The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

Savile stepped carefully over him and disappeared into the house. Lulu rolled gracefully back into the hammock and curled herself up like a sleek yellow cat. Mrs Bradley, smiling gently, advanced towards Cleaver Wright. Wright grinned.

‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘You ought to pay, really. Look. Isn’t that beautiful?’

Mrs Bradley drew out a small reading-glass and surveyed the returning Savile. He was clad effectively and with great simplicity in a loin-cloth. His satin skin glistened with oil. Without a look or a word he trotted across to the hammock, gathered up the recumbent form of Lulu with as much ease as he would have handled a kitten, and carried her across the garden to his former position in the centre of the path.

‘Now then,’ said Wright. ‘Up with her. That’s the ticket. Can you keep her there a second?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Savile, who, to Mrs Bradley’s surprise, appeared to find little difficulty in holding Lulu clear above his head on outstretched arms. The muscles of his back and shoulders stood out like cords under the beautiful, creamy skin. It was a delight to look upon such perfect muscular development.

Wright picked up a piece of charcoal.

II

‘Well,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘I never would have believed it!’

‘No,’ agreed Wright, putting finishing touches to his sketch. ‘A bit startling, isn’t it? He looks such a worm in his clothes. But take them away, and, damn it, the chap’s a pocket Hercules. Most surprising fellow.’

He held the drawing at arm’s length and studied it thoughtfully.

‘Not too bad,’ he said at last. ‘Two guineas. Want it?’

‘Yes, if you’ll take me in and show me the other things you have done, young man,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I have never seen a studio. It will be an experience for me. And at my age’ – she glanced at him out of the corner of a beady black eye – ‘one embraces new experiences with avidity, because there will come a time –’ She broke off and cackled – a harsh, unlovely sound. Wright looked pained. His bright, intensely blue eyes sought hers sombrely.

‘Oh, come now, auntie –’

‘Beatrice,’ supplied Mrs Bradley promptly.

‘Thank you, Beatrice. Ah, come now, Auntie Beatrice! Don’t talk like that. Come in quick, before you cause me to burst into tears. Look see! This is my dear little room.’

Mrs Bradley followed him into his studio. The first thing which took her eye was a large plan of a human skeleton, carefully annotated in small neat script and covered with red-ink dotted lines. She examined this plan with great interest.

‘Most informative,’ she said at last, after giving it a prolonged scrutiny.

‘Yes. Old Savile stuck that up and wrote the book of words. Thinks it helps him to draw pictures of gods and wood-nymphs! Heaven knows why. I find the thing rather revolting.’

He turned the elaborate chart with its face to the wall, and led her over to a stack of canvases.

‘And the model of Rupert Sethleigh’s head,’ said Mrs Bradley, when she had examined several oil-paintings and Wright had directed her attention to a small clay figure of a Roman gladiator. ‘Did you model that in here?’

‘That? Oh, yes. Funny business, that, you know. Deuce knows what happened to that skull. You heard, I suppose, that when the police johnnies broke up my model to get the skull out, they found a bally coconut inside? Most astounding! Well, it astounded me, anyhow! Most extraordinary thing. I couldn’t believe it. Thought the inspector was pulling my leg at first. But no!’

‘The silly part was,’ said Savile, who had entered behind them, and was once again the sleek-haired, sallow- complexioned, rather unpleasant person Mrs Bradley had met at Felicity’s tennis-party, ‘that the coconut itself was the one which our young friend –’

A sudden crash drowned the rest of his sentence.

‘Damn!’ said Cleaver Wright, picking up a dummy figure which had been seated in a rakish attitude on top of a tall pedestal. ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Bradley, for the wicked word, but I’ve broked my poor dolly.’ He stroked the head of the repulsive object tenderly.

Mrs Bradley smiled, and involuntarily Cleaver Wright squirmed. He had seen the same gentle, anticipatory, patient smile on the face of an alligator in the London Zoological Gardens. It was a smile of quiet relish. It was the smile of the Chinese executioner. In spite of the afternoon’s warmth, Wright found himself shivering. He changed the subject hastily, and laid the dummy down.

‘I suppose the police have pretty well made up their minds that poor old Redsey killed his brute of a cousin?’ he asked.

Mrs Bradley raised her sparse, black brows.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you should think that.’

‘Oh, one reads the papers,’ said Wright carelessly. ‘That’s all. Still, one is very glad one has a complete alibi, of course,’ he added, grinning wickedly, ‘as one is known to have disliked the chap oneself.’

‘A complete alibi?’ Mrs Bradley grimaced. ‘Then you’ve more than I have, young man. If the police came and asked me where I was on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd, I should be compelled to tell them that I was alone in the house from four-thirty until five minutes past eleven; that nobody called during that time; and that, had the spirit so moved me – which, in confidence, young man, I may inform you it did not! – I could have gone out and killed Rupert Sethleigh without a soul being any the wiser!’

She hooted with owl-like amusement. Cleaver Wright grinned.

‘Well, I’m better off than you,’ he said. ‘I went to the “Queen’s Head” for a nightcap, and got embroiled in a row with a great oaf of a farmer called Galloway. Didn’t finish the scrap until nearly closing-time. Choice, wasn’t it?’

‘Did you get hurt?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

‘Got pretty badly knocked about,’ said Wright carelessly. ‘Never mind.’ He grinned again.

‘And you bear Mr Galloway no malice?’ said Mrs Bradley musingly. ‘That is so nice, I think. It is what they call the true sporting feeling, isn’t it? They teach it at the Public Schools now, don’t they?’

Wright glared at her suspiciously. Women, especially ancient dames like this one, were fools, he knew. Yet was it possible – ? But Mrs Bradley’s wrinkled yellow face was mild and sweet as that of a grandmother – which, owing to the extreme distaste displayed by her only son for the whole female sex, she certainly was not! – and Wright was forced to the conclusion that – alas for the progress of feminism! – it was possible! The woman was an idiot. Why had he shivered when she smiled?

He grunted and moved towards the door. Mrs Bradley followed him, but on the way she paused at some shelves of books. On top of the bookcase was a fine array of silver sports trophies.

‘Old Savile’s, mostly,’ said Wright.

Mrs Bradley drew out her reading-glass and scanned the engraved inscriptions closely.

‘But you have two,’ she said, with a beam of senile futility. ‘How very nice! What did you do to win such lovely cups? Oh, and there’s a belt! How extremely amusing. What are they for?’

Wright shrugged his shoulders.

‘Oh, for boxing,’ he said carelessly. ‘About the only thing I’m any good at in the sports line.’

‘They are pretty things,’ said Mrs Bradley, even more fatuously than before. ‘You must be clever!’

When she had gone, Wright pulled on an old pair of boxing-gloves, made one or two preliminary sparring movements, and then, by way of relieving his feelings, measured the distance with his left hand and then with his powerful right he split a panel of the studio door from top to bottom.

III

Mrs Bradley entered the bar of the ‘Queen’s Head’ in some trepidation. It is not often that respectable elderly ladies, expensively, albeit hideously, clad in magenta silk dress, summer coat to match, large black picture hat (quite ludicrously unbecoming, the last-named, to Mrs Bradley’s beaky bird-like profile and sharp black eyes), walk into the bar of a public house. At the ‘Queen’s Head’ such an occurrence was absolutely unknown.

Wandles Parva (or those three-quarters of it which could command the entrance to the house of refreshment from the cover and vantage-point of the upstairs bedroom window) was keenly interested.

‘Be going to ask Billy Bondy for a subscription for the church, like?’

‘What, she? Never you need think so! Her don’t never go into church without it might be on a weekday like