The Crozier Pharaohs (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  After the death of his wife, Dr. Rant had begun the course of alcoholism and drugs which led to his own death. More and more work depended upon Mortlake, especially after the death of Mrs. Subbock, when the villagers refused to be attended by Rant—although the holidaymakers made no distinction between the two doctors except for those who came year after year and got to hear the rumours that Dr. Rant was “past it.”

  “Of course, the end was inevitable, I suppose,” said Bryony, “when he began prescribing drugs for himself and did not give up but, if possible, increased his consumption of alcohol.” He had become more and more tyrannical and unreasonable, and suffered from periods of morbid introspection.

  “Do you happen to know when your father made his will?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, yes. He made a fresh will as soon as our mother’s funeral was over. Everything had been left to her, you see. He was beastly to her, as he was to us, but he knew what was the right thing to do. Unluckily she died before he did, otherwise the three of us could have settled down to quite a happy, peaceful life, because there was no shortage of money, thanks to the rich old lady in Stafford.”

  Bryony referred to the time when the Rant family had lived in the Midlands. The old lady, it seemed, had suffered from chronic bronchitis and often spoke of moving further south. Dr. Rant was in constant attendance on her and persuaded her that to move from the comfortable, warm home she had always known and try to settle down among people she did not know and to have another doctor prescribe and care for her would not be to her advantage.

  She died rather suddenly, and it was then discovered that she had left all her money to Rant. There were mutterings of undue influence among the members of charitable institutions which had hoped to benefit, but there were no relatives to contest the provisions of the will, neither could the charities prove that they had been promised anything.

  However, ugly rumours began to circulate and, although nobody dared say so openly, it began to seep about that the old lady had shuffled off this mortal coil remarkably soon after the will had been signed and witnessed. The witnesses, two of the old lady’s servants, were responsible for this undercover but dangerous hint and Dr. Rant, at that time an able physician although even then a selfish husband and an unsympathetic father, had been forced to leave a rapidly declining practice and bury himself morosely in Abbots Crozier.

  “I was fifteen when we moved south,” said Bryony, “and Morpeth was twelve. We were overjoyed at first to live in the country and so near the sea. We went to boarding-school and loved it. Some of the girls were not so keen and found the rules, especially those relating to being out-of-bounds, irksome and frustrating, but for us it was heaven after living with father and being toads under the harrow. I was heartbroken when he took me away to be a drudge at home. I was eighteen then. Morpeth stayed on for a couple of years, then she was also taken away from school and we had to resign ourselves to the fact that there was no chance for either of us to go to college or train for anything except to be father’s slaves and watch mother’s health getting worse and worse.”

  It came out that Bryony, as the driver of the car, was sent regularly to the chemist’s on behalf of her father. His prescriptions were made up by an elderly pharmacist in Castercombe who had died shortly after the demise of Dr. Rant himself.

  “I used to go by way of the road through the valley,” said Bryony, “until it was blocked for weeks by a big fall of rock. After that, I had to drive down to Abbots Bay and take the coast road and come back the same way. I much preferred it, but, of course, it took a great deal longer and father used to be very impatient with me. In the end, Dr. Mortlake heard him reproaching me in his usual hurtful manner—and, after that, Dr. Mortlake took the prescriptions and told me to go out and enjoy myself. He would hand me the medicine (that’s what father always called it) when he returned. He drives much faster and more confidently than I do, so he was able to cut down on the time and this mollified father, so we all benefited.”

  “Didn’t you ever think of leaving home?” asked Laura.

  “With what? We had no money of our own while father was alive and we weren’t trained for anything. Besides, there was mother. Even after her death, we were still helpless. If Dr. Mortlake had been in a position to buy his own practice, I would have been tempted to accept his offer of marriage, but he was not in such a position. Besides, I knew he would never agree to have Morpeth to live with us, and I certainly would not have been willing to leave her on her own to cope with father.”

