The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (31 page)

Jim nodded.

‘I see,' he said, still trying to readjust his thoughts sufficiently to take hold of the idea that the large, robust, ruddy, rather offensively loud-voiced and didactic Dr Barnes was a murderer.

‘And then the slug business.'

‘How much?' said Jim, puzzled.

‘Miss Barnes's own words, sir. The man that came crawling out of the bushes like a great black slug. She confessed that the form seemed somehow familiar, you remember? Well, sir, what could be more familiar than the sight of her own father? That's who she saw, and the doctor can't deny it!'

‘And why should he deny it?' asked a rich voice at the open French doors. ‘Of course it was Dr Barnes, and of course Margery did not recognize him, although his figure seemed familiar. It is a great pity she did not, for otherwise quite a number of muddles could have been cleared up by this time.'

And Mrs Bradley stepped into the library and seated herself in its most comfortable chair. Jim turned to her in perplexity.

‘I'm damned if I can make this business out at all, Mrs Bradley,' he confessed frankly. ‘Of course, we all knew that you were drawing the long-bow about the vicar yesterday, but really, to push the murder off on to the doctor seems almost as bad to me. I mean, all the people here have known the chap for years, and I'm sure he must have lived down any scandal there ever was connected with his son.'

‘Cleaver Wright is that son,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘Oh, really? I've heard rumours of it, of course. Still, there's a sight of difference between going off the end about some woman or other and doing a blooming great murder, isn't there?'

‘There is,' said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘Curious of me, perhaps, but on the whole I prefer the murderer. The population of this country is so excessive that, looked at from the purely common-sense point of view, a person who decreases it is considerably more public-spirited than one who adds to it, and he should be dealt with accordingly.'

‘But the doctor?' said Jim, having digested these theses in silence. ‘It's a knock-out to me.'

‘Well, what can you expect will happen to a man who has never played bears with the children?' demanded Mrs Bradley abruptly.

‘Never what?' asked the inspector, grinning.

‘But, of course, to arrest him for murder is ridiculous,' went on Mrs Bradley calmly. ‘He was in the Manor Woods – yes. He has no alibi? Are you sure of that? Go and ask Lulu Hirst. His daughter saw him – yes. And he was crawling on hands and knees, and if he had ever played bears with her when she was a child she would have recognized him, and could have said so, and that part of the business could have been cleared up. Anyway, inspector, take the advice of a sincere well-wisher and let the poor man go. Besides, what about fingerprints in the butcher's shop?'

‘Oh, we don't think the actual work was done in the butcher's shop. We suspect he dismembered the body in his own surgery in the garden. More expeditious, madam, you see. Then he wrapped up the bits in Miss Felicity Broome's muslin curtains, like they wrap up meat when they deliver it to the butchers' shops, and that's how the curtains got scorched.'

‘Expound, O sage,' said Mrs Bradley, settling down with huge enjoyment to listen.

‘Well, madam, you yourself put us on to that. Don't you remember how you found out about that suitcase getting to Mrs Lulu Hirst?'

Mrs Bradley nodded her small black head.

‘And don't you remember telling me her words?'

‘Whose words, inspector?'

‘Mrs Lulu's. She didn't name Savile or Wright as the man that scorched that ironing. All she said was “that swine I goes with”. Well, that's the doctor, madam. Plain as a pikestaff. She washed the curtains for him and he went and scorched 'em!'

‘Inspector,' said Mrs Bradley, with emotion, ‘you will convince me in a minute that you are right and I am wrong. This is too wonderful for words!'

The inspector grinned.

‘Just a little bit of deduction,' he said spaciously. ‘Just part of our job, you know.'

‘Then you imply that Lulu Hirst is aware that Dr Barnes committed this murder?'

‘That's right, Mrs Bradley. And that's why it's no good me going to her, as you suggest, to give the doctor an alibi, because I know she will, like a shot. Knows he did it, you see.'

Mrs Bradley sighed and turned to Jim Redsey.

‘This is very difficult, young man,' she observed.

Jim put out his large hands helplessly.

