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by Gladys Mitchell

  “No, I don’t. Eat your breakfast before it gets cold, dear child.”

  “In the sixteenth century,” said Carey suddenly, “wilful murderers had their right hands cut off before they were hanged.”

  “Wilful murderers,” said Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. “That opens up a field for Speculation, child.” She did not add that the same fact had already opened up a field of speculation for her on the previous night, or that it had been followed, as she lay wakeful and thinking deeply, by the familiar, in the circumstances, misplaced caption, “Signature tune,” which flashed across her brain.

  “Whose signature? And what tune?” she said. But her nephew, who had just seen hog-puddings on the menu, did not hear her.

  • CHAPTER 7 •

  The House on the Ridge

  “‘Tell they master to revenge himself tomorrow at the Maiden’s Castle, where he shall see me again.’”

  Mr. Geoffrey Saxant, the senior partner of Saxant and Senss, lived just outside the pretty little village of Aubery. A chalk ridge rose behind the village, and he had built his house high enough to obtain a wide view over the valley with its sluggish, cloud-reflecting river, its farmstead, and its fields.

  George drove Carey and Mrs. Bradley sedately out of the inn-yard, and took half an hour exactly to bring them to Mr. Saxant’s front door. The garden went down in terraces towards the river, but the drive wound serpent-wise up the hill to end on a level forty-yard stretch along the front of the house.

  Mrs. Saxant was gardening. She rose from her knees when the car drew up, and came forward to meet her visitors. Mrs. Bradley introduced herself and presented her nephew.

  “And now,” she said, “we’ve come about those ears.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re not from a newspaper, are you?”

  “No. We’re friends of Mr. Carn’s solicitor. My aunt is assisting Mr. Justus Bassin.”

  “But an arrest has been made… I didn’t think there was any more to be done.”

  “The wrong arrest has been made. Moreover, we have good reason to believe that the letter lately received by your husband requesting him to cancel publication of Mr. Carn’s last book is a forgery.”

  “I know there’s some doubt about that. But you must understand that I know very little about my husband’s business.”

  “Nevertheless, you know something about his partner,” said Carey, eyeing her. The effect of this remark was surprising. Mrs. Saxant went pale, then flushed, swallowed, opened her mouth, shut it, and then, pulling herself together, made the following astounding response:

  “Oh, I see. Blackmail. Perhaps you’d better come in.”

  French windows, leading into the drawing-room were open. She dropped her gardening gloves on the step, and without troubling even to wipe her gardening boots, which left earthy clods and impressions on the polished floorboards, led the way in, and pointed to a couple of chairs.

  “First,” said Mrs. Bradley, “what did Mr. Carn look like?”

  “He looked a thorough literary man.”

  “Ah, yes, I know,” said Carey. “Joseph Conrad beard and Arnold Bennett moustaches. I’ve seen photographs of him, I think.”

  “Second,” said Mrs. Bradley, “did you recognise the ears for Mr. Carn’s?”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t think of anything in the terrible shock of opening that horrible parcel. I could have recognised them, though, if I hadn’t been so badly upset.”

  “Third, what made your husband agree to print Carn’s book?”

  “I don’t know at all. It was a business proposition, I suppose.”

  “Didn’t you persuade him to print it?”

  “I may have said it would be a good thing to print it. Carn was a famous man.”

  “And a very unpopular one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your husband didn’t like Carn very much.”

  “I don’t think Carn had many friends. Very clever men are usually disliked, don’t you think?”

  “Did Mr. Senss like Carn?” asked Mrs. Bradley, forbearing to point out that Mrs. Saxant had already contradicted herself.

  “I haven’t the least idea. Tell me why you’ve come, and what you want.”

  “Information. We have not come to blackmail you, Mrs. Saxant. I deduce that Carn was your lover.”

  “You deduce it?”

  “Well, somebody sent you his ears. There must have been some reason for that. You could have recognised the ears, you say. How?”

  “He had had them pierced to take ear-rings. Nobody knew it except me. It was a joke between us. It was for amateur theatricals, I think.”

