The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (29 page)

‘We've got nothing on Savile. Besides, he's as meek as a sheep.'

‘The deuce he is! And he's got muscles like a prizefighter under those polite duds of his! Besides, he could have pinched the skull from Wright, and he could have buried it on those cliffs! He could have gone over there on the Thursday afternoon while everybody at the Vicarage was playing tennis –'

‘But he was playing tennis, too.'

‘Yes, part of the time. Then he went into the house to look at one of the vicar's books, but I wonder whether that was an excuse for slipping away and burying the skull without anybody knowing he had left the house? You see, from the Vicarage it is the easiest thing in the world to drop over into the churchyard and take a short cut on to the Bossbury road.'

‘Yes, but he couldn't walk to Rams Cove and back in an afternoon, Mr Bidwell.'

‘Who said he could? He'd have a car waiting. He's got one, you see. We must find out about that. If he didn't go in a car – oh, or on a push-bike; that's another idea! – or on his motor-bike – I believe it belongs to Wright, as a matter of fact, but Savile borrows it, I know –'

‘Or he could have buried the suitcase with that fish inside it,' grinned the inspector. ‘Just a nice little game for a quiet summer afternoon!'

‘You still think the boy Harringay did that, and then lied about it?' said Superintendent Bidwell.

‘Well, don't you, sir?' asked Grindy, laughing.

‘I don't know. Either he or Wright. That's the sort of silly-idiot joke Wright would think really funny. And don't forget – talking of Wright – that he can't account for that hour and a half between the time he left church and the time he went to the pub.'

‘I heard some rumour that he met a girl.'

‘What girl?'

‘The doctor's daughter.'

‘Oh. Doesn't want to give her away to papa, I suppose. Of course, he could have hidden the skull himself, and put that coconut in its place. But the
motive
is the whole blinking point. There was nothing between him and Sethleigh any time that we know of, was there? You see, that's where I think we ought to freeze hard on to young Redsey, now that we've proved Sethleigh is dead. After all, he's the chap with the really strong motive.'

‘What about the doctor?'

‘Eh?'

‘And Mrs Bryce Harringay?'

‘Eh?'

‘And Savile? Why, that Lulu girl up at the Cottage as good as told Mrs Bradley that Sethleigh was her lover. “There's one man dead for me already,” she said. What else can you make of that? A husband that's been fooled isn't the sweetest-tempered creature on earth, you know, and you say yourself the chap's got muscle enough for the job.'

‘What was that about the doctor?'

‘Blackmail.'

‘Oh, that illegitimacy business. What of it? Good Lord, if every man who has an illegitimate kid turned into a murderer, what the devil would the world come to?'

‘Oh, well, a doctor, you know. Got to be pretty careful. The patients and all that. Especially when they're county families. Don't like it, you know. Family doctor's got to be a bally Joseph as far as they're concerned, or else – nah poo!'

‘Was it ever proved, though?'

‘Cleaver Wright.'

‘How much?'

‘Fact. Don't you spot the likeness?'

‘I – well, now you mention it – oh, I don't know, though. One's reddish and the other nearly black.'

‘Not an unusual result in father and son. Probably the mother was dark, too.'

‘But the eyes and mouth?'

‘Different, yes. The mother again, I should think. But the family likeness is unmistakable, once you've got on to it. And, of course, Cleaver's been sponging on the doctor ever since he's been here!'

‘Has he?'

‘Rumour says so. May not be true, of course. But we might look into it, I think. I've often wondered why those folks came to live here. Easy money was probably the reason. The doctor wouldn't want –'

‘But Mrs Bryce Harringay?'

‘Well, I've been thinking a lot about young Redsey and that will, and I'm dead sure that boy's telling the truth. Put it this way. As soon as the will was altered and Sethleigh died, young Harringay came in for the house and land.'

‘Yes. I know that. Go on.'

‘Redsey swears he didn't know the will was going to be altered. Hadn't heard a word about it.'

‘We've thrashed all that out before. I say he did know.'

‘Half a minute. Just take the other side for a moment. Suppose he didn't know, but that Mrs Bryce Harringay did.'

