The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The road, of little importance, soon degenerated into a broad, muddy cattle drive. The woods, which, at first, had screened the water from view, gave place to open rough pasture. About a mile and a half of this, and a decrepit wooden bridge took the cattle drive across a wide ditch. In the immediate foreground appeared a huddle of willows. When both vehicles had crossed the bridge, the motor-cyclist signalled a halt, and George pulled up and got out.

  “Beyond the trees, that’s where he tumble in. That’s why we didn’t see it happen. The road twist and the trees act like a wall.”

  Dame Beatrice joined them on the muddy track, and all four walked forward and rounded the bend by the trees.

  “Now,” she said, “it is very important that you tell me all you can about what happened. The question of an inheritance may depend upon it.”

  “Ah, Camber Abbey you mean. That do seem a long way from here, but we read the papers. The poor youngster, that should have had the place when his father die, but…”

  “But the boy died first. What can you tell me of the manner of his death?”

  “Nothing much but what everybody hear already. That got to be common talk in our village; in Camber village, too, I reckon.”

  “Where did you first see the boy?”

  “A hundred yards or so further back. Clearing the dyke we were. That’s pretty slow work, but a man clearing weeds have no time much to look about him. Still, we notice him.”

  “What made you notice the boy particularly?”

  “That shout and babble.”

  “That seem excited, like,” added the younger Huckle. “That laugh.”

  “Then that seem to stagger about, like an old boozer,” explained the older brother. “But we think it was just an old game that play by himself.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might be able to add anything to what you have told me?”

  “Nobody but old Tom Teek. Tom, that make up the road and have time to knock off now and then and look at the boy.”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that the boy was acting rather dangerously and foolishly?”

  “That were no business of ours. That was for his father to guide him more sensible. We don’t interfere.”

  “Well, I think I had better talk to Mr. Teek. You might direct me to where I can find him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Siren

  “There might you hear her kindle her soft voice

  In the close murmur of a sparkling noise,

  And lay the ground-work of her hopeful song.”

  Richard Crashaw

  Tom Teek had a small thatched cottage at Cadham. He was not at home when Dame Beatrice called, and his wife directed her to where he most probably would be found at work.

  “That expect to be sent to make up the drove road Axter way. You can’t miss it if you keep your eyes open. That take his old dinner and reckon to get a glass of beer at the ‘Rod and Line,’ so I know that don’t expect to be home till tea-time.” She pointed out the direction the car was to take and went indoors.

  The narrow road wound in the manner that gave point to the old saying that the original Norfolk roadmakers always worked with their backs to the wind. It was bordered by giant elms which had finished their flowering and were beginning to come into tiny, incredible leaf. A hump-backed bridge carried the road over a river. There were cattle grazing in meadows and, far-off, the lines of willows indicated more streams. Just past the windmill which had been given as a landmark was the drove road.

  The old man had come by bicycle and they found him seated beside his machine eating cold dumplings and a piece of cheese. George stopped the car and got out.

  “Mr. Teek, sir?”

  “Surely, sir.”

  “Dame Beatrice would like a word.”

  Dame Beatrice found herself confronting a healthy-looking, blue-eyed old man who received her with a polite nod of the head.

  “Good morning, Mr. Teek. I was recommended to you by Mr. Huckle.”

  “Which one of them?—bor Harry or bor Billy?”

  “By both of them. Mr. Teek, they told me, is the man to give me the information I want.”

  “Ah, I shouldn’t wonder. Not much I don’t know about what go on around these parts.”

  “This went on some months ago; last summer, I understand. A boy was drowned near where you were working. The brothers Huckle were cleaning a dyke near by and saw the boy and, I think, pulled the body out, but don’t seem to know much about what happened.”

  “I remember it all very clear. I was called by the Crowner. That tell me I give my evidence very well.”

  “I’m sure you did. You said, no doubt, that the boy was behaving very strangely.”

  “That sing and holler.”

