The Devil at Saxon Wall

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Well, that meant our Mr Middleton inherited the London house together with this big house here with its land, and a whole lot of money—the Middletons used to be tea merchants and had their own fleet of clipper-ships, so I’ve heard tell—so it meant he was very well off, though, of course, he had always been comfortable.

  ‘But, later on—in fact, only a few months ago—Mr Carswell Middleton turned up in a London hospital, suffering from injuries through being knocked down by a car, and it seems the shock brought back his memory that he’d lost, and he remembered who he was and everything. Well, it wasn’t hard for him to prove he was speaking the truth. For one thing, Mr and Mrs Palliner both recognised him, and so did father and I. He’d got some papers, too. I don’t know all that part of the tale, I never heard quite all of it, but, anyhow, the little boy’s lawyers and trustees fought it, but they hadn’t got any case against Mr Middleton’s proofs, and he did promise them faithful, so I heard, that he never intended to marry, so the boy wouldn’t be disappointed any way about inheriting, it simply put his chances off a year or two, it didn’t do away with them. He was to have the little boy to live with him, to be brought up like his son, too and all, and all the arrangements were made, his bedroom got ready and everything, only this dreadful thing had to go and happen to him just as the whole thing was arranged so pleasant for everybody.’

  ‘And did people really believe that Mr Carswell Middleton would remain a bachelor?’ Mrs Bradley inquired. Mrs Tebbutt looked cautiously round to make certain that her son was not within earshot, and then said quietly:

  ‘If they did, it was more than anybody could have believed of Mr Hanley Middleton. It’s ill work to speak against the dead, madam, but I know it nearly broke Mrs Palliner’s heart to know that her only daughter was married to a rake.’

  ‘A rake?’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘A promiscuous rake,’ said Mrs Tebbutt, sinking her voice still further in order to gild the lily with the greater effect. ‘They couldn’t keep a servant till they got our Martha—Martha Fluke—to come in for them. And then she soon had to get married to that half-witted husband, poor thing, to cover herself against what might be coming to her.’

  ‘Are you speaking of Mrs Passion by any chance?’ asked Mrs Bradley, interested.

  ‘That’s right. I always call her Fluke because she was Fluke when I first heard of her.’

  ‘Have you lived in the village before, then?’ Mrs Bradley inquired.

  ‘In Saxon Wall? Thank God I have not,’ replied Mrs Tebbutt earnestly. ‘But everyone that knew Mr Hanley knew Martha Fluke as well. He used to bring her up to London regular, in pretence of having her to wait on poor Miss Constance. Oh, it was a scandalous thing! I can’t think why Mrs Palliner ever had Martha in the house, unless it was to get a sight of her daughter sometimes, for Mr Hanley wouldn’t come without the girl, and wouldn’t let his wife go and stay with her parents without him. It was a nice how-d’ye do, I can tell you.’

  ‘It all sounds very sad,’ said Mrs Bradley. Mrs Tebbutt dropped her voice again.

  ‘If poor Miss Constance hadn’t been first to go, I wouldn’t like to have said who killed Mr Hanley,’ she said bluntly. Mrs Bradley nodded.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me exactly what happened on the evening of the murder,’ she said, and, as she spoke, she produced from a pocket in her skirt a notebook and a small gold pencil. As Mrs Tebbutt talked, Mrs Bradley wrote. The tiny hieroglyphics were meaningless except to the woman who wrote them down.

  ‘We spent the evening as usual,’ Mrs Tebbutt began. ‘That is to say, madam, we had our tea at five, Mr Middleton having had his at half-past four, and then, while father went round the flower beds with his little hoe, loosening the soil, which it had been too hot for him to do earlier in the day, Tom cut the lawn in the front, and I got Mr Middleton’s dinner ready, and cooked it for seven-thirty, that being the time that he preferred to dine.

  ‘Well, I gave them a nice drink of milk and soda, there being no water nice enough for lemonade, it giving it a funny, musty taste since the dry weather, and cups of tea, even, being anything but what they were; and then father went in and laid the table, and Tom cut a few flowers for me to put in a vase, and then father went to Mr Middleton to see what wine he wanted opened.’

  ‘Where was Mr Middleton between tea and dinner?’ Mrs Bradley inquired, without looking up from her notebook.

