The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

by Gladys Mitchell

  Mrs Willows gazed at the bold fellow in terrified admiration. She had been a hero-worshipper for fifteen years.

  ‘I think we might cross you out of the list of suspects, my friend,’ thought Mrs Bradley as she walked up the lane towards the house of Dr Barnes and turned in at the double gates. ‘Still, I am very glad I have had a look at you. Conclusive, I think. Exit Willows.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Margery Barnes, straightening her back at Mrs Bradley’s approach, for she had spent the previous twenty minutes in weeding the gravel path. ‘Father is out on his round. I’m expecting him home soon, though. He usually comes in at about ten, and goes out again at about eleven.’ She glanced at Mrs Bradley’s face. ‘You don’t look very ill,’ she remarked.

  Mrs Bradley stretched out a claw-like hand and tweaked her short fair hair.

  ‘I am not in the least ill. I am thankful to say,’ she observed. ‘I have come to consult your father about a different matter. Rather a serious matter, I am afraid.’

  Margery blanched.

  ‘Not about that horrible murder? You’re not going to ask Father anything about that?’ she cried in consternation.

  ‘Hoots toots!’ cried Mrs Bradley, who professed an enormous admiration for the Scots people and occasionally expressed herself in what she fondly believed to be their native tongue. ‘And here is your father!’

  ‘Oh, Father!’ cried Margery. ‘Mrs Bradley has called to ask you –’

  ‘To prescribe for old Martha Higgs down in the village,’ interpolated Mrs Bradley neatly. Margery gasped with relief, and subsided. ‘She is not an insured person, Mrs Bradley continued, ‘and she can’t get a widow’s pension because unfortunately she is a spinster. She has the old age pension and two shillings a week from her nephew – good luck to him for a dutiful and generous boy, for he has a wife and children of his own – and her rheumatism is really very bad. I think a time at Bath might help the poor dear. I suppose a cure, or anything approaching a cure, is hopeless at her age, but I think perhaps –’

  Imagining that the discussion might probably last for some time, Margery slipped away to her own room, changed her shoes, put on a hat, and bicycled down to the Vicarage.

  As soon as Margery had gone, Mrs Bradley propounded to the doctor her question as to the probable hiding-place of the skull.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor remarked, his fresh-coloured face flushing darkly, ‘if they had brought the thing to me instead of giving it to young Wright to monkey about with, I could soon have told them whether it was Sethleigh’s skull or not. You had only to try his dental plate in the jaws and deduce whether it would fit.’

  ‘Quite so. I had thought of that myself,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But there were two objections to the plan at the time you mentioned.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes, doctor. For one thing, when the bishop handed the skull over to Cleaver Wright there was no idea of its being Sethleigh’s skull. The bishop and the vicar had an argument to which historic or prehistoric period the skull belonged, and the vicar expressed some hope that a complete model in clay might help to settle the question. That was all. Secondly, the dental plate, I suppose, was in Sethleigh’s mouth when he met his death, and so –’

  ‘The police haven’t found it, you mean,’ said the doctor. ‘H’m! I see. Still, it would have been an infallible proof, you know. Quite infallible! I mean, a man’s dental plate, like his finger-prints, can’t possibly belong to anyone else, you know.’

  Mrs Bradley shook her head slowly from side to side until she looked like some hideously leering idol from the East. ‘Is any proof ever infallible?’ she asked sadly.

  II

  Felicity was out, and the Reverend Stephen Broome was preparing his sermon when Margery alighted at the Vicarage gate, propped up her bicycle against the untidy hedge, and walked up to the front door.

  ‘The mistress is along by the village, and, sure, himself will have my life, Miss Margery, should I put the face of me inside his little room this day,’ exclaimed Mary Kate when Margery asked to see either the vicar or his daughter.

  ‘I can’t help it. If Felicity is out, I must see him! Tell him it’s about the murder, Mary Kate. That ought to fetch him!’

  ‘The murder! Oh, then, Miss Margery, what’s come over you at all?’

  ‘Nothing. Go and tell the vicar quickly, Mary Kate. Oh, do hurry up!’

