The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

know.’

The inspector grinned tolerantly.

‘Well, sir?’

‘Yes, well, look here. On Monday night – after the Sunday when Jim and Rupert had that row – I scouted after old Jim to this place – these woods – and saw him snooping about in the bushes for the – well, I suppose I’d better say the body. Old Jim thought old Rupert had chucked in the towel, you see, and ought to have a decent burial or something.’

‘We’ve heard all this before, sir.’

‘Yes. Well, I watched him –’

‘Where were you exactly?’

Aubrey considered.

‘About here. Yes, here. You can see where my feet and legs scraped the leaves and things on the ground. And old Jim was over there, just behind the sergeant and a bit to the left – my left, sergeant, and your right. That’s it. He searched those bushes. He had a hurricane lamp. That’s how I could see him.’

The sergeant, who had been conning the ground near the bushes in question, straightened himself.

‘Certainly seems feasible, sir,’ he remarked to the inspector. ‘Come and see for yourself. Twigs broken near the ground, soil and leaves scraped as though something has been dragged along – these ridges and grooves might as well be heel-marks as anything else – and the whole place looks disturbed and trampled.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the inspector. ‘Well, sir?’

‘Yes, well, he was looking for old Rupert and old Rupert wasn’t there!’

‘Now, sir!’ the inspector’s voice rang out sharply.

‘Well, I didn’t go and look, of course,’ said Aubrey, ‘but it was pretty obvious. Old Jim looked properly flummoxed. Then he had another go.’

‘If there’s anybody – no, of course there isn’t –’ began the inspector.

‘Anybody to corroborate my yarn?’ said Aubrey, guessing the inspector’s thought. ‘Well, as it happens, there is somebody else who – who knows that Jim was in the woods on Monday night.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Miss Broome. You know, the vicar’s daughter.’

‘The vicar’s daughter?’ repeated the inspector.

‘Yes. She comes here whenever she wants to, of course. Gets in through the wicket gate that opens on to the road. Well, she wanted some fresh air or something, and came for a stroll, and saw me pinch old Jim’s spade, and old Jim thought I was a poacher or something, and hounded me out. He fell down and tore chunks out of his Oxfords on the brambles, you know,’ added Aubrey, circumstantially, ‘and I got clear away while he was picking the thorns out of his eyebrows!’

‘I see, sir.’

At this moment Constable Pearce approached.

‘Oh, I say, Pearce, you know,’ said the boy, ‘awfully sorry I pinched your bike. I don’t think I damaged it.’

‘You’re kindly welcome, sir,’ said the constable handsomely.

‘Pearce,’ said the inspector, ‘you can get back to the station now, and tell the superintendent I’d like a word with him this evening. And I’d be obliged, sir,’ he went on, turning again to Aubrey, ‘if one of the gardeners would lend me a spade.’

‘I’ll go and see about it,’ said Aubrey with alacrity. He grinned wickedly as he walked away, thinking of the trout he had buried.

‘For of course they’ve spotted where the ground has been dug up,’ he said to himself, ‘and are going to have a look-see.’

The inspector seated himself on a fallen log, invited the sergeant to sit beside him, and took out a packet of cigarettes.

‘There’s the hole Redsey dug that night,’ he said, pointing.

‘I suppose you can believe the boy?’ suggested the sergeant laconically.

‘Don’t know. Ought to be able to, at that age! And there’s the young lady’s evidence, you see, although we’ve still got to collect that.’

‘She’s probably been got at,’ said the sergeant dourly.

‘Oh, you can always frighten girls into telling the truth,’ said the inspector easily.

The sergeant, father of three daughters, laughed with sardonic amusement.

‘Frighten them?’ he said bitterly.

‘Besides, she’s the vicar’s daughter,’ the inspector hastily interpolated.

‘Caesar’s wife, in fact,’ said a rich voice just behind them. Both men looked round in time to see Mrs Lestrange Bradley disappearing at a bend in the woodland path.

‘Who’s that?’ asked the inspector, startled.

‘Old party that’s taken that place on the Bossbury road just the other side of Wandles,’ said the sergeant. ‘Queer old girl, by all accounts. Writes books about lunatics, or something.’

‘Doesn’t look like a writer of comic stuff,’ said the inspector, frowning.

‘No, not comic stuff, sir. The real thing. Finds out why they’ve gone dotty and tries to put ’em right again. Does it, too, sometimes, or so I’ve heard.’

‘She’d better not come nosing round where she’s not wanted, anyway,’ said the inspector. ‘Looks suspicious.’

Before they had finished the second cigarette, Aubrey returned with a spade, and the sergeant set to work. The loose soil was soon thrown up, and a hole much the size and shape of that dug by Jim Redsey was made in the soft ground.

‘Nothing here,’ grunted the inspector. ‘And, anyway, we know where the corpse is, although Mr Bidwell’s got some idea there may be another body somewhere.’

‘Half a minute, sir.’ The sergeant thrust in the spade once more. ‘She’s struck on something.’

He dug away manfully. To Aubrey’s amazement a darkish rectangular object was soon disclosed to view. The inspector and the sergeant finished off the job with their hands, and pulled up a suitcase.

Aubrey’s eyes nearly started out of his head. He felt sick, and his heart thumped against his ribs. On the lid, plainly discernible, were Rupert Sethleigh’s initials. It was the suitcase which someone had removed while he had gone for the fish that night.

‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the inspector. ‘What’s this?’

He opened the lid. Inside the case was Aubrey’s stuffed trout. It still looked affronted and resentful, and well it might, for stuck on to its back by the agency of a large pin was a legend written on a sheet of note-paper in pencil, and formed entirely of block capitals. Tersely it ran:

‘A present from Grimsby.’

II

Mrs Bradley was half-way across the lawn by the time the inspector had discovered the suitcase. She had spent about an hour and a half with pencil and paper after Jim Redsey had driven away from the gates of the Stone House, and Felicity, who had entirely forgotten her first unsatisfactory impression of the clever little old woman, sat on the step and affected to read. From time to time, however, her eyes strayed to the outrageously clad figure seated at the table, and what she saw did not encourage her to ask questions. At last Mrs Bradley raised her head and spoke.

‘I don’t see that they will have much choice in the matter, unless some fresh evidence turns up,’ she said.

‘Who?’ asked Felicity, laying down the book and turning round.

‘The police, my dear. I have worked it all out, and, you see, Mr Redsey could have killed his cousin, hidden the body, and managed the alibi for Sunday night. Then, after you and Aubrey returned to your beds on Monday night, he could have dismembered the body in the woods and then taken the limbs and so on into Bossbury on Tuesday morning. He couldn’t have dismembered the body on Tuesday morning, because there was not enough time for that, but he could have taken the remains in a car, unlocked the shop with the key which Binks’s assistant