“Then we’ll try to waste no more of your time before we let you get back to work,” said Delphick, as Brinton, at his side, still gaped in stunned amazement. “We have reason to suspect, Mrs. Bragbury, that your husband’s accident was not, in fact, an accident. We think that someone tampered with the steering of his car, and—”
“Not an accident?” Mavis went pale. Her voice rose to a squeal. “The car’s bin tampered with? Oh, that’s wicked lies! I won’t—I don’t believe you!”
“Please try not to distress yourself too much, Mrs. Bragbury. This must be hard for you, I know, but there is the strongest evidence—”
“Evidence?” Her eyes widened in horrified dismay. “You mean it’s true—it weren’t an accident?” She saw his nod, and turned white. She gulped. “But—but that means the insurance mightn’t cover it!”
It was Delphick’s turn to goggle, though he recovered himself more speedily than had Brinton. “I really couldn’t say about that, I’m afraid. Perhaps your financial adviser will be able to—”
“Financial adviser? There’s another thing!” Mavis was growing red-faced now, and her eyes were angry. “Donald it was kept the books for the business, with me not seeing why we should pay good money for someone outside the family to do what anyone with a bit o’ gumption could be doing for us for free—and now that’ll mean more money down the drain, neither me nor the girls being much inclined to sums, and busy with the cooking, what’s more. And now here you come telling me the insurance won’t pay out on the car—and nothing to get on his life, most like, if what you say about tampering’s true ...”
As even her indignant breath had at last to give out, Delphick leaped into the breach. “It appears so. Mrs. Bragbury—which is why we’ve come to you. We’ve no reason to suppose this tampering was a—an episode of random spite, or casual vandalism. Did your husband, do you know, have any enemies?”
“That’s libel,” snapped Mavis, inaccurately. “And I’ll thank you not to go spreading tales o’ that sort around the neighbourhood—this is a respectable family, let me tell you, and we’ve kept ourselves to ourselves right from the start. We don’t go in for no nonsense, and that’s a fact.”
“A business rival, maybe?” Delphick wasn’t going to give up easily. “Bragbury’s has an excellent reputation in these parts—and justifiably so, I’m told. It could well be in someone’s interests to, ah, curtail your activities by—by reducing your workforce: especially if, as you suggest, your husband was the only one capable of handling the larger vehicles such as the delivery van.”
“Handling? Yes, and,” said Mavis, as the grim realisation dawned, “servicing, which is summat else we’re going to have to pay for now, me and the girls not being inclined to oil and grease, never mind the taste it’d give the food, and the customers not paying to eat in the inspection pit. Oh, it’s a black day for Bragbury’s, and no mistake!”
Delphick, for all his training and experience, was at something of a loss over the correct response to her remark. Fortunately for his composure, however, Mavis continued to enlarge on her theme for some minutes to come, and he was able to collect his scattered wits and jump into the next conversational breach as soon as it presented itself.
“It would be the greatest possible help in our investigations if we knew why your husband was out so late last night, and where he was going. After all the excitement and upset of the princess’s disappearance, I would have thought that he and your daughter, as witnesses of the event, would prefer to spend a quiet evening at home.” And he hoped he’d be forgiven the lie: he couldn’t remember when he’d last seen so unrestful a house. It didn’t seem probable that any of the other rooms were more welcoming; he dreaded to think what the Bragbury daughters were like if, as so often happened, they took after their mother. Since Donald had been responsible for the service and maintenance of his car, if it was learned later that he’d tampered with the steering himself, and committed suicide, the Oracle wouldn’t be in the least surprised.
“Evening at home?” Mavis looked astounded at the very idea. “When there’s business to be done? The girls were washing up—all that good food gone to waste, none o’ the Dungeness lot bothering to eat it, and never thinking to put it in the cool until too late—and then helping me get ready for today, which is no more’n you’d expect, us with a business to run.” And once again she sniffed, and stared at the clock on the overmantel; and she sighed, and wiped restless hands down the front of her apron.