  “Did you think he was a danger to himself?”

  “No. That never enter my head. I take very little notice. I conclude that was acting silly. Boys do act silly, so I take very little notice except to think a good sousing in cold water bring that back to his senses.”

  “Instead of which, the good sousing drowned him. What can you tell me about that?”

  “That was a long way ahead of where I work when that happen.”

  “Quite so. Did you see anybody besides the boy and the two Huckles?”

  “Ah, but he was fishing.”

  “I suppose this man was called as a witness at the inquest? What was his name?”

  “That wasn’t called.”

  “Did you mention him to the coroner?”

  “Why should I? ’twadn’t no business o’ mine.”

  Dame Beatrice made a swift calculation of how far she could go without causing the old fellow to wonder what her real object was in asking so many questions, and decided to take the bull by the horns. His appearance as a witness in the coroner’s court must have given Teek something to talk about for the rest of his life, she supposed, and the probability was that he would take it for granted that others were as interested in the details as he was himself.

  “There is some question about the property,” she said vaguely, thus supporting the reason she had given for her enquiries. “The family are anxious to contact everybody who may have noticed the boy’s behaviour that day. It needs to be established whether he was out of his mind.”

  “Out of his mind? If that was anything, that was drunk.”

  “Drunk? But he was a boy of only fifteen! Who would have served him with drink?”

  “Nobody, not in a public house, of course, ma’am. That lose them their licence. But any farmhouse keep a jug of cider handy, and that’s heady stuff, our Norfolk cider, if you have enough of it. People mean it kindly, but if a youngster isn’t accustomed to it—and they say in the court that was an abstainer and the son of an abstainer—”

  “Yes, I see. And you think a glass of cider would have been enough to account for the way he was behaving? It certainly could be so. Did you see him eating his lunch?”

  “Ah. That have sandwiches and a bag full of ripe little darkish fruit. Look like tomatoes to me, but I didn’t much notice. Then that take out a book and sprawl himself down for a read. I go on working for a bit, then I have my dinner and a bit of a sleep, then I wake up because of the hullabaloo.”

  “The boy?”

  “That shout and sing and stagger about. Then that go stumbling out of my sight, still a-laughing and a-bellering.”

  “How far was the fisherman from where the boy had his lunch?”

  “Three hundred yards.”

  “Was he the same side of the river?”

  “No, that fish from the opposite bank, with a rod as thick as my thumb.”

  “Did you keep this fisherman in sight all the time you were working?”

  “That move off.”

  “Did you actually see him go?”

  “No. That must have gone while I was asleep.”

  “And you didn’t see him again?”

  “No, nor think about him till now.”

  “Could you
describe him, do you think?”

  The old man narrowed his eyes.

  “I’d know him again,” he said slowly. “Ah, for sure I’d know him again.”

  “A big man? Tall? Stout?”

  “Noo, I couldn’t say. All I knoo is as he wore a yeller wesket. In shirt sleeves that was, with a yeller wesket, and a grey jacket by his side on the grass.”

  “Young, old, middle-aged?”

  “No, I can’t tell you. But I’d know him again. Once seen, always remembered; that’s Tom Teek.”

  Dame Beatrice realised that the old man had told her all he could. One of her theories now seemed rather more likely than the others, but she needed time to think it over and then to experiment with it. She thanked Teek warmly and begged him to drink her health, which the old fellow, thanking her in return, blithely promised to do.

  “And now,” she said, “back to the inn at Camber, George, for lunch. We have not solved the mystery yet, by any means, but we make a little progress.”

  George, a bachelor who liked domesticity, had arranged to have all his meals with the family who kept the inn. Dame Beatrice had a late lunch alone in the dining-room, before she returned on foot to Camber Abbey. Her first question was put to Ethel as soon as she arrived.

  “Ethel, what happened to the tomatoes?”

  Ethel flushed darkly, but did not attempt to evade the question or pretend that she did not understand it.

