The Devil at Saxon Wall

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘The son, young Tom Tebbutt, wasn’t called upon, then, to identify the body?’ Jones inquired.

  Hearing his name, Tom stepped out of the back door and came round to them.

  ‘You call, sir?’

  ‘No, Tom. You didn’t go on to the inquest and testify that the murdered man was Mr Middleton, did you?’

  ‘Not me, Mr Jones. Weren’t asked. Dad, he was going, so mother said, but he were still too bad, so Mrs Passion went along with mother, and mother, she had to look at the corpse and swear.’

  ‘Mrs Passion is your aunt, isn’t she, Tom?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Not as I knows of, mam.’ He looked surprised.

  ‘Oh, of course!’ said Mrs Bradley, as though she had just remembered the fact. ‘Mrs Tebbutt is only your stepmother, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right, mam.’

  ‘Tom, when you peeped in at the dining-room window that night, did the dead man really look like Mr Middleton?’

  ‘Well, he had Mr Middleton’s way of lying down, mam, and that’s all I know. Soon as I see somebody there I went to bed.’

  ‘Tom, at what time of night was it that you and your father and stepmother and Mrs Passion chased the vicar out of the grounds of Neot House?’

  Tom looked confused and began to stammer an angry denial that the incident had ever happened.

  ‘I had it from an eye-witness, Tom,’ said Mrs Bradley, grinning. ‘Come, now. Don’t waste our time. I can’t think why you haven’t told me about it before.’

  ‘I don’t know what time it was,’ said Tom, truculently.

  ‘It was before eleven, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t say when it was.’

  ‘What had the vicar been doing, Tom?’

  ‘Putting rubbish in our well.’

  ‘Oh, dear me! Whatever for?’

  ‘So’s everybody got to go to him for water and say their prayers in church and send their little ’uns to Sunday School before he’ll give any. That’s why.’

  ‘Yes, I see. And you caught him at it and chased him off the premises?’

  ‘What if I did? They wasn’t your premises, I suppose?’

  ‘There’s no need for impudence, Tom, especially to ladies,’ said Jones, beginning to lose his temper with the boy.

  ‘I ain’t impudent. And if you wants to go poking your nose into something else that don’t concern you, I wish you’d find out why they don’t let me go and see dad when he’s lying there all by himself.’

  ‘Hasn’t your stepmother told you that he is suffering from an infectious illness?’ inquired Mrs Bradley.

  ‘Yes, more than once. But if mother allows of that there Mrs Passion to go in and out, why for can’t I? That’s what I be wanting to know. I beant a little ’un that’s got to be took care of, but so’s I shan’t go in, do you know what they’ve been and done?’

  ‘Put a billy goat on guard at the door,’ said Mrs Bradley, laughing, ‘and not the one that belongs to the Misses Harper, either.’

  ‘Well, for the Lord’s sake!—’ said Tom aghast. He crossed his fingers and avoided her bright black eye.

  ‘Come, come!’ said Mrs Bradley, laughing. ‘It doesn’t take a witch to see goat-prints on an otherwise innocuous lawn, child. They exercise the goat after dark, you see.’

  ‘Do they so?’

  ‘Yes. After dark. At about half-past eleven, I should imagine.’

  ‘So if I bided me time,’ said Tom slowly, ‘I could slope in when the old goat wasn’t there, and have a look at dad.’

  ‘Yes. And leave the weapon in your bedroom, Tom. It won’t be needed,’ Mrs Bradley advised him.

  ‘Weapon?’ He turned green. ‘I anna got no weapon. I wouldn’t—you don’t think I’d go for to be revenged on my dad?’

  ‘I hope not, for your sake, young man,’ said the Chief Constable, addressing him for the first time. Tom caught his eye, gulped, and, at a word from Mrs Bradley, made haste to leave them.

  ‘So that’s Tom Tebbutt,’ said the Chief Constable, slowly. ‘In other words, the young fellow who’s going to make it unnecessary for me to get permission to exhume those bodies.’

  Mrs Bradley patted him delicately on the shoulder.

  ‘First prize for general intelligence, child,’ she said.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ said Jones. Mrs Bradley called loudly for Henry Pike, whose face appeared immediately above the fence which separated the cottage gardens.

