Tom Brown's Body mb-22

by Gladys Mitchell

  'Did you know,' asked Mrs Bradley, 'that somebody else had previously met him at Mrs Harries's cottage?'

  'Oh, yes,' Marion replied, readily. 'It was Mrs Poundbury. He was a very silly boy. He tried to get rid of her by giving her old Mrs Harries's anti-love potions.' She laughed heartily, and then looked enquiringly from one to the other of her hearers. 'You don't think that's funny?' she enquired.

  'Not very, you know,' said Gavin apologetically. 'In fact' – he hesitated a moment – 'in fact, I rather think that you are well out of a very dirty business. Well, good-bye, Miss Pearson. If you think of anything else we ought to know, I'm sure you'll come and tell us.'

  'You don't like Miss Pearson very much,' said Mrs Bradley when, for the second time, they had left the house.

  'I like her so little,' said Gavin deliberately, 'that, if she had the physical strength, I'd suspect her of murdering Conway herself. I said she's well out of it, but I'm not sure I'd have cared to be in Conway's shoes, either. Chelsea Arts Club Ball? Wonder whether there's anything at the London end which would help us?'

  This seemed to Mrs Bradley doubtful. Conway's London life, so far as Gavin had been able to make out in his previous researches, could have been summed up as Love Among the Intelligentsia. In a Bohemian and rootless society he had flourished like the green bay tree. His easy conquests and even easier retreats had left no more than a tolerant memory of themselves, for no such fluttering of the dovecots had attended his amoral and amorous adventures in London as had caused so much havoc in the monastic seclusion of Spey.

  He had not been much liked by the beards and berets of the colony, but then, as they explained, waving paint and nicotine-stained fingers, they had never got to know him very well. He came and he went. For instance, said they, they had never realized that he was, among other things, a Schoolmaster; on the other hand, they had never enquired, of course. Live and let live was their motto.

  'Glad you can live up to half of it, anyhow,' thought Gavin; and went on to interview the ladies of the little colony. These spoke well of Conway. He was inclined to be sadistic in his love-making; all were agreed upon that. But he was healthy, strong, vigorous, wilful, and amusing. They had been sorry to hear that he was dead. Some jealous husband, they surmised, had gone outside the canons of good taste and had done for him, once and for all. Good and proper, they added, their tones congratulating the jealous but manful husband.

  'I should like to have painted Gerald dead,' said one lady, dreamily. 'He must have looked like Itylus.'

  'Icarus,' said her friend.

  'Yes, I meant Icarus.'

  'He hadn't exactly grown wings, had he?' said Gavin, grinning. 'And he was dressed, when he was found, in flannel bags and a sports jacket. Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and, no doubt,' he added gallantly, 'at the end of her paint-brush, too. Did anyone ever paint him, by the way? Alive, I mean.'

  'Oh, yes,' was the immediate response from the first of the two. 'We all painted him, of course, at different times. He was terribly paintogenic'

  It was at this point that Gavin had one of those irrational hunches which are the gift of the gods to deserving, intelligent, open-minded policemen.

  'Was he ever painted in fancy dress?' he enquired.

  'Oh, yes, of course. He made a divine Bacchus, and most of us at one time or another did him as Hamlet, too.'

  'Laertes,' said the friend who had corrected her before.

  'Oh, well, Laertes, then. It comes to the same thing.'

  Her friend, who had experienced a normal education before she had received the urge to paint, smiled at Gavin and did not reply. He did not reply to the smile.

  'And, of course, there was that thing Camelot Eager did of him,' said the first girl, doubtfully, 'but it wasn't Gerald, if you know what I mean. What with that horrible mask, and the stilts and things, it could have been simply anybody. Still, there's no doubt that Gerald was a great success at the Chelsea Arts Ball. The rest of us just crept under his huge legs, and all that sort of thing. He was on stilts, you see.'

  'Ah!' said Gavin, on a note of deep Scottish reverence. 'Was he really? And did he bring anybody with him?'

  'Did he!' replied the girl in a tone which blended annoyance with unwilling and rueful self-depreciation. 'I'll say he did!'

