The Crozier Pharaohs (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Look,” said Morpeth desperately, “if the man was found in Rocky Valley and Susan met the shepherd near the foot of Cowlass Hill, she wouldn’t have known anything about what had happened until the shepherd told her. There is more than one way of getting to that hill.”

  “The valley opens out on to those hill pastures, and most people go that way, Miss Rant.”

  “But you can take the cliff path to Castercombe and bypass the valley altogether.”

  “You did what?” said Bryony, when Morpeth got back to the car-park and showed her sister the newspaper picture. “Well, you have put your foot in it! Poor old Susan!”

  “Susan wouldn’t have known who the dead man was, even if she had passed beside the corpse. She was out with Isis and Nephthys when Goodfellow called on us and he never came near us again after you had taken him to see Dame Beatrice. We can both swear that Susan had never set eyes on him and wouldn’t have a clue to who he was.”

  “I’m going to ask whether we can call at the Stone House this afternoon. I think Dame Beatrice ought to know about this.”

  “I expect she does know. It’s in the papers.”

  The detective-inspector had got there first. Polly, the maid who answered the door, informed the sisters that Dame Beatrice and Mrs. Gavin had two policemen with them. “But come in, miss, do,” she said to Bryony. “The ladies won’t be long, if you’d care to wait. They’re in the library.” She showed Bryony and Morpeth into the drawing-room. “I don’t suppose they’ll be all that long,” she repeated comfortingly. “The police hasn’t much time to waste, nor have our two ladies. You can play the piano if you want. They’ll not hear it from here.”

  Bryony had preserved a long silence which had lasted for the whole of the journey. When the door had closed behind Polly, she broke into speech.

  “So the police have beaten us to it,” she said. “I can’t think what made you go to the police station before you had spoken to me about that wretched newspaper picture.”

  “I did what I thought was the best.”

  “The way to hell—! Oh, well, it’s done now. I wish, all the same, that we’d got our story to Dame Beatrice before the police arrived.”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “Of course it makes a difference.” She lapsed into a brooding silence again. Morpeth stood it for the next ten minutes and then she went over to the piano and began very softly to strum. This did nothing to relieve the tension. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Bryony exclaimed. Fortunately, soon after this Laura came into the room.

  “Sorry we had to park you,” she said. “The rozzers have gone, so I’ll ring for tea and then you can tell us why you’ve come.”

  “I suppose,” said Bryony bluntly, when tea had been brought and Dame Beatrice had joined them, “it’s no good asking what was said between you and the detectives?”

  Dame Beatrice cackled and replied that she saw no need for absolute secrecy. She proceeded to give an account of the interview. It had begun when she was asked whether it was true that she had been called upon to treat a patient named Robin Goodfellow.

  “Well,” said Morpeth, as she and her sister drove home, “I hope you are not going to continue the great silence. You know how I hate it when you don’t speak to me.”

  “I’m sorry I was angry with you. Perhaps, after all, you did the right thing in going straight to the police when you saw that madman’s picture in the newspaper.”

  “Dame Beatrice told them that in her opinion—and she made it in her professional capacity—he was not a madman.”

  “I don’t have to agree. Only a madman would cut his own throat.”

  “People do that sort of thing in a fit of depression, not because they’re mad.”

  “I didn’t notice that Goodfellow gave us any impression of feeling depressed when we met him, nor in the car when I took him to the Stone House.”

  Back in that Georgian domicile, Dame Beatrice and Laura were conducting their own conversation.

  “You told them you saw no need for secrecy,” said Laura, “but you withheld the most important point, didn’t you?”

  “I thought I qualified it by saying ‘absolute’ secrecy. Are you thinking of anything in particular?”

  “You didn’t mention that the police think the throat-slitting was not suicide but murder.”

  “My dear Laura, that word was never mentioned. I am aware of what the police think, but they were careful not to say it.”

  “And you were careful not to put the word into their mouths.”

