Here Comes a Chopper

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And that indicates that the body may be that of Mr Lingfield. On the other hand, we must not lose sight of the equally important argument that it may be the body of a stranger.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I thought of that myself.’

  ‘You thought of what, child?’

  ‘Why, that the dog may have followed the scent of the person who carried the body to the bushes, and not Mr Lingfield’s scent. It’s more likely, really, isn’t it? I mean, the fact that the body was being carried——’

  Mrs Bradley gazed at her admiringly.

  ‘You’re an intelligent child,’ she said. ‘So intelligent that I want to give you a hint. If what is indicated is true, and Mr Lingfield is dead, the murderer (for somebody, as you rightly observe, must have carried the body to that copse) may be living in this house.’

  ‘You don’t think Mrs Denbies did it, do you? I could never believe it.’

  ‘Never mind what I think, There is one thing I should rather like to know, but perhaps it will come out as time goes on. But whatever I think, there can be no doubt that the sooner this business is cleared up the better it will be for everybody, particularly for Mrs Denbies. An interpretive artist is quite the worst subject for all this kind of muddle.’

  ‘I can’t quite see,’ said Dorothy, ‘why anybody took the trouble and ran the risk of moving the body from the railway line when the train had cut off the head, Surely it would have been very much better to leave the man there to make it look like suicide? And why have taken the clothes?’

  ‘The idea seems to have been to remove all marks of identity, child. And yet——’

  ‘Everyone here would guess it might be Mr Lingfield,’ Dorothy put in.

  ‘One might think so,’ said Mrs Bradley. She spoke absently. Dorothy glanced at her. Mrs Bradley’s black eyes were gazing at the doorway, as though she were expecting the murderer to walk in. But the only person to enter was the correct and fatherly Bugle.

  ‘Is it your wish, madam,’ he said, addressing Mrs Bradley, ‘to accompany the party to the mortuary?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Mrs Denbies will manage very well. Mr Hoskyn’—she glanced at Dorothy—’will support her. I wonder how long they will be?’

  ‘About a couple of hours, madam, the inspector informed me when I asked him. They should be back in time for tea.’

  ‘And that reminds me,’ said Mrs Bradley suddenly, ‘that you and I, child, have not lunched. And that your unfortunate and patient brother is still outside in your car. Let us all three drive into Dorking, shall we, taking George if he is still in the house, and lunch together. I took the precaution to telephone for a table.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Dorothy, who was by now extremely hungry. At this moment George came in.

  ‘I say, Great-Aunt Bradley!’ he exclaimed. ‘Immense excitement! Mr Lingfield has been discovered in a quarry, and someone has cut off both his feet!’

  ‘You are misinformed, George,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘A person unknown (so far) has been found in Baker’s Spinney, and something—we suspect the down train—has cut off his head.’

  ‘Oh,’ said George, dashed, ‘that’s nothing. It happened to a chap’s sister’s fiancé at school, It could happen to you or to me. But, feet—that’s rather different. I rather wish it were feet.’

  ‘It is easier to identify a person without feet than without a head, my dear George,’ said Mrs Bradley. George nodded, and looked solemn. After a considerable pause, he observed:

  ‘Of course, I could identify Mr Lingfield, head or no head. Very easily, too, I should rather imagine.’

  ‘You could?’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Oh, yes. But it doesn’t make any difference. I’d never be allowed to go within a mile of a mortuary. No such luck,’ George responded.

  ‘But how do you mean—you could identify him—head or no head?’ Mrs Bradley demanded.

  ‘Bathing, you know,’ said George. ‘He had an old crocodile bite.’

  ‘Where?’ Mrs Bradley demanded. George grinned and then blushed.

  ‘Do you want me to draw the marks?’ he asked. ‘They were here.’ He indicated on his body the position of the bites. ‘They were shaped like this, you know.’

  He helped himself to a large sheet of writing paper out of the drawer of a desk, took a pencil from his pocket, gazed in abstraction for a moment, and then, with a wide sweep, indicated the outline of a buttock and on it made two marks the shape of what, on a pair of trousers, would be called hedge-tears.

