Mrs. Bradley wrung water out of her clothes (for she and Deborah were, by this time, almost as wet as the girls) and went into the cabin to change, for she, alone of the party, had brought a spare set of clothes.
Kitty seemed little the worse for her gallant escape from captivity. Alice and Laura, it proved, had “rather enjoyed the swim.” Fortunately the two rescuers had put off shoes and slacks before they went in, and their sweaters and College blazers were in the cabin.
Kitty and Deborah were not so lucky, and had to go to bed in the cabin, as the only available garments were Jonathan’s raincoat and an extra sportscoat belonging to Mrs. Bradley. However, after having the tea, Kitty soon went off to sleep. The sun was beginning to decline, and the boat they were chasing was out of sight.
At dusk the lights were put on. The wind had dropped with the sunset, but Laura, who proved to be weather-wise, said that it was a false lull, and that they could look for it to blow later on. For fear this prophecy should prove true, Mrs. Bradley was inclined to put in to port and leave the rest of the chase to the police.
Jonathan, who had had an hour or two of sleep, squeezed tightly on one bunk with his wife to keep her warm (as she put it), took over the controls just before darkness came, and was in emphatic agreement. He, too, agreed that the weather was not likely to improve. The sea, in fact, had not died down at all, although the wind had dropped. He observed that they were slightly off their course, but should be within view of Orford Ness very shortly.
As he spoke, the light on Orford Ness came in view, for, although for some time the cruiser had been within its range, it had only at that moment begun to function. A second light, flashing red and green, also began its night’s work, and helped them to check their position.
“Try Felixstowe, I think,” suggested Jonathan. “It’s a good deep channel alongside Bawdsey Bank, and it’s pretty well buoyed all the way in after that. Ten to one that’s where they’ll make for, unless they try Harwich, and can get a boat across to Holland.”
“I doubt whether they’ll try either,” said Mrs. Bradley, “with Pirberry watching every port, and with me still at large and unharmed,” she added with a chuckle.
“Well, they’ll never risk going on, if they know the first thing about the weather,” Jonathan observed, “and if they want you they know where you are.”
“We don’t know yet how many are on board with Mr. Os,” said Mrs. Bradley. “They may override him, much as he dislikes me, and make him go on running. Drowning must be preferred to hanging, any day.”
Her nephew thought this statement open to argument, if not to downright contradiction, but refused to be controversial, merely observing that their own course of action was clear. They must certainly put the girls ashore as soon as they could, now that Kitty was safe and sound. He added that he hoped the little pests would stay put for once, forgetting that this time the adventure was scarcely of their seeking.
The channel into Felixstowe and Harwich was pretty well lighted. They made the River Orwell, and lay for the night off Pinmill, in two and a quarter fathoms. A tribute to the excellence of the police information was a visit which was paid to them, ten minutes after they had moored, by the Essex constabulary, which, represented by a sergeant and three constables, came up in a launch and demanded to know their names and business.
Mrs. Bradley, it appeared, had been described carefully and well, for the production by her papers of identification provided by the thoughtful Mr. Pirberry scarcely seemed to be necessary. To the disgust of Laura (although to Kitty’s and Alice’s relief) arrangements were made whereby Mrs. Bradley was to accompany the three girls to the police station at Harwich, and afterwards to a hotel. At the last moment, however, it occurred to Laura that Kitty had no clothes dry enough to put on, and could scarcely be expected to attend at the police station merely in a sportscoat covered by a raincoat. Deborah, most fortunately, was not concerned in the matter, for she had nothing on at all.
The problem was solved by the sergeant, a young and pleasant man, who said that his wife would be only too glad to lend the young lady some clothes, and added the valuable information that he was a Pinmill man himself, and wouldn’t be five minutes gone.
He was a quarter of an hour, but brought his wife back with him, and, when she saw the girls, she offered to have them for the night, informing her husband roundly that he was not going to drag them to any police station at that hour. He could question them in his own home, and then they could have supper with her and go to bed. They looked tired to death, she added, kindly but erroneously.