  “All they said was that they had not found the implement with which the deed was done.”

  “Well, wasn’t that tantamount to saying the man had been murdered? You can’t cut your throat and then get rid of the knife or whatever it was.”

  “The part of the valley where the hiker found the body is no longer cordoned off, we were told. I think that tomorrow we will drive over there and look at—”

  “The spot marked with a cross?”

  “The police were not sufficiently informative to make certain that we can do that, but I would like to obtain a general view of the setting.”

  “Fancy Morpeth’s having the guts to take action without first consulting Bryony!”

  “You mean that, on her own initiative, she went to the police? It was an impulse she may live to regret.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not like this disappearance of the coat, hat, and bag from that loft.”

  “There doesn’t seem much doubt about who had those. The poacher Adams knew of that room, so did the tramp he found asleep there, so, possibly, did the prowler they talked about and, if one tramp, why not others? It would get around that the Rants are on their own at night and that there is no lock on the front gates—and none, so far, on the door to the loft. All these points have come out in conversation at various times and, I thought, were emphasised today.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dame Beatrice, “but there is one point which you appear to have overlooked. There are three other people, in addition to those you have listed, who knew what the loft contained.”

  “Four,” said Laura. “I suppose Dr. Mortlake would have known. He lived in the house long enough and didn’t move out until after Dr. Rant’s death. He doesn’t seem to have left until the will was proved and he knew he could go into practice on his own. He may even have helped the Rants to clear up their father’s things and get rid of his clothes. The doctor’s bag is missing, Morpeth told us. Who would want it except another doctor? Mortlake, beware! ‘There’s a porpoise close behind you and he’s treading on your tail!’ Oh, I’m not serious,” Laura added hastily as she caught Dame Beatrice’s eye.

  “ ‘Dare to be a Daniel,’ ” responded Dame Beatrice. “ ‘Dare to stand alone, dare to have a porpoise firm and dare to make it known!’ Your powers of imagination have rendered me, as usual, faint but pursuing. Dr. Mortlake? You open up strange and terrifying vistas.”

  Laura spread out shapely hands and opened up another vista, or thought she did.

  “If they would let you see the body,” she said, “could you tell whether the throat had been cut with a doctor’s scalpel?”

  “I am not a forensic expert and I have no intention of asking to see the body,” Dame Beatrice replied.

  “Throat-cutting must be a very messy business. Wouldn’t the murderer have got smothered in blood?”

  “Perhaps not if, as the police seem to think, the victim was seized by the hair from behind, his head pulled back and one swift and deadly slash made across his throat.”

  “With a scalpel?” persisted Laura.

  “The police did not offer a suggestion as to the nature of the weapon, as you know. They merely said that they had not found anything with which the lethal wound could have been inflicted.”

  “Perhaps the hiker who found the body spotted a knife and pocketed it. Seems unlikely. Oh, well, they say all murderers make at least one mistake. What interests me is the
fate of the doctor’s bag. Bryony told us that the three scalpels Dr. Rant possessed were rolled up in a soft leather hold-all rather like some manicure sets people take when they’re travelling. Where do you think the doctor’s old waterproof and his tweed hat have gone? Morpeth says she found them missing when she went to clear up that loft. Did they go at the same time as the bag, I wonder?”

  “I am going on the assumption that the person the poacher saw talking to the tramp outside Sekhmet’s kennel that morning was wearing them, but no mention was made of a bag, so I may be mistaken. However, Adams’s somewhat inadequate description of the clothes the person was wearing coincides quite interestingly with Morpeth’s account of the missing raincoat and hat.”

  “You say ‘person.’ I notice that you don’t commit yourself as to sex.”

  “The poacher himself admitted that he was unable to guess whether the stranger was a man or a woman,” said Dame Beatrice. “I wonder what light the inquest will throw on this second unnatural death?”