‘You see, madam, there's her own words to be thought about. She said to you, you remember, “There's one man dead for me already, and another soon will be!” Or some expression like that. Meaning, I take it, that Sethleigh was murdered, and the doctor would be hanged for doing it.'

‘H'm! Doesn't sound as though she would be prepared to fix him up with much of an alibi,' said Mrs Bradley tersely. ‘You can't have it both ways, inspector, you know!'

‘Oh, yes, you can, Mrs Bradley, with ladies of the type of Mrs Lulu,' contradicted the inspector gravely. ‘Love their loves
and
hate 'em, that's the way they go on. You'd be surprised!'

Mrs Bradley broke into an amused cackle.

‘Upon my word, inspector!' she said. ‘I can't think what has happened to you. This is so sudden!'

‘Well,' remarked the inspector, winking solemnly at Jim, ‘I got your little book out of the Bossbury Library a couple of days back. There's some frisky reading in that there book, Mrs Bradley, and I reckon it has kind of inspired me. Keep it away from the wife, though, I had to. Wouldn't hardly do to let her know I read stuff like that! If it was fiction it would be seized by the police, and so I tell you!' He guffawed loudly.

‘Frisky reading!' said Mrs Bradley, clutching her black hair. ‘Seized by the police! James, get me some water! This man unnerves me!'

Jim grinned.

‘And as you value your professional reputation, inspector,' she added, ‘fly, fly to the prison-house and set free that unfortunate, choleric, ridiculous man! Tidy, indeed! Is it tidy to have illegitimate children all over the place, so that blackmailers may arise from the earth and counfound you? Is it tidy to have affairs with the Lulu Hirsts of this world, so that all the village knows about them? Is it tidy to be compelled to forbid your own daughter, of whom you are very fond, to have aught to do with young men for fear that her innocent mind may be contaminated with stories of your own depravity? No, no, no! And the motive, inspector! The motive! Why, the poor man
had
no motive! Everybody in the village knew his secret. It wasn't a secret at all!'

She smote the polished table vehemently, and continued:

‘No, I tell you, no! And the man who cut up that body
is
tidy! How many times must I say it? He is a maniac for tidiness! Oh, you are right enough about the curtains! They
were
used for the purpose you stated! And the corpse was
not
dismembered in the butcher's shop! Neither was it dismembered in the doctor's surgery, though! And what about the burial of that suitcase containing the fish? What about that ridiculous notice on the fish? Those were the clues you should have studied! Those were the two facts absolutely germane to your case! Man, rid your mind of this poison about the doctor's guilt! He is a fool, but he is not a madman!'

She stopped short. The inspector and Jim gaped at her in stark amazement.

‘Beware of the fact that will not fit,' proclaimed Mrs Bradley, more calmly. ‘Go home and pray, inspector. But set the doctor free first!'

She walked quickly out of the room through the French doors, leaving the two men staring after her.

‘Well, I'm damned!' said the inspector solemnly.

Jim nodded. It seemed an adequate comment.

Suddenly Mrs Bradley poked her head tortoise-wise in at the French doors, and addressed herself again to the inspector.

‘I couldn't bear the thought that our charming James should be suspected of murder,' she said. ‘An unpalatable idea! Therefore I determined to look at the facts for myself. It very soon dawned upon me that we were dealing, not with a man possessing a perverted sense of humour, but with a man of such deadly seriousness of mind that the mere word “eccentricity” could not account for his peculiar traits. The man to whom dead flesh was meat, and must be disposed of as such; the man who split open the skull and boiled it because that's what he's seen done with the heads of deceased animals; the man who, dog-like, buried the skull (after all, there
were
other ways of getting rid of it, you see!); the man who found himself compelled to write “A Present from Grimsby” on a stuffed fish; a man whose queer mentality would never let him rest until he had seen an offering, a sacrifice – a human sacrifice – laid upon the Stone (by the way, he went back home and brought a small saw and a carving-knife as well as the suitcase back with him to the Stone, and performed that unpleasant job on the Sunday night when everybody had gone to bed. Very neat, considering the enormous handicap of having nothing but the front lamp of a car to light up the grisly work); and –'

‘I say!' said Jim, open-eyed. ‘What a ghastly scene! But how do you know all this?'