  “Bumby-hole, madam.”

  “You threw them away?”

  “Didn’t want the master poisoned.”

  “That does you a certain amount of credit, if it is true. What makes you so certain that it was the tomatoes which made you ill?”

  “Something seemed to tell me. Besides, I was sick and you couldn’t mistake it. I had the doctor to me.”

  “Was there any chance that the tomatoes could have been retrieved from the dust-heap?”

  “No. I go and dance on the nasty things.”

  “I see. But, Ethel, did it never occur to you that Stephen Camber must have eaten some of the tomatoes?”

  “Yes, madam, but what could I do about that? Poor Master Stephen was dead and drownded before it came to me what that was. It wasn’t till Mr. Hugh took over that it seem to come all over me that Master Stephen had not been drunk like they say, but must have got at the tomatoes.”

  “Ethel, where did those tomatoes come from?”

  “I couldn’t say, madam. I took it they come from Tom Adams, but when I tax him with it, he turn so hard that I didn’t like to press it and so I conclude to let it go at that.”

  “I see. Very well, Ethel. Don’t worry yourself about this conversation.”

  Ethel hesitated and then burst out:

  “It wasn’t the tomatoes as killed him! It wasn’t the tomatoes! He was drownded, I tell you… drownded!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Penelope and the Suitors

  “I freeze, I freeze, and nothing dwels

  In me but Snow and ysicles.

  For pitties sake, give your advice,

  To melt this snow, and thaw this ice.”

  Robert Herrick

  “And now,” said Dame Beatrice on the following morning, “to dismiss from the case, as it were, Penelope’s suitors.”

  Hugh frowned.

  “It still seems to me that one of them might be implicated,” he said. “Héloïse simply hasn’t the temperament for really dirty deeds.”

  “What did you make of the tomatoes? Of the story of Ethel the Misguided, I mean.”

  “Nothing. The mystery is—who put them in the dining-room so that she was able to help herself to them?”

  “Do the Adams grow tomatoes in your greenhouses?”

  “Yes, I believe so. I don’t happen to care for tomatoes and, in any case, they are not in season now.”

  “But they were in season when Ethel purloined them from the dining-room and when Stephen took them on his picnic. Still, I do not suspect the Adams of any desire to make away with your cousin Paul or his son.”

  “What do you suspect, then?”

  “Possibly that a mysterious visitor left the tomatoes and that he came with that purpose and that purpose alone. I wonder whether Mr. Paul cared for tomatoes?”

  “Surely that is a purely academic point? Paul took no harm from them, so far as we know. I can’t think why the doctor didn’t tell him about them, though.”

  “Possibly your cousin was a man who thought that a local G.P. was suitable for the servants but not sufficiently so for himself. I would like to talk to Dr. Castleton again, this time in private.”

  “Medical shop, eh? A very sound idea, if I may say so.”

  “He suspected the presence of a weak dose of atropine, of course, but he also concluded that Ethel must be peculiarly allergic to the drug if she thought she got it from eating the tomatoes.”

  “But do tomatoes contain or secrete atropine?”

  “Not in any measurable quantity, if at all. But there are ‘sports’ in Nature, are there not?—and the tomato belongs to a group of plants in which measurable quantities of atropine can be found.”

  “So that’s still your theory! A ‘sport” tomato plant and an allergic Ethel?”

  “Not necessarily, but it is a much more comfortable one than others I have formulated.”

  “As we realised before of course, Stephen must have been equally allergic to atropine in a ‘sport’ tomato. Rather strange, that. Do you place any reliance upon the theory that Ethel may have been his mother, and that she transmitted this particular allergy to him?”

  “No. The young are often affected by these things more severely than are older people,” said Dame Beatrice, with deliberate vagueness.

  “He was fifteen years old, not three,” retorted Hugh.