  “Yes, Abbots Crozier is fast becoming a hissing and a byword for a danger spot. As for the inquest, perhaps it will tell us whether Robin Goodfellow was the man’s real name. My own view is that it was as much of an alias as Ozymandias. Still, parents have the weirdest flights of fancy when it comes to naming their children, as poor Morpeth Rant knows to her cost. Fancy naming a baby after a folk dance!”

  “Morpeth is as pleasant a name as Elspeth,” remarked Dame Beatrice, “if it is taken on its own. As for the inquest, well, I have no wish to seem ghoulish, but I am looking forward to it.”

  The death at Watersmeet had attracted very little attention outside the immediate neighbourhood of Axehead, Abbots Bay, and Abbots Crozier and would hardly have merited more than a few lines in the local paper had it not been for the bizarre incident of Sekhmet and the dead man’s trousers. Unless or until they could prove their theory that the man had been murdered and his trousers stripped off him and given to the dog before the body had been put into the river, the police were keeping very quiet about the whole Watersmeet affair.

  The valley murder, as it came to be called, was a very different matter. The big dailies ran it as front-page news and the London Postmark devoted its double centre page to a set of photographs of the area. Broadcasts and television coverage followed, and Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier, together with Axehead, where the inquest was opened, swarmed with reporters and cameramen. Accommodation in both the villages and the town was stretched to its limits and there was even an overflow into Castercombe.

  The medical evidence indicated that the victim had been attacked from behind and his head pulled back. One slash had severed the jugular vein. The identification of the body posed a problem for the police because it threw more open the vexing business of discovering who the murderer was.

  The corpse was identified by a smart London policeman neither as Ozymandias nor Robin Goodfellow, although the man had been known for some time under the latter name. He turned out to be a very shady private eye known also to the Metropolitan Police as Hillingdon. The media had done their work and the pictures of the dead man had been compared with those in police files, for Ozymandias had done time for larceny. The inquest was then adjourned pending further police enquiries and the search for the weapon responsible for Hillingdon’s death.

  “I think,” said Dame Beatrice, “that this murder ties up with the death at Watersmeet.”

  This opinion was endorsed by Detective-Inspector Harrow to his sergeant.

  “Ten to one,” he said, “this Hillingdon, as we’ve now got to call him, knew something about that Watersmeet business, and died because of what he knew.”

  “So if we knew who the Watersmeet killer was—and we’re still convinced that was murder, not accident—we could spot the valley murderer, sir.”

  “All sorts of trouble about that, the way I see it. As there’s a London end to this business, we could be looking for a needle in a haystack unless the Metropolitan Police come in and help. If only we could get a clear identification of that Watersmeet corpse it might help.”

  “The two deaths were, of course, quite unlike. Murderers usually repeat their effects.”

  “Oh, well, we must just soldier on with this Rocky Valley business. That place has got itself a bad name locally. It’s a queer sort of landscape and not a bit like anywhere else in that neighbourhood.”

  “According to what I’ve heard, sir, nobody goes that way after sunset if they’re cycling or on foot, and motorists prefer the coast road, although it’s the longer way to Castercombe from Axehead.”

  “Nobody goes that way after sunset? Makes it an ideal place for a murder, doesn’t it? According to the doctors, death had occurred the night before the body was found. The two men must have met by arrangement and both wanted the transaction kept secret, I reckon.”

  “Brings us back to the Watersmeet business. According to Adams, two men or a man and a woman met in the Rants’ garden before the household was stirring. It is more than possible that the man found dead in the river later in the day was one of them.”

  “Sounds like people who knew the Rants’ garden and the valley, doesn’t it?—or, anyway, one of them did.”

  “And knew that Watersmeet would most likely be deserted so early in the morning. It sounds like three assignations: one in the Rants’ garden, one at Watersmeet, and this one in Rocky Valley—and the last two with unsuspecting victims. What do you think about one of the Rant sisters? We are already keeping an eye on that dog-woman of theirs. All three women are out every day with those hounds and must know the countryside like the backs of their hands.”

