Here Comes a Chopper

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Lady Catherine my foot! What on earth are you getting at? Are you trying to suggest that that weak-minded old woman has been leading you up the garden?’

  ‘I suggest nothing, sir. But from what I heard——’

  Roger was both baffled and furious.

  ‘You heard nothing that could have any bearing,’ he said, ‘on——’

  ‘Yes, on what, sir?’ The inspector drew up the car at the entrance to the school grounds. ‘Bearing on what?’

  ‘On the murder of Lingfield, of course!’ said Roger, savagely. ‘If you ask me, Lady Catherine did that herself! She’s crazy enough to do anything!’

  ‘Now you’re talking, sir,’ said the inspector. He drove gently in at the school gates and pulled up on the gravel path outside the headmaster’s house.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Little boy, pretty knave, shoot not at random,

  For if you hit me, slave, I’ll tell your grandam.’

  ANONYMOUS (16th century)

  KIRBY AND HEALY-LUNN were greatly impressed by the inspector. He had asked Roger, in the presence of the headmaster, to lead him on to the cricket field and introduce him to a couple of intelligent boys, and Roger, who understood the hint, at once went out with him and found him the two he wanted. Roger went back to an empty common-room, and wrote to Mrs Bradley.

  Mrs Bradley was sympathetic. She wrote in return long and soothingly, giving comforting hints of her own activities and conclusions in the matter of the two murders, and suggesting that Roger should not worry himself unduly, even if he were arrested. She added a postscript to the effect that, once he had been cautioned by the police, he was not to say anything at all about the murders.

  Meanwhile the inspector had had Roger’s story confirmed not only by Kirby and Healy-Lunn (who begged him not to betray them to the headmaster ‘because, you see, it would get Mr Hoskyn into no end of a jam’), but by the pink shirt and the blonde at the theatre.

  ‘He went off for about half an hour, but he certainly came back all right,’ said the pink shirt. ‘And if he told you we were discussing the contemporary theatre, well, of course, quite actually, we were. And he certainly collected two boys. I saw them go. Chrystabel can confirm.’

  This Chrystabel did at once. In response to the inspector’s next question she said that she would certainly have noticed blood on Roger’s clothes. ‘Our play was called “Blood,” and you see the connection?’ she added, looking at the inspector as though she felt sure that he did not.

  This evidence, coupled with that of the boys, convinced the inspector that unless there was a flaw in the time scheme which had not yet made itself evident, Roger was not very likely to have been the murderer of Sim.

  ‘One thing strikes me, too, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘How far from the railway was the body?’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said the inspector. ‘The whole thing’s the spit and image of the murder of Mr Lingfield.’

  ‘If it was Mr Lingfield,’ said the sergeant.

  It was very shortly after this that Dorothy was invited to spend the Whitsun week-end at Whiteledge. As this week-end coincided with Roger’s half-term, she scarcely knew whether to accept the invitation or not. She did not, after his proposal, want to meet him, but, on the other hand, it seemed unkind to put herself entirely beyond his reach. The thought, however, that at Whiteledge she might be in a position to find out more of the mystery than she would be able to do by remaining outside what now seemed to her the magic circle of that place, tipped the scale and persuaded her to accept the invitation.

  It had come from Mary Leith.

  ‘We saw so little of you,’ wrote Mary, ‘and should like to have seen so much more.’

  This was flattery of the wrong sort, but, to Dorothy’s pleasure, the first person she met at Whiteledge was Mrs Bradley, this on the lawn in front of the house. The archery targets were in position, and Mrs Bradley, clad in a bilious green woollen pullover and a heather-mixture skirt of an almost incredible hairiness, was practising with bow and arrows and had scored, it appeared, a gold and two reds, a total of twenty-three points.

  She walked up to the target and withdrew her arrows before she greeted the girl. When she did, it was with none of the usual formulae. She said merely:

  ‘That’s how it was done, and that’s why the head was removed. But the questions still remain of who did it, and where is the head, and who enticed Mrs Denbies out of the house that night, and where she went. We must endeavour to find out which members of the house-party understand how to use a bow and arrows. Do you understand their use, child?’

