The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

confident heartiness.

A small, shrivelled, bird-like woman, who might have been thirty-five and who might have been ninety, clad in a blue and sulphur jumper like the plumage of a macaw, came forward with that air of easy condescension which is usually achieved by royalty only, and fixed the vicar with an eagle eye.

‘Am I addressing the spiritual adviser of this parish?’ she enquired.

Her voice was startling in that it belied her whole appearance. Here was no bird-like twitter nor harsh parrot cry, but a mellifluous utterance, rich and full, and curiously, definitely, superlatively attractive.

The Reverend Stephen Broome blushed nervously, and ran a bony finger round the inside of his clerical collar.

‘Er – I suppose so. That is – yes,’ he replied.

‘Then I am compelled to state that in my opinion the west door is a disgrace,’ said Mrs Bradley firmly.

‘We were just talking about it when you knocked,’ said Felicity, quick to defend her father. ‘But the Restoration Fund, all told, only amounts to twenty-nine shillings and sevenpence, and what’s the use of that, I should like to know? It’s all very well for people to complain –’

Mrs Bradley looked at her for the first time. Felicity felt herself blushing beneath the long, cool, slightly ironic gaze.

‘A lovely child,’ said Mrs Bradley at last. ‘And so angry with me.’

She turned again to the vicar.

‘Have it repaired,’ she said. ‘Send me the estimates. I will pay the bill.’

‘Oh, but I’m going to see the bishop about it this very afternoon,’ said the Reverend Stephen helplessly. ‘I mean, it is tremendously kind of you, but –’

‘Oh, I’m solvent,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a hideous cackle. ‘As for going to see Reginald Crowdesley, you might as well save your time, young man. Look here, suppose I give you a cheque for the Restoration Fund, and then you can muddle along in your own way with it. I suppose he is a muddler?’ she added, turning to Felicity again. ‘He looks like one.’

The vicar chuckled appreciatively at this palpable home truth, but Felicity was too angry to reply. She was more angry still when the vicar invited Mrs Bradley to the tennis party on the following afternoon.

‘Then that will make the twelve people you wanted, dear,’ he announced to Felicity in tones of such decided self-congratulation at having solved one of the domestic problems at last that she could do no less than smile and second the invitation.

‘Although how I did it,’ she confided to Aubrey Harringay next day, ‘I don’t know. She’s a most infuriating woman!’

‘Yes. The mater loathes her too,’ said Aubrey, grinning. ‘She’s a psycho-analyst.’

‘A what?’

‘Psycho-analyst. I don’t know what they do, quite. I believe it’s something mad but brainy. The thing was all the rage two or three years ago, and the mater was potty to be in the thick of it, as usual. She collects these new movements. Well, she tried to collect Mrs Bradley, who appears to be rather a brass hat at the business, but the old dame wasn’t having any. Said that what the mater required was not a psycho-analyst but a copper-plated tummy, because all her moods and tempers were simply due to indigestion and not to all these repressions and complexes at all. Of course, the mater was rather fed, and tried to get old Blessington – that’s our solicitor – to start an action for slander or something. But old Blessington only told her not to be an ass, but to think herself lucky she’d had such good advice absolutely free of charge, and advised her to follow it up. So the mater tried the diet stunt, as recommended by Mrs Bradley, and has positively never looked back. Oh, and by the way! Rather a confounded nuisance! I ought to have told you yesterday, but we all went out in the car, and, anyway, I couldn’t see that there was anything to be done. That case of Rupert’s. It’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Felicity, puzzled. ‘But you buried it.’

‘No, as a matter of fact I did not bury it,’ confessed Aubrey. ‘And I wish I knew whether the silly blighter who boned it while I was gone for the fish was playing a practical joke, or whether – Oh, I don’t know. What do you think about it?’

‘As I haven’t the least idea what you are talking about,’ said Felicity, ‘I’m afraid I’m not thinking very clearly about anything. What did happen, then?’