  “You mean that you know. Were you the heroine of the play?”

  “Yes. What are you after? Why are you asking me these things?”

  “A pretty woman horribly frightened is an unpleasant sight,” thought Carey.

  “Does Mr. Senss know that Mr. Carn was your lover?” Mrs. Bradley implacably continued.

  “No, of course not. Nobody knew. I don’t see how you know. Or about Kurt Senss either. A woman can’t help it if men are silly about her, can she?”

  “Somebody knew, and told me.”

  “Who was it told you?”

  “I don’t know his name yet. The person who sent you the ears must have known. What did your husband say when he saw the ears?”

  “I really don’t remember.” She looked, thought Carey, ready to burst into tears under all this bullying.

  “Never mind. Where is your husband now?”

  “He’s gone to the printing press.”

  “Oh?” said Mrs. Bradley, looking at her watch. “He doesn’t usually go so early, does he?”

  “No. He usually leaves the house at half-past ten.”

  “And it isn’t more than ten o’clock now.”

  “No. You see, he received a telephone message to say that there had been a fire at the works.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Very sorry. Was it a bad fire, do you know?”

  “Not nearly as bad as it might have been. It seems that somebody gave the alarm immediately. Geoffrey says he would give a hundred pounds to whoever it was, if he could trace him, but he’s not going to advertise the fact, because he’d attract a lot of greedy sharks who’d had nothing whatever to do with it.”

  “Is your husband a generous man, Mrs. Saxant?”

  The woman looked at her cautiously for a moment, and then said huskily, with the fear gone from her voice:

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “He is, then?”

  “Yes, he is—very. Not only in material things.”

  “No. That’s what I meant. Well, we must go. Mrs. Saxant, would you swear to those ears?”

  “Yes… yes, I suppose so,” Mrs. Saxant replied, looking at Mrs. Bradley with horrible fascination. She was still standing at the French windows when Mrs. Bradley looked back at the bend in the drive.

  “Why on earth did she come across like that?” asked Carey, when the car had been driven through the gates and was out on the road again. “She seems the Delilah of the neighbourhood, does she not?”

  “She’s a badly frightened woman,” replied his aunt, “and, so far, we have done nothing to reassure her. She thought her friendship for Carn had been kept a close secret. The present of the ears undeceived her. She loves her husband, and does not want to hurt him, but she can’t forbear to take these lovers when the opportunity comes.”

  “And Senss is another of them. Shouldn’t have thought he was the sort, funnily enough. Of course—his partner’s wife—I suppose there are opportunities—not exactly behaviour comme il faut, though, is it, do you think?”

  Mrs. Bradley picked up the speaking-tube, and directed George to take them back to the “Lion.”

  “But I thought you particularly wanted to visit Saxant?” said Carey.

  “Not at the printing press, child. Besides, there will be some confusion there, after the fire.”

  “Yes, of cou
rse. Do you think she’d have been easier in her mind, in one sense, if we had proved to be blackmailers?”

  “Well, child, in one sense, that’s exactly what we are. We are using the fact that she is in a badly frightened state in order to extort information, which otherwise she would not give us. Not, as you would say, behaviour comme il faut.”

  George stopped the car and got out.

  “If you please, madam,” he said, coming round to Mrs. Bradley’s window, “I am under the impression that we are being followed by a car from the house at which you and Mr. Lestrange were calling this morning. Am I to continue directly back to the hotel?”

  “Oh, yes, I think so, George. Thank you for the information.”

  “I say, we have scared her,” said Carey. “And the beauty of it is that my first remark, the one that nearly made her swoon, was not even intended to be a shot in the dark. It was of the purest mashed-potato type, and didn’t mean a thing. She gave the game away nicely.”

  “Yes. Not really cut out for the part of unfaithful wife, poor creature. Lots of them aren’t. They’re victims of boredom, very often.”

  “Do you think Mrs. Saxant bored, then?”

  “To distraction, except when her garden grows. And even then I expect she wants someone to take an interest in the growing, and lovers are good at that.”

