The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

II

Aubrey himself, much mystified by the discovery of the suitcase containing his trout, wandered back to the Manor House, and went up to his own room. He picked up his bat and was practising a few late cuts – the kind of stroke, he reflected, that looks so pretty at the nets, but which never seems to come off in a match – when the bell rang for tea.

Aubrey, always ready for his meals, hastily washed his hands and brushed his hair. Then he tore down the stairs, jumped the last eight, and nearly knocked Mrs Bradley flying. Before he could so much as apologize, she gripped his arm and hissed into his ear:

‘Go upstairs again, and bring me the false teeth!’

Aubrey stared at her in stark amazement for a full minute. Then he bolted upstairs again, and shortly returned bearing a small cardboard box. This he handed to her.

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘The trove of the dust-heap shall be paid for in – hard cash?’

Aubrey stuck his hands in his pockets and put his head on one side.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me – let me have a bit of a look-in, will you, Mrs Bradley? There’s going to be a lark, isn’t there?’

‘At six o’clock to-morrow night, so early in the morning, then,’ said Mrs Bradley, nodding and cackling and wagging a yellow forefinger at him. ‘Bring Felicity Broome and James Redsey. I must have James Redsey. Understand?’

‘No,’ said Aubrey, laughing. ‘But it sounds the goods all right. I’ll go and tell Felicity directly after tea.’

‘And I myself will invite James Redsey,’ observed Mrs Bradley, ‘and then he won’t have the requisite amount of nerve to refuse the invitation. That young man is afraid of me! He darts behind potted palms at my approach! I’ve seen him do it! But this time he will not escape!’

She proved a true prophet. The spineless James fell an easy victim to an invitation which he spent the rest of the evening cursing and reviling, but which he had not found the courage to refuse when Mrs Bradley delivered it.

After tea, Aubrey went in search of Felicity Broome and found her lying on the grass in the orchard behind the Vicarage garden. She was weeping bitterly. He stood by her side for a moment and looked down upon her gravely, a tall, thin, brown-faced boy, sympathetic and diffident. At last he coughed.

Felicity raised herself and looked round. Slowly she sat up, and, with woman’s instinct, began to tidy her rumpled hair. Her eyelashes were wet and her cheeks flushed with weeping. She was very lovely.

‘I say,’ began Aubrey, abashed at the sight of woman’s tears. He hesitated. ‘I suppose you know those police johnnies have been nosing round our place again?’ he added awkwardly.

Felicity nodded. A sob escaped her, and she clenched her small teeth viciously. Absurd to let a kid like Aubrey see one cry, and all about a man whom one had only known about – about ten weeks!

‘I’m sure they think – they think that Jimsey –’ she managed to observe in a husky voice.

Aubrey nodded gloomily.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so, too,’ he said. ‘And they found that bally suitcase, too, this afternoon.’

‘Found it?’ Felicity stared at him. ‘The inspector was over here asking about it, but I had no idea they’d found it! Where?’

‘Buried in old Jim’s hole, where we had decided to put it ourselves. Comic, isn’t it? But you don’t want to worry, Felicity,’ he added hastily. ‘I mean, they can’t prove anything, you know. Old Jim has been absolutely square with them. Confessed he knocked Rupert out and everything. That ought to count in his favour, you know. If only we could find out who bunked off with that bally suitcase that night, and then buried it like that!’

‘Why?’ Felicity gave her eyes a last dab and tossed back her hair.

‘Well, don’t you see! It must have been the – the real murderer. After all, if old Jim didn’t carve up the corpse – and he swears he didn’t, and the police don’t believe he did, because I asked the inspector and he said they could check up Jim’s alibi for Monday, when they are pretty sure it was done – unless it was done on the Sunday, when, again, Jim couldn’t have done it – well then, it seems to me that Jim couldn’t have killed Rupert, but only stunned him, as Jim himself said; and then Rupert got up, all woozy from the concussion or whatever it was, and somebody else stepped in and had a soft job finishing the poor blighter off.’

Felicity shivered.

‘Yes, but it’s Jimsey they’re after. I know it is! I can see it in that inspector’s eye,’ she said with a gulp.’

‘Look here,’ said Aubrey, seating himself beside her, and grinning at two very young calves who came up to gaze at them, ‘let’s get this straight. Do you or do you not believe that Jim Redsey killed Rupert?’

‘Aubrey! You know I believe what Jim says! But, after all, what does he say? That he thought he’d killed his cousin! He himself thought so!’

Aubrey sighed.

‘Well, anyway, I’m going to find the man who did the – what’s that word the police always use? – yes, the dismembering of the corpse. You know, that stunt’s often done, and people always think it’s to cover up the crime by messing up the identity of the body. But I often think it must be because the murderer can’t stick the sight of the victim when the deed’s done.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Felicity sharply. ‘And look here, Aubrey, I know you’re a clever boy. And brave, too. So, if you want any help, you know I’ll do what I can.’

‘Good man,’ said Aubrey briskly. ‘Now the first job is one you can help me over right away. Will you come with me to see that old dame the mater hates so much?’

‘Mrs Bradley?’

‘Yes, she wants us to go there at six to-morrow.’

‘Yes, I’ll come with you, of course. Did you know she gave Father five hundred pounds?’

‘Five hundred? What for?’

‘The Restoration Fund. But she won’t come to church.’

‘Why not?’

Felicity giggled in spite of herself.

‘She thinks the Church Catechism is immoral.’

‘So do I,’ said Aubrey feelingly. ‘I can’t stick learning stuff by heart. But what’s her objection?’

‘The bit about your betters. She says the village children are led to believe it means the squire and the people who go fox-hunting and the factory owners who pay women about half what they would pay men for doing exactly the same work.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘And the bit about our station in life. She says it’s retrogressive to teach children ideas like that. They just think it means never try to get on and do anything with your life. She says the plutocrats made use of phrases like that to keep the workers down – what used to be called “in their place”, and made them put up with all sorts of bad conditions because it was the – the will of Heaven. She says she knows the Church doesn’t interpret these things like that, but that the Victorians always did. She thinks it’s a frightfully progressive sign that so few intelligent people go to church. She says, if people got up in a political meeting and made the sort of speech that the average clergyman “dignifies by the name of sermon”, most of the audience would walk out, and the vulgar ones would throw tomatoes and make rude noises.’

‘Has your pater heard all this?’

‘Oh, yes. She and Father sit in the garden and argue for hours. I’m glad. It’s a change for the poor darling and it keeps him out of my way. And she often has us over there to meals and things. Dinner chiefly. She’s got a French cook. Father loves going. So do I, really, although she scares me.’

‘Yes, you always feel as though she’s getting at you,’ agreed Aubrey. ‘Have you ever played billiards with her?’

‘No, I don’t play.’

‘She’s hot. Well, we’ll go and see her to-morrow, then. Call for you at a quarter to six. That do?’

Felicity nodded.

‘I shall be ready,’ she said. ‘And now I must go and wash my face. Do I look very horrible?’

She smiled up at him gloriously.

‘You look all right,’ said Aubrey, fired by her loveliness, agonizingly conscious of the inadequacy of his words, but bashfully incapable of adding so much as a syllable to them. He put out a lean brown hand and helped her to her