  ‘The scale of the bim—or semi-bim,’ said George, ‘is about one to three, and Mr Lingfield was fairly fat. The scale of the crocodile bites is life-size. That is why they look rather large. So you can multiply the bim by three or divide the size of each bite by three—one or the other—and you get the right proportion. Do you see what I mean, Great-Aunt Bradley?’

  Mrs Bradley said that she did. She looked appreciatively at the drawing, which had the merits of artistry and scientific accuracy combined, folded it very carefully so that the creases in the paper did not come across the tooth-marks, put it into her capacious pocket and said to George:

  ‘You shall see the body at the mortuary. What you have told me is most valuable.’

  George looked taken aback by this unexpected promise.

  ‘I’m—I—well, thank you very much,’ he stammered. ‘But, perhaps—I mean——’

  ‘But after all, it won’t really be necessary,’ Mrs Bradley interpolated, bestowing on him her unnerving grin. ‘Mrs Denbies has gone.’ George looked relieved at this statement.

  ‘After all, I don’t suppose my evidence would be accepted,’ he observed. ‘I’m of age for this family, but I suppose, by law, I’m still a minor. I’m glad you like the drawing.’

  ‘I certainly do,’ said Mrs Bradley. With less satisfaction she looked at the sheet which Lady Catherine had handed to the inspector. It was inscribed only with the words: Tomorrow’s Fool.

  Whilst Mrs Bradley was taking the other young people to lunch, Roger, who had fallen suddenly, violently, passionately, abruptly (and he supposed eternally) in love with Mrs Denbies, escorted her to the mortuary.

  ‘I say,’ he said shyly, when he was seated beside her in the police car which was driving them to Guildford, ‘it was a great treat to me yesterday to hear you play. Not that I know a great deal about music, I’m afraid——’

  ‘You are a poet,’ said Claudia Denbies. ‘Therefore you must know, in one sense, a very great deal about music.’

  ‘Oh. I say! I didn’t know you knew——’

  ‘Mrs Bradley has a copy of your volume of poems called Marigoldana. Who was she? Do tell me about her.’

  ‘About——’

  ‘Marigold, of course. Aren’t all the sonnets to her?’

  ‘Oh, well, she’s pretty mythical, of course, actually. I mean, I never thought about her objectively until—well, as a matter of fact, until today.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘May I,’ said Roger desperately, ‘may I, if ever I get a second impression printed, dedicate it to you?’

  She laid a hand on his knee.

  ‘That’s really lovely of you, Roger. I may call you Roger, mayn’t I?—I should be most honoured. But what will the original Marigold say?’

  ‘There isn’t, honestly, any original Marigold. I mean, there was, of course, but only—I swear it—in my imagination.’ He crushed down an obtrusive recollection that on the previous day he had been tempted to call Dorothy Woodcote Marigold.

  ‘You’re wonderfully gifted!’ breathed Claudia.

  ‘I say,’ said Roger, completely overcome by this tribute, although it was, in crystallized form, his own opinion of himself, ‘I say, you shouldn’t say that! I mean, anything decent in those sonnets was simply, don’t you see, anticipatory, as it were. I knew you’d come along some day, and—and—well, here you are!’

  ‘And old enough to be your mother,’ said Claudia Denb
ies, nipping in the bud this delicate flowering of compliments.

  ‘Oh, don’t talk rot!’ said Roger, in an anxious shout. ‘You can’t be a day more than——’

  ‘Shush! You may put your foot in it.’

  ‘No, but dash it, I mean to say, what has actual age to do with it?’

  ‘And a boy’s best friend is his mother,’ continued Claudia Denbies, with deadly emphasis. ‘All the same, it’s very sweet of you to want to be in love with me. I——’

  ‘I don’t want to be,’ said Roger. ‘I am!’

  ‘And what about that very charming and lovely girl you brought along with you last evening and then this morning again?’

  Roger had to admit to himself that if Dorothy had not witnessed his unlucky vomiting that morning at sight of the corpse he might have been in love with her still. He crushed down this realization, however, and said:

  ‘She’s a child! I couldn’t possibly think of her like—this! It wouldn’t be right. I think of her as a young sister, I swear that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Claudia Denbies. ‘Very well. But, darling, don’t grip my hand like that. I’ve got to play on Saturday, if this wretched back of mine will let me.’