  ‘Go to the Long Thin Man now, Henry, please,’ she said. Henry smiled and nodded. In the quiet of the evening they could hear him running down the road.

  ‘Wheels within wheels,’ said Mrs Bradley cryptically. She glanced sideways at the Chief Constable. He was lying back in his deck chair, his feet up on the canvas rest with which all Jones’ deck chairs were provided; his mouth was half open and he appeared to be asleep. Mrs Bradley lowered her voice a little. ‘The chief difficulty in discovering the identity of any murderer is that there are often so many suspects to choose from,’ she said.

  ‘How many people, then, do you imagine might have had some reason for murder?’ Jones inquired. Mrs Bradley produced from a capacious pocket in her skirt a notebook and pencil, but before she could answer, he continued:

  ‘But, for the life of me, I can’t think why you want to look further than Mrs Passion. She had the motive, she had the opportunity, she provided herself with an alibi and, if you ask me, she has the temperament.’

  ‘The temperament,’ repeated Mrs Bradley. ‘Yes, child. As good psychologists, we ought not to lose sight of that important item. The temperament for murder—an inexhaustibly interesting subject. I have it, you have it, the vicar has it. Mrs Tebbutt has it, Doctor Mortmain has it. To how many other people in Saxon Wall would you say it has been vouchsafed?’

  Jones laughed, and protested that he did not know.

  ‘Besides, why drag in ourselves and the doctor?’ he inquired. ‘We are not among your numerous suspects, are we?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a peculiarly unnerving grimace.

  ‘Well, who are the others? I really can’t think of any more.’

  ‘I believe we once discussed the possibility of the two Miss Harpers,’ suggested Mrs Bradley. She leaned forward so that she could tap him on the knee with the end of her silver pencil. ‘We might question those women further, child, you know.’

  ‘But they have been questioned.’

  ‘By the police. Not by me. I just allowed Miss Phoebe to ramble on, you know.’

  ‘Well, police questioning is not to be despised. They understand how to get hold of information, do the Roberts. You’d know they did if ever you’d been nabbed for anything.’

  ‘I have been nabbed,’ said Mrs Bradley mincingly.

  ‘What for?’ asked Jones, amazed. ‘Contempt of court?’

  Mrs Bradley stroked the sleeve of a jumper she had knitted for herself in five shades of purple, two of which did not blend happily with the rest, and smiled reminiscently.

  ‘For murder,’ she replied, with modest conciseness.

  ‘Good Lord, yes! I remember. But you didn’t do it, did you?’

  ‘Of course I did it,’ the little old woman replied. Jones groaned.

  ‘But you didn’t kill this unknown man, did you?’

  ‘No I didn’t kill him, child. You haven’t forgotten the Tebbutts, mother and son?’

  ‘Not father?’

  ‘Father, possibly. Not very likely. He is not on my list. What say you to old Mrs Fluke?’

  ‘Wicked enough for anything, but she has an alibi.’

  ‘Well, you think she has, so let her pass for the moment. What do you think about a motive for Passion? Passion’s alibi is curiously suspect, child, when one comes to think about it.’

  ‘Why? The poor devil was sick as a dog. Shouldn’t think he felt much like committing murder. Suicide would be more likely, I should think.’

  ‘You have a coarse mind, child. Did it strike you that he wa
s at considerable pains to tell everybody how very sick he was?’

  ‘Oh, well, persons of his mentality are always proud of their illnesses. Now what about the vicar, whose case we have also discussed. Aren’t you going to bring him back on to the list?’ asked Jones with levity. Mrs Bradley shook her head at him.

  ‘The vicar has never been removed from my list,’ she said.

  ‘But Crevister?’ said Jones, becoming serious. ‘You are joking,’

  ‘Not exactly. You see, Doctor Crevister may have had a motive for the murder which at present we don’t know. He is one of the few people connected with the case who was actually living in Saxon Wall when Middleton committed the other murders.’

  ‘Besides,’ Jones added, ‘I suppose to a certain extent it’s bred in the bone, this “birds of a feather” business.’

  ‘This—?’ inquired Mrs Bradley. Jones grinned.

  ‘You know quite well what I mean. For instance, if I am with a man for a quarter of an hour, I know, long before that quarter of an hour is up, whether he’s any sort of a writer. I can spot one a mile off. Doctors and lawyers, I take it, are equally gifted.’

