crowd it in. Wonderful how many patients a country practitioner can – acquire was your word, sir, I think?’ – he guffawed heartily – ‘and what a devil of a time it takes him to get round to see ’em all!’
‘Country practitioner?’ said Jim, puzzled. ‘What on earth are you getting at?’
‘Why, Dr Barnes, sir, of course. He’s the chap we’ve arrested. I just told you we’d made an arrest. Don’t you remember little Miss Barnes saying her father was at the major’s that Sunday evening? And Mrs Bradley’s peculiar answer struck me all of a heap. She said they could prove whether that was so later on – or some words of that sort. Evasive, I said to myself. There’s something behind that, I said. Well, it turns out on investigation that he was never at the major’s at all! What do you make of that, sir? And then – another thing,’ he added, before Jim could reply; ‘the dismembering of the corpse! Child’s play, sir, to a surgeon! And wouldn’t disgust him and upset him like it would ordinary folks. Just science to him, cutting up a body. Just science. And Mrs Bradley confided to me herself what a tidy beggar the murderer must be! Now, sir, I ask you! What could be tidier than cutting up a body as neat as that, and hanging up the bits out of the way?’
Jim looked as he felt – sick.
‘Then, again,’ pursued the inspector, ‘look at the motives! Two motives, in fact, and both different. Mixed motives, as we call it. His daughter and the blackmail business.’
Jim, rather tired of Rupert’s wide reputation as a Don Juan of the baser sort, merely nodded.
‘Well, three, if you count Mrs Lulu,’ said the inspector, working it all out. ‘Both sweet on her, you see, Sethleigh and him were. Jealousy, and all that. Wonderful what a bit of passion will do to a man’s character, you know. Anyway, he could have done the deed in the time; he wasn’t at the major’s; and we trapped him into saying he’d been in the Manor Woods before he knew what we were after. So how’s that? As for the deed itself – well, Mrs Bradley talked of the vicar’s penknife, but a doctor would be neater. Tidy again, sir, you see! She certainly put me on the track there again! His scalpel. And it could be put away with his other instruments and nobody any the wiser! Then the head. Takes a doctor to dissect a head nicely and leave just the bare skull like we found. The police surgeon says the head was split half-way down, and boiled to leave the bone, but you know what these surgeons are, sir – must have their nasty little jokes! Anyway, that’s a small point. Well, then, sir, the Stone of Sacrifice. If you say “doctor” where Mrs Bradley said “vicar”, you’ll be about right. I should say that to the doctor that big slab suggested an operating-table! Something in that, sir, don’t you think? And perhaps he could have done something about the quantity of blood. There wasn’t enough for a stab in the neck, you see. That’s the only flaw in our theory.’
Jim nodded.
‘I see,’ he said, still trying to readjust his thoughts sufficiently to take hold of the idea that the large, robust, ruddy, rather offensively loud-voiced and didactic Dr Barnes was a murderer.
‘And then the slug business.’
‘How much?’ said Jim, puzzled.
‘Miss Barnes’s own words, sir. The man that came crawling out of the bushes like a great black slug. She confessed that the form seemed somehow familiar, you remember? Well, sir, what could be more familiar than the sight of her own father? That’s who she saw, and the doctor can’t deny it!’
‘And why should he deny it?’ asked a rich voice at the open French doors. ‘Of course it was Dr Barnes, and of course Margery did not recognize him, although his figure seemed familiar. It is a great pity she did not, for otherwise quite a number of muddles could have been cleared up by this time.’
And Mrs Bradley stepped into the library and seated herself in its most comfortable chair. Jim turned to her in perplexity.
‘I’m damned if I can make this business out at all, Mrs Bradley,’ he confessed frankly. ‘Of course, we all knew that you were drawing the long-bow about the vicar yesterday, but really, to push the murder off on to the doctor seems almost as bad to me. I mean, all the people here have known the chap for years, and I’m sure he must have lived down any scandal there ever was connected with his son.’
