The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Might as well give the inspector something to think about if he does come nosing round here,’ he said to himself. He thrust spade and case into the bushes, groped his way out of the murky woods, and returned to the house.

  There was a case of stuffed trout in the hall. Aubrey, creeping in by way of the drawing-room, whose French windows had been left unfastened when he and Felicity had ventured forth in quest of the case, switched on the light, took off his jacket, folded it into a thick pad, and placed it against the glass. Then he raised his fist and dealt the folded coat a smashing blow.

  Above stairs his cousin Redsey slept heavily, the prey of terrible dreams. Aubrey’s mother, that stately, uncourageous matron, also slept. Her Roman profile, dignified even in slumber, and both her shell-like ears, were buried beneath the clothes. The tinkle of broken glass as it fell to the floor of the hall passed entirely unnoticed.

  Aubrey seized the largest trout with both hands. To his excited imagination it appeared to present an expression of shocked surprise at being thus rudely disturbed. Switching off the light, he thrust the fish under his arm and ran back to the woods. Here he pushed the trout into what remained of the hole, drew out the spade, and quickly shovelled back the rest of the earth and stamped it flat.

  Then, with the circumspect aid of the torch, he felt for the case, intending to find some other hiding-place for it. To his consternation and dismay, it was not to be found.

  Aubrey searched frantically. Throwing caution to the winds, he used the torch recklessly, careless of who might see the gleaming light. All was of no avail. The incriminating bloodstained suitcase had vanished.

  VII

  ‘I knew I heard burglars,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay triumphantly to a nervously ill-tempered Jim Redsey and a heavy-eyed worried-looking Aubrey next morning.

  ‘Burglars?’ said Jim, with a short laugh. ‘What rot!’

  ‘I object, James, both to your speech and the abrupt, I may say discourteous, tone in which you see fit to deliver it,’ pronounced his aunt coldly. ‘I repeat, there were burglars in this house last night. They have stolen a valuable trout from the case in the hall.’

  ‘Valuable?’ snarled Redsey. ‘What tosh! A beastly lot of mid-Victorian atrocities, those trout! As a matter of fact, one of them isn’t a trout at all. It’s a roach.’

  ‘I do not affect to be a judge of fish,’ said his aunt, ‘neither am I an authority upon their names and habits. I merely remark that there were burglars in this house last night. I heard them. As proof I submit that the trout is gone. I realize that I am but a poor subnormal specimen of humanity, belonging to the weaker sex at that; one who may be contradicted, insulted and corrected at random by any young man who happens to be a poor twelve at golf and an average – a very average – performer upon the piano. Nevertheless, I have ears and eyes equal to any in this country, and I insist that this house was visited by burglars last night! I myself perceived them stealing across the lawn in the early hours of the morning! And I repeat that they removed a valuable fish from the case in the hall.’

  ‘Why you keep harping on the value of the putrid fish I can’t conceive,’ said Jim irritably, perceiving that his aunt was going to get the best of it as usual.

  ‘If it were not valuable,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay, in a tone which indicated clearly that the argument was at an end, ‘the burglars would not have taken it. If you are going to choke, Aubrey, will you please go outside!’

  CHAPTER VI

  Thursday

  ‘PLEASE yourself, my dear old thing,’ said Felicity despairingly. ‘I don’t mind a bit.’

  The Vicar of Wandles smiled upon his daughter vaguely.

  ‘But you know perfectly well that I’m never happy when I please myself,’ he said. ‘You please yourself instead. Did you notice whether I put Tacitus on the mantelpiece in the other room? I don’t seem to have him with me.’

  Apologetically he drew a small clock from the large pocket of his black alpaca coat and placed it on the table.

