The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

The inspector grinned.

‘Would you, sir,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Well, never mind about that. Whoever did it, it didn’t help us. Next there was blood on the Stone. Now it seems to have occurred to this Mrs Bradley – although who gave her permission to wander over the grounds at will, I don’t know – but, anyway, she has decided there was not enough blood on that Stone to indicate that the murder was done there. Well, we had been inclined to think that from the beginning. We looked about to give ourselves other ideas. Spotted the hockey shed over Kerslake’s field. Investigated. Floor covered with blood. Quite promising! Took samples for testing. Turns out it’s a regular poachers’ rendezvous, and the blood is rabbits’ blood. Then, after days and days of picking up dead matches, and coughing like Sherlock Holmes, and finding me pairs of the vicars’ trousers that don’t mean anything, but are simply where he leaned over a newly painted fence to get a kid’s ball, this Mrs Bradley also finds the shed, and spots the blood. Sends the boy chasing off to find me, and hands me her Important Discovery’ – the inspector’s voice was harsh with emotion – ‘of the spot where the murder was committed! When, after a consultation with the super here, I tell her the truth about the bloodstains, instead of giving her the tip to keep her nose out of things which don’t concern her, what does she do?’ He glared ferociously, kicked an inoffensive buttercup out of existence, and answered his own question with a belligerent scowl. ‘Grins in my face and thanks me so much for saving her the time and trouble of testing the bloodstains for herself. Had the infernal damned cheek to tell me she herself had thought it couldn’t be Sethleigh’s blood, and got off a bright bit about – now, what was it she said? – oh, ah! – “the elimination of unnecessary, and, in fact, dangerous matter” – and, after telling me things about my inside that makes me go all hot to remember, she goes off cackling to herself as though she’d made a joke or laid an egg or something!’

CHAPTER XVII

The Stone of Sacrifice

‘HEADS!’ shrieked Aubrey Harringay, lifting a full toss from George Willows high into the deep blue of the summer sky.

Mrs Bradley smiled serenely, and, timing it nicely, brought off a neat catch. She flicked the ball back to Willows and walked up to the nets.

‘Come out of that a moment,’ she said, addressing the batsman. ‘I want you to accompany me into the woods.’

It was early in the afternoon. Mrs Bradley, having ascertained, without trouble or waste of time, that the bloodstains on the floor of the hockey shed were not connected with the murder, had gone home to lunch in a contented frame of mind. Aubrey had returned to the Manor House. The police had gone back to Bossbury, for they were still exploring various avenues of research from that end of the case by assuming that the dismembered body was not that of Rupert Sethleigh. So far, they had had little fortune with either of their assumptions, and, to all intents and purposes, the body which they had discovered in the butcher’s shop remained unidentified. The fact that both Grindy and Superintendent Bidwell felt certain that the murdered man was Rupert Sethleigh availed little without actual proof, and some person or persons unknown had gone so cleverly to work that proof of such kind seemed as difficult as ever to obtain.

At two-thirty, Felicity Broome, groaning but obedient, had met ten old ladies of the parish and followed the two boldest on to the top of the Culminster bus. They were to go over the cathedral, have a short river excursion, tea in the riverside gardens of the Temperance Hotel, and then were to fill in the last quarter of an hour or so before the departure of the seven o’clock bus by looking at the exhibits in the Culminster Museum.

‘Do what you like. Pay what you like. Give the dears a good time,’ said Mrs Bradley generously, ‘but whatever happens you must take them to see the Culminster Collection.’

‘But why?’ asked the puzzled Felicity. ‘I could understand going there yesterday to see the skull, but what is the point of going there to-day?’

Mrs Bradley grimaced.

‘If you don’t go, I must,’ she said. ‘If you go in with all these old ladies, nobody will take any notice. If I go, I shall probably be murdered to-night. Don’t ask me why. I’ll tell you more about it later. That’s all. Will you take them?’

Felicity went white.

