The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (9 page)

‘Your guests are all right,' said Aubrey, with youthful optimism. ‘The major is still clinging tight to lovely Lulu – no, honestly, though, talk about “the face that launched a thousand ships” – she
is
a glorious kid, isn't she? Young, too, you know. Not more than eighteen. Can't be. She is bucked at having the old lad on her hands all the afternoon! And the mater is busy having a row with old Jim, and Mrs Bradley is hobnobbing with the doctor, and Margery has gone home to feed her rabbits, but she's coming back immediately, and I – here am I!' He put his black head on one side and smiled at her.

‘Yes,' said Felicity absently. ‘Aubrey, I wish you had buried that suitcase after all. It seems to me that even if the police had found it, they couldn't have done much with it. But the thought that somebody was watching us all the time in those woods makes me crawl all over. I say, here comes Mrs Bradley. Do talk to her.'

‘Not I,' said Aubrey, making a bee-line for the gooseberry bushes which bordered the kitchen garden and divided it from the lawn. ‘You do your own dirty work, young child! I'm going to have a squint at your historic dust-heap.'

‘I've been talking for hours,' announced Mrs Bradley to Felicity. ‘How ill-natured one is always tempted to be when one gossips! The dear doctor was thus tempted. He fell.'

‘Did he?' said Felicity. She laughed. ‘Poor old thing! He loves to be malicious. Who was the victim this time?'

‘Mrs Savile.' She lowered her small, thin body carefully into a deck-chair and arranged her sulphur and green voile frock.

‘You mean Lulu Hirst,' said Felicity, sitting on the grass and gazing up into Mrs Bradley's shrewd yellow face.

‘Do I? That's what the doctor seemed anxious to impress upon me.'

‘What is?'

‘That I meant Lulu Hirst. But I've worked it out logically. Would you care to hear the conclusions?'

‘Yes, please,' said Felicity politely.

‘What is your own opinion of the young person?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

‘I can't stand any of them up at the Cottage,' said Felicity. ‘They are such a queer crowd. Of course, one can understand Cleaver Wright. He is an artist.'

‘But I thought personal peculiarities as part of an artist's stock-in-trade had gone sadly out of fashion,' demurred Mrs Bradley. ‘Where does he come from?'

‘Somewhere in London.'

‘And now he lives in the Cottage on the Hill. Did he give it that name? No? I thought not. That was the always-correct Mr Savile's choice, wasn't it? Yes? I thought so. And Lulu –'

‘Surnamed the Unspeakable,' muttered Felicity darkly.

Mrs Bradley gave a sinister chuckle.

‘How extraordinarily interesting!' she observed.

‘I don't think it is interesting,' said Felicity through her teeth. ‘I think she's a little cat!'

‘That's where you are entirely wrong, child,' said Mrs Bradley very seriously. ‘However, we will go into that later. I was about to remark that Lulu, in actual fact, is Mr Savile's wife.'

‘Then why doesn't she say so, and have done with it?' was Felicity's spirited demand.

‘For the simple reason, child, that Savile, a man of average prosperity and under no obligation financially to labour for his bread, likes to consider himself a painter. The craze for defying convention, I seem to remember, was still rife in the quarter of London from which he came, and therefore I imagine he considered it highly improper to be shackled by the matrimonial tie. To such an apostle of free thought, free love, and, I darkly suspect, free food and drink at the expense of other and more indigent people, the idea of marriage convention would be singularly distasteful. But there is another side to his nature. He is in the most startling sense a rigid pedant. Therefore, as he knows the average person still looks upon the state of matrimony as a reasonable preliminary to cohabitation with a member of the opposite sex, he went through the form of marriage with Lulu Hirst according to the requirements of English law, and such law would unhesitatingly recognize them as man and wife. But once this enterprising fellow had compromised with the law of the land, his next intention was to effect a compromise with that of his immediate circle. Therefore he and his wife mutually agreed that Lulu should retain her maiden name of Hirst, and the awful secret that they had been branded with the matrimonial iron was to remain locked in their bosoms. Savile desired that Chelsea or Bloomsbury or Chiswick or wherever it is should not look down upon him. He must save his soul – and, of course, his face; a thing of far greater importance to most of us!'