  Upon this, Mary Kate flung herself into the study, omitting even the formality of knocking at the door, and cried in a loud voice rich with direful woe:

  ‘Glory be to God, your honour’s reverence, Mr Broome! There’s Mistress Margery from the doctor’s house below does be after saying she’s done the murder herself itself entirely!’

  ‘Where is Miss Margery?’ enquired the vicar.

  ‘Sure, herself is below stairs waiting on your reverence.’

  ‘And don’t call me your reverence! I’ve told you before that I am not of the Roman persuasion.’

  ‘More’s the shame to you, then,’ retorted Mary Kate, recovering her wonted poise with speed and certainty, ‘that you wouldn’t be an honest Christian man – and you to be baptizing the babes and burying the old people and all!’

  The vicar, as usual, was left without the honours of war, and Mary Kate retired in triumph from the study. She returned in two minutes and ushered in a stammering and shame-flushed Margery Barnes.

  ‘Please, may I shut the door?’ she asked timidly when Mary Kate had departed. ‘I – what I have to say is absolutely private. I don’t – nobody else – I couldn’t let everybody know.’

  The Vicar of Wandles Parva laid down his pen and turned to face her. Without meeting his quizzical gaze, Margery went over to the door and closed it.

  ‘Now then,’ said the Reverend Stephen. ‘What’s all this? Some dark deed, or what?’

  ‘It’s partly about me and partly about somebody else,’ said Margery, looking past him and collecting her thoughts, and – or so it seemed to the vicar – her courage. He looked at her, half amused, and saw a red-faced, slightly perspiring, fair-haired, short-skirted, ingenuous maiden of eighteen, curiously like – who was she curiously like? He frowned. Margery caught his eye, and avoided it again.

  ‘Mr Broome,’ she said at last, ‘do you think – I mean, there’s no chance of Jim Redsey being arrested, is there? You hear such horrible rumours down in the village about him.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The vicar looked thoughtful. ‘I believe there’s a good deal of evidence against him. He’ll have to stand his trial if he is arrested, of course, unless anything turns up to point out the real murderer. It is a very nasty, puzzling business, this murder; isn’t it? I shouldn’t think too much about it, if I were you.’

  ‘You don’t believe Jim Redsey did it, do you, Mr Broome? I can see you don’t! Oh, I’m so glad!’

  ‘Why, no, I don’t believe he did it. And you don’t believe it either, I see.’ The Reverend Stephen Broome picked up his pen and rustled some papers suggestively. But Margery refused to be turned out of the study by the feeble hints of work to be done. She crossed one thick, sturdy leg over the other and leaned forward confidentially.

  ‘I know he didn’t do it,’ she said unexpectedly.

  ‘What?’ The vicar looked startled.

  Margery nodded her head emphatically.

  ‘If I – if I tell you what I know, will you back me up with Father?’ she demanded.

  ‘What have you been up to, then?’ The vicar laid down his pen and began to fill his pipe.

  ‘I’ll tell you.’

  She uncrossed her legs, leaned forward, with her elbows among the vicar’s scattered sermon papers, and began.

  ‘Rupert Sethleigh was supposed to have been killed on Sunday night, June 22nd, wasn’t he? And, at about nine o’clock, Jim Redsey was in the “Queen’s Head”. Well, if anybody saw Rupert Sethleigh alive after Jim Redsey had knocked him down and gone off and left him for dead, would it prove that Jim was not – would
they – I mean, they couldn’t think Jim did it then, could they?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. It would make a difference, of course, because the police would then have to prove that Redsey returned and finished off the job, and, from what I understand of the matter, it would be impossible to prove that.’

  ‘Could they – would they try to prove that?’

  ‘Well, I expect so. You see, the police seem to have a very strong case against Redsey. I’m afraid I don’t read the papers, so I am not at all clear how far the police theories have gone, but one hears things. . . . Look here, why don’t you go and tell what you know to the inspector? He’ll be able to advise you far better than I can.’

  ‘But what about Father? He’ll be furious when he knows what I’ve done!’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to face up to it. You didn’t do anything desperate, I suppose?’

  He surveyed her quizzically.

  ‘I’ve brought up a daughter myself,’ he added, ‘so I know the sort of thing they get up to.’