  “I never liked Dr. Mortlake,” said Morpeth, “after I knew he wanted to take Bryony away from me. All the same, I sometimes wonder whether we ought not to be very grateful to him.”

  “In what way?” Laura enquired.

  “Oh, after mother’s death he did far more work for the practice than father did. Also, when he was with us—at meals, and so on, you know—father kept his temper in check where we were concerned and that was a very good thing.”

  “A very interesting and informative evening, I thought,” said Dame Beatrice, when the sisters had returned to Crozier Lodge. “What impression did it make on you?”

  “I think Morpeth’s gratitude to Dr. Mortlake may rest upon something more than that his presence at meal-times kept Dr. Rant in check to some extent. What a life those two women seem to have had of it, don’t they? I’m certain, if I had been Bryony, I would have left home, money or no money, job or no job, especially after the mother died.”

  Dame Beatrice nodded, but not in agreement. “Bryony might have taken the risk of breaking away and trying a taste of freedom, but not with Morpeth acting as her Old Man of the Sea. It is clear that they have no intention of ever separating,” she said. “There are several more questions I must ask the sisters, but they can wait until tomorrow.”

  Dame Beatrice rang Crozier Lodge at half-past three the following afternoon, guessing that although Susan and one of the Rants might be out exercising hounds, it was unlikely that the Lodge would be untenanted. Morpeth answered the call.

  “Do come to tea,” she said. “The others will be back by half-past four and I’ve baked some lovely scones and there will be home-made strawberry jam and clotted cream.”

  After tea, Dame Beatrice and Laura were introduced to the hounds. The bitches, including Sekhmet, who was never in purdah, were loose in the garden and responded politely and, in Sekhmet’s case, enthusiastically to the visitors, but these were able to view the dogs only through the meshes of the strong wire fence which surrounded the stable yard. Dame Beatrice did not put her questions until she and Laura were about to take their leave. The two sisters accompanied them to the double gates outside which they had left the car, but Susan remained in the house, as Dame Beatrice had supposed that she would do, as the visitors were not, strictly speaking, her guests.

  “I suppose,” said Dame Beatrice, “that if either of you needed medical attention, you would call in Dr. Mortlake.”

  “Oh, no,” said Morpeth. “He almost counts as a brother, you see. We should have the man from Axehead, but it hasn’t been necessary since father died.”

  “I can see that your father would have been unlikely to avail himself of his partner’s services, particularly as Dr. Mortlake can hardly have approved of certain aspects—”

  “You mean the booze,” said Bryony, with a short laugh. “Even less did he approve of the drugs or that father made up his own prescriptions for them.”

  “He knew what the prescriptions were, of course?”

  “I don’t know, but he was kind enough to relieve me of the job of presenting them at the chemist’s in Castercombe, so I think he was sure to have known something about what father had ordered,” Bryony said. “I used to have to wait, quite often, before the bottle was ready to be handed over. It was a nuisance I was very glad to get rid of.”

  “Did you see the chemist make up the prescriptions?” asked Dame Beatrice.

  “No, he used to do that in his back room, with the hel
p of his chemist’s boy, whom I never met. Apparently, he was an intelligent lad and took a great interest, Dr. Mortlake told us, in the prescriptions, so the chemist, who was getting old, taught him quite a lot, although, of course, he had no proper training or qualifications. It’s my belief, all the same, that he was trusted, in the end, to make up some of the medicines. Of course, nobody was supposed to know that, but rumours do get around.”

  “But they weren’t true,” said Morpeth. “The old chemist would never have dared. You can’t have an unqualified person making up prescriptions. You might kill somebody.”

  “I was only repeating what I had heard. Anyway, the old chemist has gone and Dr. Mortlake said the young man had gone, too. Perhaps he went abroad and practised his skills there. It’s a pity to let talents go to waste.”

  13

  Brother and Sister

  “So now for Susan,” said Dame Beatrice, when they were in the car. “Drive down to the Axehead road, as usual, and then turn left and pull up where the zigzag footpath from Abbots Crozier ends in the middle of Abbots Bay village. There, I fear, we may have some time to wait.”