She cackled with pleasure at the picture she had conjured up. Felicity smiled politely.

‘Thus,' Mrs Bradley continued, ‘
all
the conventions had been complied with, and there remained but to settle down to a life of humdrum ease in the country.'

She shook her head sadly.

‘There are none as despotically governed as the lawless,' she observed tritely. ‘There are none as absurdly shackled by taboo and convention as those who desire to be free of these things. We change our masters; but it is as slaves we live and die.'

With grace, strength, and precision, Aubrey Harringay cleared the gooseberry bushes like a steeplechaser and came up beside Felicity.

‘Well, child,' said Mrs Bradley. Aubrey smiled engagingly at her, but addressed himself to the girl.

‘I say,' he said, ‘I hope you don't mind, but I've been having a squizz at your dust-heap, as I said I would.'

‘But it
smells!
' said Felicity, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘And I do hope you turned up the bottoms of your lovely white trousers! It is such a dreadful place.'

‘Horrid. Yes,' Aubrey agreed absently, glancing down at his flannels. ‘I say,' he added unexpectedly, ‘What does your pater do with his false teeth?'

‘But he hasn't false teeth!' cried Felicity, bewildered.

‘No, I thought he hadn't,' remarked Aubrey. He smiled amiably at them both and walked serenely away, leaving Mrs Bradley with a curious expression on her sharp-featured, sardonic face, and Felicity staring after him in perplexity.

Suddenly Mrs Bradley laughed. Her own teeth were even, strong, and white – the teeth of a relentless beast of prey; a creature tigerish, carnivorous, untamed.

‘But why the country?' she said to herself. ‘Curious!'

The Tale of a Head

T
HE
Bishop of Culminster sighed heavily and inspected his left leg. The leg, shapely, well gaitered, neat, and infinitely episcopal, satisfied his anxious scrutiny. He inspected his right leg.

‘I do wish, Reginald,' said Mrs Bryce Harringay, with pardonable asperity, ‘that you would Hurry Up. The car has been at the door now for twenty minutes.'

The bishop smiled benignly upon her, but groaned in spirit. A long drive in the car with his autocratic sister-in-law was, in his opinion, a poor way of spending a lovely June day.

‘I am more than ready, my dear Constance,' he observed, following her down the steps and out to the waiting vehicle.

Mrs Bryce Harringay snorted and, climbing in, settled herself comfortably against the upholstery of Rupert Sethleigh's Bentley car.

‘And where is Rupert?' enquired the bishop, as the car, handled by Rupert Sethleigh's chauffeur, started off with some of the bishop's gravel path rattling under the mudguards. ‘Could he not find time to accompany you?'

‘It is about Rupert that I wish to speak to you.' Mrs Bryce Harringay paused. It was a thousand pities to miss a chance of being really dramatic. ‘Rupert,' she announced after due consideration, ‘Rupert has disappeared.'

‘Disappeared? Rupert? But – I mean – that doesn't sound like Rupert. It isn't at all the sort of thing Rupert would do,' observed the bishop mildly. ‘I can't imagine it. People like Rupert don't disappear. Absconding clerks and company promoters, perhaps, but not Rupert. Oh, dear, no.'

Mrs Bryce Harringay turned wrathfully upon him.

‘I am tired, Reginald, of being told absurd things about Rupert. Anyone is liable to disappear. It isn't anything disgraceful! As a matter of fact, we thought at first that he might have gone to America.'

‘I should hardly have thought that going to America came under the heading of Disappearance, you know,' remarked the bishop thoughtfully.

Mrs Bryce Harringay turned upon him the gaze she kept for those suspected of trying to be humorous at her expense, but the bishop's expansive urbanity disarmed her.

‘We have had the police! We have endured the Press! The house has been ransacked! The garden-beds have been both photographed and trampled upon! This morning the lodge gates were besieged – literally
besieged
– by sightseers from the neighbouring towns! Rupert's private papers have been commandeered! So has the library, which I have been compelled to place at the disposal of the authorities so that the servants and ourselves may be put through a humiliating questionnaire concerning our movements during the past few days! And it is all James's fault! Every bit of it!'

