[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening

by Gladys Mitchell

  'Grandfather didn't send us. Could we just speak to you for a minute about the murders?'

  'About the murders? Not about the rent?'

  Light dawned on me. She was behind with her rent. I knew how people dreaded that. Eviction for non-payment of rent was all too common in those days, I suppose. We knew that the first thing our own mother did when father brought home his wages at the end of the week was to count out the rent-money and put it in the tea-caddy ready for the rent-man when he came on Monday morning. We realised, therefore, with the precocious intelligence of the children of the poor, that if the Widow Winter owed our grandfather even two weeks' rent we had the whip-hand of her, especially as being behind with her rent was the last thing she would want her neighbours to know about.

  'Not about the rent. I expect grandfather will wait a bit longer,' I said. 'But we want to talk to you, please, Mrs Winter. We won't keep you long, but it's very, very important.'

  'And about the murders?' Her long thin nose appeared to quiver with eagerness. 'Well, you better come enside, then.'

  So, for the first and last time in our lives we penetrated into the forest of pot-plants from behind which she kept watch over the comings and goings of the village. The room was airless, stuffy and heavy with a smell of wet and decaying foliage. She asked us to sit down, but she herself remained standing at the window behind her barrage of plants, barely turning her head when she spoke to us. It seemed as though she could not bear to take her eyes off the village street, and the houses opposite her own, even for a moment.

  'It's about Mr Ward,' I said. 'Aunt Kirstie's lodger, you know.'

  'I ded hear as they dug hem up en the old cottage down the road. Murdered for hes money, Oi reckon.'

  'For his money?' This, to us, was entirely a novel idea. 'But he didn't have any money.'

  'Oh, dedn't he, though!' She sniffed importantly. 'Only went to the public every day of hes loife and took hes denner there as well as hes beer. Every four weeks he was en Old Mother Honour's lettle post-office a-changen of hes bets of paper Messus Kempson sent hem.'

  'How do you know?' asked Kenneth.

  'Talked to Messus Honour when Oi got moi Lord George dedn't Oi? Ferret and foind out, that be moi motto. Ef ee don't arsk ee don't learn, do ee? Don't you arsk questions when you be at school?-whech Oi do notece as you beant there thes mornen. Whoi not, then?'

  This question ought to have non-plussed us, but we had agreed upon our answer to it if it was put to us, as we thought it might well be.

  'Because the police and Mrs Kempson and an important lady called Mrs Bradley have asked us to help them and, in any case, our school is in London, not here,' I said glibly, for we had memorised and rehearsed this wording. The Widow Winter withdrew her gaze from the window long enough to give us a hard look, but all she said was,

  'Oh, Oi see. Oi follered hem ento the shop one day to boi moiself a stamp and Oi seen hem get twenty pound acrorst the counter-just loike that! The post-offece in the town ded used to send Old Mother Honour the money special every month, Oi reckon, so as her could pay et out to hem. Her wouldn't never have all that money en the tell, and her'd have to gev et to hem when he handed over hes money-orders-four on 'em!'

  This was a revelation to us. Twenty pounds! The largest amount we had ever seen at one and the same time was the five pounds our father received every Quarter Day for travelling expenses. As he always used his bicycle for getting about, the five pounds came in very handy indeed and we always felt immensely proud of him when he put them out on the kitchen table in front of mother and they laughed together with pleasure over them.

  'Oi'll tell ee sommat else,' said Mrs Winter. Like so many lonely people (and, ostracised as she was in the village because of all the spying she did, I imagine that she was very lonely indeed) she talked to us as though we were her own age. 'You knows about the noight the young lady was kelled? Well, Oi 'adn't got off to sleep-Oi sleeps en the front room, see?-when Oi hears one o' them moty-cars go boy.

  '"Oi knows the sound of that there," Oi says to moiself. "That be Doctor Matters' car," Oi says. "But 'twouldn't be hem, not at past ten o'clock," Oi says. "That'll be Doctor Tassall-ah, and what do he get up to weth old Mother Grant? Loike foine to know that, Oi'ud."'

  'I expect he goes to look after her ague,' said Kenneth.

