The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  It seemed that just out of Stalham lived a family reported to be “settled-down” gypsies. They had lived there for three generations, were named Huzy (a variant, Mrs. Bradley thought, of a Hungarian name) and were certainly of mixed or foreign blood. There was a rumour (not that anybody was silly enough to believe it, Mrs. Bradley was assured) that the daughter, a woman of about forty, was a witch, and that, having set her cap in vain for five years or so at the old man, she had decided to take her revenge on him by bringing about his death.

  She had uttered no threats, but had made current certain hints and veiled promises that he would die “before Christmas.” She had a perfect alibi for the time of the old man’s death, which had been fixed by the doctor at between two o’clock and four on the afternoon of the Bank Holiday, for she had been serving refreshments in Stalham to holiday-makers at a booth near the river, and the stall-keepers on either side, men whose word there was no reason to doubt, were prepared to swear that she had not left the river-bank from eight o’clock that morning until the midday. After that she had gone into the town to get a drink at a small inn, where she was well known and could again be sworn to, and had left it at one, to return to the booth. There she had remained until five, when she went off again for half an hour, this time to her home to make herself a cup of tea. She had come back at twenty to six, and had remained at the booth until eight, when she had gone off for another drink.

  Mrs. Bradley obtained the address and went to call. It was a dirty house, foetid and dark. An old woman opened the door.

  “Good morning,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Is your daughter Martha at home?”

  “No,” replied the crone.

  “A pity,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I want to look at her doll.”

  “Doll? That haven’t got no doll. That isn’t a child.”

  “No. Has she any pins or rusty nails?”

  The old woman slammed the door, but before Mrs. Bradley, who had retired with deliberate slowness from the field, had gone ten yards, it was opened again. The woman who opened it this time looked about forty, and was handsome, in a bold, coarse style.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” said the woman.

  “No?” said Mrs. Bradley. “What did you do? Hit the doll on the back of the head?”

  “No. I mean no harm.” She certainly understood the reference to the doll, Mrs. Bradley was interested to notice.

  “You’ve heard that Elias Bennett is dead, though, haven’t you? May I come in and see the doll?”

  “No, you mayn’t. What business is it of yours?”

  “Only that I don’t want to see an innocent person arrested for the murder.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Be off!”

  She, too, slammed the door. Mrs. Bradley retreated thoughtfully, watched, she well knew, from behind the filthy curtains, which obscured the front room from people passing by in the street. When she had gone a few paces down the road she halted, took from her capacious skirt-pocket a small bag, and took out of the bag a worsted viper, which she had constructed, with minute care, to resemble those found on the bodies.

  By the time she reached the door for the third time it was half open. A dark hand snatched her inside and closed the door behind her. The voice of the witch said, “Why not you say where you come from? What do you want?”

  “They want to know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “how much your brother told the police, that’s all. And they want to have a report about the doll.”

  “But they know naught about the doll,” the woman expostulated. “Private to me, that is. Nought to do with them.”

  “They know everything,” said Mrs. Bradley, solemnly. “Come now. If you wish to keep on their right side, show me the doll; I want to get back and make my report that you are innocent.”

  “Innocent? I never killed old Elias!”

  “They will know that, when I have seen the doll.”

  Without another word, the woman led her up uncarpeted stairs to a bedroom. The only furnishings were an unmade bed, a chair whose cane seat had worn down into a kind of funnel-shape, a huge mahogany wardrobe, and a small, flyblown mirror, hanging over the mantelpiece. The ceiling was dark grey, the walls were peeling, the window was thick with dirt.

  The woman shut the door and placed the chair under the handle, and then went across to the wardrobe, which she opened.

  “There it is, then,” she said; adding in spiteful tones, “See what you can make out of that!”

  Mrs. Bradley took the doll down. It was dressed in imitation of a farmer’s working clothes, breeches, gaiters, and all. It wore a round, pie-dish sort of hat, and little bits of hair had been glued carefully on to its cheeks and chin to make whiskers.

  Mrs. Bradley removed the hat. The doll’s head was intact. She took out her small magnifying glass.

  “I see you have removed the pins,” she said. “A good thing indeed for you that you did not touch the head.”

  She handed the doll to its owner, and walked towards the door, holding a hand-bag mirror so that she could keep watch on the woman’s movements. The witch, however, did nothing except to put the doll carefully back, but, for some reason, her hand fumbled. As she went down on her knees to pick up the pieces, she gave a half-glance round. Her face was grey with terror. Mrs. Bradley turned round and raised her left hand.

  “Hic, haec, hoc, decapitate cock,” she said solemnly. Then, as she went out, “And leave evil alone. It is not for you,” she added.

  She went to the superintendent with her story.

  “There is no doubt that the worsted viper was a password into the house, and there is no doubt that the person who made that doll into the likeness of the farmer could have made the vipers,” she said. “In fact, it struck me that the leather used for the doll’s gaiters was the same as that from which the heads of the vipers had been cut. There’s guilty knowledge of some kind in that house. What they do there, besides manufacture vipers, of course, I don’t know, but perhaps it will give us a lead. Do you think you could put a discreet and responsible sergeant onto it quietly? I’m afraid Mr. Os wouldn’t like it if I bothered him with it and it proved to be a false trail.”