  ‘Oh, here and there, madam, just the same as usual. He went to the greenhouse, I believe, and he spent half an hour or so in the library where he was making a list of some books, I think, and he went up to his bedroom to dress at about six-thirty, just as usual, and Tom went up to hand him his studs and put the links into his shirt.

  ‘After his dinner he stayed in the dining-room drinking a glass of port, and then he lay on the settee, with his knees drawn up——’

  She looked at Mrs Bradley, who nodded, comprehending that the woman was remembering the attitude in which Middleton’s dead body had been found.

  ‘He was reading a book,’ Mrs Tebbutt continued. ‘He always read for a bit after dinner. Then at about nine o’clock he went for a walk in the grounds, and called, I believe, on the vicar, though that wasn’t usual. But he couldn’t have stayed there long, for he was inside the house again by twenty to ten and ringing for father to bring him his brandy and soda, that he never went to bed without.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Bradley, looking up from the notebook and dangling the little gold pencil between two yellow fingers, ‘was Mr Middleton ever affected by his experiences in France?’

  ‘He never had the nightmare, or anything of that, so far as we ever heard,’ said Mrs Tebbutt.

  ‘Did he ever appear to suffer from temporary loss of memory?’

  ‘No. He had a very keen memory, especially in little things. Quite trying it was at times. And always on the fidget till his orders were carried out. Once his memory came back, it came back for good, you might say.’

  ‘He went to bed early that night, I think?’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Very early for him it was, madam. At half-past ten he went upstairs, and we never heard another sound of him.’

  ‘Now this is the critical point of the story, it seems to me,’ said Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘I suppose the police are perfectly satisfied that when your son went into the dining-room at a quarter-past eleven and saw him lying on the settee, that Mr Middleton was dead?’

  ‘They’re sure, and the two doctors, the doctor from Stowhall and Doctor Mortmain here in Saxon Wall, are sure of it too. There doesn’t seem any doubt about it, more’s the pity.’

  ‘Now, why do you say that?’ asked Mrs Bradley, eyeing the woman keenly. ‘Come along, Mrs Tebbutt. There’s something you haven’t told me.’

  The woman’s face suddenly puckered and crumpled. Her voice sounded strangled as she flung herself on her knees at Mrs Bradley’s side, clutched Mrs Bradley’s hideous jumper and cried heartrendingly:

  ‘Oh, madam, it’s my boy! It’s Tom! Oh, what shall I do if he’s hanged! What shall I do if he’s hanged!’

  Mrs Bradley soothed her. Then she said:

  ‘Now, tell me what you mean. Don’t keep back anything. And then I’ll talk to Tom.’

  ‘Oh, madam, I wish you would! I dare not say to him what’s in my heart to say. Madam, he’s always been such a nervous boy. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, so big and strapping a lad he looks since he was turned fourteen, but when he was a little chap we had no end of trouble. I remember once at school. Oh, dear! I was so upset! He thought the master was going to give him the cane, and he turned on him like a little tiger, and bit the poor man in the thumb, and was screaming out and that—I can’t think where he gets it from. I’m sure we’ve never done anything to aggravate it. His father’s never thrashed him, never in all his life. The headmaster sent for me. He said he shouldn’t punish him, as he was certain sure that he was too upset to have known what he was doing, but he thought I should be told. We had to give Tom
hyoscin to quiet him. And the next time was when he left school and went to his very first job. He threw a hammer at the foreman, and might easily have killed him. That was because the man was going to fetch him a clip of the ear for something he done which was wrong. It isn’t temper—not as you and I know temper, madam—it’s just his dreadful nerves. And where he gets them from I do not know. Even valerian doesn’t seem to soothe him.’

  ‘And you think, in a moment of panic——’ said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully.

  ‘Who else was there that could have done it? That’s what I ask myself,’ said the woman despairingly. ‘And knowing these turns he gets. It’s when he’s taken off his guard, you see. Now, boxing, that’s different. Used to knock one another about like anything at that. He was a scout, you see, before we came down here. But Tom could stand all that, when he was prepared to be knocked about. It isn’t the pain he’s frightened of, you see. I’ve known him as brave as brave when he hurt himself accidental, or at football or anything of that. But it’s only nerves. I’m sure he wouldn’t mean any harm if only he stopped to think.’