  “We are to waylay her?”

  “I do not want to visit her in her cottage, but I must see her alone. Before we can get any further in this business, she will have to explain why she left home so early on the day of the first man’s death and what she was doing up to the time that Sekhmet was missing. The police are not satisfied, I am sure, with her continued assertion that she was bathing in the Abbots Bay sea-pool.”

  “If she wasn’t, and refuses to come clean, she’s asking for trouble, but why are you bothering? We didn’t know the first man and we certainly didn’t take to that charlatan Ozymandias. You don’t think Susan is likely to be pinched for the first death, do you?”

  “She could also be apprehended for the second one now that those scalpels have been found, and so could Bryony or Morpeth.”

  “I thought it was pretty clear the scalpels had been taken by that tramp, or whatever he was, who slept in the garage loft.”

  “Or by the poacher, perhaps. As for the man in the loft, he may or may not have stolen the doctor’s bag, but the poacher has identified him as the man Susan found dead at Watersmeet, so he could not have been the murderer of Goodfellow.”

  “The poacher only recognised him on the strength of what could have been a very poor and misleading artist’s impression.”

  “That reminds me. Now that the local police and I are mutually acquainted, I must ask to see the far from poor and misleading pictures their official photographer took of the dead man which were thought to be too gruesome to print in the newspapers.”

  “You don’t think you know who he was, do you?”

  “No. I am hoping that I can find someone to tell me.”

  They sat on for half an hour and expected to wait longer, but Susan, it seemed, had left Crozier Lodge earlier than usual. Laura got out of the driver’s seat and greeted her.

  “Hullo, there!” she said. “We’ve been waiting until we could get you on your own, away from Bryony and Morpeth. Hop into the car and have a word with Dame Beatrice.”

  Dame Beatrice had taken her seat at the back. A bewildered but unexpectedly obedient Susan got in beside her. Her obedience was soon explained.

  “I think I’m in for a spot of bother,” she said. “The police don’t believe that first death was an accident, do they?”

  “The more one knows of Sekhmet, the less one can conceive of a man’s being so much alarmed by her attentions as to yield up his trousers to her and dash into a river to escape from her. Have the police made her acquaintance?”

  “Yes. They’ve been once or twice, a different man each time, and I was asked to go into the house so that her reactions wouldn’t be conditioned by my presence.”

  “In other words, to find out how she would behave herself with strangers when you were not there,” said Laura. “What did the Rants think about these visits?”

  “They don’t know anything about them. That’s what worries me. They must have kept watch and seen Bryony and Morpeth go out with four of the hounds, so that they knew I was alone at the Lodge with nobody to back me up. Of course, all that damn bitch did was to abase herself before them, pile on the charm, roll over, wag her stinking tail and more or less jump through hoops for their benefit. If ever a dog landed its handler and feeder in jug, that dog is blasted Sekhmet and that handler and feeder is me. Besides, now this second death—this obvious murder—has come about, the police are more on their toes than ever.”

  “But you couldn’t have any connection with the murder in the valley,” said Laura. “It took place in the late evening. You would have been back in your cottage, not roaming the moor seeking whom you might devour.”

  “That’s all you know,” said Susan. “I don’t always go straight home from the Lodge. I’m not liked in the village but I do go quite often to the Crozier Arms. I’ve got my bit of money, and I like my pint and I don’t see why unfriendliness should do me out of it.”

  “I wonder you don’t patronise a pub down here in Abbots Bay,” said Laura.

  “Chance would be a fine thing. The chairman of the licensing justices owns both the big hotels here, and he sees to it that there’s no pub, as such, in the place. Well, I’m not the type to feel at home in a hotel bar. I stink of dog, I suppose, and my clothes aren’t exactly haute couture. At the Crozier Arms, they’re not particular what you look or smell like, so long as you can pay your shot. I might be more popular there if I could stand my round, but, for one thing, I can’t afford it and, for another, one pint is my limit. Sorry! I’m talking too much.”