  “I could, ma’am, certainly. Although, of course, if all they do there is to manufacture the vipers as toys, it won’t lead us far.”

  “I don’t see why not. There must be some connection between the man who peddles the vipers and the people who use them, and the inference is, you know, that the farmer had obtained some knowledge of the transactions of the murderers—or they thought he had!—which would account for the fact they killed him.”

  “You don’t mean the Huzys? Although, of course, that peddler was one of them.”

  “No. I mean the gang, including my precious Mr. Bleriot, who may be for them or against them, but is certainly mixed up in their concerns.”

  “I’ll see to it, ma’am, unless, of course, Mr. Os think of seeing them for himself. If so, I can’t interfere, as that is in charge of the case.”

  “Quite, yes. No, it’s just an idea of mine that the Huzys may know something more about the vipers. If they do, it might start a trail.”

  “Which we could well do with. The Chief Constable, that rib Mr. Os something unmerciful yesterday. Like a bear that was, this morning.”

  “Small wonder,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  • CHAPTER 16 •

  “Please, would you tell me…why your cat grins like that?”

  —From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

  “But I don’t see how you deduced the doll,” said Jonathan. At his aunt’s request, he had picked her up at Stalham and they were cruising leisurely on Barton Broad.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “When you hear prophecies that people are going to die within a given time, coupled with a reference to witchcraft, a doll is the most likely thing. She might have worked her spells some other way, but, in view of the careful manufacture of the vipers, it seemed worth while to assume that
a doll in which the woman stuck pins would be the means chosen to bring about the death.”

  “You speak seriously,” said the young man. “You don’t believe in all that rot?”

  “I have known various instances in which it has been successful,” Mrs. Bradley replied, “but only, of course, when the threatened person has known what was being done and believed in the efficacy of the magic. One can read of proved instances, too.” (Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today by William Seabrook, Harrap, 1941.)

  “But the old fellow didn’t believe in it, did he?”

  “We don’t know. He may not have known it was being tried, which would mean that Martha Huzy is not a skilled practitioner, or she would have told him. In any case, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Well, I don’t know. He was killed.”

  “Yes. But she didn’t kill him.”

  “She may know all about it.”

  “That is for the police to find out—how much she knew about the death. My own impression is that she knew nothing. There was nothing faked or out of the ordinary in her alibi. The family have had a booth in Stalham on August Bank Holidays for years. Whit Mondays, too.”

  “Yes, I see. When do we go along and have a look at this field? Or don’t we?”

  “There would be no profit in going to see the field, child. And the movements of Elias Bennett up to the time of his death have been satisfactorily accounted for, and were innocent enough. He had been to place flowers on his wife’s grave in the morning, and was to have attended a fête, held by the Sons of Temperance in the afternoon. It was when he was on his way to the meeting place, according to the police, that he was struck down.”

  The police had interviewed the local secretary of the Sons of Temperance, and Mrs. Bradley proceeded to follow their example. The secretary proved to be employed by a firm of boat-builders, and was a man of sixty-four. He was very ready to talk about the murder, which, naturally, had made a very great stir in the neighbourhood, and seemed to take for granted Mrs. Bradley’s right to question him.

  The little band of men and women who had planned the outing had been disappointed when Elias had failed to meet them on the Bank Holiday, but were not altogether surprised.

  “How was that?” enquired Mrs. Bradley.

  Well, it was this way: Elias had a setter bitch of which he was very fond, and the dog had been suffering from some mysterious malady for a couple of days. He had dosed her himself, and had sent along very early on Monday morning to say that if the bitch was no better he should not leave her.

  “Very thorough,” said Mrs. Bradley; but she was not referring to Elias.

  The most hopeful method of approach, now that she had established a connection between the Huzys and the worsted vipers, was to terrify the gypsies into further revelations. To this end, she went into Stalham and purchased a large tin of table salt, of a kind which did not cake but poured out of a small round hole in the lid.

  She went by night to the house where the Huzys lived, and, unstopping the tin by removing the small rubber plug in the lid, she poured salt generously on to the ground in front of the dirty front window. Stopping only for a second to admire the shape of her handiwork by the light of a small electric torch, she walked back to the waterside and was taken out to O’Reilly in a dinghy.

  “Well?” said Jonathan grinning. “Did you ill-wish them?”

  “They will think so,” his aunt replied. “If they had been Italians it would have more success, but no doubt they will know enough of the Black Art to comprehend the curse which is upon them.”

  “You didn’t really curse them, did you?” asked Deborah curiously. Mrs. Bradley cackled.

  “No,” she answered. “But if their consciences are sufficiently guilty, we shall find that there is no need. I will teach poor Martha Huzy more about witchcraft in a fortnight than she has been able to learn in forty years,” she added, with immense satisfaction, “unless she tells me what I want to know.”

