a hot and tiring afternoon, when Mrs Bradley stood up.
‘And when Margery has shown us exactly where she sat while the young man told her those tales of his, and I have told her the name of the said young man, I think we shall begin to find matters moving towards the detection of the murderer,’ she said. ‘
‘No. Had ’em tailored by the chaps who made all his other clothes – Roundway & Down. Yes, always wore cellular trunks and vest – you know the things?’
‘Oh, thank you! That simplifies matters,’ said Mrs Bradley. Aubrey turned to go for Margery Barnes, but his movement was suddenly arrested. With a sharp sound, a yard-long arrow stuck quivering in the trunk of a tree. It had missed Mrs Bradley’s head by less than three inches.
‘Good Lord!’ said Aubrey, rather pale.
Mrs Bradley cackled with genuine gratification.
Before she could make any remark, however, the sallow-visaged Savile came bounding into the clearing past the white-faced, startled boy, and ran swiftly up to her. In his right hand he carried a six-foot long-bow. He was clad in a drab-coloured waterproof, and had a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder. On his head was a green cap decorated with a startlingly tall pheasant’s feather. He raised this extraordinary headgear as he approached.
‘Dear me!’ he exclaimed in tones of consternation. ‘How terribly careless of me! I almost killed you! My dear Mrs Bradley, I scarcely dare hope that you will accept my apologies! This is what comes of practising for amateur theatricals!’
He opened his waterproof with the hand which was not holding the bow, and displayed a suit of Lincoln green.
‘How very charming!’ exclaimed Mrs Bradley. ‘Do let me hold your long-bow whilst you remove this outer husk.’
She seized the bow, and Savile, smiling in his suave, deferential, deprecating way, delicately removed the sad-coloured garment and stood displayed in all the beauty of Robin Hood tunic and hose. The reason for the feathered cap was now made apparent. A bulge they had noticed beneath the waterpoof transformed itself into a handsome hunting-horn, and, round his waist, Savile was wearing a leather belt on which a deer-skin wallet was gallantly and nattily slung.
It was an attractive costume, and Savile’s perfect figure set it off to great advantage.
‘Jolly fine,’ said Aubrey politely, with a boy’s instinctive aversion to fancy dress. Savile glanced down at slender legs shapely as an actor’s, struck an attitude, and smirked unpleasantly.
‘And what part do you play?’ Mrs Bradley enquired with great interest. ‘And have you to shoot an arrow at somebody?’
‘I think I will collect the one in the tree,’ remarked Savile, without attempting to answer either question. ‘A pity to lose it, don’t you think?’
‘Let me get it whilst you resume your waterproof,’ said Mrs Bradley, and before Savile could protest she had stepped nimbly up to the great tree and was wrenching at the arrow with both hands.
‘I am quite pleased to think that you
‘I was actually in the public woods on the other side of the Bossbury road,’ said Savile, taking the arrow from her and placing it carefully in his quiver. ‘But when I observed that the arrow had flown over here into the Manor Woods, I hurried across at once to make certain no damage had been done.’
‘Liar,’ said Aubrey under his breath. ‘That arrow never flew from the other side of the Bossbury road,’ he thought to himself.
‘Are you also acting a play?’ Savile went on.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley unblushingly. ‘A very modern play,’ she added circumstantially. ‘I am sorry the full cast is not here. Aubrey and I were carrying out our respective roles of villain’ – she pointed dramatically to the thin, brown-faced boy – ‘and innocent victim.’ She simpered idiotically and then leered with horrible effect. Savile stepped back a pace.
‘Oh, you must go? Good-bye, then,’ said Mrs Bradley, extending her repulsive-looking claw and giving Savile’s olive-hued hand a grasp which made all the bones grate together.
She waited until he had disappeared, and then hooted joyously.
‘It’s nothing to laugh at, you know,’ said Aubrey, the stern young male. ‘He nearly killed you.’
‘Ah, well! Boys will be boys,’ said Mrs Bradley philosophically. ‘And I don’t think I’ll bother about Margery Barnes, after all. I’ll walk over and see the doctor myself.’
CHAPTER XVIII
I
‘CONSANGUINITY is a queer thing,’ remarked Mrs Bradley.
Dr Barnes filled up a medicine bottle with water, corked it carefully, dried it, labelled and directed it, laid it aside for his boy to deliver, screwed the top on his fountain-pen, and then turned round. Against his white dispenser’s overall his florid face looked even larger and more ruddy than usual. He grunted. He disliked and mistrusted Mrs Bradley to a singularly flattering extent (at least, she thought his attitude flattering, for she had a habit of taking anybody’s dislike of her person and character as a compliment of the highest order!), and made no attempt to conceal his aversion from the object of it. After all, the woman was never ill! Boasted of the fact!
Mrs Bradley, who had watched his professional manoeuvres with detached interest, smiled unpleasantly.
‘Don’t you think so?’ she went on conversationally.
The doctor washed and dried his hands, removed his overall, and hung it carefully upon its appointed hook.
‘Never thought about it,’ he replied briefly. He stretched out his large, shapely hands and turned them over. He was proud of them. ‘Of whom are you thinking? Somebody in particular, of course?’ he said, with perfunctory politeness but complete lack of interest.
‘Yes. My son, Ferdinand Lestrange. And –
The doctor shrugged his great shoulders.
‘Oh, is he your son? I didn’t know that. Brilliant man,’ he remarked casually. Mrs Bradley’s sharp black eyes, quick and bright and callous as those of a bird, watched him beadily, steadily, as he took his morning coat from a hanger and put it on.
‘Yes, Ferdinand is my son,’ she repeated. ‘A clever boy! Takes after his mother.’
She smirked self-consciously, and the doctor scowled. He hated to see any woman making a fool of herself, but when it came to old women! Of course, the unlovely creature was famous in her way, he remembered! He supposed it had gone to her head!
‘Defended you in a murder trial, didn’t he?’ he remarked, pleasantly conscious that he was saying, socially and humanely speaking, quite the wrong thing.
‘And got me off,’ said Mrs Bradley succinctly. ‘Excuse me! A slight crease across the shoulders. A well-fitting coat, but a little formal, surely, for the time of year?’
‘We have to suffer in order to maintain the dignity of the profession,’ said the doctor, a slightly sardonic smile lifting his dark neat moustache. ‘If it is Margery you came to see,’ he continued abruptly, ‘she went to shop in the village. After that she was going to take on the vicar at tennis! Wish
‘But the vicar is not good at tennis,’ Mrs Bradley observed as she followed the doctor out into the garden, ‘whereas Margery is quite a star performer, according to Aubrey Harringay. I should think she would require a more expert opponent.’
‘She’s gone there to practise her service,’ the doctor said carelessly. ‘The vicar is the only person who doesn’t care when people knock the heads off his flowers and things, you see. I won’t have a court marked out on this lawn here. Spoils the grass.’