  ‘I see.’ Mrs Bradley pursed her lips into the semblance of a little beak. Jones looked at her. Then he said:

  ‘Look here, what are you getting at? I’m willing to bet anything you like to suggest that you’ve got something up your sleeve. So out with it. Am I to prepare for a shock?’

  Mrs Bradley shrugged.

  ‘I am puzzled by a good many things,’ she said. ‘And there are a good many questions for which I want answers.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘For example, child, who was it that first trailed the red herring of a Mr Carswell Middleton? It’s interesting, that. You see, so many people had it pat.’

  ‘Including Passion, who’s more or less mentally deficient,’ said Jones, thoughtfully. ‘You mean, he’d been pretty carefully coached before I had that conversation with him the day he was mowing the cricket pitch?’

  ‘Exactly. He had been very carefully coached. Very carefully. And he really was sick when he said he was. And there’s another interesting point. We deduced that there was no such person as Carswell Middleton, and it turns out that there is no such person as Carswell Middleton.’

  ‘Well?’ said Jones. Mrs Bradley, chin on hand, considered him.

  ‘Well, child?’

  Jones laughed and shook his head.

  ‘No clue, either across or down, leaps to assist my faltering intelligence,’ he said. ‘Therefore, say on.’

  ‘How many people still living in the village today knew Hanley Middleton by sight, do you imagine?’ asked Mrs Bradley. Jones, knitting his brows, replied that he supposed that there must be quite a number.

  ‘Quite a number,’ agreed Mrs Bradley. ‘Did it ever strike you, I wonder,’ she continued, going off at a tangent suddenly, ‘that although Mrs Passion may have needed an alibi that night, she may have needed it for reasons totally unconnected with the murder?’

  ‘Spare me!’ said Jones, placing his hand on his heart.

  ‘You think it over,’ Mrs Bradley advised him.

  ‘It was Mrs Tebbutt who came to my cottage that night?’

  ‘It was Mrs Tebbutt. Of that one fact I am absolutely certain.’

  ‘And she came in order to provide Mrs Passion with an alibi?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, child.’

  ‘But not an alibi for the murder at Neot House?’

  Mrs Bradley cackled. Jones frowned in thought, and then he shook his head.

  ‘No. I can’t solve it,’ he said. ‘Give it up, please.’

  ‘I think she had an appointment at Neot House with Hanley Middleton.’

  ‘But she didn’t murder him? Ah, another thing! Who hit me on the head that night, do you suppose? The murderer?’

  ‘I think it was one of the Tebbutts, but I’m not at all sure,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘You mean Tom’s a nervous boy, and saw me crawling, and took a pot shot for luck?’

  ‘Possibly. But I think it far more likely that you were within an ace of seeing something which the Tebbutts did not care to have disclosed.’

  ‘I say! What rotten luck! I wish I’d seen it. I suppose you know what it was?’

  ‘Well, no, I don’t, child. But I can guess.’

  ‘And what would I have gained by seeing it, whatever it was?’

  ‘Exactly nothing, child. As far as I can tell, it would not have made the slightest impression on you. It would not even have caused you a moment of surprise.’

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘Oh, just an empty room in Neot House, child, just an empty room. And now stop talking about the murder, because here comes Mr Hallam, and I don’t want to upset his nerves. Aha! And Mrs Passion!’

  Mrs Passion approached the group very slowly, and, addressing herself to Jones, said, in her expressionless voice:

  ‘Anything I can do, Mr Jones, before I go to bed?’

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Passion. There’ll be plenty of washing up in the morning, but it can wait.’

  ‘Oh, so Lily Soudall don’t spoil her nice hands with dirty dish clouts and soda water,’ said Mrs Passion.

  ‘Oh, Lord, I’d forgotten Lily! Just go round to the back and tell her she can go, will you! And young Tebbutt, too.’

  ‘Tom Tebbutt?’ For an instant her lack-lustre eyes took on the expression of those of a hunted hare. Then she recovered. ‘If I diddun think Tom Tebbutt was after a job at Southampton.’

  ‘He was. He got the sack, and is afraid to let his parents know,’ said Jones, with easy mendacity.

  ‘By the way, Mrs Passion,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘you might sit in that small basket chair, and tell us, once and for all, who killed Hanley Middleton.’

