The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (30 page)

‘
Ad nauseam
,' said Mrs Bradley, with no intention of snubbing him. ‘But then, child, don't you see? If it
was
the murderer, then the murderer couldn't have been Cleaver Wright, whom she'd just left in the clearing.'

‘Why not? He could have sneaked behind the bushes when she ran away from him, and started crawling out without noticing that she had run back to the clearing again.'

‘With what object should he hide himself then? You are not proposing to tell me that, in the few seconds whilst Margery Barnes was lost to sight, Cleaver Wright killed Sethleigh, hid the body, and crawled into the bushes and then out again, are you?'

‘Well, no, but –'

‘And if you are not telling me that, why then, if he
was
the murderer, that means he murdered Sethleigh at some time between five minutes to eight, when your mother saw Sethleigh and Redsey going into the woods together, and a quarter to nine, when he met Margery Barnes. Well, that part of the theory is tenable. After all, given reasonably favourable circumstances, it does not take long to kill a fellow-creature. But, supposing Wright did that, do you really think it conceivable that he immediately brought Margery Barnes to the spot where he had just committed the murder? And, even supposing that he were bold or foolhardy or coldblooded enough to return to the spot with the girl, why should he have fled to the “Queen's Head” in that panic-stricken way and at once set about providing himself with an alibi? You see, I'm sure he
saw
the corpse in the woods that night, and he
may
have got blood from it on to his clothes. Of course, the fight with Galloway was a capital mistake. It was a confession that he knew of, even if he did not actually participate in, the crime.'

‘Knew of?'

‘Oh, yes. Cleaver Wright has been shielding somebody for a long time now. The curious part of it all is that I rather fancy he is shielding somebody who is not the murderer!'

‘I don't follow.'

‘No. I expressed myself very badly, child. Take a concrete case. He is in love with Lulu Hirst. Suppose he imagined she had done it. She couldn't possibly have done it, as a matter of fact –'

‘Why not?'

‘Wrong type, my dear. These passionate, tigerish, rather primitive persons don't go about things so deliberately. All the details of the murder of Rupert Sethleigh have probably been planned for months. All that the murderer needed was a favourable opportunity. He prowled about, and had the wit to take advantage of one of those freaks of fortune which do occasionally occur. He saw that James Redsey imagined he had killed his cousin. I can't see why a man who had the presence of mind to take advantage of a fact like that should have made the tremendous mistake of transporting the corpse to Bossbury and attempting to get rid of all evidence of its identity. Only the fact that it was impossible for your cousin James Redsey to have dismembered the body has saved him from arrest all this long time. I dare say that if the butcher person had contented himself with stabbing the prostrate Sethleigh as he lay unconscious on the ground, and had gone away leaving the corpse undisturbed, James Redsey would have been hanged.'

‘Motive,' said Aubrey, under his breath.

‘Exactly. James had the best motive of anybody, and, in my opinion, your mother had the next best. Then come Dr Barnes and Savile, with about equal motive, I should say, and then Wright. Perhaps Wright's motive was stronger than Savile's, though. He is in love with Lulu in his crude animal fashion, whereas Savile is merely married to her. And – Aubrey!' She leaned forward and slapped his knee excitedly. ‘Quick! Run! Get the inspector to find out which of Lulu's admirers scorched the collar and handkerchiefs and Felicity Broome's curtains! Run, child, run! Yes, he went that way! Find out whether it was Savile or Wright, or somebody else! Particularly whether it was somebody else. It's important!'

Aubrey returned, breathless, in ten minutes.

‘He's going to find out. Wants to know why you want to know.'

‘To-morrow he shall hear,' promised Mrs Bradley.

‘What was I saying? Oh, yes. About Wright shielding Lulu.'

‘You think he doesn't know the real murderer? You think he thinks it is somebody else?'

‘Yes. Queer state of affairs, isn't it?'

‘I should say so. By Jove, yes! First of all old Jim certain he'd laid Rupert out. Then everybody having such a frightful bother to prove that the – that Rupert was really dead. . . . Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you! Who
did
pinch the skull from Cleaver Wright's studio that afternoon?'

‘Cleaver Wright, perhaps.'

‘Still on this false tack of thinking the murderer was – well, you know! – somebody it wasn't?'

‘Yes, I think so.'

