The Longer Bodies (28 page)

‘Yes,' agreed the superintendent, somewhat hazily, for her harsh, strident, parrot-voice confused him, ‘it's really wonderful what one can get away with. I suppose
she
spent the night in your dressing room too?'

‘That was the curious part of it,' said old Mrs Puddequet, with glee. ‘She didn't.'

‘Didn't?'

‘No. She came out almost immediately and locked the door on the outside and took the key away with her. At six o'clock next morning she crept into my room again and went up to the dressing-room door and let him out. What can you make of that?'

The superintendent concealed his true feelings in a most creditable manner, and replied:

‘Nothing at all.' And then, falling in with the old lady's obviously Rabelaisian frame of mind, he added, ‘Seems to have been rather a waste of time, doesn't it?'

Old Mrs Puddequet smote him playfully with the umbrella and squealed with joy.

‘But I suppose,' the superintendent continued, cleverly following up his investigation along the line of least resistance, ‘you fell asleep or something, and perhaps lost the—er—the second act of the play?' His voice ended on a mark of interrogation.

‘Oh, did I?' snorted old Mrs Puddequet. ‘People of my age don't get so much amusement, young man, that they can afford to go to sleep and miss things like that! I never would have believed it of Companion Caddick, never! To have sufficient enterprise to smuggle a young and handsome man into the house past my very bed—!'

The recollection of it overcame her. She lay back in the bathchair and squealed and choked until she was exhausted with laughter.

‘You managed to pull the inspector's leg pretty well, then,' remarked the superintendent, grinning. ‘You told him you'd been out in this bathchair at one o'clock in the morning, if you remember.'

‘I don't remember telling him anything of the kind!' retorted old Mrs Puddequet, with spirit. ‘And what is he going to do about the stone balustrade up there, now that he's smashed up my two stone balls, I wonder?'

‘I've brought you these to put in place of them,' said Mrs Bradley's voice from behind the statue of a Roman gladiator. She came forward. Under each arm she carried a stone ornament.

‘Please take them from me, superintendent,' she said pleasantly.

‘Superintendent?' squealed old Mrs Puddequet furiously. ‘Have I been talking all this time to an eavesdropping policeman?'

‘No, to an eavesdropping psychologist,' said Mrs Bradley under her breath, for, by taking advantage of the cover afforded by the statue, she had managed to hear the whole conversation.

‘No
bon
, sonny,' said the superintendent upon his return to Market Longer. Bloxham looked at him anxiously.

‘What isn't?' he asked.

‘Kost.'

‘No
bon
?'

‘No earthly
bon
. Fellow was locked in that dressing room all night. So, even if he killed Hobson, he couldn't possibly have put the body in the water and tied it to that statue. Get out the book of words and let's have another go, because, if Kost wasn't the murderer, we've nothing on Caddick as the accomplice. You've certainly splashed the gravy up the wallpaper this time, boy.'

‘
AT ANY RATE,
we haven't proved that Kost didn't commit the second murder. He was the last person to see Anthony alive—' began Bloxham despairingly.

‘You said that before,' remarked the superintendent mildly. ‘I think I should go back to Longer if I were you and find out from Miss Caddick whether she really locked that door.'

Bloxham, who had scarcely liked to suggest this obvious proceeding, was gone before the superintendent could say any more.

Miss Caddick received him in the morning room, where she was having her tea.

‘You
will
have a cup of tea, inspector, won't you?' she fluttered.

Bloxham said that he would.

‘Did you wish to see me about—anything in particular?' enquired Miss Caddick, after he had confessed to a preference for two lumps of sugar.

‘Er—yes.' Bloxham helped himself to bread and butter. ‘Why did you lock the door on the outside when you'd shown Kost into Mrs Puddequet's dressing room on the night of Hobson's murder?'

‘Oh, that? Well you see'—she giggled coyly—‘I thought it would hardly
do
for anybody to open that door and
find
him there at night. So embarrassing for dear Mrs Puddequet, you see. I thought it would be so much
simpler
just to lock the door and take away the key.'

Bloxham nodded gloomily.