  Felicity went into the dining-room and retrieved the volume in question.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to upset you, sweetest, but we shan’t have a single clock in the house that will keep correct time if you go pushing them into the pockets of your coat like that. And I mend those pockets so often,’ she added with a little sigh. ‘Now, about the tennis. Whom shall we have? Aubrey, his awful mother, and Jimsey. That’s three from the Manor to start with. Then I owe Mr Wright an invitation, so that means asking Mr Savile and the unspeakable Lulu as well. That makes six. You and me, eight. Then I ought to ask Margery – she doesn’t get much fun, poor kid – and Dr Barnes. No good inviting Mrs Barnes with them, because she’s away. That’s ten. We ought to have two more, I suppose, and make it up to a dozen. What about the major? We might just as well ask everybody at once, and get it over. Besides, it’s cheaper than having two or three little stunts.’

  ‘What about Mr Sethleigh?’ suggested the vicar. ‘You didn’t include him with the Manor crowd.’

  A shadow crossed Felicity’s brow.

  ‘Darling, I keep telling you he has gone to America,’ she said. The vicar gazed at her in mild surprise.

  ‘Really? That’s very curious,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked his daughter sharply.

  Felicity’s nerves were raw. She had not slept for thinking of Aubrey and his task of burying the blood-stained suitcase. A thousand times in fevered imagination she had sped down the Bossbury road with the horrid thing in her hand. In fancy she found herself groping her way into the dark pig-sty, terrified of what she might discover there.

  ‘Why?’ echoed the vicar. He thought deeply for a moment. ‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Well, he wants me to witness his will. I promised to go over there on Monday afternoon, when his solicitor was due to arrive, but I completely forgot it.’

  ‘But you did witness his will, darling. Ever so long ago. I was about sixteen at the time. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember that will. I thought it a very fair will, you know. But he was going to alter it. You see, according to the terms of the first will, the chief beneficiary was the young cousin of his, James Redsey. But Redsey has done something to annoy Sethleigh, I should imagine, because this new will, from what I can understand, cuts Redsey right out and leaves the bulk of the property to the boy Aubrey Harringay.’

  ‘But – but are you certain?’ cried Felicity, going very white.

  ‘Absolutely. I told the police all about it yesterday afternoon. They came here to find out all I knew about Sethleigh, but I didn’t realize he had gone to Americà. What have the police to do with it?’

  Felicity sat down. She felt that, without support of some kind, her trembling knees would give way and she would fall.

  ‘Oh, dearest!’ she cried. ‘You didn’t tell them about the altered will?’

  ‘Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I? Especially as it hasn’t been altered yet. At least, I suppose not, or Sethleigh would have been over here for my signature before this. Oh, you say he has gone to America, though. Did he see Grayling – it is Grayling, isn’t it? – before he went?’

  ‘No,’ said Felicity, moistening her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. ‘No, he – no, he didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, well, then Redsey is still the heir. Perhaps Sethleigh will have recovered from his annoyance by the time he returns to England. I like the look of young Redsey. By the way,’ he broke off, ‘I think I must go into Culminster this afternoon. I want to see Crowdesley about the Repairing Fund. We must have something done to the west door soon. It’s the finest bit of Norman work in the county, and it’s simply going to ruin.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Felicity, as cheerfully as she could. ‘Perhaps he’ll give you lunch if you trot off at once. I expect he’ll have something nice. Bishops generally do, don’t they? And there’s nothing but the cold lamb here, and precious little of that.’

  ‘I doubt if it would be a popul
ar move to rush him for lunch,’ said the vicar, grinning boyishly. ‘I think it will have to be the lamb, and I’ll go over there first thing this afternoon.’

  The one maid the Vicarage boasted knocked aggressively at the door.

  ‘There’s a lady across the half-door does be wanting his reverence,’ she announced grandly and with a truly Hibernian toss of the forelock. ‘Will I be after asking her within?’

  ‘You will,’ replied the vicar, to whom Mary Kate Maloney was an unending source of joy. ‘And kindly refrain from instructing her to wipe her shoes on the mat, as you did the last visitor who came to call on me.’

  ‘Sure,’ retorted Mary Kate, with the readiness of her race to enter into any argument, however unprofitable, ‘and wouldn’t that be foolishness itself, with no rain falling these twenty days and the road without as dry as Tim Nixey’s throat, and the whole of the sky like brazen brass entirely?’

  The vicar chuckled as she flounced out, and Felicity rose to receive the visitor.

