The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “If you can stand it, so can I,” said Deborah, looking obstinate.

  “Well, you’ll only be a confounded nuisance,” said her husband. “And I thought you’d promised to go if you got in the way.”

  “I am not in the way at present. Did you get much from all that work you did last night?” she demanded of Mrs. Bradley.

  “Nothing fresh, child. I want to see Martha Huzy again, and I want, under her directions, to return to Worstead.”

  “I don’t care much about the Huzys. Double-crossers, I’ll bet,” said Jonathan. “I don’t trust that crazy gang an inch.”

  “Nor I, but they’ll behave as long as the brother is in custody. He is being held as accessory to the murders of Sitter, Duke, and Rilitz.”

  “What about the murder of the farmer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And then there’s this woman on the sand-dunes.”

  “Yes. If it weren’t for the worsted viper’s having been found on the body, there would be nothing to connect her death with that of the three street-walkers, and, except for his very slight connection with the Huzys, there is nothing at all to indicate that the death of the farmer had anything to do with the other murders. There wasn’t a viper on him.”

  “No, but there seems to be that peculiar connection. Is that why you want to go back there?”

  “Not exactly. I have other things to say to Martha Huzy besides emphasising her peculiar connection with the farmer. Let us start for Stalham, if both of you have finished breakfast.”

  “Finished?” said Jonathan. “I haven’t begun.”

  Three-quarters of an hour later they were on their way back to Stalham.

  “I shan’t be long,” said Mrs. Bradley, when they were drawn up in the staithe at the top of Sutton Broad. She went straight to the house of Martha Huzy and knocked with a devil’s tattoo upon the door. The old woman opened it.

  “You and your noise,” she said. “And that Martha, that isn’t in. No good you say you want her. That isn’t in, I tell you.”

  “All right. Give her this,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and tell her to meet me in Worstead at ten o’clock tonight.”

  “Likely that go to Worstead at ten o’clock tonight,” observed the crone, receiving Mrs. Bradley’s piece of paper distastefully. When she glanced at it, however, her face changed. “Why didn’t you tell us before you were one of them?” she enquired.

  “You don’t say ‘one of us,’” Mrs. Bradley observed.

  “Oh, I am not grand enough for that. Martha, that belong, and so did Elias Bennett. Put money in it, that did, after that have old row with Parson Morley. Come seven years ago, that was, and never set foot in church since. That was why our Martha think that get him.”

  This speech made so many things so extraordinarily clear to Mrs. Bradley that she scarcely knew how to reply to it.

  “Well, you won’t forget to give her the paper,” she said, “and tell her ten o’clock.”

  “The Grand Order, I wholly suppose?” enquired the crone. Mrs. Bradley did not reply to this. She merely grinned. The old woman nodded, curtsied, and closed the door.

  “So the Huzys are the connecting link?” said Jonathan, when he heard it. “Now, look here, you’re not going to walk into a hornet’s nest at Worstead. You think Martha Huzy will guide you to the right house, and you don’t think it’s the house the poisoned dart was blown from. Well, you’re not going to walk into a trap. You’ve got to get some policemen to back you up.”

  “I shall arrange for that,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but not a word to the inspector. I don’t think he likes my prospecting on my own. Leave Deborah at the hotel, but you can come with us to Worstead if you choose. Some extraordinary things are going to happen, unless I’m much mistaken.” She chuckled with ghoulish relish.

  • CHAPTER 22 •

  “Ahem!” said the Mouse, with an important air. “Are you all ready?”

  —From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

  They went off again almost immediately, and met the inspector. He was disgruntled.

  “Beyond finding out, all over again, that Martha Huzy set her cap at him, and probably did him in out of gypsy revenge when he wouldn’t look at her, I can’t get a thing,” he complained. “Look at these for a lot of rubbish!”

  He showed them a list of statements, twenty at least. He flicked the topmost irritably with his finger.

  “Patience and zeal,” said Mrs. Bradley consolingly, “usually lead to some measure of success. When can I see Edgar Copley?”

  “Now, if you like. Is your car here? He’s staying in Norwich. If you’ll give me a lift we can catch him perhaps before lunch.”