“So your husband went out on a—a business matter?” The deduction, thought Delphick, wasn’t unreasonable; he was pleased to observe Mavis’s brisk nod of confirmation. “Was this a long-standing appointment? Would an outsider have known—could he or she have expected—him to leave the house and drive in that particular direction at that particular hour?”
For the first time, Mrs. Bragbury’s look was neither hostile nor disbelieving. Her dark eyes narrowed, and her forehead creased in a frown. “You wait there,” she said; and, wheeling, marched out of the room without another word.
As she failed to close the door behind her (saving time, each of the three policemen independently guessed), nobody dared say anything in case, on her return, she overheard it. Their expressions, however, were more than eloquent as they looked at one another in a strained, thoughtful silence.
“Here,” said Mavis, marching back into the room with an appointments diary in her hand. She slapped the book on the table in front of Delphick, and opened it. “Read that!”
Whatever the female Bragburys’ ability with sums, nobody could fault their handwriting skills. The booking was plain for all to see, and Delphick—after a startled gulp—duly read it aloud.
“Eight-thirty, Mr. Mountfitchet. About his daughter’s wedding.” Above the gasps of Brinton and Bob, he addressed Mavis Bragbury with a note of more than urgency in his tone.
“Mountfitchet? Do you mean Charley Mountfitchet—from Plummergen?”
“That’s who he said he was.”
Something in her voice told Delphick what his next question should be. “You didn’t believe him?”
She shrugged. “No reason why not.”
“But Charley Mountfitchet’s a bachelor, for heaven’s sake. He hasn’t got a daughter!”
Mavis gave him an old-fashioned look. “Not as we’ve heard of so far, no, but they’re a funny lot over to Plummergen. No telling what he got up to in his young days a-coming home to roost now, is there?”
The landlord of the George and Dragon was a cheery, open-natured soul who delighted in helping the police with their enquiries on the least excuse. The most unlikely persons, Delphick knew, had the darkest of secrets hidden in their pasts; but Charley Mountfitchet seemed even more unlikely than most.
“So this ... Mr. Mountfitchet telephoned to ask for some help in catering for his daughter’s wedding. Did he ask for Mr. Bragbury by name?”
“ ’Twas allus Donald as did the driving and the bookings, me and the girls being busy with the preparation and the cooking. Everyone knows that.”
“Do they, indeed.” Delphick frowned. Mavis pounced.
“They do, and if you’re trying to name me a liar, I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head! Me a poor lone widow-woman as I am—you oughter be downright ashamed o’ yourself, and that’s a fact.”
Once more, Delphick gulped. The idea of Mavis Bragbury as a grieving widow had long since passed from his memory. “I—I apologise, Mrs. Bragbury. I’m just ... confused, you see. Didn’t it occur to you that the call from Mr. Mountfitchet might not—might not be entirely above-board?”
She shrugged again. “Thought it weren’t so likely he’d a daughter being wed, that’s true ...”
“Then why did you allow your husband to go rushing off on what might well have proved to be a wild goose chase?” Delphick restrained himself nobly from reminding her of what Donald Bragbury’s errand had finally proved to be.
Mavis sighed. She answered in the voice of
an exasperated adult addressing a very stupid child. “Just acos he’d no wedding for the catering didn’t mean as there weren’t no cause for Charley Mountfitchet to do business with us. The George and Dragon’s good enough eating, but nothing fancy—and for all I knew he was a-planning to bring in our stuff by the back door and try for a rosette in one o’ they hotel guides—ah, and I’d’ve made sure he’d paid handsome for the privilege, and all!”
Delphick glanced at Bob, who was making a note to check with Charley the instant they returned to Plummergen. There was, he supposed, always the outside chance that the landlord hoped to go up-market: ever since the Best Kept Village Competition, and Plummergen’s second prize, there were more visitors than ever before. But such a hole-and-corner way of improving the George’s cuisine, which was good plain fare rather than particularly haute, was very unlike the Charley Mountfitchet they’d known for so many years ...
“Then it never occurred to you, Mrs. Bragbury, that the message might be a hoax? You thought that Mr. Mountfitchet was about to propose to your husband some ... some slightly dubious—ethically, if not commercially—deal?”
