Tom Brown's Body

promised to go along and have it with old Pearson. His daughter's out for the evening. I just came to tell you what we found.'

Mrs Bradley summed up her guest, and decided that his looks did not deceive her; for Mr Semple looked what he was – an athletic, games-playing young man, fairly well-bred, obviously simple-minded and equally obviously kind-hearted. What seemed alien to him, therefore, was his bleak-eyed, terrified stare, a slight stammer every time he spoke, and a too-easy assurance and buoyancy with which he was attempting to cover up these nervous reactions.

Enter quite a possible murderer, thought Mrs Bradley, and one with an excellent motive. 'And this discovery of yours?' she said. Mr Semple looked distressed.

'Oh, no bearing, I daresay,' he admitted, 'but Mr Wyck indicated that you were the person to come to, don't you know. It was a headless cock, as a matter of fact. Killed in that Voodoo sort of style. Revolting, actually.'

'Details,' said Mrs Bradley, producing her notebook. Mr Semple looked more distressed than before, but replied and gave the details. They were interesting, and, as he had said, revolting. Mrs Bradley inscribed them carefully in her notebook. 'And what bearing do you suppose all this to have upon the death of Mr Conway?' she enquired. 'Have you heard that a member of the Staff has been visiting the village witch, Mrs Harries?'

'I did hear something,' admitted Semple. 'Why, do you know about that?'

'Oh, yes. I am a frequent visitor there myself. I suppose Mr Kay did not accompany you here because he has met me there.'

'Kay's doing some sort of research for some sort of Society, I believe,' said Mr Semple. 'He's one of these Folk-Dancing sort of chaps.'

Mrs Bradley did not connect folk-dancing and witchcraft very closely, but did not say so. She talked about the ballet – much to the confusion of her guest.

When he departed, she gazed after him with a certain amount of pity. The rejected lover seldom meets with sympathy, she reflected; and rightly so, for he deserves none.

She mentioned this theory to Miss Loveday, who already delighted her very much. Miss Loveday, who had been sewing, put away her workbox with great deliberation, assumed her spectacles (which, to Mrs Bradley's stupefaction, she always discarded when she sewed), and pronounced with deliberation:

'And which of us, my brother or myself, do you suspect of the murder of Gerald Conway?'

'I think (if I thought that either of you had had anything to do with it), that I should suspect the two of you of having been identical accessories,' said Mrs Bradley. Miss Loveday nodded.

'I understand you,' she said, 'and it is, of course, unnecessary to tell you that my brother and I are twins. This is not generally known, but I tell it to you because I feel that you knew it the moment you set eyes on us. What say you?'

'I am dumbfounded,' said Mrs Bradley, 'and, naturally, much enlightened.'

'I wonder whether you always speak the truth?' said Miss Loveday. 'I have noticed that doctors, whether charlatans or not, very seldom commit themselves to direct statements of fact. Do you suspect our Roman Bath?'

'Certainly,' Mrs Bradley replied. 'Your Roman Bath, the river, and every bathroom in Spey School.'

'Ah!' said Miss Loveday, nodding. 'You see? An evasive answer. As for the School bathrooms, with the exception of those in this House they are primitive and odd. 'They got them into polished baths and were cleansed.' So said blind Homer. I would not go bail for the cleanliness of the School House bathrooms, nor for Mr Poundbury's.'

'I am a sybarite,' Mrs Bradley replied. Miss Loveday studied her face but gained nothing from this scrutiny.

'You are a Sphinx,' she retorted. 'Now, tell me. Have you come to any conclusions about Merrys?' Mrs Bradley was on safe ground here, and they indulged in a lively discussion of adolescent boys for the next hour and a half.

'And now,' said Mrs Bradley, 'tell me all about Mr Semple. I know he hoped to marry Miss Marion Pearson and I know he plays games and has championed the cause of Mr Kay, whom now he despises and dislikes. What else is there to know?'

'Nothing,' replied Miss Loveday.

*

The meeting convened by the chairman of the governors had been intended to be a solemn and impressive affair, but it turned out that the chairman, himself an Old Boy, had known Mrs Bradley for years, and that they were not only well acquainted but were old and firm friends.

'Good Lord, Mrs B.!' he said joyously. 'Fancy finding you here! Come on, and tell me what to say. I suppose it is murder, ain't it? Who did it? Do you happen to know?'

'I think I know,' Mrs Bradley replied, 'but that has nothing to do with your meeting, which, nevertheless, I shall attend.'

The local Superintendent of Police was also present.

'You know, Beadle,' said the chairman to him confidentially, 'I should call in Scotland Yard if I were you. Mean to say, it's a bit above your weight, this sort of thing, unless you're pretty sure you can get your hooks on the fellow. Who did it, hey? Do you know?'

'Not by so much as a hair, sir,' replied the Superintendent, instinctively following a lead, 'unless, of course, it should chance to be the gentleman we've got our eye on, and I don't want to go into that. And Scotland Yard are sending their Mr Gavin.'

'By the way, Wyck, I suppose we'd better shelve the question of Housemasters until this confounded business is settled,' suggested a governor who was known to be a rabid anti-feminist. 'Wonder who –'

'Couldn't have been a boy, anyway,' broke in a retired major, another of the governors. 'I know boys out and out. No vice in 'em. What do you say, Sainsbury?' He turned to another of the party who was also an Old Boy of the School.

'Can't concur in your opinion. Boys are all thugs. Got three of my own, so I ought to know,' replied Sainsbury, a lively-looking man of forty-five. 'Besides, what about Watt in '18?'

Reminiscences of Watt led to reminiscences of Pott, and the talk passed to Bott, Cott, and Gott.

'Talking of Gott,' said Mrs Bradley, seizing her opportunity, 'isn't there a boy at the School named Issacher?'

'Yes, there is an Issacher in Mr Loveday's House,' said Mr Wyck, looking up from the notes he was writing. He glanced at her gratefully, for he wanted to get the meeting over, and all the Potts, Botts, Cotts, and Gotts had been. before his time as Headmaster, and he was not particularly interested in any but his own Old Boys.

'We must interview him,' said Mrs Bradley, at once. 'This boy Issacher, I mean.'

The governors were surprised by this suggestion, but Issacher was sent for hastily by the Headmaster, who now saw a chance of getting on with the meeting. Issacher kept it waiting for fourteen minutes. He was a thick-set boy in a bad temper which his racial background caused him to hide at first. He sidled in, looked at the Headmaster, and bowed to the chairman of the governors, who had been on his father's board of directors at one time.

'Ah, Issacher?' said the chairman.

'Sir?' said Issacher.

'Sorry to have dragged you from your studies and all that,' put in the major, laughing heartily at his own wit.

'I was taking my practice time. I am a pianist, sir,' said Issacher, with deadly meekness. 'Last week I was interrupted for a routine dental inspection when my teeth are perfectly sound.' He showed them. 'This week I had hoped to be allowed at least the hour allotted to me on my timetable.'

'Don't be impertinent, boy,' said Mr Wyck, mildly. 'Stand at the end of the table and reply clearly and exactly to what is asked you.'

'But, sir!' protested the youth, his fine hands beginning to flutter. 'Really, sir, I have done no wrong! I only ask for a little time to practise my music! But no! I am accused and browbeaten! There is no justice anywhere! Of what am I accused?'

'Don't act in this terrified way,' said Mr Wyck. 'You are being foolish, my boy.'

'And talking of accusations,' said Mrs Bradley, before anyone else could speak, 'what of your book, Mr Issacher?'