  'Not wethout she paid hem, and that she can't afford, so what goes on? But now you lesten here. Oi be loyen awake, wonderen, and turnen Doctor Tassall over en moi moind, loike, when Oi hears another car, blest ef Oi don't. And who do ee thenk that was, then? Whoi, et was Mester Noigel Kempson, that's who et was. Knows hes car too, Oi does. "So what goes on?" Oi says to moiself. Woild young men, the two of 'em, Oi thenks. So Oi puts on moi wrapper and Oi sneaks down the stairs and Oi goes out to moi front gate and what do Oi see? Et's a lovely clear noight, not near what ee'd call dark, and Oi sees a beg shadder standen opposyte Messus Honour's.'

  We hardly dared to breathe. This was true drama and greatly superior to anything Our Sarah had told the Sunday school children on the day after the murder.

  'Please go on!' said Kenneth. 'What happened next?' Mrs Winter, sparing a second from her window-gazing to turn and shake her head, replied regretfully,

  'Don't Oi wesh Oi knowed! Oi reckon et were a car, but whether et were Doctor Matters' car, or whether et were young Mester Noigel's car weth him or somebody else or hem and somebody else en et, es more nor Oi can tell ee.'

  'You don't mean the girl they found down by the sheepwash?' asked Kenneth.

  'No better than she should a-ben, ef you arsk me! A proper lettle flebberty-gebbet. Must ha' ben. Out to meet some man or other, Oi reckon, and he done for her. But you wouldn't understand, at your age, and quoite roight as ee shouldn't. There've allus ben goens on and more goens on, and the gentry be worst o' the lot. Ah, and that young Doctor Tassall, too. Hem and hes Messus Grant!'

  'We don't think Mr Ward was murdered for his money,' said Kenneth, 'but perhaps be found the treasure in the hermit's cottage and was murdered for that.'

  'Treasure? What treasure?' Her long nose quivered again.

  'Well, something must have been buried there, or why did Mr Ward dig up the floor?'

  'Hem? Proper dotty-loike, weren't he? Touched en the head, Oi reckon.' She had scarcely at all ceased to keep vigil at the window and now she exclaimed: 'There's somebody new awalken down the road! Now who would that be, Oi wonder? Look loike her as Oi seen en the Kempson's car a-comen back from the town station weth luggage an' all.'

  'Do you mean Mrs Bradley?' asked Kenneth, jumping up from his chair.

  'You keep out o' soight! You keep out o' soight!' cried Mrs Winter in agony. 'Nobody don't never see nobody watchen out moi front winder!'

  'She's got a hope!' said Kenneth, when we were outside the front door and he had scooped up the money-box. 'Oh, well, if she owes her rent, it wouldn't be any good asking her for money.' We shot out of Mrs Winter's front gate and joined Mrs Bradley in the road. I thought she seemed pleased to see us.

  'Well, well, well! The Baker Street Irregulars!' she said. At that time we had not read the Sherlock Holmes stories and so this quip was lost on us. Later I wondered how she knew or guessed that we had been doing-or trying to do-some detective work.

  'How have you got on?' was her next question. 'And to what extent, if any, has a good cause benefited from your questionable endeavours?'

  We knew she was pulling our legs, but Kenneth answered truthfully.

  'We've only got threepence ha'penny, and the ha'penny is mine. At least, it was mine before I put it in the box, and Mrs Honour won't answer any questions because we haven't any money to spend.'

  'That is a deficiency which can be dealt with.'

  'Oh, no!' I said, as she took a fat purse out of her skirt pocket. 'We're not allowed to take money.'

  'This is not money; merely working expenses,' she said. I thought of father and his quarterly five pounds, and this did seem to put a different complexion on the matter.
'In a business concern,' she went on, 'it is quite usual for the partners to put up the capital and for others to take a salary and work for the firm until such time as they, too, are in a position to invest in it.'

  We told her what had happened so far.