For the last time, Mavis shrugged. She looked at the clock with impatience; she looked at Delphick with scorn. “And why not?” she demanded. “Why not? ’Twould have bin a good bit o’ business coming our way, wouldn’t it?”
chapter
~ 15 ~
CATESBY GAZED SLOWLY around the darkened room. The other two at the table gazed back, without speaking. Winter moved restlessly on his chair; Keyes sighed, and licked his lips. His feet shuffled on the floor; his fingers pattered on the tabletop in a nervous dance of which he seemed unaware.
Catesby frowned. “Where is Rookwood?”
“Checking on ... on our visitor,” said Keyes, stilling his fingers for no more than a moment.
“That one,” volunteered Winter, now the silence had been broken, “is a bit of a handful, and then some.” He winced as he rubbed his shin. “Call her the spitfire type, and I won’t argue. She doesn’t come across like that in public, though, does she? Quite a surprise. None of your blue-blooded stand-on-your-dignity-at-all-times nonsense about her. She’s not going to give in easily, believe me—if she keeps on like this much longer, I vote we think about doping her rations.” He ventured a grin. “Or d’you reckon that would be, um, treason?”
“Treason?” Catesby’s echo was an icy hiss. “It would be closer to the truth to call it stupidity—and dangerous stupidity, at that, when not one of us would have the least idea of what we were doing. What use would she be to us ... damaged—or dead?”
“We could ask someone,” said Winter. “Or look it up in the library—just a few sleeping pills, tranquillisers, something like that. Just to keep her quiet.”
“She’s hardly,” said Keyes, “a noisy guest.”
“Noblesse oblige.” Winter grinned. “Anyway, wouldn’t do her much good if she was. Noisy, I mean, stuck out in the middle of nowhere like she is ...”
“Nowhere, as you call it,” Catesby reminded him, “has its advantages.”
Winter tried hard to give his answering shrug an air of bravado. He almost succeeded. “Did I say it hasn’t? Nobody’s going to complain about the—the planning of this operation. None of us, anyway.”
Catesby’s shrewd glance made him fidget again, and lower his gaze. Beside him, there was an empty chair: in the next chair to it, Keyes continued to patter his fingers on the tabletop. Suddenly, he cleared his throat.
“I—I don’t know about complaining,” he began. “But—well, there’s been talk—”
He broke off. From outside, there had come a rattling sound, followed by a soft thud as someone opened the door. Every head turned.
“Rookwood!”
“You are late,” Catesby informed him.
Rookwood, breathing hard, slipped, limping, into his seat. With a tender hand, he massaged the top of his head. “From now on,” he said, “we go in twos.”
“We have already agreed it is too dangerous—”
But Catesby, for once, was not allowed to finish. “In twos,” insisted Rookwood, “and to hell with whether anyone notices we aren’t there!” He himself did not notice that Keyes stopped his relentless finger-pattering, and winced; neither, for once, did the all-observant Catesby. “Do you know”—Rookwood sounded incredulous—“she kicked me on the kneecap, and hit me on the head with the tray when I dropped it?” He ignored the sudden snort which burst from the listening Winter. “She’ll have to go hungry tonight, and serve her right—though of course we don’t want her to starve,” he concluded, catching Catesby’s eye, and calming down a little. “I mean, a kid like that ...”
“A spitfire,” corrected Winter, with feeling. “Sleeping pills, that’s what she needs—”
“No!” Catesby slammed a forceful hand on the tabletop. “No, we might do more harm than good. If ... if things should, by some horrible mischance, go wrong ... if we are discovered—it will look better for us if we have treated her with ... with the respect due to her position. As far as possible, that is. In the circumstances.”
There was a long silence.
“Well, naturally, after all the trouble you—we’ve gone to, we don’t want to be discovered,” said Winter.
Keyes clasped his hands together, tightly clenching his fingers. He coughed, and blushed. “It—it wouldn’t do any harm to—to think about Stage Two ...”
