The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

The public, however, was becoming restless. Local magnates were writing letters to the County Times and the Bossbury Herald. The superintendent had given up clicking his tongue sympathetically every time Grindy reported his complete lack of progress, and was beginning to avoid his comrade’s eye and mutter remarks concerning ‘lack of initiative in making an arrest’, and ‘doing something to shut the mouths of fatheads who didn’t realize what the police were up against’, and – even less encouraging to a conscientious police officer who had won his present position through efficiency, keenness, hard work, and scrupulously just dealing – ‘no good being a thin-skinned sissy when it came to a clear case of murder. Make an arrest and stick to your guns!’

Grindy, however, was staunch to his own opinion. In his heart of hearts he felt that the case against James Redsey had broken down. A man of few words, he contented himself with grunts of disagreement with the superintendent’s opinions, and occasionally by the terse statement that he was damned if he would arrest a man on assumptions that could be blown to bits before they ever reached the ears of a grand jury. Assumptions were not facts. It was facts he was after.

The superintendent lost his temper, and said some hard things. It was when Grindy was walking from Bossbury into Wandles Parva to relieve his feelings by some brisk physical exercise, and, incidentally, to find out whether the gardener Willows had a good and sufficient alibi for the evening and night in question, that he encountered Mrs Bradley.

‘Ah, inspector,’ she said. ‘If you will come to my house – you know it, don’t you? – the Stone House, just along the road there – I will give you a list of persons, one of whom is the murderer of Rupert Sethleigh – that is, supposing always that Rupert Sethleigh is dead. The last is a theory not yet proved satisfactorily, I believe.’

The inspector treated her to a wintry smile.

‘If you’re pulling my leg, madam,’ he said, ‘my advice is for you to leave off. I don’t feel much like joking about this murder, and that’s a fact.’

‘Why don’t you arrest James Redsey? Everybody thinks he killed his cousin, you know.’

‘Then everybody is a fool, even if it includes yourself, madam,’ retorted the inspector rudely.

Mrs Bradley put out her hand and grasped the inspector’s massive paw.

‘A Daniel come to judgment!’ she observed, with a little squeal of laughter which made the stolid officer stare at her in perplexity.

‘Have you really got hold of anything, madam?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. But I have hopes! Such hopes!’ She cackled happily.

The inspector saluted and strode on. He then shook his head sadly. Poor old girl! She looked like being a case for a mental home before long. Harmless, though, he supposed. He came to the wicket gate leading into the mazes of the Manor Woods, and took the main path which led to the clearing. He thought he might as well have one more look at that damned Stone! . . . And there was that skull. Funny it should have disappeared. Wright must have moved it himself for a joke. . . .

Mrs Bradley had barely turned into the lane which led to her own front gate when she heard footsteps behind her. It was Aubrey Harringay, taking his mother’s darlings, the stout Marie and the snuffling Antoinette, out for a short walk.

‘I refuse,’ said Mrs Bradley with great decision, ‘to be pestered with those abortions. Take them away, little boy.’

Aubrey grinned, and promptly hitched the end of the lead to Mrs Bradley’s front gate. ‘They’ll be all right there for a minute,’ he said. ‘Loathsome little brutes! Old Jim hoofed Antoinette this morning. He’s in the mater’s black books in consequence. I wish she’d buy a decent dog – or let me have one. I had the offer of a four-months’ Great Dane puppy for eight and six last year, and she jolly well turned the deal down. Said it would probably eat these two hog-puddings by mistake.’ He cast a jaundiced look at the apples of his mother’s eyes as they sprawled obscenely in the dust and lolled their tongues out.

‘Hog-puddings,’ said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully, ‘reminds me of something. Did Rupert Sethleigh have his flannels made by a tailor or did he buy them ready-made?’

‘His whites would be tailored, of course, but I dare-say he bought a couple of pairs of grey ones from an outfitter’s.’

‘You don’t know for certain, do you? Would your mother know?’

‘I could find out. I’ll go and dig into his wardrobe. Will that do?’

‘I don’t know. I can tell you that when you bring me the result of your findings.’

‘It’s a queer thing,’ said Aubrey thoughtfully, ‘about grey flannel bags. A chap can almost always wear another chap’s greys. I suppose they are built a bit slackly or something. I’ve worn old Rupert’s, which are too big in the seat; I’ve worn old Jim’s, which are too big everywhere; I’ve bagged chaps’ at school when I couldn’t find my own; and chaps have bagged mine and worn ’em. And yet, somehow, they seem to look much about the same when you’ve got ’em on.’

‘A point,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘which I had imagined might possibly be raised by someone other than myself, a point which I had hoped might be raised and a point which I intend to bring to the immediate notice of Inspector Grindy, who is a peculiarly worthy man and deserves a little preferential treatment.’

‘A good chap,’ said Aubrey earnestly. ‘Hundreds of chaps in his place would have arrested old Jim ages ago, but old Grindy hangs on. A dashed noble fellow, if you ask me.’

‘To-morrow,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘I want you to take me up to the top of the old Observation Tower. I want to have a look round. Take the Armenian atrocities away now. I’m going to pay a call on the Saviles, and another on Dr Barnes. No, you can’t come, but I shall enjoy your company to-morrow, dear child. Oh, and I want to see the vicar. Go round that way home, there’s a sweet fellow, and ask him to spare me five minutes in three-quarters of an hour’s time. Thank you so much.’

Savile was in the back garden again when Mrs Bradley arrived. To her amazement, he was standing at the head of a small hole with an open book in his hand, an expression of unctuous piety upon his sallow face and a clerical collar round his neck.

Wright put his head out of the kitchen door just as Mrs Bradley approached. He gazed at his friend in amazement.

‘What the devil are you doing now?’ he cried.

Savile gazed at him benignly.

‘I am interring Lulu’s canary,’ he said solemnly. ‘It has passed away.’

‘You’re a blasphemous idiot!’ said Wright, half angry at the mockery, half tickled by the absurdity of the scene. ‘What’s that book?’

Savile glanced at the volume in his hand.

‘It is called Hints to Bird-Lovers,’ he replied.

Mrs Bradley pursed up her lips until she looked like a bird herself. Then she turned on her heel and retraced her steps. Wright waved his hand in a semi-derisive farewell. Savile, absorbed in his task, had not known of her approach, and did not hear the latch of the garden gate announcing her departure.

Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue.

Dr Barnes was dressing the wound of a farm labourer who had cut himself on a scythe, and Mrs Bradley was obliged to wait in the outer room until he had finished.

‘Well, what is it this time?’ asked the doctor, in his full-bodied, loud-voiced, robustly cheerful way.

‘Nothing much,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Can you give me something for a slight attack of indigestion?’

‘You haven’t got indigestion!’

‘No, I haven’t, I am thankful to say. But my new girl has – or else it’s homesickness. I do hope and trust,’ she continued piously, ‘that it is indigestion, for she really is rather a treasure. But perhaps it is homesickness, because she read me bits out of one of the family letters yesterday. Her sister has a new baby and she hasn’t seen it, and the grandfather already plays bears on the floor to amuse it, and the baby really seems pleased. Isn’t that charming?’ And she grinned hideously at him.

The doctor shot some bismuth tablets into a piece of paper, sealed up the ends, and scribbled on the outside with his fountain-pen.

‘Well, I can safely say I shall never play bears on the floor to delight my grandchildren,’ he said, handing her the small neat package. ‘Tell her to take them as the directions suggest, and to drink some hot water every morning. I never amused Margery in any such ponderously inane fashion – I don’t