  'Valuable information from Mrs Grant,' she commented, 'and a useful pointer from Mrs Winter. It was one which had already occurred to me, so I am glad to have an opinion which coincides with mine, especially as it comes from such a source. I imagine, from what I have heard about her from various persons, that what Mrs Winter does not know about what goes on in the village is, as the saying goes, not worth knowing. You have done well. As you probably thought, Miss Summers may have picked up gossip from the baker with whom, I am told, she has a platonic understanding. As for Mrs Honour, as you think and say, living, as she does, almost opposite the cottage in which Mr Ward was found, she must have something to report. Let me accompany you into these Hansel and Gretel dwellings and we will put the owners to the question.'

  'That's what they used to call it when the Spanish Inquisition was working,' I said. 'We won't really torture Miss Summers, will we?'

  'Nor Mrs Honour, I trust. Did you know that our English version of Hansel and Gretel is completely bowdlerised? In the original version collected by the brothers Grimm, no witch appears except the wicked step-mother, who is referred to not as a witch but as a fairy, albeit, we must suppose, a wicked one, and there is no house made of confectionery in the story. Hansel, in fact, is turned into a fawn after drinking from the third of the forbidden brooks and is cherished by his sister Gretel until the king who marries her catches the wicked fairy and makes her change Hansel back again. Well, never mind Miss Summers. Let us concentrate upon Mrs Honour.'

  Chapter 15

  Mrs Lestrange Bradley Again

  It was clear that Margaret and Kenneth knew Mrs Honour's shop-window display off by heart and I feel sure that they could have played Kim's Game with the items with great success. This being so, we went inside the shop, as there was a further display within, so that comparisons could be made and merits weighed up and discussed.

  While they were choosing what I was to buy for them, I entered into conversation with the shopkeeper and postmistress concerning the stamps I should require to send a letter to America. Having settled this matter, I then purchased envelopes and notepaper and asked whether she did not think that the American police were more efficient than our own.

  As I had hoped and anticipated, this proved to be an effective ploy, for she replied that, if they were not, she hardly supposed they would catch any criminals at all. I agreed with her and suggested that it was disgraceful that a woman like herself, living alone-that was a shot in the dark, but it found its mark-should be without police protection. She agreed and immediately confessed that she now felt extremely nervous at nights, since she knew that there was a fiend in human shape roaming about the village. She added that no one was safe.

  'Must be a madman,' she said. 'Who with any sense in their head would kill first an innocent young lady who was not even known in the place, and then a nice, quiet gentleman like Mr Ward?'

  'Oh, was he nice and quiet?' I asked. She assured me that he was and that he called regularly at her shop to buy snuff, for she had a licence to sell tobacco. He also used the post-office counter, she added, but only once a month.

  'I suppose you cannot see from behind your counter which children or other people might ever have gone into the cottage where Mr Ward's body was found,' I remarked. She said that the police had asked her that, but she could tell them nothing except that some rude children occasionally came and shouted in at her doorway so that she was obliged to chase them away.

  'The last lot ran into the cottage to get away from me, but that was weeks ago,' she said. 'I've seen nothing since.'

  So the young Cliftons made their modest purchases, thanked me quite unnecessarily and we made our way up the slope to the house where they were staying. Having franked myself, so to speak, by purchasing their confectionery for them, I said that I should be interested to meet their aunt.

  She proved to be a buxom, kindly woman, very different from the elderly and (I suspect) shrewish Mrs Honour, and when the children introduced me as a friend of Mrs Kempson-they had insisted upon taking me up the steps to the front door, although I am sure their usual entrance was by the sideway and the kitchen-Mrs Landgrave took me into the parlour and insisted upon giving me refreshment. We then got rid of the children and settled down to conversation about Mr Ward.

  Yes, she said, he had been quiet enough and gave no trouble. She knew he spent time at the village public house, but declared that she had never seen him what she called 'the worse'. On the other hand, during the week or two before his death she had become increasingly worried about his idiosyncrasies. He had dug up their garden and her father's chicken-run and one day she had seen him come into the kitchen just as she had put the children's mid-day dinner on the table and had noticed that he was soaking wet up to his waistcoat and had great splashes of mud on his face.

  Subsequently, although they had tried to hide the fact, she found that Kenneth's shorts and Margaret's cotton frock were also wet and muddy. When she discovered this and challenged them about it, they reported that they had seen Mr Ward standing in the sheepwash wielding a pickaxe. They had been alarmed and had hidden partly in the brook when he abandoned his strange occupation and appeared to be coming their way.

