Winking at the Brim (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Suppose I telegraphed: Hold everything. We’re coming. Would that fit the occasion?”

  “Admirably. George can take it to the village post-office and you can tell him to get the car ready for a journey to London.”

  “You won’t need him to drive?”

  “Not if you are willing to take the wheel.”

  “Right. I’ll book a London hotel for the night, then, and tomorrow we can entrain. What a good thing you didn’t fix up those visits to your relatives!”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Vicar Denies Liability

  “…the fact that the document must have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose.”

  Edgar Allan Poe.

  “Fortunately,” said Dame Beatrice, when an early lunch was over and they were ready to set out for London, “the vicarage is on our way.”

  “Miss Barton’s vicarage?”

  “Yes. Before we go to Tannasgan there is one fact which needs to be established.”

  “Whether the vicar really did write that letter, I suppose.”

  “If I did not love and respect you for any other reason, dear child, I would do so for your intelligence.”

  “Many thanks for unsolicited although ironic testimonial. I know the inference that he did not write such a letter was fairly obvious.”

  “Do you think so? There are unkind, thoughtless, fainthearted men among the clergy just as among men in any other calling, I assume.”

  “One doesn’t tend to think so, though.”

  “Possibly not, although they sometimes appear in fiction, and even the wildest fiction must, to some extent, be based on fact.”

  “You’re thinking of the Reverend Mr. Brocklehurst, I suppose.”

  “There is also the ridiculous and sycophantic Mr. Collins, not to mention Canon Chasuble and the Reverend Slowley Slowley Jones of happy Aldwych memory.”

  “Still, I think it’s a case of exceptions proving the rule. Incidentally, you realise that we don’t even know this particular cleric’s name?”

  “It will not elude us for long, although I wish Sally had thought to mention it in her letter.”

  Forty miles along the road to London, Laura, under Dame Beatrice’s directions, turned off to the village which they sought. A halt at the church produced the vicar’s name from a gold-lettered notice board and the vicarage was close at hand. Laura remained in the car while Dame Beatrice walked up a narrow path to the front door. Here she produced a visiting-card which she handed to the maid, was invited in, and found herself parked in a pleasant room which overlooked the garden.

  She was not kept waiting. A thin, tall, athletic-looking man of between thirty-five and forty, wearing a suit in clerical grey of summer weight, came in, closed the door behind him, and stretched out a short-fingered, muscular hand.

  “Dame Beatrice? This is indeed a pleasure. I know your work, of course. I took an extra-mural course in applied psychology before I was ordained, and found your books most helpful and wonderfully free of the jargon one so often associates with such works.”

  “Very kind indeed of you to say so.” Dame Beatrice briskly acknowledged the compliment and then went on without a pause: “However, it was another aspect of my work which caused me to come and see you. I trust I have not chosen an inconvenient time?”

  “Not at all. Oh, by no means. I have lunched and I do not need to begin my round of visits—the sick, you know, and people who have other problems—for at least another hour. Have you had lunch, by the way?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed, thank you. Well, I hardly think my visit will need to last an hour, but, all the same, not to waste your time, I will come to the point at once.”

  “Please, do sit down.”

  Dame Beatrice took the armchair which he indicated and he seated himself on the settee opposite her.

  “I will begin with an abrupt question which, I trust, will not offend you. Have you written to a Miss Angela Barton recently?” she asked.

  “My housekeeper? I’m afraid I have been rather remiss. I really meant to send her a picture postcard while I was on holiday, but I mislaid her Scottish address and no amount of mental energy served to call it to mind. She went up to Scotland with her relatives, Sir Humphrey and Lady Calshott and their daughter, and although she sent me a picture postcard almost as soon as she got to Glasgow, she did not put her holiday address on it, and that was the last I heard. I assume that she was waiting to hear from me before she wrote again.”

  “I am afraid you will never hear from her now.”

  “You don’t mean…”

  “I should have broken it to you more gently, had there been time, but I am on my way to London, there to spend the night before I travel north to look into things. No doubt you will be hearing from Sir Humphrey before long, but in the meantime he is heavily involved with the Scottish authorities. You see, the theory at present is that Miss Barton took her own life.”

  “Never! I cannot believe that! Where is the evidence for it?”

  “Well, the one thing which seems certain is that she took poison and died of the effects.”

  “Dame Beatrice! That cannot be true! Poor, poor Miss Barton! It must have been an oversight, an accident! She never would have done such a thing deliberately. She was an upright woman, a churchwoman, a consistent and most valuable worker in the parish. I cannot believe that she would compass her own death, whatever the reason!”

  “You are not entirely alone in your opinion.”

  “Dame Beatrice, you may not know this, but, in time, my intention is to marry.”

  “Possibly to marry Angela Barton?”

  “To marry Angela Barton? Good gracious, no! She had become my housekeeper, but that was only a temporary arrangement, as, surely, she was fully aware.”

  “Are you sure you did not write to her to emphasise this?”

  “Perfectly certain. You are about to make something plain to me, but what it is I have not the remotest idea.”

  “A letter was found beside the body purporting to come from you.”