  Dorothy laughed.

  ‘You can hardly expect me to say that I do,’ she replied. Mrs Bradley cackled, and led her towards the house.

  ‘I have requested that you should occupy the bedroom they gave you last time,’ she said.

  ‘Are you responsible for my invitation here?’ Dorothy enquired.

  ‘Yes, child.’

  ‘But what about Roger?’

  ‘He must amuse himself for today and tomorrow. After that you can meet him if you like. Are you afraid of ghosts?’

  ‘N-no.’

  Mrs Bradley cackled again at the expression of indecision on the girl’s face. They walked into the house together, and Mrs Bradley handed her bow and the sheaf of arrows to Bugle. He received them with an inclination of the head, thumbed the bow knowledgeably, and then said:

  ‘Phoebe should be here, miss. She will show you.’

  Exactly what pretext Mrs Bradley had made for getting Mary Leith to invite her to the house Dorothy did not discover. She realized at once, however, why Mrs Bradley had insisted upon her having the bedroom she had been given before. The broken architrave over the mantelpiece was now completed with a remarkably good likeness of Captain Ranmore which certainly had not been there before.

  ‘Yes, poor Harry did it two years ago,’ said Lady Catherine, when Dorothy referred to it at dinner. ‘It is very fine, is it not? Of course, Harry would have been a famous sculptor if he had not indulged his guilty passions.’

  ‘What guilty passions?’ Mrs Bradley enquired. Dorothy had mentioned the sculptured bust to her and had been requested to refer to it in public.

  ‘Well, I cannot particularize in front of George,’ Lady Catherine replied. ‘You are a woman of the world, surely.’

  ‘Yes, but not of the half-world,’ Mrs Bradley meekly answered, accepting a nut which Captain Ranmore had cracked for her.

  She invited herself into Dorothy’s room that night to look at the bust.

  ‘Does it come down?’ she enquired. ‘Or is it, perhaps, cemented into place?’

  Dorothy, slender and childish in silk pyjamas, said that she did not know. She got into bed, leaving Mrs Bradley staring thoughtfully at the likeness.

  ‘I think it must be,’ Mrs Bradley muttered. ‘I ought to take it away. One can hardly expect you to sleep with it in the room.’

  ‘What is it?—a bomb?’ enquired the girl. Mrs Bradley brought a chair and stood on it. Then she extended her yellow arms, short-sleeved in her dinner frock, gave a sudden heave and a jerk, and had the head between her claws.

  ‘Look out! You’ll drop it!’ cried Dorothy.

  ‘Exactly what I intend to do,’ Mrs Bradley imperturbably replied. ‘Are your nerves strong enough to stand the noise?’ Upon this enquiry, and without waiting for an answer, she deliberately dropped the bust on to the edge of the fender, where it smashed into pieces, some large and others smaller.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ she remarked, as she climbed from the chair and stepped daintily over the débris. ‘Stay where you are, child! We don’t want this trodden about.’

  Dorothy, sitting up in bed, was half aghast and half tickled at the incident.

  ‘Now you’ve done it!’ she said. ‘I wonder who will come along to see what has happened?’

  Mrs Bradley snatched the quilt from the foot of the bed and spread it out evenly and smoothly on the floor.

  �
�Stay where you are,’ she said, as Dorothy began to get out of bed to help her. Watched by the fascinated girl, she began to gather the broken pieces into the quilt, whose four corners she brought together, as soon as she had finished her task, to make a commodious receptacle. She acknowledged Dorothy’s interest with a grin. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Now, as you rightly point out, we must expect that someone will have noticed that it made a noise in falling. Fortunately——’

  To Dorothy’s amused surprise, she went over to a built-in cupboard and produced a newspaper parcel whose contents proved to be broken pieces of china. These she shot gently upon the area of the floor from which she had recently removed the portions of the smashed bust, and, picking up the laden quilt very carefully, she put that in the cupboard in place of the newspaper parcel. Then she folded the piece of newspaper and placed it tidily in the empty fireplace. She then went down on her knees.

  There came a discreet tap at the door. Mrs Bradley rose from her knees and called:

  ‘Come in!’