  11

  Scalpels

  The valley indeed had a sinister reputation. Robin Goodfellow was not the first to have met with a violent death there. At one time the distance between Castercombe and Axehead, then a flourishing port, could be covered only on foot or on horseback, since no coach could cope with the descent or ascent from what became the village of Abbots Crozier after Abbots Bay needed to expand.

  There was a coast road between Castercombe and Axehead, but the journey was a long one, and during the old coaching days before the sea wall was heightened and improved the thoroughfare was often under water. The valley was sheltered and the road through it was always passable, although the surface was very rough and travellers carried weapons. But, even in those times, nobody risked the valley after dark for there were stories of attacks, some of them fatal, by highway bands who emerged suddenly from behind the jagged and fantastically shaped outcroppings of rock. It was commonly held that there were ghostly as well as human agencies to be feared.

  One exception had been a party of amateur ghost-hunters, but, although they were reticent about their experiences, most of them declared that they would not care to brave the valley again after nightfall.

  At Hallowe’en and at other times which were kept secret, the local witches held a meeting in the valley and fearful happenings ensued.

  However, it was far from dark when, on the morning following the visit of the police and the sisters Rant to the Stone House, Dame Beatrice and Laura, having booked lunch at the Headlands hotel, drove westwards towards Cowlass Hill and Castercombe.

  “Well,” said Laura, “from what little we were told, it doesn’t seem that Goodfellow was killed all that far from the village. Hullo! We are not the only seekers after truth, it seems.”

  Three police cars were parked off the road and not far from them were a couple of caravans and some tents. Uniformed policemen and what appeared to be a troop of Guides were searching the heather and beating down the bracken. Directing operations was a police inspector, also in uniform. The police were in shirt-sleeves, for the day was already warming up.

  Laura parked the car just off the road and she and Dame Beatrice got out. A little knot of idlers, probably holidaymakers, was watching the scene from the roadside. Laura and Dame Beatrice joined them. The inspector came up.

  “Nobody to leave the roadsid
e,” he said.

  “Then what are the Guides doing among the local vegetation?” asked Laura.

  Before the inspector could reply, Dame Beatrice presented her official card. His authoritative attitude changed. Having been introduced to Laura, he led them away from the sightseers and said, “My apologies, madam. Only trying to keep the general public off our pitch, although what they think they’re going to see, goodness knows.” He turned to Laura. “The Girl Guides are helping us,” he said. “They stick at a dull job better than boys do, and don’t go skylarking about. They had permission to camp here, so we thought we’d make them useful.”

  “They were not camping here at the time of the incident, of course?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Came from Bristol about an hour ago. They’re helping us look for the murder weapon, although we don’t call it that. I don’t think anything will turn up. If the murderer has any sense, he’ll have taken the weapon away with him and disposed of it elsewhere.”

  “Were the caravans here when it happened?” asked Laura.

  “No, Mrs. Gavin, they are ours. We’re keeping a round-the-clock watch on this part of the valley in case anything emerges.”

  “Including the murderer?”

  “Well, you never know.”

  “I wonder the Guide leader likes the idea of having a camp so near the scene of a pretty horrible crime.”

  “The young lady didn’t know about it until I took her aside and told her. Anyway, we are moving them on this afternoon. Found them a much better site in a farmer’s field at the foot of Cowlass Hill. When they turned up here, I thought it better to let them into the area and make themselves useful, especially as we no longer needed to cordon off the area once the body had been photographed and removed.”

  “Well,” said Laura to Dame Beatrice, as they walked back to the car, “at least we know where it happened.”

  “And, thanks to the courtesy of the police force, we know when. Susan, according to what the Rant sisters told us yesterday, appeared to think that the death had occurred on the morning when she had the news from the shepherd, but Goodfellow had been dead for at least twelve hours when the police doctor examined him.”