Authors: Gladys Mitchell
‘I have thought out two possible explanations,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘either of which will cover the facts as we know them. It may be that Mountjoy was urgently in need of money. Eleanor Bing possessed a fairly comfortable little fortune, and the other woman may have intended to carry out the tragicomedy of marrying Eleanor, secure in the certainty that her unfortunate dupe’s fear of ridicule would result in her keeping Mountjoy’s sex a secret.’
The Chief Constable slowly nodded, while the inspector made rapid notes.
‘The other explanation,’ went on Mrs Bradley, ‘may sound to you extraordinary, but it is more probably the correct one. Have you heard of sexual perversion?’
The Chief Constable nodded.
‘Not a pleasant subject,’ he said briefly.
‘I do not propose to discuss it,’ Mrs Bradley assured him, ‘but I do suggest to you that Mountjoy may have formed a very real and, for the time
being, a very strong attachment to Eleanor Bing.’
‘It is a possibility, of course,’ said the Chief Constable in a tone which proved that he did not consider it anything of the kind.
‘Whatever happened,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, ‘one thing must be regarded as certain. In some way or another Eleanor Bing soon discovered the truth about her lover.’
The inspector slapped his knee.
‘Motive!’ he almost shouted. ‘Motive for the murder! Revenge on the person who had deceived her!’
‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Bradley placidly. ‘That’s what I should have said—until this morning.’
There followed a short but pregnant silence. Then the Chief Constable said:
‘That is certainly a very ingenious theory, Mrs Bradley. It certainly provides a motive, and a strong motive for the crime.’
Mrs Bradley smiled in her reptilian manner.
‘Did they tell you about the watch?’ she asked.
‘The watch?’
‘The watch belonging to Mountjoy, which was discovered by me at the bottom of the washstand jug.’
‘What about the watch, Mrs Bradley!’ The Chief Constable looked puzzled.
‘Drowned watch, drowned woman,’ said Mrs Bradley cryptically. ‘Just another little proof that Mountjoy was murdered and did not die as the result
of an accident.’ She cackled with grim, sardonic amusement, and then added: ‘I think that concludes my voluntary statement, gentlemen.’
‘Which means that if we want any further information, we must ask for it,’ chuckled the Chief Constable. ‘Well, thank you for your very enlightening remarks, Mrs Bradley. Now, just one question. Will you tell us exactly why you took Miss Clark into your bedroom last night? I gather, of course, that you thought someone might make an attempt on her life, but what gave you that impression? For I presume it was not mere guesswork or scare-mongering on your part.’
‘Oh, I had my reasons,’ Mrs Bradley answered. She stared absent-mindedly out of the window for a little while, and then turned basilisk eyes on the police officers.
‘I knew that Eleanor would kill the girl if she could,’ she announced calmly.
‘But how could you know such a thing?’ cried the Chief Constable. ‘That is what we would like to know. What put the thought into your head?’
‘Well, for one thing, Eleanor is quite mad, you know,’ said Mrs Bradley kindly. ‘And mad people do such queer things, don’t you think?’
The Chief Constable moved restlessly.
‘I think you are wrong. I have talked with Miss Bing this morning, and I never saw anyone who appeared more entirely in possession of all her mental faculties,’ he said coldly.
‘Well, then I need not say any more,’ Mrs Bradley
pointed out. ‘I thought you wanted to know why I took Dorothy to sleep in my room. That is all.’
‘You say that you knew Eleanor Bing would make an attempt on her life?’
‘Exactly,’ Mrs Bradley beamed on him as upon a favourite pupil. The inspector grinned behind his hand.
‘And I think the discovery of that dummy figure with its head staved in, and a heavy poker lying near, justified my assumptions,’ she added.
The inspector hitched his shoulders irritably.
‘I suggest that it is quite as likely you went in and did the damage yourself,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s not an impossible theory, is it?’
Mrs Bradley cackled gleefully.
‘My word!’ she said happily. ‘That is a very clever thought of yours, now, isn’t it! Of course I might! I never thought of that! But still, you know, there was the clock. You haven’t heard about the clock yet.’
The inspector turned an unfortunately audible expletive into a hacking cough, and avoided his chief’s eye.
Mrs Bradley, however, was perfectly serious.
‘I didn’t tell you how she smashed the clock,’ she said. ‘You’d like to hear about the clock, wouldn’t you?’