  ‘Mrs Lestrange Bradley,’ announced Mary Kate magnificently. One of her most striking virtues consisted of an enviable ability to grasp names the first time she heard them, coupled with the courage to repeat them aloud with confident heartiness.

  A small, shrivelled, bird-like woman, who might have been thirty-five and who might have been ninety, clad in a blue and sulphur jumper like the plumage of a macaw, came forward with that air of easy condescension which is usually achieved by royalty only, and fixed the vicar with an eagle eye.

  ‘Am I addressing the spiritual adviser of this parish?’ she enquired.

  Her voice was startling in that it belied her whole appearance. Here was no bird-like twitter nor harsh parrot cry, but a mellifluous utterance, rich and full, and curiously, definitely, superlatively attractive.

  The Reverend Stephen Broome blushed nervously, and ran a bony finger round the inside of his clerical collar.

  ‘Er – I suppose so. That is – yes,’ he replied.

  ‘Then I am compelled to state that in my opinion the west door is a disgrace,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly.

  ‘We were just talking about it when you knocked,’ said Felicity, quick to defend her father. ‘But the Restoration Fund, all told, only amounts to twenty-nine shillings and sevenpence, and what’s the use of that, I should like to know? It’s all very well for people to complain –’

  Mrs Bradley looked at her for the first time. Felicity felt herself blushing beneath the long, cool, slightly ironic gaze.

  ‘A lovely child,’ said Mrs Bradley at last. ‘And so angry with me.’

  She turned again to the vicar.

  ‘Have it repaired,’ she said. ‘Send me the estimates. I will pay the bill.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m going to see the bishop about it this very afternoon,’ said the Reverend Stephen helplessly. ‘I mean, it is tremendously kind of you, but –’

  ‘Oh, I’m solvent,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a hideous cackle. ‘As for going to see Reginald Crowdesley, you might as well save your time, young man. Look here, suppose I give you a cheque for the Restoration Fund, and then you can muddle along in your own way with it. I suppose he is a muddler?’ she added, turning to Felicity again. ‘He looks like one.’

  The vicar chuckled appreciatively at this palpable home truth, but Felicity was too angry to reply. She was more angry still when the vicar invited Mrs Bradley to the tennis party on the following afternoon.

  ‘Then that will make the twelve people you wanted, dear,’ he announced to Felicity in tones of such decided self-congratulation at having solved one of the domestic problems at last that she could do no less than smile and second the invitation.

  ‘Although how I did it,’ she confided to Aūbrey Harringay next day, ‘I don’t know. She’s a most infuriating woman!’

  ‘Yes. The mater loathes her too,’ said Aubrey, grinning. ‘She’s a psycho-analyst.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Psycho-analyst. I don’t know what they do, quite. I believe it’s something mad but brainy. The thing was all the rage two or three years ago, and the mater was potty to be in the thick of it, as usual. She collects these new movements. Well, she tried to collect Mrs Bradley, who appears to be rather a brass hat at the business, but the old dame wasn’t having any. Said that what the mater required was not a psycho-analyst but a copper-plated tummy, because all her moods and tempers were simply due to indigestion and not to all these repressions and complexes at all. Of course, the mater was rather fed, and tried to get old Blessington – that’s our solicitor – to start an action for slander or something. But old Blessington only told her not to be an ass, but to think herself lucky she’d had such good advice absolutely free of charge, and advised her to follow it up. So the mater tried the diet stunt, as recommended by Mrs Bradley, and has positively never looked back. Oh, and by the way! Rather a confounded nuisance! I ought to have told you yesterday, but we all went out in the car, and, anyway, I couldn’t see that there was anything to be done. That case of Rupert’s. It’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ said Felicity, puzzled. ‘But you buried it.’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact I did not bury it,’ confessed Aubrey. ‘And I wish I knew whether the silly blighter who boned it while I was gone for the fish was playing a practical joke, or whether – Oh, I don’t know. What do you think about it?’

  ‘As I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about,’ said Felicity, ‘I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly about anything. What did happen, then?’