‘We needn't suppose at all. We know she'd heard the will was to be altered. She said as much.'

‘More than once.' The inspector grinned ruefully. ‘And always with chapter and verse, not to mention whole book of words, complete with song and dance! What I've put up with from those two old women – her and the scraggy one –'

‘Bradley?'

‘Ah. Never mind! Well, as I say, supposing she not only knew that the proposed alteration was in the wind, but that she actually thought the will had already been altered?'

‘But she didn't think so.'

‘We can't prove it, either way. Neither can we prove that Redsey is telling the truth when he swears he didn't know. It cuts both ways, you see, and if you say one of 'em's a liar, you've got to keep your weather eye lifting because the other one may be lying too. See my point?'

‘Oh, yes. But the crime? You don't tell me she did in Sethleigh and then carved him up?'

‘I think she might have killed him. Big, hefty, very heavy woman, you know, and determined – damned determined!' said the inspector feelingly. ‘She could have followed the two of them into the woods, seen Redsey knock out Sethleigh, gone up and stabbed Sethleigh in the throat with her little fruit-knife –'

‘Fruit-knife?'

‘Ah. Poor woman's one of these vegetarians, you know. They all cart their fruit-knives about with them. At least, the Miss Mindens always do; and this one is always got up in gold chains and things, so she could easily hang a fruit-knife on herself somewhere. Silver or stainless steel they're made of, and are beautifully fashioned and finished. And nobody would think of such a thing as a weapon. You could clean it up after the murder, and go on carting it about with you, you see. Not like anything big and suspicious – like a dagger, for instance.'

‘That's a point. We've never discovered quite how the murder was committed. We only know the chap wasn't killed at the butcher's, because there was not enough blood. A little neat nick in the neck would have done the trick very nicely, I should say.'

‘Yes,' went on the inspector, ‘and she's got no alibi at all from about a quarter to eight until ten o'clock that night.'

‘How's that?'

‘Well, I've been nosing round that house a fair number of times now, and getting out a few ideas – you know the way – and it has sort of come out that she didn't go to church that night, and she went up to her bedroom at about a quarter to eight because she had a touch of neuralgia or something. Well, nobody saw her from then until two farm hands brought Redsey home drunk from the “Queen's Head” that night. What do you make of that?'

‘And you think she had an idea the will had already been altered?'

‘Ah.'

‘And by doing in Sethleigh she could grab the lot for the kid?'

‘Ah.'

‘There's something in it, but not much.'

‘There's as much in it as in your tin-pot idea that Redsey did it,' retorted the inspector, grinning. ‘The fact is, Mr Bidwell, they've neither of them got the stomach to carve up the corpse. It seems to me we're up against that all the time. Those that had enough motive to do the murder couldn't rake up the guts to cover their tracks by messing up the identity of the body. And those that are blood-thirsty enough to hang bits of a dead man on hooks don't seem to have had enough motive to kick a dog – let alone commit a crime!'

‘Then there's the question of Savile,' said Mrs Bradley, after a pause. ‘A very vexed question, that of Savile. You see, the Stone itself would be such a temptation to him.'

‘How do you mean?' asked Aubrey.

‘A most curious person, Savile,' Mrs Bradley went on. ‘I've made a whole sheaf of notes about him. I shall incorporate them in my small new work for the Sixpenny Library. It is entitled
Psycho-Analysis for the Many
. You might recommend it to your mother with my compliments! No, but Savile really is a gem. I wouldn't have missed him for anything. And the vicar, too. Excellent. Surprisingly excellent, both of them.'

‘But Savile hadn't any reason for hating Sethleigh,' said Aubrey.

‘Hadn't he? You go and ask Lulu Hirst about that.' Mrs Bradley pursed her lips and shook her small black head.

‘Oh? Oh, really. Oh, I see.' He didn't, in the least, but at fifteen and three-quarters one hesitates about confessing ignorance on any subject under the sun.

‘Yes, Savile liked things done just so,' Mrs Bradley went on, as though she were talking to herself. ‘And I wonder sometimes whether the Stone was too much for him. Somehow, though, I think he wouldn't have carried the thing through so boldly. He is consistent, I am sure; neat and tidy to a fault – it was a
very
tidy person who left that butcher's shop in such good order! – and he has a curious kink in his mentality. Have you observed it, child? But I don't think he has the requisite amount of nerve, quite, for a murder.'