‘Then,' said Aubrey, disappointed, ‘he was the one who put it in the Culminster Collection?'

‘Of course, child. I've known that all along. His peculiar sense of humour again, you see.'

‘The – I mean – you can't prove anything from the skull being moved back to the butcher's shop.'

‘Well' – Mrs Bradley smiled at him thoughtfully – ‘it just depends who moved it back, doesn't it? Wright would be bound to share his little joke. No fun keeping it all to himself. See?'

‘Yes. Well, I thought you gave the names of all the people you suspected to the police, and told them –'

‘I did tell them quite a number of strange things, child. There is a surprise in store for Cleaver Wright, I think. Of course, he stole the key of the Museum from the vicar. A man like that is a menace to the whole parish! The vicar, I mean. Anybody could steal anything from him!'

‘You know,' said Aubrey, wrinkling his brow, ‘I feel in an awful muddle about all this.
Do
you know who the murderer is? And can you be certain that Cleaver Wright could get into the butcher's shop?'

‘I am not quite prepared to answer those questions,' said Mrs Bradley, smiling with quiet enjoyment. ‘Ask me again to-morrow. And now, dear me! Whoever is this? Mary Kate Maloney, as I live! She seems perturbed.'

Mary Kate flew up the garden path in an ecstasy of importance, terror, and blazing excitement. She had not even troubled to remove her apron.

‘Glory be to God, Mrs Bradley, ma'am!' she declared, fervent but out of breath. ‘Do you be running over to the house with all your legs this day! Sure, and there's poor Mr Savile from the Cottage on the Hill does be hanging by his braces from the wood-shed door entirely.'

‘I'm glad it's entirely,' said Mrs Bradley calmly, as she stood up and smoothed her skirt. ‘I am bored to death by mere limbs and joints. What's come over him that he should do a silly thing like that?'

‘Sure, they do be saying it must be unrequited love, the poor young fellow, ma'am.'

‘Fiddlesticks!' said Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘Undigested dinner is more likely in his case!'

The Inspector Makes an Arrest

I
NSPECTOR
G
RINDY
saluted Mrs Bryce Harringay with punctilious ceremony, and halted.

‘Well, madam, you've seen the last of me,' he observed with great geniality, ‘and I'm sorry you were ever troubled. Still, all's well that ends well, as the saying is. Could I see Mr Redsey for a minute?'

‘I will cause him to be summoned,' said Mrs Bryce Harringay majestically.

Jim met the inspector in the library.

‘Well, what is it now?' he said ungraciously.

The inspector grinned.

‘Only to tell you you're free to get off to America as soon as you like, sir,' he said. ‘We've nothing on you at all now. We've made our arrest.'

‘The devil you have!' said Jim, staring. ‘That poor dago Savile, I suppose?'

‘Well, sir, no. As a matter of fact, after I'd heard that comic fairy-tale Mrs Bradley was handing out to you all in her garden, I got quite one or two new ideas on the subject of that murder. Of course, I knew it wasn't the vicar. Hasn't got it in him. Besides, one or two of Mrs Bradley's ideas were entirely up the loop, and I knew it, and she knew it too, I reckon, and was just trying it on!'

‘But how the deuce did you hear her ideas at all?' asked Jim, handing his cigarette-case to the police officer. Inspector Grindy laid his uniform cap on the table and stretched out a massive mahogany hand.

‘Thank you. I will. Just to show there's no ill-feeling,' he said.

They lit up. Then Jim said:

‘Where did you say you were?'

‘Oh, behind that clump of laurels. At Mrs Bradley's invitation,' replied the inspector jovially. ‘And I certainly got a knock-out over that silver tobacco-case. You see, sir, she pulled my leg about that case quite a long time ago. Told me the murderer had collected some of Sethleigh's blood in it and poured it over the Stone of Sacrifice. Though, mind you, there was nothing like enough blood on that Stone for a murder! Of course I knew that was only her funny idea of a joke, so I took no notice; but, upon my soul, I was startled to see the vicar hike that case out of his pocket. Sifting it out, though, it seems as though he must have –'

‘Acquired it?' suggested Jim, grinning.

