‘Then, didn’t he disturb the murderer and kneel by the body?’
‘He kneel by the body? Oh no! What? Kneel by a headless corpse?’
She chuckled. In spite of the heat, Jim shivered. Cold sweat trickled down his spine.
‘Afraid I don’t follow,’ he said feebly.
‘No, James?’ Mrs Bradley stood up, put her bird-like black head on one side and pursed her beaky little mouth. She was enjoying herself. ‘Savile decapitated a dead man, that’s all.’
‘Savile – Look here, are you calling me a murderer?’ shouted Jim, hoarse with anxiety and crimson with anger. ‘You’d better not! I’ll – I’ll –’
Aubrey Harringay would have realized the significance of that chokingly thick utterance and the young man’s ugly scowl, and would have made his getaway with celerity. Mrs Bradley was not blind to the symptoms, but she merely grinned in her own unpleasantly ghoulish fashion, and poked him in the ribs with inconsequent hardihood.
‘Do not threaten me, James,’ she observed calmly. ‘Threats are so wearing to the threatener. As my dear good friend and neighbour, Mrs Bryce Harringay, would say, “Conserve your energies for some Worthy Purpose.” There goes Felicity Broome. Bestow upon her my love. Be off with you!’
‘But what about Rupert and so forth?’ gulped Jim, cowed by the old lady’s intrepid refusal to take his anger seriously. ‘What are you going to do?’
Mrs Bradley waved a yellow claw.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘If I had been going to give you away, child, I should have done it long ago. However, that punch of yours which knocked Sethleigh down most certainly caused his death. The shock alone would have done for that heart of his. I’ve never had the least doubt about that. Besides, there was never enough blood for a death by wounding. Even the inspector saw that, bless his heart! And morally, of course, Savile was guilty.’