Mrs. Bradley glanced at her nephew. He raised his eyebrows, and nodded. The result of this wordless collaboration was that, when the police and the girls had gone, and Deborah, wrapped in blankets, was fast asleep in the cabin, Jonathan started up the engine and gently backed the cruiser away from her moorings.
Turning her was tricky work in the dark, although, fortunately, at Pinmill, there was plenty of room. Every moment, nevertheless, they expected (and deserved, said Jonathan, later) to run aground; but luck was with them, and they were able to steer downstream. It was, as Jonathan pointed out, the most idiotic manoeuvre, because the tide, although almost full, was not due to turn for at least another hour, and to beat out to sea under such conditions was asking for more trouble than, actually, they got.
It was when they had left the lights which marked the conjunction of the river-mouths of the Orwell and the Stour, and were beginning to find the full, unbroken force of the wind, which had got up again at great pressure, that their stowaway crawled out from under the port-side bunk, and announced that she “could just about manage a biscuit,” if nobody minded.
Jonathan said he was dashed, but Mrs. Bradley betrayed no surprise whatever, and confessed afterwards that she had not felt any. Neither she nor her nephew was sorry to see Laura. It was more than useful to have a fourth hand on board. Watches were hastily arranged. Jonathan and Laura were to take the first three hours, Jonathan and his aunt the next three, and that would leave Laura and Mrs. Bradley in charge as daylight came. As no one could spare any clothes for Deborah, she was left out of these arrangements.
The general agreement was that they should not attempt the Thames Estuary, but should run on south, put in at the first port they could reach after eight o’clock in the morning for information, and then be guided by this information as to their further course of action. In round terms, said Mrs. Bradley, grinning, they were on a pleasure trip, and nothing else mattered for a time.
A pleasure trip it certainly was not, at first. The wind was blowing strongly from the southeast. They ran right out to Cork Hole first, and that short passage gave them the worst of the weather, for no amount of extra speed could eliminate the effects of the strong sea and the wind.
Left in the control cabin with Laura, Jonathan marked the chart in pencil. Steering had to be by compass, and allowance had to be made for tide drift as well as for the wind, particularly in so comparatively small a vessel. Much of the time it was not safe to run direct, and a zigzag course had to be followed, to avoid seas coming beam-on.
They checked with the flashes from the buoy by Goldmer Gat, again from Longsand Head, set course for Kentish Knock, and dropped down past the Elbow. From here they could check position again by the North Foreland Light with its red and white flashes every twenty seconds. South they went still, past Ramsgate and through the Small Downs past Deal and so through the Straits of Dover to the curve of the south coast into the English Channel.
The night passed quite without incident. Laura took over the controls for part of the time, and changed over with Mrs. Bradley, to get some sleep, at just after one in the morning. Occasionally they saw the lights of ships, but none of these came near, and the wind died down by the morning, although from midnight until almost four o’clock none but the best of sailors would have felt at all happy on the cruiser.
At dawn they were just off Folkestone, having travelled three times (or more) t
he distance marked on the chart. This was due to the heavy seas, which necessitated constant tacking.
“Done pretty well,” said Jonathan, going off to the cabin to turn in, having plotted the course with Laura for heading towards Southampton.
The dawn turned to gold from its grey. Laura edged in towards the shore. She took bearings, but steered by the land, keeping far enough out to avoid any trouble round headlands. Mrs. Bradley, beside her in the control cabin, took over the steering at five. The cruise was proving a pleasure trip after all. Laura, relieved of responsibility, went into the cabin where the lovely Deborah, very disconsolate and bored, was sitting, wrapped in her blanket, on the bunk. Laura grinned.
“Here,” she said, beginning to strip off her clothes. “I’m going to turn in for a bit. You can have these if you like. Give ’em a bit of a shake to air them; they’ll be a bit big for you, I daresay, but you’re welcome.”
In the end it was decided to make for Lymington. It was a small place, but it was easy enough, as Mrs. Bradley pointed out, to use the telephone if there was no news of the fugitives to be had in Lymington itself.