  “When I have spoken with the doctor, I shall track down Mr. Maitland and Mr. Tunstall,” said Dame Beatrice, briskly turning the conversation. “No, perhaps I had better reverse the processes. I will leave a message at the surgery asking for an appointment, then I will see what I can get from the rejected suitors, and then—may I meet Dr. Castleton here?”

  “Of course. The library shall be placed at your disposal.”

  She decided to visit Tunstall first. His boatyard on the Bure was smaller than some of those higher up the river near Wroxham and in Horning, but there was the same air and atmosphere of preparation about it as there was in the older-established yards.

  “Getting ready for the season,” said an old man to whom Dame Beatrice addressed herself. “The gaffer? Yes, that will be somewhere about. Bor Tom,” he shouted to a passing ancient, “where’s gaffer?”

  “Inside,” replied Tom, jerking a tobacco-stained thumb. Dame Beatrice entered the boathouse and found a man of about thirty, dressed in tweeds and tennis shoes, talking to an older man who was wearing a cap and workman’s overalls. Both turned and stared when she walked in.

  “Mr. Tunstall?” she said, addressing them equally, although there was no doubt which was master.

  “Yes?” replied the tweed suit. He was a dark-haired, fresh-faced, sturdy young man with a brisk air about him.

  “I should be very much obliged if you could spare me a few minutes on a private matter. I shall not need to keep you long.”

  “All right.” He followed her on to the quay beside which three motor-cruisers were tied up. “I haven’t blotted my copybook in any way, so far as I know.”

  “It isn’t anything like that at all.”

  “Right. Come aboard and let’s sit.” He handed her on board the nearest boat and they sat in the well. Although it was a pleasant morning, the air still had the nip of early spring; Dame Beatrice, however, was wearing a fur coat and her companion, she supposed, was impervious to the weather.

  “It’s about Miss Catherine Tolley.”

  “Oh, yes?” His eyes became guarded.

  “She has been receiving anonymous communications.”

  “Oh?”

  “O
thers have received them, too. All are on the same note. There appears to be a prejudice, on the part of the writer, against her forthcoming marriage to the man who recently inherited Camber Abbey and its estates.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “The letters, naturally, are a great annoyance to Miss Tolley and even more so to her fiancé, and they have called me in to track down the writer and put an end to the one-sided correspondence. I am a psychiatrist by profession and they thought my approach might be preferable to that of the police.”

  “Most of the people who write letters of that sort are unhinged, I’ve always understood. But how do you think I can help? You don’t suppose I wrote the beastly things, do you?”

  “I have to retain an open mind, Mr. Tunstall, but I confess that you seem to me a most unlikely candidate. What I do want from you—in complete confidence, of course—is a pointer, if you can give me one. You know Miss Tolley very well, or so I am led to believe. You know her circle of acquaintances, too, no doubt?”

  “Not as well as you might think. It’s true I once proposed to her, but I’m afraid I was carried away. It was at a ball at the Assembly Rooms in Norwich during the Festival of Britain in 1951.”

  “You cannot think of anybody who might feel, let us say, like a dog in the manger?”

  “Not a clue. Sorry. If anybody is annoying Catherine I’d like to help you find him. I suppose”—his candid eyes met hers—“it isn’t the chap he wants to annoy?”

  “It is more than possible. Do you know Mr. Hugh Camber?”

  “Never met him. I can’t say I knew the other one, the one who was drowned. He kept a yacht at Horning and I’ve had him pointed out to me as he sailed by, but I never exchanged a word with him. He never put in at my place.”

  “Used his son to sail with him?”

  “Frequently. Delicate, thin boy. Queer they should both have been drowned. Both quite good swimmers and it’s not at all dangerous where the boy tumbled in, although it’s fairly deep and there might be weed.”

  “That is a most interesting statement. I have seen the place where the boy was drowned, but I had not considered your point about his ability to swim. Well, I need take no more of your time, Mr. Tunstall. I am most grateful to you for suffering me to question you about the letters.”