She put aside her book, and got up.
“That’s remarkably naughty of Deborah,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You go with her. I shan’t feel entirely happy until she’s safely in Edinburgh. George can drive you to Peterborough, and you can get a train from there on the main line.”
“Can do. But you look after yourself, mind, while I’ve gone.”
“I’ll see you again tomorrow or the next day,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“You’ll see me again tonight,” her nephew replied. “Once Deb is on the train she’ll be all right. You’re in far greater danger than she is.”
“That is not your concern,” said his aunt. They ran the cruiser back to Acle and had just disembarked when the inspector came along, highly jubilant, and with nothing but a badly bruised chin to mark his accident.
“A smart bit of work, ma’am,” he said. “I only wish I’d been there, as well as Mr. Pirberry. I should say we’re all fixed up for at least three hangings.”
“Three, Inspector?” said Mrs. Bradley, surprised.
“Sure, ma’am. This man Amos Bleriot for the three women, Martha Huzy (I’ll bust that alibi of hers, if it takes me night and day to do it) for Bennett, and Copley for his sister.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Can you prove it against Copley, then?”
“Well, ask yourself, ma’am! The girl is murdered during the time he reckons he left her. No witnesses have come forward to back up his story. She’s found on board his yacht. What would you do in my place?”
“Arrest him. But nothing is proved, you know. And how did he get the serpent? He didn’t steal it from me.”
She pulled out the serpent she had been given, and dangled it between two yellow fingers.
“That’s the only snag,” the inspector admitted. “But there’s nothing much in it, after all. Your three young ladies got hold of one all right. No saying how many of ’em’s about. He might have got it from anywhere.”
“So he might. But, barring the one I made for myself”—she drew that one out, and held it in her other hand—“there’s nothing to indicate that serpents can be obtained except through the agency of Martha Huzy. You would have to show some connection between her and Edgar Copley, I imagine.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult, ma’am. I feel equal to anything, now we’ve got so far.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a singularly mirthless grin. “I wonder whether you feel equal to giving me a lift into Norwich? My nephew and his wife are going to borrow my car, and I am somewhat stranded without it.”
“Surely, ma’am. With pleasure. Hop in, if you’re ready to start. The police station? Want to see Pirberry? I’m afraid you’ll be unlucky there. He was recalled by the Yard for a conference early this morning. The message came through about an hour and a half after he’d turned in his prisoners. I took the call, as he’d gone off to get a little sleep.”
“They let you out of hospital soon enough,” Mrs. Bradley observed.
“As a matter of fact, I’m A.W.O.L., ma’am, I’m afraid. I couldn’t stay cooped up there with all this excitement going on.”
“I suppose not, no. But I think you are rather unwise. Still, you look better. Yes, I did want to see Mr. Pirberry. But it isn’t important. It can wait.”
“So you won’t want to go to Norwich, ma’am?”
“No. I’ll stay on board and write up my notes. How long does he expect to be away?”
“Not more than a couple of days, ma’am.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then. Now he’s made all those arrests, we ought to be able to take our ease, ought we not?”
“I guess we ought, ma’am. A fine bit of work. I only wish I had been in at the death, as it were.”
“Well, it didn’t come to that,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“No, but it will,” said Os, giving a significant smile. “Well, I’ll now go back and break down Martha Huzy’s alibi.”
“Let me know how you get on. I shall watch your progress there with very great interest. My own impression still is that Martha’s alibi is unassailable.”
“We shall see,” said Os, getting back into the police car. “By the way, ma’am, how come it you can tell those vipers apart?”
Mrs. Bradley glanced at the snakes in her hands.
“My kinaesthetic sense informs me of the difference, Mr. Os.”
“Ah,” said the inspector. He started up the car, waved a large official hand, and was off.