“Or we might make Cowes,” said Jonathan, who had not only taken less than his allotted time in his berth, but had made tea and cooked eggs and bacon for breakfast. He smiled at his wife, who, with Laura’s slacks belted firmly and Laura’s sweater with its sleeves rolled up, was looking as lovely as the morning.
It was a sweet run in to Lymington, although it was almost lunchtime when they reached it. The morning papers had not the news they wanted to hear, and a telephone call to police headquarters at Southampton brought nothing, either. Every police station in the kingdom had the description of Mr. Os but, so far, with no result.
“Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Do you think they can still be at sea?”
“If they can be so can we,” said her nephew. “Just say the word, and we’ll be off. It’s a grand day for cruising.”
“Bother them!” said Mrs. Bradley roundly. “Why should we trouble? Let’s cruise round the Isle of Wight. We have earned some fun.”
“What’s the matter with getting back to Yarmouth?” suggested Jonathan. “I can berth this outfit there and run her back to Hull when we’re sure we’ve done with her. To hell with Mr. Os. If he wants us he can come and look for us. That is, if the police don’t get him first.”
So Mrs. Bradley and Laura went ashore at Southampton to buy Deborah some clothes, as her own were not yet dry, and while they were ashore they went into a post-office and Mrs. Bradley telephoned Pirberry at Norwich. He was not there himself to take the call, but the superintendent answered it.
“They must have changed course in the darkness, ma’am,” he reported. “They were spotted off Yarmouth Roads this afternoon by a fishing boat. At least, we think it must be them. Mr. Pirberry, that’s on the trail now.”
The run back to Yarmouth was postponed until the morning, and then was made in fine and only moderately breezy weather, and the cruiser lay up for the night in the mouth of the river, where there was depth to take her. Next day Mrs. Bradley and the two girls remained on board whilst Jonathan went to get O’Reilly and bring her along to the coast.
He brought a message, too, which had been left on board her. It was dated for the previous day.
“Well done,” it said. “Stick to it. But we’ll get you yet, you old pterodactyl. If we swing, we’ll swing for something worthwhile.”
“Well, that’s very civil and complimentary,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I am inclined to hope that Mr. Pirberry is second in the field and that we are first. Let us go to Voley Water tomorrow. Have you any objection, my dear Laura?”
As Laura did not know the name of the small Broad beside which they had found the body in the bungalow, the question meant little to her. So, in the sunshine of the following day, O’Reilly chugged gently up the River Bure and passed Stokesby Old Windmill and the conjunction of Muck Fleet with the main stream. Here it turned northwards, then west under the Wey Bridge, northwards again toward Thurne Mouth, and then once more to the west.
The sun was high and the day was at its hottest by the time they passed Saint Benet’s Abbey and were following the river past the lakes, Broads, and staithes of Ranworth Marshes. Then still up-river they went, avoiding the turning to Ranworth Broad, until at last they came to the staithe, discovered by the girls, which led to Voley Water.
Here in the middle of the Broad the cruiser was brought to rest. Laura, from her seat on the cabin roof, looked round about her at the tiny Broad. Nothing seemed changed. The woods, the bright green marshes, the placid water of the second entrance to the Broad with its screen of rushes, were just as she had first seen them before any horrors were known, and when the destruction of the peace was still undreamed-of.
Mrs. Bradley came to her and spoke quietly.
“If Mr. Os comes, and come he will,” she said, “you must get below as soon as I give the word.”
Jonathan had left the cockpit and now came up to seat himself beside her, and Deborah followed.
“By the way,” he said, “who is Mr. Bleriot?”
“Another brother, I imagine,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “If my inferences are correct, he chose to hide his surname in the second half of his Christian name. Mr. Os was bolder; mistakenly, as it turns out.”
“When did you first suspect him?” Deborah enquired. “Was it just the name?”