  She proceeded to give a portrait-in-words of Mrs Pound-bury. Gavin was delighted. 'And how long ago did you say this was?' he demanded. The answer dashed his hopes.

  'Oh, it was the one they had in the year before last.'

  'Too far back,' he thought despondently. 'It doesn't get us any further.' He had reported the information to Mrs Bradley, however, and before he returned to London to make further enquiries she suggested that he might try to get hold of the pictures of Conway which his friends had painted.

  He came back to Spey with two portraits.

  'Interesting, but not helpful, I fancy,' he said. 'Now what about this boy Scrupe and Marion Pearson?'

  'There was nothing much in the letters,' said Marion, at this next interview.

  'I know. We read 'em,' said Gavin. 'The signature didn't mean anything to us at the time, although we supposed we should have to contact this Marion sometime or other. But the letters, if you don't mind my saying so, were so innocent, and sort of prattle-y, that we weren't particularly interested in the writer, especially as the letters were undated and there was no hint of – forgive me! – passion and all that. We thought, as a matter of fact, that they might have come from a cousin of his, or someone.'

  'Yes, I expect they were pretty ordinary,' said their author. 'Lucky for me, I suppose.'

  'More about Scrupe, please,' said Gavin. 'He's one of the boys you particularly liked, I gather – apart from his embarrassing fondness, I mean. He's rather a clever boy, isn't he?'

  'Yes, he's a most entertaining, attractive boy. I found he'd broken into the cottage and I caught him with a mask in his hands. He didn't seem a bit surprised to see me. "Hullo, Marion, darling," he said. "What are you doing here? – and what the devil's this I've got hold of? Did Mr Pearson make it! It looks like his work. I say, I couldn't borrow it, I suppose? I'm going to a fancy dress dance at my aunt's this Christmas and my aunt's been chivvying me to write and tell her what sort of costume I want. This would be a smasher, wouldn't it? How do you think I'd look with my manly torso all painted an irresistible deep chocolate colour, and with a garland of pussy's-tails round my slim and connubial middle?"'

  'And what did you say to that?' enquired Gavin, fitting this portrait of Scrupe into the frame already supplied by Mrs Bradley, and reflecting, in his crude, masculine way, that six with an ashplant would do the youth very little harm.

  'I pointed out that everything in the cottage belonged neither to him nor to me, and that, in any case, he had no business to be there. Then Scrupe very cheekily asked me what I was doing there, then. "And letting yourself in with a key, too, as large as life," he finished up.'

  'But how did the young devil know that the mask was there?' demanded Gavin.

  'I don't believe he did. I believe he was just snooping round. I accused him of it, in fact, and he just put his head on one side and said, "That's all very well, you know, precious, but I adhere to my previous question. If I'm snooping so are you. Now, why?" I was idiot enough to get angry at that, and I told him pretty sharply to mind his own business. "If you were a gentleman," I said, "you'd go away at once. My private affairs are nothing to do with you." He just grinned like a monkey at that, and – well, I had to tell him. At least, I thought I had to. "I am engaged to Mr Conway, if you want to know," I said, "and I'm here to take back my letters." He sobered down at that. I've never seen such a sudden change in anybody. He is really a very nice boy. "I say, old thing," he said, "you are a fool! You'd better get out of that, you know. I don't want to speak ill of my mentors and preceptors, but Conway is a tick." I boxed his ears, hard, but he just shook his head, like a horse shaking off a fly, and said, "Your guilty and disgraceful secret is safe
with me; is mine with you if I just borrow this head?" Then he climbed through the window and ran away.'

  'With or without the head?'

  'Without. I suppose he must have come back for it later when I'd gone home.'

  'And you think that the news of your engagement was such a shock that this boy laid for Mr Conway?' demanded Gavin. Marion shook her head.

  'I've been answering your question, that's all,' she said. 'You asked me what I knew about Scrupe.'

  'The devil I did!' thought Gavin.

  'And another thing,' he added to Mrs Bradley. 'Now that I know the girl was away from home that night, I shall have to see whether Pearson's got any sort of alibi for the time of the murder.'

  'I should tackle Scrupe first,' said Mrs Bradley, 'and leave Mr Pearson's alibi to simmer.'

  Gavin took this advice on the principle that a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse.