  “Far from that,” said Dame Beatrice. “In fact, I hope that you will be prepared to tell us a great deal more.”

  “Such as what?” Susan’s mood, which had been expansive although slightly melancholy, changed. She became wary and suspicious.

  Dame Beatrice sensed the change. She said gently, “You need help. You have admitted that, but I cannot and I will not work in the dark. Where were you on the evening of Goodfellow’s death?”

  “I told you. I was in the Crozier Arms.”

  “And after that?”

  “Oh, well, I visited a friend.”

  “The same friend as you visited on the morning of the Watersmeet death?”

  Susan’s expression turned to one of mulish obstinacy.

  “How much do you know?—not that you’ll tell me,” she said.

  “Certainly I will tell you. All that I know is that you did not go for a bathe that morning. The rest is surmise.”

  “Oh, yes? Well, that isn’t much help to you because you wouldn’t be right and I’m still not saying anything.”

  “Not even if I mention a poacher named Adams?”

  “The Rants pay for the rabbits and he’s never been convicted for poaching or stealing or anything else.”

  “And, so far, he has not been identified as your brother.”

  “How did you find that out?” Susan blurted out the words in alarmed surprise.

  “I mentioned that it was surmise, but my guesses are always based upon deduction, which is another way of saying that I am trained and experienced in putting two and two together. You may trust me. I know you have killed nobody.”

  “Why?”

  “Call it instinct.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Susan, rousing herself as though she had been heartened, as indeed she had. “I know your reputation for catching criminals. You know who the Crozier murderer is, don’t you?”

  “Do you?” asked Laura, when Susan, having told them a story which was an appendix to what they already knew, had got out of the car and gone home.

  “Do I what?”

  “Know who the murderer is.”

  “So would you if you thought over all that we have been told, but, as usual, it is a question of proof, as Nicholas Blake has put it. However, I hope to learn from a little experiment I am going to make with the assista
nce of those Watersmeet photographs which were not published in the newspapers. Meanwhile, think of what we have been told.”

  “Does Susan’s story, the one she has just told us, come into it?”

  “I think not, except that Dr. Rant died and that some time after his death, when the Rant sisters decided to breed Pharaohs, Susan became kennel-maid to Sekhmet and the cherished hounds.”

  “You said she was not the murderer, but you mention Dr. Rant. You don’t mean that Dr. Rant was also murdered, do you?”

  “If he was not, my whole theory falls to the ground.”

  Laura did not voice the astonishment she felt, but, as she drove homewards, she turned the conversation on to the story they had heard from Susan. They had known that she had been adopted by the vicar of Axehead and the twin villages of Abbots Crozier and Abbots Bay, and that her tiny income came from interest on the money he had left her in his will. They also knew that she remembered a brother. In the account she had just given them, she said that she had lost track of him after she became a member of the vicar’s household, for, as a child, she was not allowed to write to him and when she was old enough to decide such matters for herself, she found that the home where they had been fostered together had been vacated and she could find nobody who could tell her where the inmates had gone. She did not pursue her enquiries very far, for she reasoned that her brother would be old enough to be at work and could be anywhere in the British Isles or even in Canada or Australia or some other part of the globe. In any case, they had never, as children, been very close friends, so, having made some attempt to trace him and failed, she soon gave up the quest and, after the deaths of her adoptive parents, whose surname she had taken, she occupied herself by taking seasonal jobs in the hotels of Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier and in such occupations as baby-sitting to families in Axehead, where there was a repertory theatre and a dance hall, or as an auxiliary worker in the Axehead hospital. She had also worked in the kennels of the moorland hunt and, later, for a veterinary surgeon in Castercombe, so when she discovered that the Rant sisters were keeping and occasionally breeding Pharaoh hounds, she had found, in her own words, “my life’s work and a couple of good friends, if only they would have me.”