“Well, that helped, of course, particularly as, apart from Ferdinand, only someone connected with the police could have known that I helped in the Bone case. Then I do know that my suspicions took definite shape when I saw one of his men trailing the friend of Martha Huzy who came to bring me a message on board. It seemed very odd to me that Mr. Os should have known of this man and had him trailed without saying a word to me about him. More peculiar still, I thought, was his action in telephoning the hotel at Stalham the first time I went to Worstead, to ask my chauffeur whether he knew where I was. As he himself knew perfectly well where I was, I concluded that he had decided to send George to find my dead body. The dart tipped with curare, you remember. The interesting thing about curare, of course,” she went on, “is that it was the one poison which corresponded most closely with witchcraft killings. It is prepared, as you probably know, with charms and spells by the natives who manufacture it to make their poisoned arrows, and is regarded by them as symbolic of magic power.”
“If you knew all this, though,” said Jonathan, “why didn’t you tip off Pirberry and have Os arrested for the murders?”
“Because he had made the challenge a personal one. I am becoming old and bored. I accepted the challenge in the spirit in which I imagined it had been offered—”
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” said Laura solemnly, “as they thought about the brother who got sent to Broadmoor, I suppose.”
“These vendettas are always a mistake,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The eldest brother was convicted, as well he deserved to be. He was found Guilty but Insane. It wasn’t true. As Ferdinand surmised, he was perfectly sane, and was lucky not to be hanged.”
“And is Os sane?” asked Jonathan.
“I hope the jury will think so.”
“Then was it Mr. Os who murdered the woman we found in the bungalow?” asked Laura.
“Morally, yes. Actually, she committed suicide. These women are extremely superstitious. Mr. Os had “hexed” her, I think, at the infamous club. The toad and the pentagram proved what had been happening to her.
“There was one more thing. Mr. Os made his first slip when he wrote me an anonymous letter after the death of the second brother. However much he wanted me in Norfolk, I cannot help thinking that it was a mistake to have had the Norwich postmark on the envelope. As soon as I heard that Amos Bleriot had gone to Norwich I began to put two and two together, with the consequence that I felt as suspicious in Norwich and its environs as I should have felt in a cage of snakes.
“The second body, that placed in the cabin of t
he houseboat, was that of the victim of a ritual murder in Worstead. I can well imagine,” she added, “that the temptation offered by all those stretched Worstead throats to the officiating priest of the mysteries must have been overwhelming. That priest, as we know, was Amos Bleriot. I asked Mr. Os to give me the list of young girls in his district who had been missing from their homes. The Black Mass cannot be said except a virgin take part in the ceremony. He neglected to provide such a list. That is a small point, of course, but it served to confirm my suspicions. Such girls are not easy to procure, but in the ceremony of the Black Mass, and apparently in the variant of it practised by Amos Bleriot, they are essential. The consecrated wafer—well, the Satanists can always get someone to attend the true Mass, his tongue coated with alum, to bring back the portion they require. Prostitutes for acolytes are also fairly easy to engage, since I presume they merely ask payment for their services. As for an unfrocked priest—another essential for the Black Mass—I imagine we shall discover that Copley happens to be one. Rather interesting, that. You will remember, Jonathan, that the service we attended with such gratifying results in Worstead was not the Black Mass. Copley, I suppose, could not be present for fear of being trailed by Mr. Pirberry. But the virgins are the difficulty usually, and the Black Mass can no more be performed without a virgin lying on the altar than without an unfrocked priest to conduct the ceremonies.”
“But what do they get out of it all?” demanded Laura. “Is it really such fun, just to mock at religion like that? It seems pretty silly to me.”
“You had better ask Mr. Os what the satisfaction is,” answered Mrs. Bradley. “But I think I can give you his reply. He will say that it is very interesting to a certain type of mind, and that Satanism is as old as the Church itself. He will probably suggest that you look at the world around you. Is it not given almost wholly over to Satan? Why deny the evidence of your own senses? Sin and the wicked flourish. Who ever heard of goodness and the saints flourishing? The sheer fact is, he will tell you, that they do not.”
The Worsted Viper (Mrs. Bradley) Page 24