As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Bradley left Jonathan and Deborah arguing over the need for her departure, walked into Stalham, and hired a car. The garage hands admitted that it was not much of a car for looks, but guaranteed the engine. They agreed that they could supply a driver, listened sympathetically to Mrs. Bradley’s piteous assertion that railway travel made her ill and that she could only travel in a car if the curtains were drawn on the sunny side and she was lying flat on the back seat with her knees up to ease the strain on the stomach, winked surreptitiously at Fred, the driver of the car, and accepted cigarettes.
“Queer old party,” was their verdict on Mrs. Bradley; and then they dismissed her from their minds. They could not know that she had excellent reasons for taking a journey to Norwich in a car, which would not be particularly remarked upon and whose numbers would have no significance for her enemies. She smiled at Fred, and got in. Fred, a nice boy, drove slowly, as he had been instructed. They made frequent halts, so that Mrs. Bradley could “get her breath,” as she put it, and finally arrived in Norwich at a quarter to five.
Fred, under instructions, drove, not to Mrs. Bradley’s hotel, but to a charming Georgian inn hard by Saint Peter Mancroft and the market.
“And now,” said Mrs. Bradley, paying him for the hire of the car and adding a generous tip, “to set matters in train for the Old Bailey.”
Fred, who had come to the conclusion during the drive that she was harmless but a lunatic, took no notice of this remark, thanked her for the tip, watched her enter the inn, and then went into its public bar for some beer.
Mrs. Bradley had her dinner at the inn, and then asked where was the telephone.
“Inspector Os, ma’am?” said the sergeant’s voice from the other end. “Very sorry, but that go to his lodgings just half an hour ago. Yes, that’s on the telephone, ma’am, or I could ring through your message from here. You’ll go round and see him, ma’am? Very good, then, ma’am. He lodge in Plantain Street, the third on the left from the market.”
“Don’t tell him I’m coming. I have a surprise for him,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“The case, ma’am?”
“Certainly.” She put down the receiver, went back to the dining room and asked the maid who had waited upon her to direct her to Plantain Street.
The inspector, however, was not in. Mrs. Bradley knocked twice, but only the echoes of the knocking answered her. She lifted the flap of the letterbox and peered into the hall. Almost halfway down the passage, flung through the letterbox by a too-enthusiastic postman, lay three envelopes. The last delivery had been at half-past five. It looked as though the sergeant were mistaken in supposing that the inspector had gone home when he left the police station. Even the busiest man will stop to pick up his letters.
She went round to the back of the house and broke a window. Then she undid the catch and scrambled in. Taking out her revolver, she made a quick search of the house, but no one was there, not even a dog or a cat. The inspector, she knew, was a bachelor. It had come out one day in a joke between himself and Pirberry, so she had not expected to find a woman in the house.
The inspector, however, it seemed, had a womanish hobby. Dolls, in all stages of dress and undress, lay scattered about the bedroom. One was particularly hideous. It had black hair, a yellowish face, and was dressed in a long dark skirt, a magenta jacket, and a chip straw hat with a band of cherry-coloured ribbon.
Mrs. Bradley went to the mirror, glanced in it, grinned, and, taking out a small pocket co
mb, carefully combed the doll’s hair. Skilfully and neatly woven in with it were some long, black human hairs. She took out her notebook, opened it at a clean page, laid the hairs on it, and then, wiping carefully the comb she took off her hat and combed her own black hair.
One or two hairs came out. She laid them with those from the doll, and then took out her small magnifying glass. So far as she could see, they were some of her own hair-combings, which had come from the doll. She scribbled a confession of what she had done, signed it, and put it just behind a small crucifix, which, with a Bible, was placed on the bedside table upon which this particular doll had been laid.
She opened the window, threw the hair-combings out, and, collecting all the dolls she could find, she heaped them together in the centre of the inspector’s bed, wrote Mormon on another piece of paper, and, with a cackle, placed it upon the pillow. Then she returned to the police station. The sergeant, who was about to go off duty, sighed a little, but politely escorted her to the inspector’s office.
