[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

his job, so we intended to sell our bungalow and live within easier distance of his work, but we couldn’t buy until we had got rid of the bungalow, so I stayed on there and he came home at week-ends. It was far from ideal, but better, I suppose, than being married to a sailor. I was pregnant at the time, and naturally didn’t want to be left alone, so we set about finding somebody to live in. Well, you know what it’s like, trying to get a maid these days when you live in the country and have only a small place and can’t afford to pay much. We advertised and we put our name down at employment agencies, but it wasn’t a bit of good, and then my husband had a brainwave and mentioned it to one or two of the people at the bank, and one of the customers knew of a charity which helps discharged prisoners, and they sent us Lucia. She’d been in prison for stealing, but they said they thought she meant to go straight if somebody would give her a job and be kind to her.

‘When I got to know her, I found out that she’d been made redundant at the factory where she worked, ran through her savings, couldn’t pay the rent and was too ignorant and friendless to find out how to get help. The magistrates gave her the lightest sentence they could. I suppose they realised that she wasn’t the sort to be a habitual criminal. Anyway, she turned out to be quite a satisfactory worker, and when Derry was born she became genuinely fond of him. I soon knew I could trust her, so, as I knew I would be going back to a job as soon as I felt he was old enough to be left, I kept her on. Who on earth would be wicked enough to want to kill her? She was utterly harmless.’

‘Did she get any letters while she was with you?’

‘No. She was almost illiterate, you know, and I suppose her friends were the same, although I must say I should be surprised to hear she had any. There was an elderly mother, of course.’

‘Acquaintances may be a better term. How many people, so far as you are aware, knew that she was in service at your bungalow?’

‘Our relatives, of course, and the people at my husband’s work – he’s a bank-clerk – and of course I’ve mentioned her from time to time at my new school since I’ve gone back to a job, and any friends who came to visit us would have known, but I’m positively certain none of them would have murdered her. It’s most likely somebody she knew in prison, don’t you think?’

‘I might well think so, but for the note left on the body.’

‘Then there’s a maniac at large in that district! Of course, I couldn’t stay on in the bungalow. My nerves wouldn’t stand it, so we moved at once and the bungalow is up for sale. I’m thankful for all sorts of reasons that we did move. For one thing, I can get along to school much more easily from here than from the bungalow; for another, John can come home every night, and there’s a nursery I can take Derry to, to get him looked after while I’m working, because, of course, I haven’t anybody helping me now.’

‘How much interest do you find you take in the lives of the teachers at your school?’

‘Well, I’m happily married, of course, so I don’t exactly pry into other people’s affairs,’ replied Mrs Clancy, looking slightly surprised by the question. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Would you, for example, know what religious sects they belong to?’

‘Precious few of them belong to any.’

‘But there are exceptions?’

‘Not that I would know of. The head is C. of E., I believe.’

‘No Catholics?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘You would not know, I suppose, anything about the late Miss Karen Schumann’s views?’

‘Oh, well, yes, as it happens, I do know about her. She called herself a Lutheran. Her father was apparently a minister before he left Germany. She was of German parentage, you know. But you don’t think there is any connection between her death and Lucia’s, do you?’

‘It is difficult to detect one, certainly, except for some cryptic notices left pinned to the bodies.’

‘Then there is a madman about! Oh, aren’t I thankful we moved! I didn’t care much about the idea of a flat in a town at one time, but now it seems so lovely to have other people below me and round about!’

‘Has your school library a theological section?’

‘There are the usual commentaries and things, but they only occupy a bit of a shelf in the history corner. I hardly ever go into the library unless I have to take a message to anybody who happens to be teaching in there – every class gets a library period a week – and I wouldn’t know about there being a theological section except that I had to catalogue the library when the teacher who looks after it was down with flu and we had the County librarian coming. Well, when I say “catalogue it”, that isn’t exactly true, because, of course, we had a catalogue. What I had to do was to insert the new additions, so that the County librarian could see what to recommend that he should lend us. Part of the library is by purchase, you see, and part is on a long loan from the County.’

‘So the number of theological works in the school library would not suffice Mr James for his studies?’

‘Oh, our budding Doctor of Divinity! I should think that, years ago, he combed through anything the school had got!’

‘Yet he worked in the school library at times, did he not?’

‘Oh, yes, but on books he’d borrowed elsewhere.’

‘Do you know that for a fact? – that he worked in the school library, but with books he had borrowed?’

‘Oh,