  Very early next morning, leaving the young people still asleep, Mrs. Bradley got up and went ashore in the dinghy. It was still just before sunrise when she reached the house occupied by the Huzys, but it was light enough for her to be able to see the large cross formed of the poured salt which still decorated the hard ground under the window.

  Later in the morning, after she had breakfasted, she went to call on the family. The cross in salt was still there. She pointed it out to the crone who came to the door.

  “Somebody seems to dislike you,” she observed. “Is your daughter Martha at home?”

  “No, that isn’t, then.”

  “She had better be in this afternoon,” said Mrs. Bradley, mildly, looking at the old woman. The crone mumbled. “Oh, and you might give her this when you see her,” Mrs. Bradley continued, producing a couple of shreds of worsted cloth tied up with a piece of scarlet wool. “It won’t hurt her if she behaves herself.”

  She walked briskly away, leaving the old woman alternately staring after her and looking down at the thing in her hand.

  Martha was in when she called in the afternoon. In fact, she opened the door to her. She was no longer the unkempt and dirty creature of the day before, but had washed herself, reddened her lips, put powder on her face, and was dressed in a respectable dark coat and a skirt and a yellow blouse.

  “Come in,” she said. “What did you send me that old rag for?”

  “Fun,” said Mrs. Bradley gravely. “But I don’t need to come in, thank you. All I want to know is where you are going to take the next viper.”

  “How should I know anything about that?”

  “Come now. Think.”

  “I don’t know, I tell you.”

  “Very well. Hang the rags from the top window if you change your mind.”

  The woman slammed the door. Mrs. Bradley stood a moment looking down on the salt. She shook her head, muttered over the cross, and scuffled her feet on the ground to make the rough shape of a pentagram. Then she went back to the boat, certain that she had been watched from the dirty front-room window.

  They spent the day sailing, and in the late evening moored the boat and sat talking, reading, and smoking until eleven.

  “Aren’t you going ashore tonight?” asked Jonathan, looking at his watch in the light of the cabin lamp.

  “No, not tonight,” said his aunt. She did not, in fact, go ashore again in Stalham for the next two days. On the morning of the third day she returned to the house with her tin of salt, made a second cross just before the door and daintily touched up the first one, which, she observed with satisfaction, the family had not dared to destroy. Then she went back to the boat, but had Jonathan moor for the night a little nearer the shore.

  She sat up that night, prepared for eventualities, and occupied herself in making a small coat and skirt, doll’s size, and a tiny yellow blouse. Her psychological foresight was not at fault. At about three in the morning she heard the sound of a boat. She went up on deck and hailed it softly.

  “Boat ahoy! Is that you, Martha?” Then she switched on her torch.

  “Put that out!” said a man’s voice. “Do you want everybody to know?”

  Mrs. Bradley kept the torch switched on as the boat approached.

  “Put it out!” said the man in the boat, speaking savagely but still quietly. “I shan’t come aboard if you don’t!”

  “You are not asked to come aboard,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Speak from where you are. What is the message?”

  “Martha Huzy says she’ll let you know if you’ll come to the house with me now.”

  “Go back, and tell Martha that I have made the clothes for the doll.”

  “I’m coming aboard,” said the man.

  Mrs. Bradley lowered the torch until it showed the small revolver she also held.

  “I don’t advise it,” she said. “Repeat my message.”

  “You’ve made the clothes for the doll. Is that all?”

  “It will be quite enough,” said Mrs. Bradley.
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  “But she said particularly I’d have to come aboard to give you the answer you asked for. Can’t expect me to shout it out loud,” he still protested.

  “You must find some other way of delivering it, then. In writing, for example. Surely Martha, with all her cleverness, can write. Go back and ask her to write it. And don’t forget about the clothes for the doll.”

  Repercussions to this were almost immediate. At about ten o’clock in the morning Mrs. Bradley went ashore, but before she had entered the village she encountered the old woman, who accosted her.

  “Our Martha want to see you.”

  Mrs. Bradley accompanied her to the house. Martha, coarse and heavy-featured, was in bed. The room stank. Fastened outside the window was the twist of rag bound with scarlet wool.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, “you are not feeling well.”

  “No, I’m not well,” said the woman. She leaned up on her elbow and fixed upon Mrs. Bradley her narrow, gypsy eyes. “Nor I shan’t be well, with you about. What for do you want to interfere?”

  “In the interests of intellectual curiosity,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Come now. The vipers. You make them. Your brother takes them—or did take them, before the police took him up—to a man whose name may be unknown to you, but whom I know as Amos Bleriot. This man had to leave the place where he was staying. He left in a hurry, because the police were on his track. Where did he go?”

  “Tell me where my pain is,” said the woman.

  “You have no pain at present,” Mrs. Bradley responded. “But you will have pain in the stomach, pain in the head, and pain in the left knee until I know what you know.” She glanced at her watch. “You will begin to feel the pains in three hours from now, and you know as well as I do what the end must be, so tell me the truth, and do not try to overreach me.”

  “All right,” said the woman, “but how shall I know…?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions. You know perfectly well how you will know.”