  ‘I’m telling you. I poked the case and the spade into the bushes while I went up to the house to get something to shove into the hole old Jim made on Monday night, and, when I got back with one of the stuffed fish from the case in the hall, I found the spade all right but the beastly case had gone. I looked again yesterday, and I looked this morning, but there’s no sign of it anywhere.’

  ‘But I can’t think why you didn’t bury it as we arranged,’ cried Felicity. ‘Now we don’t know what has happened to it!’

  ‘Well, I thought – the police, you see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They’ll nose about. Sure to. They may just as easily nose about outside the house as inside it. If they go into the clearing they’ll spot the freshly dug earth. Then they’ll excavate. Well, it wouldn’t do for them to find the blood-stained baggage, would it, with old Rupert’s initials as large as life on the lid? You see, my theory is this: Old Rupert murdered that man, whoever it was, and took the body into Bossbury to cover the tracks. Then Rupert thought it best to disappear. Then I think Jim and Rupert had a scrap in the woods, and Jim won, and Rupert got hairy and told Jim he’d tell the police Jim did it, and Jim got wind up because he couldn’t prove an alibi, and perhaps even helped Rupert a bit and so forth, and there you are.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Felicity slowly, ‘there I am. And there are you, and you’re a wretched little liar, Aubrey Harringay.’

  Aubrey, who topped her by an inch and a half – for he was a tall boy – grinned cheerfully.

  ‘Of course,’ continued Felicity, knitting her brows and thinking it out, ‘the murdered man can’t be Rupert. I mean, theoretically he is, but actually things like that don’t happen to people one knows. Oh, bother! Here comes somebody looking for a tennis partner. Will you play again, or are you too tired?’

  ‘I’m too tired to play with Savile,’ said Aubrey decidedly. ‘He’s such a dud at tennis.’ So saying, he walked off.

  The sleek-haired Savile, however, was looking neither for a partner nor an opponent. He had come in search of Felicity for another purpose. He approached her with his ingratiating smile.

  ‘When I was over here last time, Miss Broome,’ he remarked, ‘your father offered to show me his Rabelais.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing special,’ replied Felicity indifferently, ‘except for the French illustrations. I believe they are supposed to be rather fine, but I’ve never seen them. If you want to look at it you can go into the
study now. I think Father is there.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Savile, his sallow face flushing warmly. ‘I will go along, then, if I may.’

  ‘There are sandwiches and things in the dining-room,’ Felicity went on. ‘Please help yourself. It’s rather a thirsty afternoon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Greasy bounder,’ remarked Aubrey, returning to her side as soon as Savile was out of sight. ‘I suppose it’s all right to let him go pawing your pater’s stuff about? Chap always looks dirty to me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Felicity, laughing. ‘And, look here! Why aren’t you helping to amuse my guests instead of hanging about and being rude about people?’

  ‘Your guests are all right,’ said Aubrey, with youthful optimism. ‘The major is still clinging tight to lovely Lulu – no, honestly, though, talk about “the face that launched a thousand ships” – she is a glorious kid, isn’t she? Young, too, you know. Not more than eighteen. Can’t be. She is bucked at having the old lad on her hands all the afternoon! And the mater is busy having a row with old Jim, and Mrs Bradley is hobnobbing with the doctor, and Margery has gone home to feed her rabbits, but she’s coming back immediately, and I – here am I!’ He put his black head on one side and smiled at her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Felicity absently. ‘Aubrey, I wish you had buried that suitcase after all. It seems to me that even if the police had found it, they couldn’t have done much with it. But the thought that somebody was watching us all the time in those woods makes me crawl all over. I say, here comes Mrs Bradley. Do talk to her.’

  ‘Not I,’ said Aubrey, making a bee-line for the gooseberry bushes which bordered the kitchen garden and divided it from the lawn. ‘You do your own dirty work, young child! I’m going to have a squint at your historic dust-heap.’

  ‘I’ve been talking for hours,’ announced Mrs Bradley to Felicity. ‘How ill-natured one is always tempted to be when one gossips! The dear doctor was thus tempted. He fell.’