‘Thank you, sir. Yes, and a long time before the murder. Mrs Bryce Harringay remembers hearing Mr Sethleigh enquiring after it, and the servants all remember being questioned about it upwards of six or perhaps eight weeks ago, so I expect the vicar pouched it in that at sent-minded manner of his, and that's that. Then the clothes. We investigated the idea that Wright handled the body, and that bit is quite true. How the devil she tumbled to that, I don't know. I hadn't seen the significance of that scrap-up in the “Queen's Head” all along, but that old woman got a strangle-hold on it right away. I'll hand her that. Well, Wright broke down under our interrogation and confessed he'd seen a headless corpse. Mark that, sir! The skull again, you see! Then we made him produce the trousers which he'd been wearing on and off ever since the murder. They were Sethleigh's, which was really a bit of a knock-out, because I'd put that bit of the old girl's yarn down as sheer piffle. Funny thing is, he's sticking to it that he didn't take 'em off the corpse at all! He'll go a long way if he isn't hanged. Time and again he must have had 'em on and stood and talked to me. It's a proper knock-out, that is! They're Sethleigh's flannels right enough. Tailor's mark on 'em and everything. Well, of course, the rest of the clothing wasn't dropped in the river at all, and Mrs Bradley never really thought it was. It seems as though it really must have been shoved into that suitcase with the head, and that's where those bloodstains must have come from. Well, the suitcase affair altogether was a bit tricky. I'm not dead sure I've got it right now, and we certainly haven't found the shirt and things. But it seems as though it was lent by Sethleigh to the vicar. Then the maid at the Vicarage packed some laundry in it and sent it to that daisy that hangs out with Savile and Wright in the Cottage on the Hill. From there the murderer pinched it. Had ample opportunity, it seems, because he was very sweet on Mrs Lulu, and used to visit her as often as he could crowd it in. Wonderful how many patients a country practitioner can – acquire was your word, sir, I think?' – he guffawed heartily – ‘and what a devil of a time it takes him to get round to see 'em all!'

‘Country practitioner?' said Jim, puzzled. ‘What on earth are you getting at?'

‘Why, Dr Barnes, sir, of course. He's the chap we've arrested. I just told you we'd made an arrest. Don't you remember little Miss Barnes saying her father was at the major's that Sunday evening? And Mrs Bradley's peculiar answer struck me all of a heap. She said they could prove whether that was so later on – or some words of that sort. Evasive, I said to myself. There's something behind that, I said. Well, it turns out on investigation that he was never at the major's at all! What do you make of that, sir? And then – another thing,' he added, before Jim could reply; ‘the dismembering of the corpse! Child's play, sir, to a surgeon! And wouldn't disgust him and upset him like it would ordinary folks. Just science to him, cutting up a body. Just science. And Mrs Bradley confided to me herself what a tidy beggar the murderer must be! Now, sir, I ask you! What could be tidier than cutting up a body as neat as that, and hanging up the bits out of the way?'

Jim looked as he felt – sick.

‘Then, again,' pursued the inspector, ‘look at the motives! Two motives, in fact, and both different. Mixed motives, as we call it. His daughter and the blackmail business.'

Jim, rather tired of Rupert's wide reputation as a Don Juan of the baser sort, merely nodded.

‘Well, three, if you count Mrs Lulu,' said the inspector, working it all out. ‘Both sweet on her, you see, Sethleigh and him were. Jealousy, and all that. Wonderful what a bit of passion will do to a man's character, you know. Anyway, he could have done the deed in the time; he wasn't at the major's; and we trapped him into saying he'd been in the Manor Woods before he knew what we were after. So how's that? As for the deed itself – well, Mrs Bradley talked of the vicar's penknife, but a doctor would be neater. Tidy again, sir, you see! She certainly put me on the track there again! His scalpel. And it could be put away with his other instruments and nobody any the wiser! Then the head. Takes a doctor to dissect a head nicely and leave just the bare skull like we found. The police surgeon says the head was split half-way down, and boiled to leave the bone, but you know what these surgeons are, sir – must have their nasty little jokes! Anyway, that's a small point. Well, then, sir, the Stone of Sacrifice. If you say “doctor” where Mrs Bradley said “vicar”, you'll be about right. I should say that to the doctor that big slab suggested an operating-table! Something in that, sir, don't you think? And perhaps he could have done something about the quantity of blood. There wasn't enough for a stab in the neck, you see. That's the only flaw in our theory.'