  Mrs Bradley looked thoughtful. It was all too hideously possible, she could see. The boy entering the dining-room intent only on the thought of the biscuits he was going to purloin—she had that part of the story from Hannibal Jones—and being suddenly aware of his employer … the poker, a smashing blow, a dead man, a boy strong enough to lift the dead man and deposit him on the sofa in such an attitude that anyone coming casually into the room would think him not dead, but resting or reading … Mrs Bradley suddenly frowned and shook her head.

  Apparently alert for any hopeful sign, the other woman caught at her sleeve and said:

  ‘Don’t you believe he did it? Don’t you? Oh, if I could see any hope!’

  Mrs Bradley pursed her lips into a little beak and shook her head again.

  ‘I certainly don’t believe he did,’ she said. ‘I have had boys under my care who were afflicted with the same kind of nervous trouble as your son. It’s curable, you know. I’ll cure him of it, if he’ll let me. And although a boy like that might strike the blow, I don’t believe for an instant that he would have moved the body. Tell me. On the occasion when he bit his teacher’s hand, what was the first you knew about it?’

  ‘Why, from Tom himself. He came home dinnertime in the most dreadful state and said he’d bitten his teacher, and did I think the police would put him in prison.’

  ‘And when he threw the hammer at the foreman?’

  ‘Oh, he came home, and cried, and said he’d got the sack, and a fat lot of use he’d be to me if anything happened to father. He’s morbid like that, madam. Always thinking father is going to die.’

  ‘The wish is father to the thought,’ said Mrs Bradley absently.

  ‘I beg pardon, madam?’

  ‘I think I ought to speak to Tom. Will you trust me alone with him? I won’t, of course, suggest anything to him of what you’ve told me.’

  ‘And you really don’t think he did it?’

  ‘From the bottom of my heart, I do not.’

  ‘God bless you,’ said Mrs Tebbutt. Then she sat down and cried.

  ‘Now you must bear up, and be very brave about all this,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I want your help. And, look here, Mrs Tebbutt, it won’t help me a bit if you remember things that didn’t happen! You understand me, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not accustomed to tell lies, madam.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not, or you wouldn’t have been in a position of trust and confidence all these years. I’m going to ask you something which may sound a little bit odd. Don’t answer it unless you really want to do so. I’m not prying, mind.’

  ‘You’re going to ask me whether Tom is Mr Tebbutt’s son.’

  Mrs Bradley smiled in a mirthless and terrifying way. ‘You’ve answered me,’ she said. Mrs Tebbutt shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think I have, madam. Tom is Mr Tebbutt’s son, madam, but he isn’t mine. Mr Tebbutt and me have only been married a matter of thirteen years, and Tom was sixteen last May.’ She paused. ‘Of course, Tom’s not legitimate,’ she said, ‘but I would never hold him up against father for that. Men have their temptations which we’re lucky to be without, I often think.’

  Mrs Bradley nodded. Tom was explained. So was Mrs Tebbutt. Deep as her distress appeared to be at the idea that the boy might have committed the murder, she had confessed her fear of his guilt. A mother, Mrs Bradley thought, might have been more reticent.

  ‘His mother was a most respectable girl,’ Mrs Tebbutt continued. ‘Really, so quiet and nice. I can’t think how her nature come to overcome her, but she died of Tom, and father brought him up and told me the whole story, quite free, when he wanted me to get married. We never had any of our own except a little girl that died, so it’s a mercy we have Tom, and his father’s ever so proud of him—quite as proud as I am—that I do know.’

  Mrs Bradley nodded again.

  ‘Now, Mrs Tebbutt,’ she said, much more briskly, ‘you say that Mr Middleton went to bed at half-past ten that night. How do you know that that was when he went?’

  ‘He called to father out of the dining-room, I believe, to say he was going. Or it might be Tom that said so. I couldn’t be certain now.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Father did, I think. Or, wait a minute! Yes, I remember. Yes, of course I saw him going up the stairs.’

  ‘This is what I want to know, Mrs Tebbutt. Are you certain that it was Mr Middleton who said that he was going to bed then?’