  I had heard something of Mr Ward's pickaxe and spadework from Mrs Kempson, who had had it from Mrs Landgrave, but I was glad to get it at first hand from the same (I thought) reliable source.

  'Do you think,' I asked, 'that Mr Ward attacked somebody with either spade or pickaxe and was killed by that person in self-defence and subsequently buried in the hope that his death could be kept from the police?'

  'I can't see him going for anybody,' she said, 'not unless he had gone out of his mind. He was always quiet and decent when he was here.'

  'Yet you were sufficiently anxious about the state of his mind to contact Mrs Kempson,' I said. She explained that it was the children of whom she had been thinking.

  'It isn't nice to have anybody that's a bit touched when you have children around,' she said. 'Besides, we thought Mrs Kempson ought to know.'

  'Did you think it strange,' I asked, 'that Mrs Kempson did not accommodate him at the manor house? Surely she had plenty of room up there?'

  But Mrs Landgrave refused, very properly, of course, to commit herself on either of these points, protesting that she had never thought about it and that she had been glad of the money which Mrs Kempson paid. This seemed to lead us to a dead end and I was about to thank her for the refreshment she had provided-a glass of very good cowslip wine and a biscuit-when a thought recurred to me. I say 'recurred', my dear Sir Walter, because in an earlier idle moment it had occurred to me one day when Mrs Kempson was describing her first meeting (after his lengthy absence) with Mr Ward. This thought was that it was difficult to reconcile the cool, hard-headed, somewhat cynical ex-convict which she had described to me, with the mentally deranged individual of quiet, inoffensive habits but eccentric behaviour pictured to me by Mrs Landgrave.

  Are you a suggestible person?' I asked her. 'I mean by that,' I explained, for I could see that she did not understand me, 'the kind of person who is apt to be influenced by the last speaker, for example.'

  I was sure she would deny this, and she did. (People always do.)

  'You're thinking of my sister Lally, the children's other auntie,' she informed me. 'I don't think anybody could make me change my mind once I'd made it up, except that sometimes, when I'm cross with the children, they can get round me, especially Ken, who is the most lovable little boy.'

  'They are charming children,' I said. 'Well, then, Mrs Landgrave, if you are not suggestible, I would like to put a plain question to you and will wait while you consider your answer.'

  'Oh, dear! You sound like that policeman,' she said. 'All righ
t, then, you ask and either I'll answer truthfully or not at all.'

  'Fair enough,' I agreed. 'Now Mr Ward was with you for just over five years, I believe. Did you ever wonder whether the man whom Mrs Kempson sent to you was the Mr Ward who carried out all that extraordinary delving?'

  She stared at me, then she closed her eyes. She certainly took her time before she opened them again. Then she shook her head firmly.

  'No,' she said decisively. 'He may have gone a bit wrong in his head, poor man, but it was the same gentleman. Turned up one afternoon with his little portmanteau of clothes and said he was Mr Ward and he believed it was all arranged he should stay with me.'

  'Did Mrs Kempson accompany him to introduce him to you?' I asked, although I felt I knew the answer from the way she had described his arrival. She shook her head again.

  'She didn't bring him nor did she ever come here to visit him,' she averred. All she did was to send me his money every week and him his money orders to cash at the post-office each month. I knew about that because the postman used to come before Mr Ward got up and I used to put the letter-it was the only one he ever got-by the side of his plate, and once he opened the envelope just as I brought in his eggs and bacon and one of the money orders fell out. I saw what it was, although he scuffled it up again all quick. I didn't see the amount and anyway that was no business of mine.'

  I took my leave. She had given me something to think about. It seemed to me that another consultation with Mrs Kempson might be advantageous. Before I returned to Hill House, however, I thought I would pay a visit to the Widow Winter. From what the children had told me, it seemed that, if she chose, she could prove to be a valuable source of information about what I was beginning to think must be the pseudo Mr Ward.

  She was all servility and unctuousness, a female Uriah Heep if ever I met one, and she invited me in without enquiring either my name or my business. I found out at once that, to some extent, she knew both. (I attempt to reproduce her remarks.)