  'Now, Scrupe,' he said, having obtained Mr Wyck's permission to talk to the boy and having disposed of Mr May-hew's objections to this course, 'I'm going to ask you some questions which it may seem well to you that you should refuse to answer.'

  'Not at all, sir,' said Scrupe, squinting modestly downwards.

  'Well, we'll see,' said Gavin good-humouredly. 'Sit down.'

  'I never sit in the presence of authority, sir.'

  'Perhaps, in the presence of authority, you are usually in an almost recumbent position?'

  Scrupe hitched his trouser knees gracefully and sat down.

  'At your service, sir.'

  'Right. What made you go to old Mrs Harries's cottage?'

  'When would that have been, sir?'

  'Why, did you go more than once?'

  'No, sir.'

  'All right. Answer the question, then.'

  'I am interested in the occult, sir.'

  'Yes?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Would the occult, in your view, include reading other people's letters?'

  'Certainly, sir. Why not?'

  'You don't think it wrong to read other people's letters?'

  'I thought we were discussing the occult, sir.'

  'Well?'

  'The occult is neither right nor wrong, sir. Shakespeare has a phrase – "but thinking makes it so."'

  'I see. So you thought it was all right to read letters which Miss Pearson had written to Mr Conway?'

  'No, of course not,' said Scrupe, speaking patiently. 'I'm not talking about those sort of letters. I met Miss Pearson there one day when I was really after something else. She told me she had come for some letters. I advised her not to marry Mr Conway. I escaped by way of a downstairs window.'

  'I see,' said Gavin. He hesitated a moment, and then said, 'Look here, Scrupe, I don't suppose you'll believe me, but I would like to tell you that if you could add anything to all this, you'd be doing Miss Pearson no harm.'

  Scrupe got up.

  'If I think of anything, I'll let you know,' he said grandly.

  'No, no,' said Gavin. 'Don't go yet. You know, I suppose, that I have every reason to suspect that Mr and Miss Pearson are responsible for the death of Mr Conway?'

  'You're bluffing,' said Scrupe.

  'Have it your own way. You must please yourself what you believe. What was all this about borrowing a fancy dress?'

  'I was commissioned to borrow it for the School plays, sir.'

  'By whom?'

  'By Mr Poundbury. I told him I thought I could lay hands on a suitable costume.'

  'The one belonging to Mr Conway?'

  'Yes, sir. Marion – Miss Pearson – had told me of the one her father helped to make.'

  'And did Mr Conway – I mean, was he prepared to lend it?'

  'I didn't like to ask him, sir. On the other hand, Mr Poundbury is a very enthusiastic sort of man, so I thought –'

  'Oh, rot!' said Gavin. 'You saw the mask by accident when you visited the cottage and –'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'And that's all I could get out of him,' said Gavin, retailing the conversation. 'I wish you'd have a go at him.'

  Mrs Bradley shook her head.

  'Where fools rush in, angels fear to tread,' she unkindly observed.

  15. And Puppy-Dogs' Tails

  *

  But now, since you have nothing better to do, ev'n go to your Book and learn your Catechism.

  IBID. (Act 1, Scene 6)

  THE School Concert was one of the great occasions of the year. From three o'clock the parents began to turn up. Lessons were cancelled from half-past twelve onwards, and the School veiled itself in its best. By half-past three Big School had begun to fill up. Parents did not sit with their boys. These formed a solid phalanx at the back, except for the School prefects (who acted as stewards to the visitors), and the House prefects (who were responsible for the orderliness of their Houses). The masters, gowned and remote, occupied the second and third rows. Directly in front of them, on either side of Mr Wyck (whose throne-like chair was in the middle of the first row), sat such members of the governing body as had chosen to grace the occasion with their presence. Directly behind the Staff sat the twittering and egoistic parents.

  *

  Ingpen, of Mr Poundbury's House, had, on the day of the plays, a very adventurous time. Spey depended upon no preparatory school in particular for its regular intake, and when, under Mr Wyck's predecessor, the numbers had fallen slightly below the complete accommodation of the School, the governing body had decided to instal a small preparatory department of its own for boys of eight to thirteen.