“He hired a sea-going cruiser, ma’am, and went off. He said he should be back, ma’am. Anything I can do for you?” he enquired. “A telegram came for him, but as he said he should be back I haven’t opened it.”
He saw her seated, lighted the cigarette she took out, accepted one for himself, and went, at her request, to find the superintendent.
“I’ve no witness to prove that I found this where I found it,” she observed, when the superintendent joined her. “But I would like you to take charge of it if you will.”
She produced a piece of dark blue velvet similar to that which had been used to muffle the rowlocks and oars of the boat. She told him where she had found it, and admitted that she thought Mr. Os had escaped.
When the superintendent, still open-mouthed, had gone, she picked up the telegram and opened it. It was from Pirberry and read:
“Some mistake. Was not sent for. Returning.”
“Well, well,” said Mrs. Bradley to herself. She stayed no longer, but returned to Acle in a police car, a constable driving, and found her nephew and his wife extremely worried.
“A nice one you are,” grumbled Jonathan. “We’ve been having a fit, thinking they’d got you after all.”
“I wish you’d gone, Deborah,” said his aunt. “Mr. Pirberry is in London, Mr. Os has gone gallivanting off on some business of his own, and I don’t like to think of you still here. I am no scaremonger, but, really, it isn’t safe.”
“Os has been here,” said Jonathan. “I am afraid we were compelled to stall a little, as Deb’s plans seem a bit uncertain. Still, that didn’t matter at all. It was you he came to see. Talked a lot about Walsingham. By the way, what was all that about Walsingham? I mean, surely you don’t still think—? I can’t see that there can be anybody left to do the stealing. That is, if you were serious. I can’t really believe that you were.”
“About stealing the east end of the Abbey, child? No, I wasn’t serious. I suppose you don’t know where we could hire a sea-going cruiser? Preferably farther up the coast, and not in Norfolk.”
“Whatever for?”
“Fun.”
“Fun? What do you call fun?”
“Wait and see, child. I wonder how Mr. Os is getting on with Martha Huzy?”
“Why should he get on with her at all?”
“He said he was going to break down her alibi for August Bank Holiday. You remember she claimed to have been at her stall near the river. By the way, what else did he say to you while he was here?”
“He asked us first whether you were still on board the cruiser. I said you were, but were resting, and that either he could leave a message or come again later on, as I wasn’t going to disturb you.”
“You didn’t tell him where you were taking Deborah, I suppose? That is, if we can persuade her to go home?”
“Actually, I did. He said she’d hardly get a train from Norwich to make the connections, unless she didn’t mind travelling all night with perhaps a good bit of waiting about on stations, so I said we were going to get the main line at Peterborough, and would have to look up a train. At that he dug out a timetable—he had an A.B.C. and a Bradshaw in the police car—and thumbed it up for us. The earliest train tomorrow reaches York, he informed me, at just after twelve; so I told him I’d telephoned Deborah’s aunt in York, and she had said she’d have her for the night if the trains proved awkward. Right or wrong of me?”
“You’re much too intelligent,” said his aunt, with her crocodile grin.
“What is all this about Inspector Os?” enquired Deborah, sensing that something was wrong.
“Have you ever thought what his name means?” asked Mrs. Bradley. “Think it out, child.” She glanced with real approval at her nephew.
“I have not forgotten,” said she, “that you gained a prize for French at your preparatory school.”
“He’s lived that down,” said Deborah. “But what’s French got to—?”
“Bone,” said Jonathan simply. “Os. Bone. Bone! The name of the man who went to Broadmoor after that London murder!”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Coincidence, very likely,” she added, “but I’ve suspected him for some time. So many things would fall into place should he prove to be the murderer. I happen to know he dabbles in black magic.”
She described the fantastic collection of witchcraft dolls which she had discovered at his lodgings, and mentioned the dark blue velvet.
“He and this chap Bleriot, working together, could have committed the murders, planted the vipers, thrown dust in Pirberry’s eyes and got away with it all, if you hadn’t rumbled him,” said Jonathan. “Well, Deb can’t go to York now.”