‘I see,' he said despondently. ‘Much simpler, of course.'

‘But in the middle of the night,' Miss Caddick continued, ‘not long before Mr Clive woke us all up by falling downstairs, it occurred to me what great
danger
poor Mr Kost would be in supposing the house were to catch on fire. So I tiptoed into dear Mrs Puddequet's room and unlocked the dressing-room door. Of course Mr Kost left the house quite early in the morning.'

They talked on other matters for the next quarter of an hour, and then Bloxham took his leave. If Kost had been locked in the dressing room until midnight—

At the gate of the sunk garden he encountered Mrs Bradley.

‘Are you going in or coming out?' said he.

‘Well, I was going in to return a book I borrowed,' replied Mrs Bradley, regarding him shrewdly with her humorous black eyes. ‘How goes the arithmetic?'

‘Arithmetic?' Bloxham laughed shortly. ‘It comes out a lemon every time.'

Mrs Bradley blinked over the idiom, and then grinned sympathetically.

‘Come into the library, where I have sufficient reason to go without asking for anybody belonging to the house,' she said, ‘and then, whilst I put back this volume and borrow another, you shall tell me about the criminals and when they are to be arrested.'

Bloxham followed her into the library.

‘Notebook,' said Mrs Bradley, holding out her skinny claw. Bloxham found the page and showed it to her. Mrs Bradley perused it with little cluckings of approval.

‘But this is wonderful!' she exclaimed, as she perused it. ‘Where are the handcuffs?'

‘But it wasn't Kost,' said Bloxham sadly. ‘And, if it wasn't Kost, you see, it wasn't Caddick either.'

‘Kost? Caddick?' said Mrs Bradley, puzzled. She looked at the notebook again. ‘My dear, neither of these could commit murder.'

‘Well, look at it in black and white,' said Bloxham. ‘What other conclusion could one come to?'

‘Why, plenty of other conclusions,' said Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘Wait just a moment and I'll come back and tell you what they are.'

She was gone from the library for less than ten minutes. When she returned, Bloxham was seated on a corner of the table with his notebook in his hands, scowling thoughtfully at the last few entries. Mrs Bradley took the notebook away from him and seated herself in a chair with the book laid open before her on the smooth, beautifully polished wood.

‘Herring, of course, you ruled out as lacking in the necessary brain power and as having no accomplice as far as can be traced,' she announced in businesslike tones. ‘That leaves Priscilla Yeomond still in your last collection of names. What have you against her?'

‘Nothing personal,' said Bloxham. ‘A very pretty and charming girl. Besides, as I've put in my notes, it is exceedingly doubtful whether she could have had anything to do with the death of Hobson. I ascertained that Celia and she left the drawing room together at somewhere round about ten o'clock while the gramophone was playing, to tidy their hair and so forth, but that's all. Of course, there's the second murder to be considered, the same as it has to be considered in regard to Kost—'

‘I suppose you have taken into consideration with regard to Priscilla Yeomond and Celia Brown-Jenkins the following facts?' said Mrs Bradley. ‘First, as you say, either of them could have leaned over the balcony and dropped the weight on to Hobson's head, for the essential point of the first murder is this: Everybody in the house had sufficient strength, and almost everybody had sufficient time and opportunity for it.'

‘Yes, but the other business of putting the body in the lake,' said Bloxham. ‘You don't mean to tell me—'

‘No, of course I don't,' said Mrs Bradley decidedly. ‘I am coming to that point next. Supposing that Priscilla accomplished Hobson's death, why then Malpas and Hilary Yeomond could have performed that mad trick which gave the game away.'

‘But Malpas and Hilary—oh, Malpas and Hilary—'

‘Both big, daring, chivalrous lads,' commented Mrs Bradley, grinning wickedly. ‘Both desperately anxious to cover up sister Priscilla's unfortunate peccadillo. Both—Hilary especially—quite clever enough to think out the details—'

Bloxham kicked the leg of the table temperamentally and then glared at the toes of his boots.