  ‘I went into the Manor Woods to – to meet a man,’ confessed Margery, blushing furiously under her freckles and looking about ten years old.

  ‘The dickens you did!’ And the vicar grinned wickedly.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what Father will say! He’s frightfully particular about – about things like that.’ To Margery, obviously, it was no grinning matter.

  ‘I see. Well, I’ll try and cope with him; but, even if I can’t mitigate his wrath, you must take comfort from the fact that you’ll be doing the right thing, and the big thing, in owning up like a sportsman. See?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margery lugubriously. ‘What sort of view will the inspector take? I mean, will he be like you or – or pious and horrified, like Mother and Father?’

  ‘You’d better trot along and see,’ said the vicar seriously. ‘Oh, half a minute! Here comes Felicity, I think.’

  He walked to the end of the passage, called her into the dining-room and said to her quite solemnly:

  ‘Child, have you ever been to the Manor Woods by night to meet a man?’

  Felicity stared at him.

  ‘Well,’ pursued the vicar, ‘why did Margery Barnes go? She’s in my study, by the way. Perhaps you’ll go in to her.’

  ‘Margery? She never did! Little idiot! Who was the man?’

  ‘I don’t know who the man was,’ the vicar replied. ‘Will her father be very angry?’

  ‘She’s never going to tell Dr Barnes?’ cried Felicity, horrified.

  ‘Wouldn’t you tell me?’

  Felicity kissed the top of his nose.

  ‘It’s rather different, silly. Dr Barnes will eat her! And that idiotic Mrs Barnes, who can’t pass a cow in the lane without wanting to squeal, will back him up when she returns from her holiday. But why is she going to tell him? I shouldn’t, if I were his daughter!’

  ‘She’s going to tell the inspector first.’

  ‘The inspector? What for? You know, sweetest, it’s rather morbid, I think – this passion for confessing one’s sins to all and sundry. By the way, do you know Mrs Bradley’s trying to find out all about – Oh, I say!’

  Her grey eyes grew wide with surmise and fear. ‘It isn’t anything to do with the murder that poor little Margery –!’ Without staying to finish the sentence, she flew into the study. At the same instant, Mrs Bradley was announced at the front door. Felicity, who had had barely time to greet the doctor’s daughter, left Margery alone and went down into the hall.

  ‘Felicity,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘don’t you think it would be rather nice to take your Sunday-school class into Culminster and show them the cathedral? And the market cross? And the museum? So interesting for the dear children.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ replied Felicity, puckering her brow. ‘It would be interesting, and I’d love to take them, but their parents can’t afford the bus fare, and it’s too far to walk. And I can’t afford to pay for the dears,’ she added, ‘much as I’d like to do it.’

  Mrs Bradley fumbled in her skirt pocket and drew out a large practical purse.

  ‘In the interests of their education,’ she said, opening it, ‘I hope I may be allowed to provide their fares.’ She pulled out a pound note. ‘And their teas.’ She pulled out another. ‘Sufficient? Good.’

  She waved aside Felicity’s thanks.

  ‘Don’t encourage them to look at the case on the north wall of the museum. It contains, among other things, the model of a Roman shield, and, if you stand at the far end of the room opposite the door, half-close your eyes, and peer diligently behind that shield, you can see something extremely interesting. But do not show it to the children. I am very anxious for you to come, immediately upon your return, to my house and tell me what you have seen.’

  Felicity looked mystified, but promised to obey.

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I’ve got Margery Barnes here with some tale or other which seems to be in connection with something which happened on the night of the murder. Shall I ask her whether she is willing for us both to hear it? She is in the next room.’

  Margery, blushing but valiant, was willing, and Felicity conducted Mrs Bradley into the study.

  ‘You can all get out,’ said the vicar, who had returned to his den and wanted to get on with his sermon. ‘I’m busy. Go into the drawing-room. That’s the place for visitors!’

  Settled in the drawing-room, Felicity turned to the younger girl.

  ‘Now then, Margery! What’s all this about your wild oats?’ she said lightly.

