‘Oh, I see. So you just pushed the laundry into the suitcase and handed the case to Lulu Hirst as it was,” said Mrs Bradley, nodding her head.
‘To Lulu Hirst indeed!’ said Mary Kate indignantly. ‘Indeed, then, and I did not! But to an impudent bit of a snubby-nosed gossoon of a boy that’s had the rough side of me tongue more than once, and will be feeling the weight of me hand if he’s after asking me again did I go on me holidays to the Isle of Man!’
The obscure but apparently lasting significance of spending one’s holiday in the Isle of Man was lost on Mrs Bradley, but the circumstantial evidence that Rupert Sethleigh’s suitcase had been handed to the boy was not. She left the Vicarage, went in search of Aubrey Harringay, sent him upon a quest, and learned that the boy had safely delivered the suitcase to Lulu. He was a bright boy. Closely questioned, he remembered the date. It was the day his father had given him fourpence to go on an outing on the following Saturday.
‘It would have been the Thursday, missus. And the Saturday would have been the Saturday before that there Bossbury murder. Yes, the day before, missus. Thank you kindly, missus. Yes, missus. Good day.’
II
Mrs Bradley, closely followed by Aubrey Harringay, climbed the apparently innumerable steps of the old Observation Tower, and at last emerged triumphantly upon the platform at the top. Slung across her shoulders was a pair of powerful field-glasses, and in her right hand she carried a roughly sketched plan of the Manor House and its grounds, including a little of the surrounding country.
‘Now, I’ve killed Sethleigh – here,’ she said to Aubrey, spreading the plan on top of a stout iron post which helped to carry the safety railing around the platform on which they stood. She pointed a yellow talon at the Stone of Sacrifice, which was indicated on the plan by a black blob. ‘Now, it is necessary to hide the body during the night. Where can I hide it?’
She glanced down at the plan and then gazed narrow-eyed at the country below.
‘Ha!’ she ejaculated at last. ‘Aubrey! What is that shed arrangement over there to the left? The hockey club’s dressing-shed? Oh, that’s interesting, I used to play hockey once.’
‘Old Jim’s good,’ said Aubrey. ‘Plays centre half. Played for Southern Counties against the Rest once. Only just missed being picked for England the year before last. Don’t suppose he’ll get hockey in Mexico.’
‘If he ever gets to Mexico,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘Hockey is a winter game, isn’t it?’ she added inconsequently.
Aubrey, who had begun to look sober at the reference to the murder, now grinned.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘A very important reason,’ returned Mrs Bradley. ‘Is the shed ever used for other purposes? I mean, does any club use it for summer games – cricket, for instance?’
‘No, I don’t think so. But I say! Old Willows will know all about it. He acts as groundsman to the hockey club during the season. There he goes by the shrubbery. Shall I hail him? You knew the mater had reinstated him, didn’t you?’
He split the air with a war-whoop which shook even Mrs Bradley’s iron nerves. Willows looked up.
‘Come up here!’ yelled Aubrey, wildly signalling in case his words should not be heard.
They could hear Willows come tramping up the stone steps.
After regaining his wind, he answered Mrs Bradley’s curt questions.
No, the hockey club’s dressing-shed was not used for any other purpose so far as he knew. He did not know whether it was kept locked. Probably not. There was no one to interfere with it. No, it was not exactly a local club. It was composed of a few gentlemen from Culminster and the old boys of Bossbury Grammar School. They played once a week, on Saturday afternoons. No, nobody ever went near the hut except during the season. It was across two fields and stuck in the middle of nowhere, you might say.
‘I think, Aubrey,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘that we ought to go and look at this hut. Will you accompany me?’ She dismissed Willows with a nod and a smile, and a promise to come and see his sweet peas.
A little-used footpath, baked hard by the summer sun, led them across the first meadow, and, after diving through a gap in a hawthorn hedge between two ancient wooden stakes, they found another path which ended at the hockey shed. It was a mere lean-to, not even locked on the outside. Aubrey pushed open the badly fitting door, and Mrs Bradley walked in. The one small window was heavily covered in cobwebs, but the wide-open door flooded the little place with light. Ominous dark stains on the boarded floor immediately attracted the eye.
‘It is for the police to determine whether these are bloodstains,’ said Mrs Bradley impersonally. ‘You’re not going to be sick, are you?’ she added anxiously.
‘No,’ said Aubrey, rather pale. ‘This is where he killed him, then.’
‘What do you mean, child?’
‘Well, he hid the body here during Sunday night, I suppose. Jolly risky, lugging a dead body across these fields, even in the half-light of ten p.m. or thereabouts. I bet he wangled him here while Sethleigh was still feeling woozy from that bash on the head. Got him here, and then did him in. Besides, the chap wouldn’t have bled like this if he was dead when the other chap lugged him in. The other chap then collected some of his victim’s blood in – in – in what? – we shall have to find out – and poured it upon the Stone of Sacrifice. You know. Devil worship stunt! That accounts for the blood on the Stone.’
‘But then,’ mused Mrs Bradley, ‘if he killed him here, and not in the Manor Woods as I first assumed he did, what on earth was that young man in such a stew about? Am I wrong? Have I picked out the right person? I can’t be wrong. Shut the door, boy, and go for the inspector. Bring him along here and make him a present of the spot where the murder was committed.’ She cackled sardonically, and then added, ‘I thought there was not enough blood on that Stone. Don’t say anything. Just go! I’m going to walk a little way – and think.’
Aubrey left her.
Mrs Bradley crossed the hockey-field and sat down in the adjoining meadow. She rested her sharp bony chin on her hands, and stared into the distance. Suddenly she began to chuckle. Then she stood up, and the sheep, looking up startled from their peaceful grazing, saw a small elderly lady, clad in rainbow-coloured jumper and check tweed skirt, sprinting gallantly across two fields back to the little wooden shed.
Aubrey and the inspector, whom he had met as though by prearrangement at the lodge gates of the Manor House, were walking towards her. She waved to them, and disappeared inside the hut. In about half a minute she reappeared with equal suddenness and walked out to meet them. The inspector grinned cheerfully at her, and winked to himself.
‘We ourselves thought there wasn’t enough blood on the Stone for the murder to have been done there,’ he observed cautiously as she came up. ‘But I wonder –’
‘The first point I want to make clear, inspector,’ interpolated Mrs Bradley, ‘is that, if the murder was committed here, and not in the woods, then James Redsey was not the murderer.’