  ‘Hanley Middleton!’ said Mrs Passion stupidly. Her pallid face was a blank which expressed more surprise than any contortion of the features or display of histrionics could have done. ‘Was it Hanley Middleton was killed? Oh, of course! What am I saying? No, no! Carswell! It were Carswell, Mr Jones!’

  The silence was broken by Jones.

  ‘I shouldn’t say any more, Mrs Passion. It’s silly to incriminate yourself before you need.’

  Mrs Passion giggled.

  ‘If I killed Hanley Middleton I’d be willing to hang, for I’d have killed the devil himself,’ she said. ‘I thought it was his brother, as would take away from my Richard everything as was his. I changed the little babies over, and give Mrs Pike the lawful one, and put my little Richard, that was Hanley Middleton’s son, in place of him. Then came this Carswell Middleton, that was young enough to marry and have sons of his own, maybe. So he got killed dead as an old cow, and my sister, she locked the door on the poor dead body, so no one should see it till day.’

  She folded her hands in her lap, and added, with another giggle:

  ‘I do lay my ruin at the door of Hanley Middleton, and after that I done his wife wrong, so sweet and gentle a young woman as she was. I really did ought to tell somebody about it, and it did all ought to be told—crying out to be told, so it be—before I die.’

  ‘No, no!’ said Jones with sudden violence. He turned to Mrs Bradley, as though to suggest that she should prevent the telling of an obviously lying and therefore possibly an incriminating tale, but Mrs Bradley, her sharp eyes fixed on Mrs Passion, and her mouth pursed into a birdlike beak, appeared to be avid with interest and in no mood to assist in an interruption of the story.

  Jones sank back in his seat and crossed his long thin legs. Hallam’s head was in shadow. The light fell aslant Mrs Passion’s dead-white face. About her neck was a single rope of pearls. She fingered them with her coarse-skinned hands and suddenly giggled again.

  ‘Funny about they beads,’ she said. ‘He give them to me when first she went away. She came back, though. I knew she wasn’t dead, although he swore she were. He swore as how he’d killed her, like he killed my first little baby I bore to him.


  ‘That was the time he killed the cockerels. I reckon he was possessed. I thought so at the time, and since then, why, I be pretty sure of it.’

  ‘Possessed?’ said Hallam, suddenly. Then he relapsed into his former attitude, and said no more while she told her story.

  ‘He was left the place by his uncle,’ Mrs Passion continued, ‘and none of us hadn’t heard tell on him till he came to live in these parts after he married his poor young wife.

  ‘Mother, she helped bewitch him, belike, for he wasn’t nothing only miserable and quiet and staring when he first came hereabouts, but as time went on, and mother cast her spells about him, he got worse and worse, and turned cruel, and hunted for women and ruined two or three good girls and then we what wasn’t good, and took we up along of the big house, he did, time she, poor creature, went back to her father and mother in London.

  ‘Thing is, he wanted her to die, but was too frit to set about and kill her, so he came along to mother and ask what was best to be done.

  ‘Mother have Irish blood, and she showed him the way to rot her away like a sheaf of corn that’s buried underground. He took and done it wrong somewhere, for nothing come of it, and when they went to see how the sheaf was doing its work, they found it gone. Mother, she was terrible upset and anxious. It worried her for weeks to try and think how sheaf had been spirited away.’

  Mrs Bradley nodded, and suddenly cackled. Mrs Passion shook a head as heavy as that of the eldest oyster.

  ‘No laughing matter, living with mother after that,’ she said, ‘so when my robust lord thought to take himself along up to London, I seemed best advised to go. But with carrying his second child for him he put me off and naught to it but to wed with Passion as had cast sheep’s eyes for a twelvemonth or more, tell him never so often I were a bad lot he was better without.’ She paused, and ogled Jones, who avoided her eye.

  ‘Meanwhile, herself got with child, Hanley Middleton must have been took demented when she died just about three weeks afterwards.’

  Mrs Bradley leaned forward.

  ‘Come, come, Mrs Passion,’ she said, in her most soothing and honeyed accents. Then she gave a screech of laughter that almost jerked Hallam and Jones to their feet, and added gleefully: ‘“Now, don’t tell me a lie for you know I hate a liar”—how did he kill his wife, and why?’