Rookwood glanced at him: at the white-knuckled hands. He said nothing, but his look was eloquent.
Catesby’s loss of command had lasted but a moment. A cleared throat; a darkling frown. A finger, tapping on the tabletop ...
“Stage Two,” said Catesby. Keyes looked up, silently pleading. “The day after tomorrow,” Catesby went on, “not before. There must be a—a discreet distance from the Bragbury episode.”
“Still a lot of cops sniffing around,” said Winter, the irreverent.
“Sniffing in the wrong places,” the loyal Rookwood reminded him. The rebellion had been brief, and, now that Catesby had appeared to yield, would not be repeated. “Just the way—Catesby—predicted ...”
Keyes, once again, shifted on his chair. Catesby looked at him, and raised an enquiring eyebrow. Keyes dropped his gaze to his clasped hands.
“There’s ... talk,” he mumbled, at last, when the look of enquiry had become overwhelming. “I couldn’t help hearing ... they’ve brought a man in from Scotland Yard.”
“In a case like this,” Catesby reminded him, “you would expect nothing less.”
“But—but he’s not an ordinary Yarder.” Keyes blushed again. “I mean, he’s not one of the Big Four, or anything, but he’s big, all right, and—”
“Once again,” Catesby broke in, “we would have expected nothing less.”
“Yes, I know, but ...” Keyes, hot-cheeked, thanked the shadows in the room for hiding so much of his embarrassment. “But it’s that man Delphick—the one they call the Oracle.”
“And?” prompted Catesby, as Keyes began to cough again.
“And ... and—he’s the one who’s always hanging around with the Battling Brolly,” brought out Keyes, at last. “And you know how she—she helps him with his cases—it’s in the papers all the time ...”
“And they know,” said Winter, “about that business with the Bragbury car, and the Mountfitchet phone call. So I’ve heard,” he added, as everyone stared at him. “You know how people gossip—and there’s bound to be at least some truth in what they say ...”
“There is, indeed.” Catesby’s lips were thin, white; as white as the knuckles on the clasped hands of Keyes. “Has anyone,” demanded Catesby, “heard ... anything else?”
Winter, for once reluctant to stir up trouble, favoured Rookwood and Keyes—especially Keyes—with a meaningful, sideways stare. Rookwood looked unhappily at Catesby, and tried to speak, but failed. It was Keyes who made the great effort, and finally brought out:
“There really is ... talk—qu
estions. Curious looks,” he gabbled, “and gossip—nothing definite,” as Catesby gave him a particularly curious look of his own, “but I can’t help thinking—thinking that Stage Two oughtn’t to wait for the day after tomorrow,” he finished, bravely. “Once people start to suspect ...”
Catesby stared at him, in silence—a silence neither Rookwood nor even Winter dared to break. The leadership of a natural leader is not readily challenged a second time in any encounter if it has already once prevailed.
“Any one questioner above another?” enquired Catesby.
Keyes licked dry lips. “Well ...”
With the silent encouragement of Rookwood and Winter, he enlarged, stumbling, on his remark; and Catesby’s frown was awful. This time, the unbroken silence stretched into what seemed an eternity.
“Stage Two tomorrow, then,” decreed Catesby, at last. An audible sigh of relief filled the room—to be drowned out by the final, ominous rider:
“And if gossip and suspicion are correct ... we may have to consider amending our plans somewhat. After Stage Three, we may have to devise a Stage Four ...”
“Posted,” said Brinton, going over the evidence yet again, “in Maidstone. First class stamp, and for once it only took a day to arrive ... not that it helps us much. If we’d only known in advance to put a twenty-four-hour watch on the busiest post office in the area, we might have spotted the blighter who popped it into the box. As it is ...”
“As it is,” said Delphick, “he, or she, could have come from anywhere—and probably did. Maidstone, unfortunately, is hardly off the beaten track—only thirty-six miles from London, around thirty from any of the Channel ports—”
“Oh, God!” Brinton was too despondent even to tear his hair. “If they’ve taken her abroad—”
Miss Seeton Rules (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 18) Page 14