  “I wrote her no letter,” said the vicar emphatically.

  “It appears that you told her you had no further use for her services.”

  “Nonsense! Utter, wicked nonsense! I should never have dismissed her in such a callous way. Really, Dame Beatrice, I cannot understand your believing anything so monstrous!”

  “I did not say I believed it. In fact, I do not. My object in travelling north is to establish the truth, if I can.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

  “There are gaps in my information, but I will tell you all I know. Miss Barton was found dead in a ruined cottage above Loch na Tannasg. The letter to which I referred, and which bears your name at the end, was lying on the floor beside the body; so was an overturned thermos flask, the vehicle in which, it is assumed, the poison was conveyed to the deceased.”

  “A thermos flask? But Miss Barton never burdened herself with such a thing. She organised several church outings for the older parishioners and for the Sunday School children, but was always adamant that she carried no sandwiches or flask of any kind with her. ‘I’ll find something somewhere, or go without,’ she would say. ‘I loathe picnic meals. If I cannot find somewhere to get a cup of tea and a bit of bread and cheese, I will go hungry.’ I used to try to persuade her to share my own small snack, but she never would.”

  “I wonder whether I might trouble you for a sheet of your notepaper for purposes of comparison with the letter which, I assume, is now in the hands of the Scottish authorities?”

  “Certainly, and I must emphasise that I wrote no letter.”

  “And you believe him?” asked Laura, when Dame Beatrice was again in the car and they were headed for Basingstoke.

  “Implicitly,” Dame Beatrice replied. “He did not write that letter. It remains for us to find out who did, for whoever wrote it is a murderer.”

  “And that holds good, even if Angela Bart
on did poison herself,” said Laura.

  “I doubt whether Angela Barton ever read that letter,” said Dame Beatrice. “Even if she had, the impression I formed of her character (on, admittedly, a very cursory acquaintance) inclines me to think that, on receipt of such a document, she would have sped back to the vicarage…”

  “What-the-helling at the top of her voice, you mean?”

  “Your idiom is picturesque and describes the impression which, in less well-chosen words, I was attempting to convey. I believe the letter was left by the murderer to indicate that death was due to suicide.”

  “What makes you so sure the vicar was telling the truth about that letter?” asked Laura when, after dinner that evening, they were seated in Dame Beatrice’s room in a London hotel. “I mean, if he denies sending it, the person who did write it is in a bit of a mess, isn’t he?”

  “Or she, of course. If Angela Barton made enemies, I feel that they would be women rather than men.”

  “That could bring those sisters into it. You told me about them after you and Sally had been to Phyllis Calshott’s birthday party. I suppose, when you come to think of it, Phyllis herself could be involved. She isn’t all that young. Didn’t Sally mention to us once that Phyllis is twenty-six? If that is so, and she is still ‘spinster of this parish,’ she might be getting desperate at seeing herself on the shelf, especially in these days when girls seem to marry at sixteen and have the first baby—if they decide to have babies at all—before they are out of their teens.”

  “She went riding with Jeremy Tamworth while Sally and I were there.”

  “That may not have been his fault,” said Laura. “Anyway, we accept the vicar’s denials as the truth, do we, and proceed from there?”

  “It makes a starting-point, as you observe. But now I think you should retire to bed. We have a long journey before us tomorrow and Glasgow is not the end of it.”

  “I wonder whether Sally herself has any suspicions? If she thinks it was murder, she must have something to go on.”

  “Well, like the vicar, she has voiced doubts about the thermos flask. That, and the most unlikely place where the body was found, must form a large part of Sally’s suspicions.”

  “What advice will you give her about voicing her suspicions to the police?”

  “I shall advise her to say nothing. It can do no good at this stage, and I think she would be unwise to involve herself unnecessarily. So long as she answers any questions truthfully, there is nothing more, at present, which she can usefully do.”

  “Just in case the vicar thinks up something helpful, how will he get in touch with us?”

  “His telephone number is on the sheet of paper I borrowed from him, so I rang him up just before dinner, have given him the name and telephone number of this hotel and have mentioned that the village whose name he either had forgotten or did not know is called Tannasgan. What makes you think he may have something helpful to tell us?”

  “It was only a passing thought. You know how it is, though. Somebody starts talking about something and you think, well, that’s that, when suddenly something else strikes you, and you wonder why on earth you didn’t think of it at the time.”

  Dame Beatrice had often wondered whether her secretary, who had Highland ancestors on both sides of the family, possessed something very near to second sight. On this occasion her secretary’s passing thought turned to reality just as Dame Beatrice, having sent Laura to bed, had taken out a volume of poetry and was settling down to her habitual bedtime reading. The telephone rang in her room and the voice of the receptionist said, “Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley? Are you prepared to have the charges reversed on a call from Hampshire?”

  “Certainly,” Dame Beatrice replied. “Put the caller through at once, please.”

  She recognised, as she had been certain she would, the scholarly Oxford voice.

  “Oh, Dame Beatrice! So good of you. I hope I did not get you out of bed?”

  “No, no, Vicar. Please go on. This is an excellent line.”

