course.’
‘Really? Do you mean all murderers are mad?’
‘Except me. And my outrageous sanity is in itself a kind of mental defect, I sometimes think.’
She chuckled. Aubrey grinned lazily.
‘But you haven’t told me yet about moving the skull,’ he said.
‘You remember playing a little game at my house?’
‘Oh, yes. We all played it, didn’t we? Go on.’
‘That’s all,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Think it out, child.’
‘We all wrote down where we thought the skull was hidden,’ said Aubrey slowly. ‘And – I’ve got it! Think so, anyway! Somebody who played that game thought you were getting a bit too hot on the subject of the skull, so they moved it. Idiots! Much better have left it alone.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Bradley, frowning thoughtfully. ‘It wasn’t the murderer who played this game of Hunt the Thimble with the skull, you see.’
‘Oh, you know who – you know – I mean, how do you know that? Do you know who the murderer is?’
‘I know that the man who moved that skull from Culminster to Bossbury was a man in a panic,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and that the murderer is not in a panic. He feels perfectly secure. And upon my word,’ she concluded vigorously, ‘if I didn’t feel certain that the police will sooner or later make out a case against some innocent person, I would leave him in peace. Rupert Sethleigh –’ She stopped. After all, this charming, serious boy was related to the murdered man.
Aubrey nodded.
‘Asked for it,’ he continued. ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? “Rupert Sethleigh – Bounder” ought to be on his tombstone.’
‘Still, I fancy that when we come to the end of these complicated affairs we may discover that it was a case of diamond cut diamond,’ amended Mrs Bradley, completely serious for once.
CHAPTER XX
‘THE policy of
‘My dear man!’ exclaimed Mrs Bryce Harringay in horror, grasping the charming little receptacle very hastily and rising to restore it to its former position on Mrs Bradley’s drawing-room mantelpiece. ‘It can’t be kleptomania in a gentleman of his profession,’ she confided in a sibilant aside to the owner of the vase, ‘so it must be pure absent-mindedness.’
‘Not kleptomania, no,’ replied Mrs Bradley composedly, but turning suddenly and terrifyingly serious. ‘That has become a mere police-court term to account for the astonishing vagaries of the idle rich.’ Her mirthless cackle added ironic corollary to the theorem.
‘I believe the young people have concluded their game,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘It sounds like it.’
‘Then I expect they would like some tea,’ said the hostess, rising to ring the bell. ‘Shall we go into the garden?’
The young people, consisting of Felicity Broome, Margery Barnes, Aubrey, and Jim, had been playing croquet on the lawn. It was a beautiful lawn, admirably kept, but none of the four cared for playing croquet upon any lawn whatsoever. However, their hostess, with a determined frown upon her forehead and a vinegary grin upon her lips, had insisted upon pressing mallets and balls upon them, and herself had placed the hoops ready for play. It was impossible to refuse to fall in with the arrangements. Mrs Bryce Harringay beamed approval.
‘A most delightful pastime, most!’ she observed largely, waving her plump white hands in a kind of careless benediction upon the incensed Aubrey, the embarrassed James, the giggling Margery, and the shrugging philosophical Miss Broome. ‘So good for the manners! So suitable for a summer day! A most attractive game, most!’
‘There,’ said Mrs Bradley to Aubrey, who promptly smacked his ball through the open gate into the road, where it trickled merrily downhill for a hundred yards or more, ‘now you can squabble and fight and lose your tempers and accuse each other of cheating for at least an hour, while we old, decrepit persons engage one another in gentle conversation punctuated by snatches of sleep.’
She waved a skinny claw at them, watched Aubrey stalk moodily off to recover his ball, and then she went into the house.
At tea the conversation turned inevitably upon the murder. ‘I wonder who on earth it can be? The inspector is getting absolute wind-up. I should think the police will be compelled to make some sort of a move soon, with all the newspapers shouting at them like this,’ said Aubrey to Mrs Bradley.
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I wonder they don’t pay more attention to Mr Savile,’ said Felicity. ‘He can’t show an alibi for the evening of June 22nd. He attempted to kill you in the Manor Woods –’
Mrs Bradley chuckled.
‘Aubrey here told the inspector so,’ she said, ‘and there is no doubt that Sethleigh used to meet Lulu Hirst in the Cottage and also in the Manor Woods. And Mr Wright did some curious things on the night of the murder. So did Mr Broome,’ she added, grinning.
‘Attempted to kill you?’ exclaimed Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘Good gracious! When was this?’
‘Aubrey will remember, I dare say,’ replied Mrs Bradley comfortably. She selected a piece of cake with careful discrimination. ‘He was with me at the time, as I said. We were in the Manor Woods, and I was attempting to reconstruct the crime from the data which we had at our disposal at that time. I imagine that I was speaking in a loud voice. Suddenly an arrow – a cloth-yard, goose-feathered, Battle of Agincourt affair with a great iron barb and a most professionally Robin Hood flight, came whizzing past my ear and stuck in the trunk of a tree on the farther side of the clearing. The police theory seems to agree with Aubrey’s idea that the arrow was shot with the deliberate intention of putting an end to my quiet and harmless existence. All the same. Savile came forward immediately and apologized quite nicely for his carelessness.’
The vicar laughed.
‘Depends what meaning you attach to the word “carelessness”,’ said Jim Redsey. ‘He probably meant he was sorry he’d made such a boss-eyed shot.’
Mrs Bradley shook her head, and Felicity Broome broke in.
‘I should think he would have run away if he really attempted your life,’ she said. ‘I mean, he wouldn’t have wanted to advertise his presence exactly, would he?’
‘Intent to deceive,’ said Aubrey, eating raspberries and cream with aplomb. He scooped up a delicious spoonful.
‘Greedy pig,’ said Margery Barnes indulgently. ‘Pass the cream.’
‘No, honestly,’ continued Aubrey, passing it, ‘I expect he thought somebody might have seen the shot, and wanted to lull their suspicions – and Mrs Bradley’s, too.’
‘Well, I certainly accepted his apology in the spirit which appeared to inspire it,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘I wonder someone doesn’t confess to the murder and have done with it,’ said Margery. ‘I mean, if I had committed a murder I should be in such a funk that I should throw in my hand and get the hanging over, I think.’ And she shivered at the thought.
‘Oh, I don’t know why one should confess,’ protested the vicar, passing his cup for more tea. Mrs Bradley took the cup from his hand, and he began to drum on the table with his long fingers. ‘After all, there is no need for a fellow to queer his own pitch, is there? It’s up to the police to prove he did it.’
‘You know,’ said Felicity, when the servants had cleared away the remains of the meal, and all were lounging comfortably in garden chairs, ‘I can’t quite see anybody doing all that.’
‘All what?’ Margery Barnes looked across at her.
‘Well, all the horrid part. I mean, well,
