Tom Brown's Body

*

'I was born under Taurus,' said Mrs Bradley complacently, 'or so I am led to believe.'

'I should like to cast your horoscope,' said Mrs Harries politely. 'But you wanted to see my book. There is just time to show you a little of it before my client appears.'

Mrs Bradley had scarcely hoped for such luck. She glanced at her watch. It showed twenty-five minutes to eleven. She had been in the cottage less than a quarter of an hour. She had sent George and the car packing, with orders to return for her after breakfast, for she anticipated a long and interesting session with the sibyl from whom she hoped to purchase Mary Toadflax's treasury.

'I am indeed curious to see the book,' she agreed. 'Did you read it?'

'No,' said Mrs Harries, who had given up the rough speech of the countryside and reverted to her natural enunciation. 'I might be tempted, so I left it alone. I would be glad to be rid of it. I think perhaps I will give it to you as a symbol of sisterhood. What was your maiden name?'

Before this interesting secret could be disclosed there came a very muffled tap at the door.

'Drat!' said Mother Harries. 'There he is already! Too early. Let him cool his heels for a bit.'

'The man I saw before?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'The same. He pesters me. He is a foreign man. He came on a night wind. I think that he, too, has wind of Mary Toadflax's book.'

The knock was repeated, very much more loudly.

'Are you sure it is he?' asked Mrs Bradley, whose ears were keen. 'It sounded to me as though there were voices, very young voices, outside.'

'No one but he would come,' pronounced Mrs Harries with an air and in a tone of omniscience. The knock came again, louder still. Mrs Harries picked up the candle, upon whose supporting saucer she laid her aged hand with sure instinct, and shuffled her way to the door. Mrs Bradley had conceived the impression that she could see, although possibly only dimly. She followed her and stood at her shoulder.

The candle lighted the young, strained, pallid faces of a couple of fourteen-year-old boys, who, upon perceiving the countenances of their receptionists, turned in terror and fled. The expected visitor arrived some two minutes later, and must have met the boys at the gate. He knocked softly.

'If you wouldn't mind going into the kitchen,' suggested Mrs Harries, 'I think you might hear something of interest.'

Mrs Bradley obediently retired, and the new arrival was admitted by the witch.

'Parcae,' she pronounced solemnly.

'Three-fold Hecate,' replied the dark man.

'And three Dianas,' said the witch.

The session having thus been declared open, there followed a heavy ritual in which various demons were invoked and the One Morer referred to, and then the visitor broke out in an impassioned, hysterical diatribe against some unknown enemy upon whom he threatened vengeance.

Mrs Bradley came out of the kitchen just as he put his fist through the glass of Mrs Harries' front room.

'Either get rid of him or put him to bed,' said she. 'He is your client, I know, but, if he goes on like this, very soon he will be my patient.'

The man under discussion decided matters for himself.

'Two of you? Two of you?' he said suddenly and loudly. 'I don't believe in your witchcraft! I don't believe in your witchcraft!' He rushed out of the cottage, banging the door behind him.

'What did you tell him?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'Of nails and the wax,' said the witch. 'He will try both, never fear.'

Mrs Bradley, who had long held the view that the victims of witches and warlocks, fortune tellers, necromancers, and the like, deserved what they got, merely resumed the subject of Mary Toadflax and her book.

The book which was produced at four in the morning proved to be without value. It was an expurgated French nineteenth-century copy of the life of Simon Magus.

'I'm sorry,' said Mrs Bradley after she had glanced perfunctorily through its pages, 'but I am not interested in this book.'

It was the most definite statement that she had made for fourteen years. Mrs Harries smiled.

'You know what it is?' she demanded.

'Oh, yes,' Mrs Bradley answered. 'And it is neither what I expected nor what I want.'

'As I thought,' said the sibyl contentedly. 'And now I will tell you something interesting. That young man will see bad trouble in the future.'

'If you encourage him to commit murder he will certainly see trouble in the future,' said Mrs Bradley. 'He is in a sad state of mind.'

'You think he needs your services, not mine,' said Mrs Harries, 'but you are wrong. It does him good to come here and shout away his hate.'

Mrs Bradley agreed with this view, but only cautiously, and returned to the subject of the book.

'Is that the only one you possess?' she demanded.

'You may rummage for yourself,' said Mrs Harries. 'I know that if you discover anything worth while you will tell me. I trust you as I would trust myself. I shall go to bed now. Take the candle and try your luck.'

'Thank you. I have my torch,' said Mrs Bradley.

'Then my house is at your disposal. Search until daylight, but do not touch the elm that grows under the stairs.'

Mrs Bradley bade her hostess good night. She went to the cupboard under the stairs, but the only thing she found there was a birch broom. She did not touch it. She assumed that the handle was made of elm, sometimes called wychwood. There was no trace of the book she sought in the cottage. She satisfied herself of this, and wondered what Mrs Harries had done with the black-letter spells and charms of Mary Toadflax. She did not, however, wake Mrs Harries and ask her. Instead, she sat in the chimney corner of the cottage and spent the rest of the night wide awake, alert to all sounds and uncomfortably aware of a sense of danger.

George came, according to orders, in the morning, and she slept in the car whilst George drove her back to the rooms she had taken in Spey village. Her hosts were the local doctor and his wife. They knew of her errand, and were glad to see her at breakfast. She retired to her room when she had made a frugal meal, and was interested to find a large toad, with eyes which reminded her somewhat of those of Lecky Harries, squatting amiably on the middle of the counterpane.

She suspected the doctor's young son of a practical joke, and, removing the toad to the front garden, she decided to challenge the child at midday.

The little boy denied all knowledge of the toad, however, and asked to see it, but although he and Mrs Bradley searched the garden, no trace of it was to be found.

Mrs Bradley returned to Mrs Harries and gave her five pounds, all in silver. The blind woman – if blind she was – seemed pleased with the present. She returned a florin 'for luck,' and wished Mrs Bradley well.

'Come again in the dark of the moon,' she said. 'Who knows? The luck may have changed.'

3. 'Mr Perrin and Mr Traill'

*

A Lawyer is an honest Employment, so is mine. Like me too he acts in a double Capacity, both against Rogues and for 'em.

IBID. (Act 1, Scene 1)

SPEY SCHOOL was well endowed; so well endowed, in fact, that Education Acts passed it by and government grants were as pointedly ignored by its trustees as though they had never existed.

It was not an expensive school, as schools go, and had not increased its fees since 1909, when it had become so much sought after that the governing body had decided upon a slightly discouraging scale of fees although they did not need the extra money.