“Thank you for nothing. She wasn’t going anyway,” said his wife. “What I want is adventure.”
“What you want is a hiding,” said her husband. “But as we can’t make you see reason, I suppose you’ll have to stay. But for goodness’ sake watch your step and mind what you’re up to. I don’t imagine this merchant will stop at much now he knows Aunt Adela has found out who and what he is.”
“He doesn’t know she’s found it out,” said Deborah; but Mrs. Bradley was unable to accept this view.
“He will know as soon as he returns to his lodgings,” she observed. “Besides, I cannot help thinking he knew, when I put down grease on the floor of his office and hooked his foot on to it, and got him carried away to hospital so that we could go to Worstead without him, that something had come out somewhere. And now he’s gone off in a sea-going cruiser, I hear.”
“I say!” said Jonathan laughing. “Did you really do that?”
“And kept him out of range of a telephone, so that he could not warn Amos Bleriot,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“I say,” said Jonathan again, struck by another and a much less pleasant thought, “that means that if he wanted to, he could set Amos Bleriot free. He had him more or less in his keeping, I suppose?”
“No. Our good Pirberry has him,” replied Mrs. Bradley, “but it seemed only fair to let Os know that the game was up. I went to his house to tell him so, but, as you know, I did not find him in. This little affair has been a personal matter between us, and it seemed only fair to play according to the rules.”
“Well, I’m dashed!” said her nephew. His aunt grinned, and then said:
“By the way, there’s a question of mine you haven’t answered. I don’t suppose you can answer it, but, as you have an interest in such pleasures, I will ask you again. I suppose you cannot tell me where I can hire a sea-going cruiser? Preferably a fast one, and not in Norfolk.”
“Oh, that! Well, not nearer than Hull, so far as I’m concerned. A pal of mine there has got one. He keeps it up at Goole. I don’t know whether he’s using it at present, but I can jolly soon find out. If I hadn’t been an ass and got married”—he grinned at his wife, who grimaced—“I’d have been across to Sweden with him this year. I don’t suppose he is using it just now, as we should have gone six weeks ago.”
“I wish you’d see what you can do about it, then,” said Mrs. Bradley. A thought struck her. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Let’s kill two birds with one stone. We’ll drive to Hull, thus taking ourselves out of the orbit of Mr. Os for a bit, and you can speak to your friend personally on the matter.”
• CHAPTER 25 •
“A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. “Oh, do let me help to undo it!”
—From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
It was thick night when the car slowed into Fakenham and George, under instructions, drove gently through the sleeping town and out to the western end of it. Here he pulled up whilst Mrs. Bradley, who was seated beside him in front, consulted a road map, and discussed the route with him. Deborah, asleep with her head on her husband’s shoulder, and Jonathan, also asleep in his corner of the car, took no part in the discussion. Mrs. Bradley and her chauffeur were soon in agreement. George drove on eastwards to King’s Lynn and across the wide River Ouse, and at Holbeach Mrs. Bradley took his place at the wheel and told him to get some sleep.
It was still dark at Lincoln, but the dawn was grey by the time they got into Doncaster. At Selby they branched off for Hull, and at Hull they stopped for breakfast.
The anonymous letter was handed over by George just after their arrival at the hotel. He had found it on the bonnet of the car. Someone, he deduced, had placed it there in passing, as he had got down to open the door of the lock-up to which the car had been assigned.
“Plenty of people in and out of the yard, madam. Anybody could have left it. I shouldn’t be any the wiser, unless it happened to be somebody known to me personally by sight.”
“Quite,” said Mrs. Bradley, perusing the missive.
“So you got little Deborah away all right. That can wait,” said the letter. “We’ve got little Kitty again. Not the same thing, of course, but no doubt you’ll be able to identify the remains. Have tipped off the other little dears where you are. Happy landings, old serpent.”
The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley) Page 22