  “Yes,” said Carey, reminiscently. “I remember before the era of Jenny, some ghastly girl who used to design women’s overalls. Everybody suffers in the cause of love, I expect.”

  “Talking of love,” said his aunt, “I perceive Adonis in person, awaiting us on the doorstep.” Carey looked out. The athletic and handsome Mr. Bassin was standing on the step outside the lounge.

  “And to what are we indebted for this favour?” asked Carey, grinning. Bassin smiled and replied.

  “Oh, we’re being retained by Lyle’s on behalf of young Mabb, and my father has sent me back again.”

  “Deuced philanthropic of Lyle’s, isn’t it? And why you, when they’ve got their own solicitors? What are Lyle’s like, really?”

  “They’re a pretty good firm, you know, and their argument is that young Mabb knows nowt about the business. They say—the son of the senior partner also plays cricket—that the police argument that there was bad blood between Carn and Mabb is just a lot of rot. Mabb, in fact, according to young Bertie Lyle, managed very tactfully as captain, and got on better with Carn than anybody else in the position would have done. Mabb appears to be, in fact, a worthy cove all round. Keeps his mother and younger sister—sister at a County Secondary School—Sunday-school boy—”

  “So was Norman Thorne,” said Carey. “Doesn’t mean a thing, except, probably, lack of the brassier type of neck.”

  “Anyhow, Lyle’s are convinced of his innocence, and have briefed—don’t laugh!—Ferdinand Lestrange for the defence.” He grinned at Mrs. Bradley, to whom Carey hastened to introduce him.

  “A most immoral boy,” said Mrs. Bradley, referring to her son Ferdinand.

  “Family affair altogether,” said Carey. “Come on. Let’s in and drink.”

  “If Mabb hadn’t sneaked out at the gate to have speech with his girl instead of going to the canteen where his mates could have given him an alibi, the police would have very little against him,” Bassin continued, when they were in the lounge, with its enormous Tudor fireplace, and the young men had been served with cocktails and Mrs. Bradley with sherry. “Oh, and it’s still more or less of a mystery what Carn did and where he went on the day of his wife’s death.”

  “Not such a mystery,” said Carey. “We had speech with Mrs. Saxant, to whom Carn’s ears were sent, and she came across very nicely with the information that she and Carn—”

  “Oh?” said Bassin. “So that’s why he didn’t take a hat.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Well, a minor mystery about Carn’s disappearance, you know, was that he didn’t take a hat. He hopped it the first time, with some suddenness, it appears, just before lunch, going off sans chapeau, and then appeared again, plus hat, a new one, which he had bought. Then he went off again, once more without a hat, leaving even the new one behind. Ergo, he went to friends, presumably in the immediate neighbourhood.”

  “Yes, but Aubery, where the Saxants live, isn’t all that much in the immediate neighbourhood,” argued Carey.

  “No. But you know your Sherlock Holmes. ‘I see that you have no gentleman visitor at present. Your hat-stand proclaims as much.’ Well, see also Mrs. Saxant: precautions observed when visiting same in capacity of alienator of wife’s affections. I suppose all her suitors had standing orders to leave their hats at home.”

  “Something in it, undoubtedly. What do you think, love?”

  “Mr. Bassin has made a point there,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I think we might do worse than interview Mrs. Saxant again. Doubtless, by this time, the servants will have received orders to throw us out. Rightly. But we must see.”

  “One other point emerges in this connection,” observed Bassin. “Carn presumably went to the Saxants’ house on foot. It’s a good long walk, you know.”

  “Oh, no. Mrs. Saxant met him with the car. Prearranged,” said Carey. “That would account for the very odd time of departure, on that first occasion, just before lunch, you know. It came out clearly at the inquest on Mrs. Carn that no message had come to the house.”

  “But if they wanted to keep their affair dark, surely it was a very queer time to have arranged?” suggested Carey.

  “Perhaps they couldn’t help themselves. Do you know what I think? I think they had to meet that day. Not just a lovers’ meeting, but about something sinister, or in some way significant.”