‘Then – what is it? The skull – what do you mean?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ replied Mrs Bradley with brusque finality, and left her. This was at nine of the church clock that morning. It was now a quarter to three, and the bus with its cargo of pleased old ladies had bucketed round the corner and was well upon its way. Having watched it out of sight, Mrs Bradley now sought out Aubrey Harringay.

‘First of all, I want James Redsey,’ she said. ‘Do you think he will come with us?’

Aubrey went to enquire, and found Jim in the billiard-room, listlessly knocking the balls about. He looked tired and worn. It had been an anxious fortnight. At any moment, he felt, the inspector might have him arrested for the murder of his cousin, and he knew just enough about the law to realize that it is easier to get caught in its gigantic and terrifying machinery than to get clear again. He slept badly, ate little, brooded, and loafed. Even Felicity, who loved him, had scolded and poured scorn on him.

‘You look like a murderer!’ she said one day, in complete but helpless exasperation. ‘Why don’t you buck up and look as though you don’t care?’

‘Well, I don’t,’ grunted Jim. ‘It isn’t much use caring, old thing. But if you caught that inspector’s eye boring holes in the back of your neck as often as I do, and if you never opened a door but he was behind it, and if you couldn’t even have a bath without seeing his ugly face come goggling against the frosted glass of the window or hearing his silly voice asking you idiotic questions through the ventilator shaft, perhaps you’d feel much as I do – that the Third Degree and the Spanish Inquisition were bedroom farces compared to the hunted-cat life I lead while he’s conducting his damned investigations. Why, I even took my aunt’s pet bowwows to my bosom the other day because Marie bit a piece out of the lad Grindy’s trousers, and he fell over Antoinette into the water-lily tank! And you know my general opinion of those galvanized sugar-pigs of hers!’

His voice was surcharged with emotion. Felicity pressed his hand.

And now, to add to his trials, here was this frightful dame named Bradley coming and invading the place and sending him idiotic invitations to play silly party games with pencils and paper at her house, and wanting him to take her into the woods, and show her the exact spot where he’d punched the blighter Rupert’s fatheaded jaw for him! It was a bit thick. He was damned if he’d go! Damned, he went.

Mrs Bradley grinned evilly. He thought he had never seen such a wicked old woman. She reminded him of some dreadful bald-headed bird he had seen in a picture at some time. Not that she was bald-headed, of course – but you got the same sort of sick feeling when you looked at her. And yet, on second thoughts, wasn’t she more like one of those reptiles – no, not reptiles! What was that word? – saurians! When she was amusing herself at your expense, which was ninety per cent of the time – and the other ten per cent was when she didn’t even seem aware that you were on the map at all! – her little smile was like that he had seen on the face of a newt – no, a sand lizard! – no, one of those repulsive-looking giant frogs. But when the woman really got in a nasty one and grinned a bit wider, why, then you could see what she must have been in a former existence! Those reincarnation johnnies were right! The bally woman had been on the earth before – as an alligator! Ugh! Man-eating! Ugh! He was jolly glad he hadn’t cut up old Rupert and hung him on hooks! He felt certain that, if he had done so, Mrs Bradley would not only have been perfectly aware of the fact, but was quite capable of thinking out a better way of doing it, and of disclosing the same with her hideously sinister cackle. He shuddered.

The three of them walked silently across the park.

At the edge of the Manor Woods, Mrs Bradley halted.

‘You first,’ she said to Aubrey. ‘Mr Redsey next. I will come last. Forward, children. Straight to the Stone of Sacrifice.’

A comparatively short walk in single file, along the narrow winding path by which Aubrey led them, brought them to the circle of pines. Even on this brilliant summer afternoon the place was eerie, gloomy, and chill. A faint wind moaned in the tops of the trees, although Jim Redsey felt certain that when he crossed the park the air had been hot and still.

Mrs Bradley walked up to the Stone of Sacrifice and laid a claw-like yellow hand upon its surface. The stone was reptile-harsh and curiously cold to the touch. She drew her hand away and gazed benignly at the strange old