  ‘Isn’t it any better? Good Lord, to think that you should suffer!’

  ‘Neuritis, I think. I’m not getting any younger.’ She tried to look pathetic, but Roger was furious.

  ‘Oh, don’t begin that ghastly tripe over again! Oh, I’m so sorry! Of course, I didn’t mean——’

  ‘Neuritis, rheumatism, sciatica, gout—I shall get them all now, I suppose. It is what one has to look forward to, I believe,’ said Claudia, thoroughly enjoying this jeremiad.

  She lay back, her ripe mouth, even more heavily coloured than usual, smiling tenderly, and her lively amber eyes amused and wistful. Roger tried to kiss her, but was pushed off.

  ‘I don’t look forward in the least to old age,’ she said, ‘and to the gradual surrender of looks and vitality and love. And even if it were suitable to love you (which it isn’t), you see, darling Roger, you’re not rich. If I could retire, and only play when I want to; if I’d ever saved any money; if I’d been in the kind of job that ended in a nice lump sum and a good fat pension——’

  ‘Oh, damn! Be quiet!’ shouted Roger. ‘I can’t stand any more of it. I love you! I love you, I tell you! Why won’t you take my love for granted? What do you want? I’m young, healthy, not bad-looking; in fact——’

  The car drew up.

  ‘The mortuary, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘To William all give audience,

  And pay you for his noddle;

  For all the Fairies’ evidence

  Were lost if it were addle.’

  RICHARD CORBET, A Proper New Ballad, etc.

  CLAUDIA DENBIES FAILED to identify the body, except negatively. The police and the mortuary authorities made her task as easy as such a dread ordeal could be by making certain that the fact that the trunk was headless should be kept discreetly veiled.

  The proceedings were tactfully conducted, and were soon over. Nevertheless, she fainted at the conclusion of them and was carried into the open air by Roger, who, although he was staggering under her not inconsiderable weight, would not permit a single policeman to touch her.

  His feelings, when, having summoned every ounce of muscle and sheer endurance he possessed, he at last got her outside the mortuary and on to the chair which a kindly young constable immediately slid in position beneath her drooping thighs, were kaleidoscopic. So many-coloured were his emotions, and so rapidly did these colours swim before him, that he could only express himself by kneeling on the concrete surface of the yard. Then, taking Claudia’s head upon his breast, he adjured her in hoarse parenthesis to speak to him.

  She complied with a whispered, ‘Darling!’ Roger, who had been prepared in any case to die for her, now felt that he could face burning for her sake. He clasped her closely.

  His embraces appeared to revive her. She pushed him away and got up.

  ‘But it wasn’t—it isn’t—Harry,’ she reiterated, as, with the solicitous young constable—he who had brought the chair—in close attendance, Roger took her tenderly to the gate and out to the car. ‘I’m so certain it wasn’t Harry!’

  The inspector, who was also there, coughed aggressively.

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ said Roger, uttering this dreadful lie without a blush. Why the hell couldn’t it have been Harry, he wondered. And yet—if it lessened her distress—no, even if she loved the brute—it was better, far better as it was. His love was as much in the knight-errant stage as present-day custom and usage will permit. ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost,’ he murmured to himself in the car going back to Whiteledge, quoting a poet whom normally he despised but now found spuriously comforting, ‘than never to have loved at all. But all the same—he occupied his anguished soul with visions of what might have been, and peopled an island with Claudia, himself and a household of Nubian slaves, whilst Claudia, in the crook of his arm, cried dismally on his shoulder.

  By the time they reached Whiteledge Mrs Denbies, however, had recovered. She had made up her face in the car towards the end of the journey whilst Roger, to his tender and tremulous delight, carried out her orders to hold her steady. Her artistry and his devotion were so far attended by success that she was able to present to Lady Catherine a bright smile and the presumably joyful tidings of a still unidentified corpse when the chatelaine met them on the doorstep.