  Her first glance at Edgar Copley dispelled one suspicion completely. He was not the man she had known as Amos Bleriot. She questioned him closely regarding the mental condition of his sister, and he answered civilly and well, giving the impression that he was nervously anxious to make a good impression.

  “That’s what he’s like all the time,” said the inspector, who stood behind her chair like a tall, stout footman behind a small and poker-like duchess. “Anxious to oblige.”

  “Yes, he seems harmless,” Mrs. Bradley admitted. “I wonder whether he is?”

  When they were back in the police station she gave Os a smile in which amusement, triumph, and malice were nicely blended. “At least he is not the man I thought he was, and that is always something. And Mr. Pirberry says that in London they are convinced that he is everything he seems and claims to be,” she observed.

  “Yes, we’re probably barking up the wrong tree,” the inspector admitted. “And what are your future plans, ma’am?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley; and proceeded to draw, very crudely, the diabolic pentagram of Amos Bleriot on the inspector’s desk with a piece of chalk. “But before I tell you about them, do you see this small seven in the east?”

  As he bent over to decipher the magic symbol the inspector’s feet slipped and he crashed with his chin on the edge of the desk. It knocked him out. Mrs. Bradley exclaimed, bending over him:

  “Good heavens! He won’t be fit to come with us! How extremely clumsy I am! Dear, dear!”

  The crash of the inspector’s fall and the loud tones of her voice brought the sergeant and a constable. Mrs. Bradley pointed to the prostrate inspector.

  “The ambulance, quickly! He’s badly hurt, and must be taken to hospital immediately. And see that they keep him very quiet,” she said.

  “I’ll see to it, ma’am,” said the sergeant, gazing with more interest than sympathy at his temporary chief. There had been some local feeling, she knew, when, at the Chief Constable’s special request, a man outside the ranks of the City Police had been given charge of the case. She had been aware for some little time that the sergeant, in particular, although loyal in supporting the inspector and apt in carrying out his orders, was by no means a friend to Mr. Os.

  When the ambulance had come and gone, and the inspector had been informed by the triumphant sergeant that he would not even be allowed within reach of a telephone for the next twenty-four hours, she informed Pirberry of the unlucky accident and arranged the evening’s work with him.

  Having thus done all she could in Norwich, she drove back to Stalham, where Jonathan and his lovely young wife, who had passed an idyllic afternoon in lazing, cruising, and making love, were waiting for her at the head of the staithe.

  She waved a skinny claw, and came aboard O’Reilly.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said. “Do what you like. I’m going to tell myself the tale of Bone, Bone, and Bone.”

  “Why not tell us?” suggested Deborah. Mrs. Bradley glanced sharply at her and shook her head solemnly.

  “You wouldn’t appreciate it,” she said. “Make the most of your husband whilst you’ve got him, and, if it makes no difference to anyone, I should prefer to cruise on Barton Broad until seven, and then, perhaps, we could all go ashore and have dinner. George
will have the car at the station entrance by a quarter to nine. That should give plenty of time.”

  She retired to the saloon and rehearsed the tale of Minnie Baum as she had worked it out afresh from the documents, but there was nothing new to be deduced. At the end of an hour and a half she put away the dossier in a drawer under one of the bunks in the salon, and went on deck. Deborah was seated on the cabin-top, gazing straight ahead of her at the darkening water; Jonathan, pipe in mouth, and an expression of great contentment upon his features and in his half-closed eyes, was seated at the wheel, which guided the course of O’Reilly through the smoothly placid waters of the Broad.

  “Thinking of tonight,” said Mrs. Bradley, half to herself; and a feeling almost of envy came into her mind; envy of youth, its crude passions, its neglected opportunities; its self-assurance; its creed that, since tomorrow never comes, it is idle to prepare for tomorrow, idle to envisage it, idle to take up arms against it or defend oneself against its threatening claims.

  “Hullo,” said Deborah, making room for her on the cabin-top. “I’m glad I came. Isn’t it lovely? I hear that you and Jon have some game on tonight, in Worstead. He says you’ll both be back some time before the morning. I don’t know why, but I shall be glad when tomorrow comes.”

  Having thus exploded all Mrs. Bradley’s theories with this one speech, she laughed, and offered her aunt-by-marriage a cigarette.