‘What clock?’ The Chief Constable was becoming restive again.
‘The Freudian clock. Dorothy’s clock,’ explained Mrs Bradley, waving her hands with what was intended to be an explanatory gesture.
‘I am afraid I don’t understand.’ The Chief Constable was obviously becoming bored.
‘No?’ Mrs Bradley, more bird-like than ever, put her head on one side and pursed her little beaky mouth at him. ‘You wouldn’t. But you may take my word for it. Smashed clock, smashed woman. My dear man, she positively flung it on the ground when she saw them kissing! The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen! I shall incorporate the incident in my
Handbook of Psycho-Analysis.
Beautiful! Beautiful! The incident, I mean, not my book, although the latter will be half price to police officials, post free. Signed copies one guinea extra. Can I put your name down?’
She smiled in a terrifyingly mirthless way, and the Chief Constable rose.
‘I think we are wasting time, madam,’ he said shortly, going to the door and holding it open. ‘I think, inspector,’ he added, turning his head towards his subordinate, who had also risen and was finding it hard work to keep his countenance, ‘that we had better apply for a warrant to search the house. I like to trust the evidence of my own eyes.’
‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’ sighed Mrs Bradley ecstatically, as she passed out of the room. But whether she was referring to the Chief Constable’s eyes, or to something else, it is difficult to say.
When the door had closed behind her, the Chief Constable stared frowningly out of the window for a moment, and then turned briskly to the inspector.
‘Let’s go and have some food,’ he suggested. ‘That woman unnerves me.’
‘You don’t really think she placed the poker there after she herself had smashed in the dummy’s mask, do you?’ asked the inspector.
‘Well, I cannot say until you have the finger-prints from that poker. We might learn something from them, although they are like figures, you know—a clever criminal can do almost anything with them. Still, we’ll see whose they are before we start to generalize about them. If they do turn out to be Mrs Bradley’s she had better look out for herself. Oh, and that is another thing. We ought, I think, to have a further interview with Miss Eleanor. That drowning business was certainly not accidental, because, apart from the rather conclusive bruises on her neck, surely anybody who felt faint would at least have the ordinary common sense to turn away from a bath full of water before she swooned; and if it was attempted suicide—well, it was a very queer way of going about the business. It would require some hardihood, you know, to bend over the side of a bath and hold your head under water until you were drowned. Besides, the bruises. The bruises ought to be conclusive.’
‘Why should she attempt to commit suicide, anyway?’ asked the inspector.
‘True. There is that point to be considered. That is partly why I want you to search the house, as a matter of fact. Papers, letters, diaries—all sorts of things like that might give us a line to follow up. You see, the bother with people of this class is that
you can’t bully them as you would the cottagers. They are too well-educated, and too well-balanced, and they know that the police are hedged in and hampered and red-taped until it is a wonder we can do any work at all in the detection of criminals. Oh, it’s silly! Silly! I know they know all about it, and I know they won’t tell us anything until you arrest somebody on suspicion—and even that may not open their mouths. Look at this Bradley woman, for example. She may decide to make away with both these other young women, and be planning to kill a few more people for all we know.’ He laughed good-humouredly, but the inspector scowled.
‘I don’t like the look nor the sound of that Mrs Bradley,’ he said. ‘And, unless I’m much mistaken, she is a very cool customer and needs watching. That statement of hers! A pack of lies from beginning to end, I expect. Why else did she give it to us?’
‘Oh, come, come!’ said the Chief Constable, smiling, ‘we can’t say that she’s untruthful. At least, not so far as we know.’
‘Oh, everybody is untruthful nowadays,’ the inspector rejoined gloomily.
‘What about the “Blue Boar” for lunch?’ said the Chief Constable soothingly.
Mrs Bradley found Carstairs in the orchard smoking his pipe.
‘Well,’ he said, as she joined him under the trees, ‘is the inquisition over?’
‘The poor things don’t know what to believe and what to scoff at as incredible. They haven’t
the least idea as to what is germane to their case, and what they can safely leave out. And they are now having bets with one another as to whether Eleanor was really a killer and tried to commit suicide because she knew she was going to be found out—or because she was overtaken by remorse; or whether a beneficent Providence nearly laid her low in her moment of supreme triumph; or whether I tried to kill her after having carefully faked evidence against her with masked dummies and pokers and incantations and moonlight flittings; or whether——’
Carstairs, laughing, interrupted her.