The bishop lifted whimsical eyebrows.

‘Indeed, Reginald, it is so! I know that James is a favourite with you. I think it is a pity. It seems that James has told Various Lies' – the bishop's smile broke bounds at the sound of the capital letters in her voice – ‘and that Rupert never had any intention of going to America, as James had falsely led us to believe he had had, and, in fact, that he did not go, and that James was fully aware that he did not go, and that, with intent to mislead us all – deliberate intent, quite deliberate – he concocted a whole series of Untruthful Explanations in order to conceal the true whereabouts of his unfortunate cousin.'

‘And where abouts
is
his unfortunate cousin?' asked the bishop, when he had digested this elaborate thesis on the subject of Rupert's disappearance and James's perfidy.

‘We do not know. It seems that James, in a fit of animal passion which a civilized person cannot but deplore, laid violent hands upon his cousin, and smote him on the head.'

‘I doubt whether that would have had a great deal of effect upon Rupert, you know,' murmured the bishop thoughtfully. ‘A thick-headed –'

‘The blow,' Mrs Bryce Harringay continued, ignoring the interruption, ‘caught Rupert under the chin and –'

‘Laid him out,' interpolated the bishop appreciatively. ‘Go on, Constance.'

‘Really, Reginald!' his sister-in-law remonstrated warmly. ‘One might almost imagine that you condoned, if not actually countenanced, this act of Sheer Barbarity.'

‘No, no. Oh, no,' the bishop hastened to observe. ‘It is your pithy narrative style which evokes my admiration, not the unworthy subject of your discourse. You should have – you have a decided gift for exposition, you know. Pray proceed.'

‘Well,' continued Mrs Bryce Harringay, somewhat mollified, ‘now comes the Really Mysterious part of the affair. The heartless and unprincipled James, for whom I find myself unable to feel anything but the most utter contempt, left his unfortunate cousin lying prone upon the damp ground at eight o'clock at night in that horrible place –'

‘I shouldn't have thought the ground could be damp anywhere after this long spell of fine weather,' remarked the bishop. ‘But what horrible place do you mean?'

‘I told you. In the midst of the woods near the Druids' Stone. There is blood on the stone where the poor boy struck his head in falling. From that moment, Rupert has never more been seen.'

‘I think it is rather soon to speak with such finality,' said the bishop. ‘I expect the truth is that Rupert is suffering from concussion and is wandering about, helpless from temporary loss of memory.'

‘Well,' pronounced Mrs Bryce Harringay in funereal tones, ‘that is what we all
hope
. But such Terrible Things have been happening down in Bossbury, that really one wonders why people come to the country for peace and quietness!'

‘I shall bathe,' said the bishop three hours later. They had drawn up on a piece of flat grassy land at the head of chalk cliffs. Below them the sea foamed shorewards over low black rocks, for the tide was just on the turn. Across the water the sun shone in a great breadth of glory; above the waves and up and down the face of the cliff the strong-winged seagulls wheeled and swooped and screamed.

There was a precipitous way leading down to the beach. Mrs Bryce Harringay had already refused to attempt it. The bishop, however, had been sitting on the short grass at the top of the cliffs, inhaling the splendid air and longing for a swim. The chauffeur had been sent over to the adjacent town to get himself some food, and Mrs Bryce Harringay some literature and a box of sweets.

‘I really must have a swim,' the bishop observed, finding that his previous statement had had no effect.

Mrs Bryce Harringay looked pained.

‘So soon after lunch?' she enquired coldly. ‘I think you are unwise.'

‘Rubbish!' said the bishop, with an incisiveness which Mrs Bryce Harringay's late husband would have envied. ‘I'll make my way down to the beach and see whether there is a suitable place for undressing. Some rocks or something. If there is no suitable spot, I shall come up again and undress in the car. You don't mind being left alone for a quarter of an hour or so, do you, while I bathe?'

‘Since I observe Cooper in the distance, I do not object in the very slightest,' Mrs Bryce Harringay replied. ‘Particularly if he has brought the magazines I asked for and not some others of his own or the shopkeeper's choice.'