  “If so, you’d think that Carn would at least have staged a quarrel with his wife before walking out of the house when lunch was practically on the table.”

  “Mrs. Carn wouldn’t have been at all an easy person to pick a quarrel with,” said Bassin, with the remembrance of her dignity and sweetness vividly present in his mind.

  “I suppose Carn was murdered?” said Carey, “or, conversely, is a murderer?”

  “Why, how do you mean?”

  “You don’t think that perhaps he committed suicide when he found that his wife was dead?”

  “He was an odd kind of fish, as this rabid book of his proves, but I can’t see any reason—”

  “Not if he thought that Mrs. Carn’s death was the direct result of his affair with Mrs. Saxant?”

  “You mean that Saxant was the murderer of Mrs. Carn?”

  “Or Mrs. Saxant. She’s scared enough to have done half a dozen murders.”

  “Let’s have lunch,” said Mrs. Bradley, getting up and leading the way to the dining-room. Their table was in the window, overlooking the yard, and beyond it was the pleasant garden. Lunch was plain and good, and all conversation, except of a general nature, was shelved.

  By two o’clock they were ready to go out again. This time Bassin accompanied them, and George, driving sedately, presented them at Mrs. Saxant’s front door at two minutes after two-thirty. It had been arranged that Bassin should be the person to request an interview, and should ask for it with Mr. Saxant.

  Mrs. Saxant’s demeanour had changed. She was no longer the obviously frightened woman of Carey’s description. She received Bassin with some show of cordiality, said that she thought it a shame that young Mabb had been arrested, that Fortinbras Carn had been difficult to get on with and that she was very sorry to say that an interview with Geoffrey was impossible at the moment because he was at the works.

  “Well, now, look here, Mrs. Saxant,” said Bassin persuasively, “I knew Mrs. Carn and liked her—”

  “Yes, oh, yes, a sweet woman.”

  “—and there are one or two things I’d like to know. No doubt you have been in communication with your own solicitor—”

  “Immediately those people who have accompanied you this afternoon—”

  “Oh, yes. But you must understand that Mrs. B
radley is making a psychological study of the case, and naturally—”

  “She hasn’t anything to do with the police?”

  “The police? What an idea!”

  “Oh? Still, she had no right whatever to question me,” said Mrs. Saxant reasonably. “I mean, I didn’t know who they were, and I can’t see why I should have to put up with a lot of impertinent questions about my private affairs.”

  “Not exactly, no, of course not. The thing is, that there was no compulsion on you to give her any answers.”

  “Yes, well, it’s the same thing exactly.”

  “Not really, you know. But let it pass.”

  “I’m not going to let it pass. If she so much as gets out of that car, I’m going to summon her for trespass.”

  “I don’t think you could do that.”

  “She menaced me this morning. It was most frightening.”

  “I suggest that it is your own conscience which frightens you, Mrs. Saxant.”

  She hesitated before replying to that. Then she said, with an honesty for which he gave her credit.

  “Yes, you’re quite right, it is. But I’m not going to say a word to anybody except in front of my lawyer.”

  “You’ve had the police here, then?”

  “Yes, of course we’ve had the police.”

  “I do wish you’d tell me just one thing.” His voice and youthful good looks made a good impression on her. She did not want to tell him anything at all, particularly anything relating to the deaths of Carn and his wife, but it was not easy to resist him. “Remember, I represent a falsely accused young fellow who never did anybody any harm,” he said.

  “Well,” she said, involuntarily, but not in a disgruntled tone, “what do you want to know?”

  “Did Carn visit you here on the day that his wife was murdered?”

  She distended her eyes a moment. He thought that she was going to refuse to answer. Then she said: “Yes, he did.”

  “Twice, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. But how do you know?”

  “Never mind. You can take it that I do know. I’m not making shots in the dark.”

  “No, I can tell that,” she answered, reverting to the frightened tones in which she had answered Carey and Mrs. Bradley that same morning.