  “Now listen, Deborah,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I want you to persuade Jonathan to stay with you. I don’t need him in the slightest tonight; I shall have plenty of policemen with me. His place is with you, and we must see that he agrees to that.”

  Deborah shook her head.

  “He won’t leave you, and I wouldn’t want him to,” she said. “But I’ll promise to lock my door, if that will relieve your mind. How soon do you want to go ashore?”

  “Are you hungry? It isn’t seven, but we can go ashore now if you like.”

  She climbed down into the cockpit to speak to her nephew. Deborah, watching them, saw her husband shake his head once, obstinately, and glance up as he did so.

  The O’Reilly, which was headed south down the River Ant for its junction with the Bure near Saint Benet’s Abbey, chugged contentedly at about five knots along these rivers. The turn, through Yarmouth on to Breydon Water, was accomplished slowly but safely, and then the cruiser ran freely up the Yare past Reedham and as far as Surlingham Broad, an odd little oval lake almost opposite the village of Brundell.

  Here it had been arranged that O’Reilly should lie up for the night. George once again met them with the car, and, having been worsted in argument with her obstinate nephew, who declared roundly that if she did not take him with her he should go to Worstead by himself that night, she promised that, after dinner, when they had taken Deborah back to the hotel, she would drive with him and her police escort straight to Worstead, where she expected to meet Martha Huzy.

  When at last they set out for Worstead, seated beside George was Detective Inspector Pirberry, and, following in a police car, were five imposing members of the City of Norwich constabulary.

  Martha Huzy, whom they met near Smallburgh, very much alarmed at being called upon to play a part, and very much inclined to be abusive, was merely requested to point out the right house. She was then escorted back to Stalham by a policeman.

  • CHAPTER 23 •

  “Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

  —From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

  The house pointed out by Martha Huzy was not the one from which the dart had been blown.

  “Do you think she’s double-crossing you?” asked Pirberry.

  “No,” Mrs. Bradley answered; but she did not enter into any details regarding the peculiar nature of the hold she had established over the superstitious and witch-ridden gypsy.

  The house was an old Georgian mansion not in Worstead itself, but possibly in about the same relationship to the village as one might imagine the Bennets’ house to have been to Longbourn: of it, but not exactly in it.

  The house was up for sale, but this surprised nobody. It was obviously better for the odd society whose proceedings it was proposed to watch, and, if necessary, to interrupt, to hold their meetings in secret. Having marked the house, therefore, and having assured themselves that at that hour—just on half-past ten—it was untenanted except by such (to the police) inconsiderable entities as spiders, rats, and ghosts, the party drove away from the village in the direction of North Walsham, parked the cars (in charge of one policeman) in a side-road which led past Westwick House, a mansion standing in its own park over towards the village of Swanton Abbot, and returned on foot to Worstead.

  It was at five minutes to eleven that they entered the house by means of a downstairs window, which was already broken, and it was at one minute past the hour that the members of the society began to arrive.

  All came on foot. No cars were heard to drive up. Conversation was unflagging and genial. The voices were cultured and agreeable. The subjects under discussion seemed to be plays, books, political news, finance—in fact, the ordinary subjects with which people who are not close friends and yet are not strangers, either, entertain themselves and one another.

  “We’ve been had,” muttered Pirberry in Mrs. Bradley’s ear. “I know some of these people. Most respectable.”

  “Wait and see,” she replied.

  A previous rapid exploration of the house with electric torches—two policemen on guard outside to give warning of any approach, since all the windows were uncurtained—had resulted in the discovery of the room most likely to be used. This was a large room on the first floor, which contained, in a built-in bookcase cupboard, a dozen small folding stools. A raised dais, obviously imported into the house since it had the appearance of newness, had been placed in the window recess, and in front of it was a low railing in wood, rather the shape of a fireguard, but considerably longer than a fireguard would need to be.

  “No altar,” Mrs. Bradley had muttered, when these adjuncts to the worship of the devil had been noted.

  The policeman who had escorted Martha Huzy back to Stalham had orders to watch the front of the Huzys’ house with the assistance of another constable who would be on duty at the back. The policeman in charge of the two cars was also debarred from being upon the scene of action, so the party inside the mansion consisted of Mrs. Bradley herself, her nephew Jonathan, Pirberry, and three constables.