  ‘Her ladyship thought perhaps you rang, madam.’

  ‘I’ve made a mess,’ said Mrs Bradley, brushing the front of her skirt and leering at the maid. ‘You had better leave it now until the morning.’

  ‘Very good, madam. Good night, madam. Good night, miss.’ She withdrew.

  ‘She’ll know, in the morning, what you really broke,’ said Dorothy. Mrs Bradley shook her head.

  ‘I doubt it, child,’ she replied. ‘I come prepared for every contingency. It would surprise you if you knew all. Well, I have another small errand before I go to bed.’ She tucked Dorothy up, grinned balefully, and was gone, leaving the bundled quilt in the cupboard, the pieces of crockery on the floor, and the mystery unexplained.

  Dorothy turned over and closed her eyes. A fumbling at the door-handle roused her. She was a little startled, but the door admitted no one but Mary Leith, who switched on the light, and, uninvited, came over and sat on the bed.

  ‘Why did Granny ask to have Mrs Bradley invited?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t like her, and I don’t want to have her here. She disturbs the balance of my mind.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Dorothy rather nervously replied. ‘And I don’t know—oh, Captain Ranmore?’

  ‘Of course. Mrs Bradley isn’t here to see me again, is she? I don’t want any more treatment. I don’t like it, and it isn’t necessary. It’s really for mother, you know. I mean, I don’t inherit, whatever people may say.’

  Dorothy was caused considerable embarrassment by these questions and facts, and did not know how to reply. She was saved from the necessity, however, by the entrance of Eunice Pigdon, who took Mary by the arm and led her out.

  She returned in about five minutes, and took Mary’s place on the bed, causing it to creak and groan under her weight.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Mary,’ she said. ‘She’s bad again. A nuisance, isn’t it? Harry Lingfield’s death. A bit of a shock, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dorothy, helplessly.

  ‘Yes. Lady Catherine begged Mrs Bradley to come along and see her, but it does not seem as though anything much can be done. They’re talking of a nursing home. I do hope it won’t come to that. After all, she’s perfectly harmless.’

  ‘A nursing home? Oh, dear! I suppose she needs rest and quiet.’

  Eunice Pigdon looked oddly at Dorothy, and then laughed.

  ‘I see you know nothing about it,’ she observed. ‘Oh, well, get to sleep. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t disturb you again. By the way, we’re having much the same people at dinner tomorrow as we had for George’s party. Do you remember? Mrs Bradley’s instructions, I believe. That woman runs this house as soon as she gets inside it.’

  Eunice got up and the mattress leapt into place. She glanced at the broken architrave over the mantelpiece. ‘I see they’ve taken Granny away,’ she remarked. ‘Or have you hidden him somewhere? It must have been the last bit of work poor Harry Lingfield did. We found it in his studio in the garden. Quite a good likeness, too, but—— Oh, well, some people have queer tastes, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘I didn’t like it,’ said Dorothy, ‘and, besides——’

  She hesitated, hoping that Eunice would oblige her by finishing the sentence for her. The knowledge that the pieces of the bust were reposing in a quilt at the bottom of the built-in cupboard gave her a feeling of guilt. Eunice was obliging enough to come to the rescue. This she did by saying, with a hearty laugh:

  ‘Oh, don’t apologize! He isn’t a general favourite, I’m afraid. I noticed he made a pass or two at dinner.’

  Dorothy, who disliked this particular vulgarism, although she could not deny that it described well enough Captain Ranmore’s approaches that evening, did not reply. Eunice waited as though she half-expected an answer, and then said, as she strolled across to the window and closed the shutters:

  ‘Lock your door when I’ve gone. I’ve bolted the shutters. One takes things as they come in this house, as no doubt you’ve already discovered.’

  ‘Oh, but,’ cried Dorothy, who loathed the feeling of being shut in, particularly in a strange room, ‘I really don’t think you need——’ Eunice closed the door and then called softly and eerily through the keyhole:

  ‘Lock it! Lock it now, before I go! I shall wait here until I hear you lock it.’