‘I don't. I deduce it. There were certainly some splinters of bone on the top of the Stone when I examined it through my reading-glass that day.'

‘But the police didn't spot them!'

‘No, child. They were not looking for them. I was. That makes all the difference,' said Mrs Bradley, looking more like some deadly reptile than ever, as she directed a serpent's grin at the inspector.

‘But who on earth could be such a maniac?' asked Jim. The inspector stood by, mute but amused.

Aubrey Harringay, coming up behind Mrs Bradley, gently pushed her into the room, and entered after her.

‘The person who puts on a clerical collar when he is going to inter a little dead bird,' replied the terrible little old lady to Jim's question. ‘The person who assumes a suit of Lincoln green and its appurtenances when he is practising archery (I cannot make up my mind whether the shot in the wood was directed at me or not, by the way).'

‘If not,' said Aubrey, eager to display knowledge, ‘why did he tell a lie about where he was standing when he shot it?'

‘Did he tell a lie?' asked Mrs Bradley.

‘Yes, of course. Said he was in the woods on the other side of the road. Couldn't have been.'

‘Why not, child?'

‘Flight of the arrow. He'd have had to shoot over the tree-tops, wouldn't he? But the arrow was less than six feet from the ground, and travelling in a straight flight. Hadn't been fired from more than twenty yards off, I should say.'

‘By heavens, Holmes,' said Mrs Bradley, hooting merrily and poking him in the ribs, ‘this is wonderful!'

‘No, it isn't,' said Aubrey, getting out of her reach. ‘It's the result of patient observation. The mater belonged to an archery club a few years ago, when I was about eleven, and I used to put in a lot of time acting as sort of caddie to her. I don't know what they call it in archery, but when I read that bit in the Bible about Jonathan shooting the arrows and telling his boy the arrow was beyond him, I jolly well know what that poor kid felt like. It reminds me of my own youth.' He grinned.

‘Oh, well. That's that,' said Mrs Bradley.

‘And what about getting the parts of the body into Binks's shop? When was that done?' demanded Jim.

‘That's where you got yourself into a muddle, my dear inspector! Somebody hung about Binks's shop for weeks and wondered how the thing was to be managed; and at last, seeing no other way, he bribed Binks's boy for the key. The boy did not recognize him – the man's a vegetarian, you see! – and anyway, the boy hasn't the brains to describe him for us – and there you are! He had only to load the dismembered parts into his car, each bit wrapped up in a fold of Felicity's muslin curtains, and deliver them at Binks's shop whenever the fancy took him, which was on the Monday afternoon, and that was that.'

‘Wouldn't the other people in the market be surprised at a delivery of meat being made in a lock-up shop on a Monday? And what about the finger-prints on the butcher's knife and cleaver?'

‘Those of Binks's boy,' grunted the inspector. ‘I tell you we made up our minds long ago the business was not done at the shop.
And
we knew the lad was bribed to give up the key.'

‘But how will they bring home the crime to the murderer?' asked Jim, glancing at the inspector.

‘They probably won't. You don't suppose the inspector is taking any notice of my fantastic theories, do you?'

She chuckled with sardonic amusement.

‘But hang it all, I mean! What price the doctor?' cried Aubrey. ‘Oh, and why did Savile try to commit suicide?'

‘The wronged husband. He considered it was the correct way of proving that his faith in human nature was gone for ever.'

‘Wronged husband?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh, Lulu.'

‘Yes.'

‘And that blighter Rupert,' interpolated Aubrey.

‘A dead man, child,' said Mrs Bradley solemnly.

‘What about it?' demanded Aubrey sternly. ‘Dead or not, he
was
a blighter! Why be soft?'

‘Quite, quite!' Mrs Bradley nodded sympathetically. ‘But not Rupert. Dr Barnes.'

‘Oh!'

‘Yes. It was certainly Dr Barnes who scorched the ironing that day. The inspector was right there.' She nodded brightly and encouragingly at him, and continued. ‘By the way, talking of Lulu – you realize the interesting implication now of Savile's having married her to please one school of opinion and his having demanded that they should continue to use her maiden name to satisfy the ridiculous conventions of another?'