  ‘Well, it’s rather inconsiderate,’ said Lady Catherine, when she heard what Claudia had to tell. ‘I do think Harry might have saved us all this trouble. I had the ante-room carpet cleaned for Christmas, and now here we are, still only in March, and policemen’s boots all over it! I do think that if people are going away in a huff, and all over nothing at that, they might at least send a message to say that they haven’t tumbled down on the railway line and had their heads cut off. It really is most vexing! Who is the wretched man, then?’

  Mrs Bradley, returning from lunch with Bob, Dorothy and young George Merrow, heard the tidings from a gloomy inspector who, for reasons best known to himself, was still haunting the house.

  ‘And my view is she’s lying, mam,’ he observed. Mrs Bradley sought Claudia in her room.

  Claudia’s blinds were drawn and the room was almost in darkness. Mrs Bradley, having knocked, went in upon the knock and found Claudia lying fully dressed, except for her shoes, upon the bed, and discovered, by hearing the sounds, that she was crying.

  ‘So you’ve got your unpleasant job over, and I hear it was not Mr Lingfield,’ said Mrs Bradley, who had the brusque, brisk, female attitude to tears. Claudia sat up, and the bed creaked heavily.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’ll draw the blinds if you want to talk to me.’ She rose and went over to the window. As soon as she could see clearly enough to find a chair, Mrs Bradley sat down.

  Claudia went to the door and turned the key.

  ‘I’m not crying about Harry,’ she said. She put eau-de-Cologne on a handkerchief and dabbed her forehead with it. ‘I’m crying because I’m in love.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs Bradley with robust, incredulous warmth. ‘Not with that tall thin child who came to dinner last night!’

  ‘Not exactly, and yet—I don’t know. He’s so very young, and so very sweet——’

  ‘Now, look here,’ said Mrs Bradley, in admonishing tones but with a cackle, ‘you let him alone, do you hear? A love-sick expression will not suit that Hamlet countenance of his, and neither,’ she added coarsely, eyeing Claudia long and steadily, ‘will the fatuous grin of a corn-fed, high-stepping gelding. Whatever way you treat him, it will be wrong. You leave the child to his betters, and none of your nonsense! And it won’t do your playing any good, let me tell you that.’

  ‘But that’s just what it will,’ protested Claudia, betraying not the faintest distaste for Mrs Bradley’s observations. ‘We
ll, I thought perhaps it would,’ she added, suddenly smiling in her turn. ‘Lately, I don’t know why, I’ve been going off, I think. I need a stimulant.’

  ‘Try gin,’ said Mrs, Bradley, speaking firmly. ‘But I did not come to talk about your troubles. They are, after all, your own business. I want to know all about the body.’

  ‘It isn’t Harry, and that’s as much as I can tell you.’

  ‘I thought you would say that. Go on.’

  ‘What about? It isn’t Harry, that’s all.’

  ‘How can you be certain, without seeing the face, I wonder?’

  ‘By the—there are certain marks.’

  ‘Well, the body I saw was slightly scarred across the middle of the left buttock. The man was naked when we found him. How long had Mr Lingfield had his scars?’

  ‘They weren’t scars, and they were on the chest.’

  ‘How long have you known Mr Lingfield?’

  ‘Since 1917, I think. He was only nineteen.’

  ‘Good gracious!’

  ‘Oh, yes. I knew him before Babbie went into the mental home, and when he was so lonely we saw a good deal of one another. Of course, I was younger then. Then he gave up everything, left Lady Catherine to look after this house and all his things, and went off exploring and big-game hunting for years.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, to keep his mind off his troubles.’

  ‘And what were his troubles?’

  ‘Well, Babbie, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘No,’ answered Claudia Denbies, looking away. ‘No, I don’t really think it was that. I don’t know what they were. He wanted me to live with him, and I did, and then I had that long concert engagement in America (although, poor boy, he begged me not to leave him), and when I came back in 1935 he had gone. He—I did not see him again until three years later. We quarrelled very soon after that, and off he went. During the war years I saw him now and again—fairly often, as a matter of fact—as often as he could arrange. We spent all his leaves together, but we couldn’t really agree. Last year we parted for good—at least, that was mentioned, I remember—and the next thing was that Lady Catherine invited me here and—I found him. He seemed very glad to see me. The rest I suppose you can guess.’