‘I've observed he's a greasy swine,' said Aubrey, without heat. ‘Can't stick him at any price.'

‘Yes. I didn't mean that. No, this that I am referring to struck me very forcibly when I went to call there one afternoon and discovered him in the act of interring a small dead bird – a canary which in life had belonged to Lulu Hirst.'

‘Oh?' The hot afternoon was making Aubrey sleepy.

‘Yes. He was wearing a clergyman's collar.'

‘Clergyman's collar? Absent-minded blighter – like the vicar! Fancy two of them in one parish!' He began to laugh.

‘Not absent-minded. That collar was a bit of ritual. Surely you noticed the Robin Hood suit when he nearly shot me in the Manor Woods that afternoon?'

‘Robin Hood suit? Oh, yes. But he told us he was rehearsing for a play.'

‘Rehearsing my foot!' pronounced Mrs Bradley firmly. ‘He was dressed for the part he was playing in his imagination, that's all. And that's why I think he must be the butcher. You see, to him a dead body – dead flesh – would signify meat. Meat is cut into joints. Very well. He cuts it into joints!'

‘But that's a bit of a skilled job, you know.' Aubrey was wide awake now. ‘I mean, you can't just pick up a butcher's cleaver and hack about. It's scientific. I've often watched them, and I bet it takes a bit of doing, not to speak of heaps of practice.' He spoke decidedly.

‘Undoubtedly. But Savile had a chart hanging up in the studio. He used it to correct his drawings. It was a mass of red-ink dots and little crosses, and was annotated very freely. It was a human body with the skeleton marked in black, and had fainter lines showing the shape of the flesh on the bones. A most fascinating work. Oh, and Wright didn't like to see me looking at it, I remember. That is interesting, too.'

‘But Savile looks such a miserable little dago,' argued Aubrey. ‘Butchers are generally hefty lads.'

‘So is Savile.' Mrs Bradley drew a vivid word-picture of Savile's strength and muscular development.

‘Shouldn't have thought it,' said Aubrey. ‘Well, he had the strength, then. What else?'

‘The Stone. Apart from any question of motive from the viewpoint of revenge or gain, we get the fact that the Stone is the centre of some weird and wonderful legends. It may even have been a sacrificial altar in some remote age, as its name suggests. I wonder sometimes whether the urge to offer a human sacrifice upon it would not be motive enough for a mind like that of Savile to cause him to commit murder. It is a pleasing idea. Rather fantastic, perhaps. . . .'

‘Then, if you are right, Savile could have been the chap who must have been sneaking about in the woods that night and boned the suitcase while I'd gone up to the house,' said Aubrey.

‘Yes. Undoubtedly. And it would fit in well with my theory of his guilt that he should have buried the fish with it and inscribed that peculiar legend upon the piece of paper. “A present from Grimsby” !' She cackled with pleasure.

‘I see the inspector at the gate. I wonder whether they've tried to find the origin of that piece of paper?' she continued, staring down the long garden path.

‘I don't think they have. The chap kept trying to get me to confess I'd written it myself,' said Aubrey. ‘Got quite huffy when I stuck to it that I knew no more about the bally paper than he did! But do you know who I think did that? Cleaver Wright. He's just that sort of feeble ass, you know. I say, I think the inspector wants to speak to you. Oh, no. He's gone. But I say! Wouldn't what you say about Savile apply pretty equally to Wright? I mean, he's a mad coot, isn't he? And I could more easily imagine him killing a chap than that worm Savile. And he's as strong as an ox, and he's pretty keen on Lulu Hirst, too; and he'd think it a good jape to cut up the body and hang up the limbs like bits of meat! I can see him grinning all over his face at the thought of it! And we
know
he was in the Manor Woods that Sunday night with Margery Barnes, and we know she ran away from him. And then, the chap she saw crawling out of the bushes could not have been Sethleigh, so that it may have been the murderer. Had you thought of that?'