  ‘It was all through Father saying “Don’t”,’ began Margery. She sighed wistfully. ‘Your father never says “Don’t”. I’ve noticed that. And, if my father never said it, what a lot of things in the world I should never ache and yearn to do!’

  She sighed again, glanced down and became aware of very dusty shoes. She cleaned them surreptitiously on her brown stockings and continued hastily:

  ‘The first time Father said “Don’t” about men was when Willie Bailey took me on the back of his motorcycle to Bossbury Fair. And we came home before it was anything like dark, so I don’t see why Father need have been so sniffy. It wasn’t as though Willie isn’t a perfectly nice boy! Anyway, Father said I wasn’t to meet Willie, or go with him anywhere ever any more. But, of course, I did. At school we were encouraged to be strong-minded and independent and to live our own lives, and I made up my mind that, if living my own life meant wanting to go out with perfectly decent or jolly clever men, I was going to do it! Well, it couldn’t be by day, openly and above-board, because Father had forbidden that. So it had to be at night. Well, it came to that Sunday night. You know the one I mean! I’d arranged to be at the Manor Woods at a quarter to nine. That was to give the people a chance to clear away from the church, because I would have to pass it, and I didn’t want to be seen. Well, it was all fairly easy that night, because Mother was on holiday – she’d gone away the day before, on the Saturday – and Father was going up to the major’s – at least, he said something about it, and he wasn’t at home when I came in from visiting old Mrs Hartley up at The Winnows – so, the coast being clear, I waited until twenty-five to nine and then I sneaked off. Well, I met him all right, although I felt rather scared. For one thing, I always had a dread that someone would see us, and tell Father, and then the Manor Woods always do frighten me, somehow – I think it’s that horrible Stone – I dream about it sometimes, and it’s always dripping with blood – and then, that night, he scared me too.’

  Felicity felt her heart beginning to beat faster.

  ‘He would have us sit down with our backs against that horrible Stone,’ continued Margery with a shudder. ‘Said I was silly to be afraid of it, and the sooner I got over the feeling, the better. Well, I didn’t feel so unsafe with him beside me, and he began to tell me stories – fairy tales, delightful things! – until his voice going on and on made me forget the Stone and everything. I just felt as though I must go to sleep. Suddenly he brought his hand down hard on m
y shoulder and pulled his face in close to mine, and glared into my eyes, and said in a horrible, blood-curdling voice, “And then the ogre cried – !” I suppose he did it for a joke, but I was so terrified that I just tore myself free and jumped up and ran through the woods for all I was worth. I fell over things, and tore myself on brambles, and caught my feet in things, and it was getting quite dark in among the trees.’

  ‘What time was this?’ Mrs Bradley rapped out the question from her corner.

  ‘Time? Oh, just after nine o’clock. I remember hearing the church clock strike nine when I first began to feel drowsy. I was to meet him at a quarter to nine, you remember, so we had not been in the woods very long.’

  ‘Nine o’clock? I see. Please go on. I’m sorry I interrupted,’ said Mrs Bradley, sitting back in her chair.

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t know how I managed not to go crashing into tree-trunks, dashing about like that. Still, I was lucky, I suppose. Suddenly, what was my horror to come bursting out into a clearing! I knew there was only one clearing in the Manor Woods, and that was the pine ring with the Stone in the middle. And, sure enough, there it was – the great, sprawling, horrible toad-like thing! – but he was not sitting there. I suppose he went after me when I ran away. Anyway, I was so frightfully breathless that I felt, Stone or no Stone, I must sit down just for a minute, so I sat down, and bent my head to my knees, as our gym mistress taught us to do if we felt a bit faint.

  ‘Well, just then I heard a slight sound quite close to me. Well, you know how it is when you hear a noise – you raise your head. Well, I raised mine, and, to my absolute horror, the first thing my eyes fell on was the figure of a man coming crawling out of the bushes like a great black slug!

  ‘Ugh! Those awful woods! I’m afraid I shrieked. At any rate, I got up and ran. I stumbled by accident upon the main path to the wicket gate, and I simply tore along it, and fell through into the road, and raced home and went straight up to bed. Oh, Felicity, I wouldn’t go out at night like that again for anything you could offer me!’