  Dorothy did not want to obey, but decided that the obstinate, heavy-faced woman probably meant what she said. She got out of bed with great reluctance, went across to the door and turned the key.

  ‘There you are, then,’ she said.

  ‘That’s it,’ Eunice responded. ‘That’s one weight off my mind.’

  Dorothy, returning to bed, could not help wondering what other weights might also be on her mind. She heard Eunice walk away, and then she turned over again and tried to go to sleep.

  She was not at any time a ready or heavy sleeper, and at midnight was still wide awake. The wind rattled the shutters and made her imagine that someone was trying to get in. Then, from the chimney, came a faint, persistent crying, as though a kitten had got lodged in the flue and could not get down. Dorothy tried to believe that this was also the wind, but she could not persuade herself of it. Neither could she bring herself to believe that the shutters, which were on the inside of the window, could be rattled quite so violently by a wind from outside the glass.

  Just as her nerves were beginning to play the usual trick of persuading her that there was something fearful and unpleasant in the room, she was brought up short by the sound of somebody hammering at the door.

  ‘Fire! Fire! Come out! Come out!’ yelled a voice.

  Dorothy was inclined afterwards to think that, had she been roused from sleep by such a warning, she might have felt considerable alarm; as it was, however, the human sounds drove her waking nightmares away, and she felt relief.

  She got out of bed very quickly, switched on the light, found her dressing-gown and a pair of thick walking shoes, and went over to the shutters and opened them.

  Her room looked out on to the garden. Nobody was below. They would naturally make for the front of the building, she supposed, for there were only two main exits and one of these was in the servants’ part of the house.

  There was no smell of smoke and no crackling of flames. However, she had unlocked her door and was preparing to make the descent when Mrs Bradley came into the room and unwrapped a heavy parcel.

  ‘Do not be in too much hurry. Dress warmly, child,’ she said. ‘I think the alarm of fire is most probably false.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Dorothy, as Mrs Bradley placed her parcel on the bed and composedly locked the door.

  ‘Effecting replacements,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Kindly hand me the contents of the parcel as soon as I get up on this chair.’

  There was a scurrying sound on the landing and staircase, followed by the clanging of a bell.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Dorothy, unwrapping the parcel and displaying a bu
st very similar to the one which Mrs Bradley had broken. ‘What’s this? A conjuring trick?’

  She raised it. It was heavy. Mrs Bradley took it from her, placed it in position in the centre of the broken architrave, climbed down, opened the window, opened the cupboard, picked up the quilt and, to Dorothy’s astonishment, having tied the four corners together, she lowered the quilt with its contents out of the window and let it fall on to the lawn. She closed the window and the shutters, turned round quickly—all her actions had been neat, deft, speedy—and said:

  ‘Under the bed, and don’t sneeze!’

  As Dorothy dived underneath, the light went out. Then Mrs Bradley joined her, and they lay on their stomachs side by side. Dorothy’s desire was to giggle, but she was too much in awe of Mrs Bradley to dare to do it. Five dragging minutes went by, and then the door opened and the light went on again.

  The intruder stood in the doorway. Dorothy could see a pair of shoes not two yards from where she was lying. Then a man called quietly:

  ‘Miss Woodcote! Miss Woodcote! Are you there?’ It was Captain Ranmore’s voice. He walked away from the bed, to Dorothy’s great relief, and crossed the room. She had the feeling that he was going to open the shutters, and if he did she felt certain that he would look out and see the white quilt, dim but distinct on the dark, still pool of the lawn. But he did not open the shutters. After shuffling his feet a little, he went out of the room and left the light on, taking the key.

  Mrs Bradley held on to Dorothy to indicate that she must not move, and they waited again in breathless silence. Dorothy felt she must suffocate. The claustrophobic atmosphere began to make her nervous. Then sounded footsteps, this time like a woman’s. The newcomer did not do more than cross the threshold, however. The next moment the light was snapped out and the room was in total darkness. The door was quietly shut and they heard the key turn in the lock.

  Mrs Bradley crawled out and switched on a torch. She went over to the shutters and flung them open.

  ‘Come out, child,’ she said. ‘The coast is clear.’ She spoke in oddly satisfied tones.