‘Cleaver Wright is that son,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Oh, really? I’ve heard rumours of it, of course. Still, there’s a sight of difference between going off the end about some woman or other and doing a blooming great murder, isn’t there?’
‘There is,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘Curious of me, perhaps, but on the whole I prefer the murderer. The population of this country is so excessive that, looked at from the purely common-sense point of view, a person who decreases it is considerably more public-spirited than one who adds to it, and he should be dealt with accordingly.’
‘But the doctor?’ said Jim, having digested these theses in silence. ‘It’s a knock-out to me.’
‘Well, what can you expect will happen to a man who has never played bears with the children?’ demanded Mrs Bradley abruptly.
‘Never what?’ asked the inspector, grinning.
‘But, of course, to arrest him for murder is ridiculous,’ went on Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘He was in the Manor Woods – yes. He has no alibi? Are you sure of that? Go and ask Lulu Hirst. His daughter saw him – yes. And he was crawling on hands and knees, and if he had ever played bears with her when she was a child she would have recognized him, and could have said so, and that part of the business could have been cleared up. Anyway, inspector, take the advice of a sincere well-wisher and let the poor man go. Besides, what about fingerprints in the butcher’s shop?’
‘Oh, we don’t think the actual work was done in the butcher’s shop. We suspect he dismembered the body in his own surgery in the garden. More expeditious, madam, you see. Then he wrapped up the bits in Miss Felicity Broome’s muslin curtains, like they wrap up meat when they deliver it to the butchers’ shops, and that’s how the curtains got scorched.’
‘Expound, O sage,’ said Mrs Bradley, settling down with huge enjoyment to listen.
‘Well, madam, you yourself put us on to that. Don’t you remember how you found out about that suitcase getting to Mrs Lulu Hirst?’
Mrs Bradley nodded her small black head.
‘And don’t you remember telling me her words?’
‘Whose words, inspector?’
‘Mrs Lulu’s. She didn’t name Savile or Wright as the man that scorched that ironing. All she said was “that swine I goes with”. Well, that’s the doctor, madam. Plain as a pikestaff. She washed the curtains for him and he went and scorched ’em!’
‘Inspector,’ said Mrs Bradley, with emotion, ‘you will convince me in a minute that you are right and I am wrong. This is too wonderful for words!’
The inspector grinned.
‘Just a little bit of deduction,’ he said spaciously. ‘Just part of our job, you know.’
‘Then you imply that Lulu Hirst is aware that Dr Barnes committed this murder?’
‘That’s right, Mrs Bradley. And that’s why it’s no good me going to her, as you suggest, to give the doctor an alibi, because I know she will, like a shot. Knows he did it, you see.’
Mrs Bradley sighed and turned to Jim Redsey.
‘This is very difficult, young man,’ she observed.
Jim put out his large hands helplessly.
‘You see, madam, there’s her own words to be thought about. She said to you, you remember, “There’s one man dead for me already, and another soon will be!” Or some expression like that. Meaning, I take it, that Sethleigh was murdered, and the doctor would be hanged for doing it.’
‘H’m! Doesn’t sound as though she would be prepared to fix him up with much of an alibi,’ said Mrs Bradley tersely. ‘You can’t have it both ways, inspector, you know!’
‘Oh, yes, you can, Mrs Bradley, with ladies of the type of Mrs Lulu,’ contradicted the inspector gravely. ‘Love their loves
Mrs Bradley broke into an amused cackle.
‘Upon my word, inspector!’ she said. ‘I can’t think what has happened to you. This is so sudden!’
‘Well,’ remarked the inspector, winking solemnly at Jim, ‘I got your little book out of the Bossbury Library a couple of days back. There’s some frisky reading in that there book, Mrs Bradley, and I reckon it has kind of inspired me. Keep it away from the wife, though, I had to. Wouldn’t hardly do to let her know I read stuff like that! If it was fiction it would be seized by the police, and so I tell you!’ He guffawed loudly.