  “Well, I have suddenly thought of something. That letter you mentioned which purported to come from me.”

  “Yes? The letter which was found beside the body?”

  “That’s it. Well, all my notepaper is stamped with my name and address.”

  “Every sheet is stamped with your name and address, yes, I see. I noticed that your telephone number was also on the sheet you gave me.”

  “Yes, well, that is just the point. The telephone number is a recent addition. If the letter I am supposed to have written does not carry this information, I certainly did not send it within the time Miss Barton has been at Tannasgan. I hope this will clear away any doubts which may have been in your mind.”

  “Your own statement did that, so far as I am concerned. Thank you so much for ringing.”

  “And you, for agreeing to reverse the charges.”

  Dame Beatrice replaced the receiver and rehearsed to herself what the vicar had just told her. Granted that he had not written the letter—and she was more than prepared to believe that he had known nothing of it at all prior to her visit—there were two points to consider.

  One was that if his personal headed notepaper, with his printed telephone number as well as his address, had not been used, the letter was undoubtedly a forgery. The other was that (still taking it for granted that the vicar was not the writer) if the forger had used a sheet of the vicar’s notepaper, then he or she could be somebody who, at some time or other, had had access to the vicarage and an opportunity to purloin a sheet of the headed stationery, with or without the telephone number printed on it.

  “And that,” said Dame Beatrice to Laura, as they established themselves in the train after an early breakfast on the following morning, “opens up an avenue leading to many interesting byways, don’t you think?”

  “Could be any one of the parties who went to Tannasgan, you mean? They all live in the vicar’s parish except Sally.”

  “And possibly Mr. Pring, who was visiting the Parrises. However, whoever it was went prepared with documentary evidence of Miss Barton’s suicide, I think.”

  “Here be villains,” said Laura soberly.

  “Yes, indeed. I wonder whether the police have kept the letter? Not that it matters, because Sally is an observant person with a good memory, and she will tell us whether it was written on headed notepaper. There is something else I must ask her, although the answer is obvious, I feel.”

  “Whether the letter as well as the body was sodden, I suppose.”

  “You read my thoughts, as you so often do.”

  “It takes some doing to forge a whole letter, doesn’t it?”

  “It depends upon whether the reader of the letter is familiar with the handwriting of the person the letter purports to come from.”

  “And, so far as we know, the only people who have seen the letter, apart from the forger himself or herself, are Sally and the police, I suppose, and neither of them would recognise the vicar’s handwriting. But the forger couldn’t be sure about that. I mean, it need not have been Sally who found the letter in the first place.”

  “I am inclined to think that the letter was an over-elaboration, in any case, and over-elaboration has sometimes proved to be a murderer’s worst enemy.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Dame Beatrice Goes North

  “…and I did not want any token of regard, being conducted where there was any thing which I desired to see, and entertained at once with the novelty of the place, and the kindness of communication.”

  Doctor Samuel Johnson.

  (1)

  It was pouring with rain when the train pulled in at Glasgow. Laura drove to the vast Central Hotel and secured two rooms for the night, and she and her employer decided upon an early start for Tannasgan on the morrow.

  “I don’t see that we could have done much today, anyway, by the time we should have got there,” said Laura, “and it wouldn’t have been any fun driving in this we
ather.”

  “I trust your judgment,” said Dame Beatrice, “particularly as you are at the wheel. I think, too, that the amenities offered by this hotel are likely to be much preferred to any which we shall find at the village inn.”

  However, at midday on the following day they found a welcoming hostess in the person of Mrs. McLauchlin and also an enthusiastic Sally who had been at the inn since eleven.

  “I guessed you’d stay for the night in Glasgow,” she said, “but I showed up here last night just in case you should have decided to chance the weather. What do you want to do first?”

  “Have lunch,” said Laura. “I’m starving.”

  “I hope you will join us, Sally,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “So do I,” said Sally. “I shall enjoy food cooked by Mrs. McLauchlin after Lady Calshott’s efforts. No shop, I take it, until we’ve eaten?”

  The “shop” consisted of questions and answers and took place in Sally’s van after lunch. By the time the conversation was ended, Dame Beatrice agreed that there was sufficient substance in Sally’s contention that Angela’s death was a case of murder to warrant, at any rate, a discreet form of enquiry.

  “Mind you,” said Sally, “I’m not asking you to stick your neck out, Grandmamma. If the fiscal, or whoever it is, says suicide, I think we must leave it at that. I’d just like to know, that’s all.”

  “Now that I have spoken with the vicar, I share your desire to have the cards on the table,” said Dame Beatrice. “The letter seems to have been the only motive for suicide, and I am convinced that he did not write the letter. The question which remains is, who did, and for what reason? Even if the poor woman did take her own life as a result of reading such a letter, the person who wrote it and forged the vicar’s signature is morally responsible for her death. That is, provided that she had read the letter, a matter which may be difficult to prove.”

  “So what’s our first move?”

  “A series of conversations with the members of your party, beginning with Sir Humphrey and Lady Calshott. It is no more than civil, in any case, on my part, to meet and have a chat with them.”