  Mrs Tebbutt looked extremely disconcerted.

  ‘You don’t mean it might have been his murderer speaking to us, madam?’

  ‘Well, frankly, I don’t,’ said Mrs Bradley, with her hideous cackle of laughter, ‘but it might help the police tremendously if it could be shown that Mr Middleton was dead at half-past ten, instead of, perhaps, say, half an hour later.’

  ‘How could that be, madam?’

  ‘Well, you see, it would mean that various people who can account for themselves satisfactorily after half-past ten, may not be able to do so if the murder took place a little earlier. In this village, for example, people can walk half a mile, we’ll say, in ten minutes.’

  ‘What the papers call an alibi, madam.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Mrs Bradley. Her grin was that of a half-fed crocodile as she went in search of Tom. Suddenly she turned about, and came back to Mrs Tebbutt.

  ‘Did you say Doctor Mortmain and the doctor from Stowhall had seen the body?’ she inquired. Mrs Tebbutt licked her lips.

  ‘I understood so, madam.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bradley, pleasantly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘For heaven’s sake, gentlemen, do not mistake me; it was not I that did it.’

  THOMAS DE QUINCEY

  On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

  ‘YOU NEEDN’T WORRY about watching your step,’ said young Tom, sourly and rudely. ‘I know mother thinks I killed Mr Middleton, but I didn’t, and that inspector can ask me what he likes.’

  ‘And so can I, I take it,’ said Mrs Bradley crisply. ‘Well, look here, child, this is the crux of the matter. Why did Mr Middleton come downstairs again?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ replied the boy. ‘He had been out all day, and most of the day before and all the night before, and he went to bed too early, I reckon, and decided he had, and put on his dressing-gown and came down again. I reckon it was all just as simple as that.’

  ‘Yes, but what a bit of luck for the murderer,’ said Mrs Bradley pleasantly.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, let us imagine, for a moment, that the murderer was someone who did not know where Mr Middleton slept.’

  ‘Well, there wouldn’t be anyone who did know that, except dad and mother and me.’

  ‘Tell me all the people who’ve been to the house since Mr Middleton arrived. Before his death, of course.’

  Tom, his face losing a li
ttle of its sullen, rebellious expression, began to consider the point.

  ‘Of course, he’d only been here a day or two, officially,’ he said.

  ‘How do you mean, officially, dear child?’

  Tom grinned.

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters now,’ he said, ‘but dad and mother and me all had to promise faithfully that we wouldn’t let on he had been here a fortnight or more. We were supposed to be getting the house in order, and Mr Middleton, he used to bunk upstairs if ever anyone came. Of course, there wasn’t many. It was the postman mostly, and Passion to do the pumping, lent us by Mr Birdseye who farms up Little Horsa, and sometimes an old girl selling taters and peas. Her name was Fluke, I think. But none of them ever set eyes on Mr Middleton, and none of us ever mentioned he was there.’

  ‘But what was Mr Middleton’s object in disguising the fact that he was living at the house?’

  ‘He said he knew a fellow who was leaving England, and who he didn’t want to let know that he had come into money, so he said, but me, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What do you believe then, child?’

  ‘I believe he wanted to have a think about who done his brother in. That’s what I believe.’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘It’s all over the village. Nobody except the old fool of a doctor who used to be here seemed to think fair play caused Mr Hanley Middleton to die. Mrs Corbett, at the Long Thin Man, she says she knows that someone done him in, and both the Miss Harpers, I believe they think so too.’

  ‘Oh, yes. The people at the Dower House. But they knew, surely, child, that Mr Middleton had been living up here for a fortnight before his death?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘I don’t believe they did. They’re proper nosey old parkers, both of them, but never a word did they let out to want to know anything about him. You see, he came in our old car, me driving him from Stowhall railway station, and as I always brought the groceries that way, and the meat and such, mother not liking the way they do the killing hereabouts, though I tell her it’s all the same, they wouldn’t notice nothing so long as Mr Middleton kept hidden; and that he surely did, for I found him under the seat with the rug hanging down in front of him, when I opened the door to let him out of the car. Half spiflicated, I should say he was, and he poked his head out, nervous as a cat, and said to me: ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘is anybody about?’