‘I gather you are not greatly impressed by our guardians of the law,’ he said.
‘Oh, I dare say they are well enough,’ answered Mrs Bradley, shrugging her shoulders. ‘How they hate me, though! It is most astonishing. Besides, I told the truth, so far as I knew it.’
She cackled harshly.
‘I am afraid this is not one of your lucky days,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘Who is the next victim of the inquisition?’
‘I don’t know. You, I should think. Although you are
persona grata
with the Chief Constable, aren’t you?’
‘I am his little ewe Iamb,’ said Carstairs modestly. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I could murder the whole lot of you, and, although I should be the only one left alive, Sir Joseph would think it so unfriendly to arrest me that I should get off scot free. As a matter of fact, I think he is a very clever man.’
‘Really?’ murmured Mrs Bradley. ‘That is what I am afraid of!’
‘Oh, dear! What a nuisance! Here comes Alastair,’ interrupted Carstairs.
‘Feeling much better,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘What hypocrites these parents are!’
Alastair began to speak long before he reached them.
‘The Police Are Continuing Their Investigation,’ he said, with capital letters in his voice. ‘I understand that they are going to take all our finger-prints.’
‘And what are they going to do with them?’ asked Carstairs, for the sake of saying something.
‘I don’t know in the least what they intend to do, either with the prints, or in any other way,’ Alastair replied, ‘but I am going to ask them to let me feel their bumps.’
At which statement Mrs Bradley was so overcome by a fit of choking that she was obliged to return to the house for a glass of water, leaving the two men alone.
As soon as she was out of hearing, Alastair Bing came very close to Carstairs, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur that was barely audible.
‘I can’t stand that woman!’ he said. ‘Do you know what I think? I think she tried to kill poor Eleanor! I do really! After all, why not? She looks a tigress, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?’
His bony forefinger found Carstairs’ short ribs and made him wince.
‘My dear Bing! My dear fellow!’ he exclaimed,
edging a little farther away. ‘You must not say things like that to me. Mrs Bradley is not a very beautiful or even a very prepossessing looking woman, I admit, but one can scarcely call her a murderer on such slight grounds as those which her personal appearance affords. You really must not make these mischievous statements, you know. Of course, I would not dream of repeating them, but there are others who would, and you might easily damage the reputation of some perfectly innocent person.’
‘But somebody tried to kill Eleanor,’ Alastair Bing insisted, clutching Carstairs by the arm. ‘I know that. She was a perfectly normal, healthy girl. Why should she be accidentally drowned? Why should she attempt to commit suicide? They are silly ideas, both of them. Utterly silly. And there’s my book on
The Roman Antiquities of Dorset
. Who else could have looked up my references for me? Who would have done the typing? Who would have read the proofs and written to the publishers? It’s all very well to talk about fainting fits and attempted suicides, but I’ve seen the bruises on her neck. And I want the murderer found. Do you hear! I want him found!’
He began to weep—a maudlin old man’s tears. Carstairs comforted him as best he could, and, when he recovered himself, suggested that they should return to the house.
Here they found an interesting ceremony in progress. The inspector, assisted by a detective-sergeant, for the Chief Constable had not returned
to Chaynings after lunch, was collecting fingerprints.
‘Don’t do the servants if you can avoid it,’ said Dorothy to the police officials as Alastair Bing and Carstairs came in. ‘If you do, poor Mr Bing won’t have a servant in the place next week.’
The proceedings were being watched with a certain gloomy interest by the onlookers, who included Bertie Philipson and Mrs Bradley.
‘They’ve done everybody’s now except yours, Father, and Mr Carstairs,’ said Garde, looking attentively at the fingers of his own large brown hands, ‘so come along. Roll up. No charge is being made. All the fun of the fair!’
The sergeant glanced at Carstairs’ hands and shook his head.
‘I shan’t need to take yours, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a thumb-print that’s clearest on the poker, and I can tell at a glance that your thumbs, with the whirl almost in the centre, are nothing like the print I’ve taken, nothing at all. I understand, sir,’ he went on, turning to the inspector, ‘that there’s a young lady in bed upstairs whose prints we haven’t taken, and that it is just possible she was the last person to handle that poker. Could we——’