  “Enough to take on an army,” Jonathan contentedly observed.

  One constable had been posted in the scullery, another in a large cupboard under the front staircase, and the third in a small room over the porch.

  Pirberry, Mrs. Bradley, and Jonathan were in the room immediately over that in which the ceremony was to take place, and Mrs. Bradley had the option (which she had allotted to herself) of interfering with subsequent proceedings in any way which seemed either amusing or suitable. The Detective Inspector had the option of making arrests if necessary, and Jonathan had the option, claimed roundly by him from the first, of “stepping in and mixing it” if danger threatened his aunt.

  None of the three had any view of the room below, but Mrs. Bradley had suggested that when the room was full they would find little difficulty in joining the ranks of the worshippers—in body if not in spirit—for she doubted whether their presence would be noticed among so many people.

  After a time the voices below them dwindled and then died away. There were some shuffling sounds, followed by dead silence. Mrs. Bradley touched Pirberry’s arm.

  “I’m going down now,” she said. “You two stay here, and come down in case of need. You know the signal. It will bring the constables, too.”

  This seemed commonsense to the Detective Inspector, but Jonathan, in his capacity of guardian angel to his aunt, followed her stealthily, and they crept down the uncarpeted staircase and almost bumped their faces on a dark procession of people, which was forming up on the landing.
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br />   The room, they could see, was dimly lighted by candles. A heavy curtain had been hung across the window, and when they got inside they could see that upon the dais a small table had been placed. It was covered by a dark cloth on which was some silver embroidery, and on the cloth stood a silver cage containing a magnificent white cock. A small woman clothed in red, having a hood drawn closely round her face and wearing silver gloves, was swinging a censer, filling the room with the acrid-sweet-sickly smell of incense. On the table in front of the cage, bound with silver cords and gagged with a black scarf, lay the naked body of a girl.

  She was so rigid that she might have been thought to be dead, but a slight degree of attention soon assured the watchers that she breathed, although the breathing was quick and shallow.

  Between the door (which was almost at the end of the room) and the dais in the window recess, a silver and black cord had been stretched from wall to wall so that the congregation, or whatever they chose to call themselves, could not advance more than halfway down the room towards the table.

  Upon the built-in bookcase, flanked by two small candles, stood a tall silver jug and a large silver plate reminiscent of a paten and chalice and yet with something indescribably redolent of a banqueting-hall about them. They “smelt secular” as Jonathan afterwards expressed it.

  The clear part of the floor, that between the black and silver cord and the table, was in possession of a small monkey-like individual in a cassock who was on his knees marking out a pentagram in white chalk.

  Some of the guests had brought folding stools of their own. Those provided by the house were resting now, still folded, against the back wall. In the most natural way in the world Mrs. Bradley took one—an example immediately followed by her nephew—unfolded it and seated herself, but so that her face was in shadow.

  Those guests who had not brought stools took the remaining ones, and very soon all were seated. One woman began some nervous giggling, and was taken out hastily by a man whose starched shirtfront suddenly winked in the candlelight as a ray caught a diamond stud. The two of them returned very soon, and the ape-man in the cassock drew, with a large wooden-legged compass attached to a piece of string pegged down in the centre of the pentagram, first one, and then another circle, of about a six-foot and a seven-foot radius respectively, and then, dismantling his apparatus and stowing it away tidily in the bookcase cupboard from which the folding stools had been taken, he took up his chalk and filled in various words in Greek characters between the two circumferences. From where she was, Mrs. Bradley could read Minos and parts of the two words (she deduced) Phanes and Tartaros. He then filled in some zodiac and cabalistic signs, a few sevens and crosses and the Greek letters A, B, and G on his pentagram, made a sign to avert the Evil Eye, bowed seven times round the circle as though to the seven infernal princes, and stepped carefully out of the symbols. He went towards the bookcase, murmured something to the woman acolyte, and both of them stepped backwards and disappeared. No sound had been heard, but it was evident that there must be a small door through which the servers and the priest of the mysteries could make their entrances and exits.