‘How do you make that out, Mrs Bradley?’
‘The time. Mrs Bryce Harringay saw the two cousins disappearing into the Manor Woods at five minutes to eight. At about five and twenty minutes to nine, James Redsey was in the “Queen’s Head” drinking himself fuddled. That means in forty minutes he argued with his cousin, knocked him down, hid him in the bushes, gave him time to come to, inveigled him up here across that field and alongside this one, stabbed him in the throat, collected his blood in Sethleigh’s own silver tobacco-case, carried this case gingerly back to the Manor Woods, emptied it over the Stone of Sacrifice, disposed of it among the bushes, went to the “Queen’s Head” without a single visible mark of blood on his clothes or hands, and was seated there drinking hard at twenty-five minutes to nine.’
The inspector scratched his head.
‘I’d like to put that down,’ he said dubiously. ‘You’re leading me up the garden somewhere, Mrs Bradley, and I can’t just see where for the moment. There’s a catch in that explanation of yours. Just give me that idea again, if you don’t mind.’
Mrs Bradley cackled.
‘Inspector, you should go far,’ she said. ‘There is a flaw in that reconstruction. A big flaw. Tell me when you find it. But do me the justice to look for that silver tobacco-case, won’t you? Oh, and do have another good hunt for those clothes,’ she added brightly. ‘Oh, and there is poor James Redsey’s wicked accomplice to be found, who so obligingly carved up the body for James, since we can prove the boy did not perform that nasty job for himself. That accomplice, unwept and unhonoured, has been sung for by all the newspapers in the country. I really think you must find him, inspector, you know.’
The inspector grinned good-humouredly.
‘You’ve got me there, all right,’ he admitted. ‘The clothing and that accomplice would down any case against James Redsey, in the hands of a clever defending counsel. I keep on telling the superintendent so. We can’t prove that the boy cut up the body. He didn’t cut it up. And that’s where the thing hangs fire.’
III
‘The worst of amateurs who think they can teach the police their job,’ remarked Inspector Grindy sententiously to the superintendent, ‘is that they don’t even give us credit for a bit of ordinary gumption such as you would think even a baby would have. Now, look at that hockey-shed business! Interfering old busybody! And look here, sir, I got on to Wright again about that skull which disappeared from his studio, but I can’t get hold of anything. Of course, I’m not worrying overmuch. Don’t believe it has anything to do with Sethleigh. I searched the Manor House. Nothing, except notes of those people Rupert Sethleigh did not blackmail. I searched the park and the woods. Nothing again, except freshly dug earth, which turns out to be a practical joke on the part of the boy, although he denies it –’
‘Does he?’ said the chief constable who had been called into the case in a consultative capacity, and was now standing with them on the Manor House lawn. ‘Then, you know, inspector, I should almost feel inclined to believe him.’
The inspector grinned.
‘Would you, sir,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Well, never mind about that. Whoever did it, it didn’t help us. Next there was blood on the Stone. Now it seems to have occurred to this Mrs Bradley – although who gave her permission to wander over the grounds at will, I don’t know – but, anyway, she has decided there was not enough blood on that Stone to indicate that the murder was done there. Well, we had been inclined to think that from the beginning. We looked about to give ourselves other ideas. Spotted the hockey shed over Kerslake’s field. Investigated. Floor covered with blood. Quite promising! Took samples for testing. Turns out it’s a regular poachers’ rendezvous, and the blood is rabbits’ blood. Then, after days and days of picking up dead matches, and coughing like Sherlock Holmes, and finding me pairs of the vicars’ trousers that don’t mean anything, but are simply where he leaned over a newly painted fence to get a kid’s ball, this Mrs Bradley also finds the shed, and spots the blood. Sends the boy chasing off to find me, and hands me her Important Discovery’ – the inspector’s voice was harsh with emotion – ‘of the spot where the murder was committed! When, after a consultation with the super here, I tell her the truth about the bloodstains, instead of giving her the tip to keep her nose out of things which don’t concern her, what does she do?’ He glared ferociously, kicked an inoffensive buttercup out of existence, and answered his own question with a belligerent scowl. ‘Grins in my face and thanks me so much for saving her the time and trouble of testing the bloodstains for herself. Had the infernal damned cheek to tell me she herself had thought it couldn’t be Sethleigh’s blood, and got off a bright bit about – now, what was it she said? – oh, ah! – “the elimination of unnecessary, and, in fact, dangerous matter” – and, after telling me things about my inside that makes me go all hot to remember, she goes off cackling to herself as though she’d made a joke or laid an egg or something!’
CHAPTER XVII
The Stone of Sacrifice
‘HEADS!’ shrieked Aubrey Harringay, lifting a full toss from George Willows high into the deep blue of the summer sky.
Mrs Bradley smiled serenely, and, timing it nicely, brought off a neat catch. She flicked the ball back to Willows and walked up to the nets.
‘Come out of that a moment,’ she said, addressing the batsman. ‘I want you to accompany me into the woods.’
It was early in the afternoon. Mrs Bradley, having ascertained, without trouble or waste of time, that the bloodstains on the floor of the hockey shed were not connected with the murder, had gone home to lunch in a contented frame of mind. Aubrey had returned to the Manor House. The police had gone back to Bossbury, for they were still exploring various avenues of research from that end of the case by assuming that the dismembered body was not that of Rupert Sethleigh. So far, they had had little fortune with either of their assumptions, and, to all intents and purposes, the body which they had discovered in the butcher’s shop remained unidentified. The fact that both Grindy and Superintendent Bidwell felt certain that the murdered man was Rupert Sethleigh availed little without actual proof, and some person or persons unknown had gone so cleverly to work that proof of such kind seemed as difficult as ever to obtain.
At two-thirty, Felicity Broome, groaning but obedient, had met ten old ladies of the parish and followed the two boldest on to the top of the Culminster bus. They were to go over the cathedral, have a short river excursion, tea in the riverside gardens of the Temperance Hotel, and then were to fill in the last quarter of an hour or so before the departure of the seven o’clock bus by looking at the exhibits in the Culminster Museum.
‘Do what you like. Pay what you like. Give the dears a good time,’ said Mrs Bradley generously, ‘but whatever happens you must take them to see the Culminster Collection.’
‘But why?’ asked the puzzled Felicity. ‘I could understand going there yesterday to see the skull, but what is the point of going there to-day?’
Mrs Bradley grimaced.
‘If you don’t go, I must,’ she said. ‘If you go in with all these old ladies, nobody will take any notice. If I go, I shall probably be murdered to-night. Don’t ask me why. I’ll tell you more about it later. That’s all. Will you take them?’
Felicity went white.
‘Then – what is it? The skull – what do you mean?’ she said.