  These children were allotted in strict rotation to the Houses, so that each Housemaster received his fair share of them. Wealthy Housemasters, such as Mr Mayhew, thought them a complete nuisance. Indigent ones, such as Mr Poundbury, charged them some extras and were very glad to have them.

  There were strict rules governing their upbringing. They were in charge of a special prefect in each House whose duty it was to make certain that they were not bullied, imposed upon, or spoilt by the older boys. They went to bed a good deal earlier than the rest of the House, and had special dormitories allotted to them. They had their own Day Room, which was not in the House at all, but in an annexe of Big School, so that they were nominally, during parts of the day, in Mr Wyck's own charge.

  They were in great request at certain times and seasons. The treble voices in the School choir were bound, for obvious reasons, to be chosen from their number. One of them usually coxed the School boat. As children, dwarfs, Midsummer Night's Dream fairies, girls, and so forth, they were much in request for the School plays. Mr Poundbury, in fact, made even more use of them than this, for he made them pay a Dramatic Society fee and charged them heavily for the hire or purchase of their costumes, two impositions from which his older actors were free. The governing body, as a matter of actual fact, financed all such School activities, but Mr Poundbury felt that the pleasure experienced by the little boys, and the pride taken in their dramatic prowess by their mothers, justified him in these otherwise doubtful sources of private profit.

  On the day of the School plays, Ingpen, nephew of the woodwork master and a robust and comely child of nine and a half, awoke at the sound of the rising bell, and, remembering what day it was, jumped out of bed excitedly, slid on his bedside rug underneath which the housemaid had smeared and rubbed up a forbidden household polish, and cracked his head rather hard against the wall towards which, as Fate would have it, he had taken a toss.

  Ingpen, who was a plucky enough creature, got up rather shakily, explored, with delicate finger and wincing eyes and mouth, that part of his cranium which had struck the wall, said, 'You silly fools, it's not funny,' to the rest of the dormitory, and was suddenly very sick in the middle of the dormitory floor.

  The catcalls, whoops, realistic imitations, and general pandemonium caused by this performance brought along Timms, Mr Poundbury's unfortunate Preep-Weep, as such dry-nurses were called at Spey, for question and answer.

  'Now what?' shouted Timms, succe
ssfully dealing with the din.

  'Please, Timms, Ingpen catted. Look.'

  Timms, who had a queasy stomach before breakfast, unwisely accepted this invitation.

  'Lord!' he said, in disgust. 'Here, you, Tomalin, go and tell matron. What's the matter with you?' he added wrath-fully to Ingpen. 'Have you been eating in dorm, you filthy little beast?'

  'Please, Timms, he slipped on his Prigga and hit his head,' volunteered a pale child whose bed was next that of Ingpen.

  'Lord!' said Timms, more mildly this time, however. 'You'd better sit down, you little fathead. What on earth do you want to slip on mats for?'

  'I don't know, Timms,' replied Ingpen; and astonished and alarmed his interlocutor by sitting on the bed, falling sideways, and, apparently, going to sleep. Matron, fortunately, arrived at this moment, scanned the mess on the floor with noteworthy lack of interest, pointed it out to the maid who had followed her up with sand, sawdust, disinfectant, and such other appurtenances as the situation demanded, and then hurried all the children out of the room with their clothing under their arms. She commanded Timms to lift up Ingpen and bring him into the Senior Day Room, which, at that hour of the morning, was empty.

  There they walked him up and down a bit, and the School doctor, for whom Mrs Poundbury, summoned at matron's request, had immediately telephoned, examined the bump on Ingpen's head. The doctor did not think the concussion was serious, but advised that Ingpen should be kept quiet and caused to 'go steady' for a bit.

  'A bit?' said Mrs Poundbury. 'What does that mean, doctor? He's in one of the School plays this afternoon! He'll go crazy if he isn't allowed to go on!'

  The doctor was a sensible man. He did not think that the child was seriously hurt. He studied Ingpen.

  'A big part?' he enquired.

  'Oh, yes, sir, please, sir, no, sir!' gasped Ingpen, who believed that the play could not possibly be put on without him.

  'Well, you keep very quiet until this afternoon, then, or I'll take you out of the whole show,' said the doctor.