‘And as for the second murder,' said Mrs Bradley, thoroughly warming to the work and enjoying herself hugely, ‘you yourself know best how very suspicious Priscilla's admissions appeared to us when you questioned everybody in the little sitting room. Of course, it is another question whether a young female of unremarkable physique could have used that keen and heavy
gladius
with such fell effect as it seems to have been used on Anthony, but, apart from that—'

‘The thing was beastly sharp,' said Bloxham slowly.

‘And the body had been completely impaled on it,' said Mrs Bradley briefly. ‘The inference, to my mind, is fairly obvious, in spite of the proved sharpness of the weapon. I fancy a clever defending counsel—Ferdinand Lestrange, for example—would make short work of a case against Priscilla Yeomond or Celia Brown-Jenkins.'

‘The thing that puzzles me,' said Bloxham, ‘is why you are so certain that both the murders were committed by the same person. There's no earthly connection between them, to my mind.'

‘Well, it would be
too
exciting to suppose that two murderers, each with a Jupiter-like propensity for picking off ill-disposed persons for no other reason, apparently, than that they
were
ill-disposed, should be dwelling together under the same roof through circumstances which neither of them could possibly have foreseen until just over a year ago,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘However, there is point in your objection, and I will not dismiss the notion lightly now that you have seen fit to put it forward. Let us take, then, the persons who could have killed Anthony, but who could not have killed Hobson. You notice again that we get Malpas Yeomond. The other two names that you have down under this heading have not been mentioned in this enquiry before, so we will deal with Malpas first.'

‘But I've nothing against Malpas Yeomond except that he has no alibi,' protested Bloxham. ‘As for Francis Yeomond, I've nothing on him, either. Not for either of these affairs.'

‘And he didn't even come to the May Fair at Hilly Longer with us,' said Mrs Bradley, ‘so I've nothing against him, either. Disappointing, isn't it? What about Amaris Cowes?'

‘Very doubtful,' said Bloxham. ‘She was even inside the house when the disturbance began and everything.'

Mrs Bradley looked surprised.

‘But was she?' she asked.

‘Of course she was. Didn't she speak to Miss Caddick?'

‘Not when the disturbances commenced,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘She did not speak to Miss Caddick until the disturbances had ceased and Miss Caddick had left Mrs Puddequet and was back in her own room.'

‘Well?' said Bloxham.

‘Well,' returned Mrs Bradley, ‘you go up to Miss Caddick's room, and wait outside the door. When you hear a shot from Mr Kost's starter's pistol, please begin taking the time by your wristwatch. Has it a seconds dial? Yes. Very well.'

‘Look here, I've not time to waste—' began Bloxham, but before he could conclude the sentence Mrs Bradley had gone. He grunted sardonically and took the chair she had vacated. He bent over his notebook, rereading the list of names. It was maddening to think that on those pages somewhere was the name of the murderer—for, despite his remark to Mrs Bradley, he, too, felt certain that the person who had killed the drunken Hobson had also murdered the spendthrift, worthless Anthony.

At the end of four and a half minutes it occurred to him that he might as well fall in with Mrs Bradley's suggestion. He rose slowly and walked to the door. As he opened it there came the sound of a blank cartridge fired in the sunk garden. He tore up the stairs three at a time after a hasty glance at the seconds hand of his watch, and for forty seconds he waited outside Miss Caddick's bedroom door, his eyes fixed on the seconds hand as it went racing round the tiny circle. Suddenly, a rich, mellifluous voice said in his ear:

‘How many, child?'

‘Good heavens!' said Bloxham, startled. ‘Fifty seconds from the sound of the shot. Where the deuce did you come from?'

‘The sunk garden,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘We can go downstairs again now. I just wished to prove that, if it had been Amaris Cowes who made that dreadful noise outside the gate of the sunk garden, she could have run round the house and come in at the kitchen entrance; then she could have come up here by the way of the back stairs without making a noise, and could have spoken to Miss Caddick, as we know she did. Miss Caddick would not have seen her approach because the door was shut and Miss Caddick was on the farther side of it. Therefore, you see, the illusion that Amaris had merely come along the landing from her own room, because she had been disturbed by the javelin which broke the window, could have been created very easily and artistically.'