I was returning from visiting rounds in the parish one afternoon during the second week in August when I encountered Mrs. Bradley.
She was walking along with her eyes fixed on the ground and did not see me until I said, “Good afternoon.”
“Ah, here you are,” she said. Quite brisk and businesslike. I gazed round for assistance but there was none available. “I want you,” she said, fixing me with the most frightfully basilisk eye, “to introduce me into the bosoms of certain families in this village. Dear little Edwy David Burt for example. Are you really friendly with him?”
Well, I was at the time, of course. Burt had upheld the cocoanut shy nobly during my enforced absences on August Bank Holiday, and I had indicated as much to him. A stout fellow, Burt.
“What about him?” I said cautiously.
“I’m on the track of the person who murdered that girl,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and I want to clear a few things out of the way.”
“Including Burt?” I asked, with an attempt at facetiousness.
“Including funny little Burt,” said Mrs. Bradley, gravely. She grasped my sleeve. “You and Constable Brown and I are going to bring a murderer to justice,” she said, with the most frightful leer.
“You mean—” I burbled.
“I want your help,” she said. “I require your invaluable assistance, child. Who so respectable as the earnest young curate? Who so universally adored as the handsome, untidy, almost illiterate young man who has not had occasion yet to quarrel with his bishop?”
She yelled with laughter, let go of my sleeve and dug me in the ribs.
“Do you believe Bob Candy did it?” she said.
“No,” I replied truthfully, “I am sure he did not.” I moved out of the reach of her claw-like hand.
“Then up with the bonnets of bonny Dundee,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking my arm. “To Burt’s bungalow—boot, saddle, to horse and away!”
Burt was out, of course. This did nothing to deter my frightfully energetic companion.
“Never mind,” she said, “let us go and see Mr. and Mrs. Gatty. There are one or two questions that I am simply bursting to put to that delicious pair!”
Mr. and Mrs. Gatty were at home. He was snipping off the dead roses and she was mowing the lawn. Both stopped working when they saw us and came to greet us.
“We’ve come about the murder,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I suppose you two dear people will sign a petition for poor Bob Candy?”
“But he hasn’t been convicted yet,” objected little Gatty.
“We want to be prepared,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly. “Do come indoors and sign. It won’t take a minute. Come along, Mr. Wells. You will have to witness his signature. Mrs. Coutts is getting up the petition, of course,” she explained to old Gatty, who had put down his scissors and gardening gloves on the wheelbarrow and was meekly accompanying us into the house. He gazed with distaste at the entrance hall of his gloomy residence.
“I do wish I could persuade Eliza to move,” he said. “I do hate and fear this beastly house, but she’s quite attached to it.”
I must confess that this remark by Gatty nearly flabbergasted me. It was generally understood in the village that Mrs. Gatty was in a terribly nervous state owing to the influence of the ex-lunatic asylum upon her system. Now, to hear Gatty seriously asserting that he was the nervous one and that his wife was the one who was determined to stay on at the house, was rather a jolt. I was about to enter into an argument with him about it when Mrs. Bradley forestalled me by saying:
“I thought your wife disliked the house?”
“Far from it,” replied Gatty. “Where’s this petition you want me to sign?”
He grinned. Well, he
“I suppose it wasn’t you on the roof of Burt’s bungalow that night?” I said.
He looked a bit flummoxed, but answered up like a shot.
“It was, Mr. Wells.”
“Well, but, well, I mean to say!” I said.
“What do you mean to say?” asked Mrs. Bradley, turning a none too cordial glance on me. At least, it looked a bit frosty when I met it, which I did, squarely, of course. I believe the woman thought she was going to intimidate me!
“Well, I mean to say, he might have murdered somebody,” I stuttered, anxious in a way to placate the old lady, who was now looking too fierce for my comfort. Besides, I was anxious too, very anxious, of course, to know what he meant by bunging slates at me that night. “What’s the idea?” I continued, severely to Gatty. Gatty wilted a bit. I stand five feet eleven in my socks.
“It was Burt’s fault,” said Gatty, getting a bit red round the ears. “He shouldn’t have locked me in that horrible crypt. I had no idea that he would play me such a prank.”
I was about to exclaim when Mrs. Bradley accidentally knocked Gatty’s fountain pen out of his hand, and we all bent and groped for it. It took us so long to find it—(my private belief is that Mrs. Bradley had had it in her hand for several minutes, for she was the one who eventually handed it back to him)—that my remark faded. Mrs. Bradley had a large sheet of paper on which were several signatures, and Gatty wrote his name under the rest, and we prepared to take our leave. We waved to Mrs. Gatty, who was at the further end of the garden, and regained the road.