‘I’m telling you. I poked the case and the spade into the bushes while I went up to the house to get something to shove into the hole old Jim made on Monday night, and, when I got back with one of the stuffed fish from the case in the hall, I found the spade all right but the beastly case had gone. I looked again yesterday, and I looked this morning, but there’s no sign of it anywhere.’

‘But I can’t think why you didn’t bury it as we arranged,’ cried Felicity. ‘Now we don’t know what has happened to it!’

‘Well, I thought – the police, you see.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They’ll nose about. Sure to. They may just as easily nose about outside the house as inside it. If they go into the clearing they’ll spot the freshly dug earth. Then they’ll excavate. Well, it wouldn’t do for them to find the blood-stained baggage, would it, with old Rupert’s initials as large as life on the lid? You see, my theory is this: Old Rupert murdered that man, whoever it was, and took the body into Bossbury to cover the tracks. Then Rupert thought it best to disappear. Then I think Jim and Rupert had a scrap in the woods, and Jim won, and Rupert got hairy and told Jim he’d tell the police Jim did it, and Jim got wind up because he couldn’t prove an alibi, and perhaps even helped Rupert a bit and so forth, and there you are.’

‘Yes,’ said Felicity slowly, ‘there I am. And there are you, and you’re a wretched little liar, Aubrey Harringay.’

Aubrey, who topped her by an inch and a half – for he was a tall boy – grinned cheerfully.

‘Of course,’ continued Felicity, knitting her brows and thinking it out, ‘the murdered man can’t be Rupert. I mean, theoretically he is, but actually things like that don’t happen to people one knows. Oh, bother! Here comes somebody looking for a tennis partner. Will you play again, or are you too tired?’

‘I’m too tired to play with Savile,’ said Aubrey decidedly. ‘He’s such a dud at tennis.’ So saying, he walked off.

The sleek-haired Savile, however, was looking neither for a partner nor an opponent. He had come in search of Felicity for another purpose. He approached her with his ingratiating smile.

‘When I was over here last time, Miss Broome,’ he remarked, ‘your father offered to show me his Rabelais.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing special,’ replied Felicity indifferently, ‘except for the French illustrations. I believe they are supposed to be rather fine, but I’ve never seen them. If you want to look at it you can go into the study now. I think Father is there.’

‘Thank you so much,’ said Savile, his sallow face flushing warmly. ‘I will go along, then, if I may.’

‘There are sandwiches and things in the dining-room,’ Felicity went on. ‘Please help yourself. It’s rather a thirsty afternoon, isn’t it?’

‘Greasy bounder,’ remarked Aubrey, returning to her side as soon as Savile was out of sight. ‘I suppose it’s all right to let him go pawing your pater’s stuff about? Chap always looks dirty to me.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Felicity, laughing. ‘And, look here! Why aren’t you helping to amuse my guests instead of hanging about and being rude about people?’

‘Your guests are all right,’ said Aubrey, with youthful optimism. ‘The major is still clinging tight to lovely Lulu – no, honestly, though, talk about “the face that launched a thousand ships” – she is a glorious kid, isn’t she? Young, too, you know. Not more than eighteen. Can’t be. She is bucked at having the old lad on her hands all the afternoon! And the mater is busy having a row with old Jim, and Mrs Bradley is hobnobbing with the doctor, and Margery has gone home to feed her rabbits, but she’s coming back immediately, and I – here am I!’ He put his black head on one side and smiled at her.

‘Yes,’ said Felicity absently. ‘Aubrey, I wish you had buried that suitcase after all. It seems to me that even if the police had found it, they couldn’t have done much with it. But the thought that somebody was watching us all the time in those woods makes me crawl all over. I say, here comes Mrs Bradley. Do talk to her.’

‘Not I,’ said Aubrey, making a bee-line for the gooseberry bushes which bordered the kitchen garden and divided it from the lawn. ‘You do your own dirty work, young child! I’m going to have a squint at your historic dust-