Fault In The Structure
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 52
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
PART ONE: Flaws in the Façade |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|
PART TWO: Seepage in the Cellar |8|9|10|11|
PART THREE: Cracks in the Plaster |12|13|14|15|
PART FOUR: Demolition |16|17|18|19|
Also by Gladys Mitchell
speedy death
mystery of a butcher’s shop
the longer bodies
the saltmarsh murders
death at the opera
the devil at saxon wall
dead man’s morris
come away death
st. peter’s finger
printer’s error
brazen tongue
hangman’s curfew
when last i died
laurels are poison
the worsted viper
sunset over soho
my father sleeps
the rising of the moon
here comes a chopper
death and the maiden
the dancing druids
tom brown’s body
groaning spinney
the devil’s elbow
the echoing strangers
merlin’s furlong
faintley speaking
watson’s choice
twelve horses and the hangman’s noose
the twenty-third man
spotted hemlock
the man who grew tomatoes
say it with flowers
the nodding canaries
my bones will keep
adders on the heath
death of a delft blue
pageant of murder
the croaking raven
skeleton island
three quick and five dead
dance to your daddy
gory dew
lament for leto
a hearse on may-day
the murder of busy lizzie
a javelin for jonah
winking at the brim
convent on styx
late, late in the evening
noonday and night
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 52 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3EF
© 1977 by Gladys Mitchell
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical; photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner
ISBN 0 7181 1601 1
Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Limited Trowbridge and Esher
Fiercely intolerant of what is false,
Fiercely zealous for what is true.
TO
JULIAN McDONAUGH,
From whose poetic drama, A Pageant of English Dominicans, the above quotation, the title of this book and all its chapter headings are borrowed with gratitude, admiration and love.
PART ONE
Flaws in the Façade
CHAPTER 1
^ »
Hardened in error by pride of intellect
Osbert Swineborn proposed to Dora Ellen at the New Year’s Eve dance which his mother, who knew Dora Ellen to be the only child and heiress of a wealthy expatriate American, had given for that purpose.
‘Well,’ said the young lady, ‘well, all right, O.K. then, but a Condition goes with it and, until that condition has been fulfilled, I want no part in your future life and happiness.’
Osbert had no inkling of what was coming. However, grateful for his mother’s efforts on his behalf and mindful, as ever (for he was a dutiful son) of her wishes, he promised that he would do anything — positively anything — which would result in his winning Dora Ellen’s hand in marriage.
It was not that he loved the young woman. The ability to love was not one of his endowments. It was simply that he agreed with his mother, who had often, although without rancour, expressed the opinion that he was unlikely ever to make what she called ‘a decent living’ for himself and that therefore his aim should be to marry a wife whose dowry would result in his leading that life of ease and leisure for which both his mother and he were convinced he was best fitted.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ he asked his fiancée. ‘Just say the word and, if I can, I’ll do it.’
‘That’s binding on you, then. Look, honey, it’s this way. I am not going through the rest of my life calling myself Dora Ellen Swineborn. I’m kind of allergic to hogs.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Osbert. ‘Is that really the case?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s really the case, so what’s wrong with planting that cute little letter e some place else and changing that little letter o into a little letter u?’
‘Such as how?’ asked Osbert, who was no dabbler in poetry, although he had heard of Shakespeare and had enjoyed Miss Joyce Grenfell’s rendering of an imaginary American mother attempting to introduce an imaginary American child to the glorious works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
‘Such as spelling it Swinburne, of course,’ said Dora Ellen impatiently. So, by deed poll, accustomed from his earliest years to female domination, Osbert slightly but significantly changed his surname and Dora Ellen became Mrs Osbert Swinburne.
When, in due course, her son was born, the mother insisted that he be named Alfriston (after his place of birth) and Calliope, after the Muse of epic poetry. With a name like A. C. Swinburne, she contended, a poet of some kind he was surely destined to become.
‘Alfriston Calliope?’ said Osbert doubtfully. ‘A bit tough on the poor little so-and-so, isn’t it? Besides, I thought Calliope was a kind of steam-engine.’
‘Honey, don’t show your ignorance,’ said his wife.
‘Anyway the kid will only be called Alf if you stick to this Alfriston label, and I’ve always thought Alf was, well, you know, rather a common sort of name; the sort of name they give barrow boys and plumbers’ mates and the chaps who wear cloth caps and belong to Unions.’
‘Alf?’ said his wife distastefully. ‘There was Alfred the Great and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I never heard either of them referred to as Alf.’
‘He might even be called Al, like Al Capone,’ said the father rebelliously.
‘Whatever he’s called, he will be able to sign himself A. C. Swinburne,’ retorted Dora. ‘I would have liked to name him Algernon Charles, but I guess it would hardly do to plagiarise that far. Anyway, so far as what he’s to be called is concerned, we must insist on Alfrist, nothing shorter.’
‘Alfrist?’ said Osbert. ‘Oh, yes, Alfrist would be all right, I suppose. Rather classy in a way. Alfrist C. Swinburne? Yes, your father might like that! It sounds quite American, I mean to say, doesn’t it? It may reconcile the old buster to our marriage, what?’
‘We never would have married if I hadn’t seen the possibilities of this A. C. Swinburne set-up,’ said Dora Ellen, at last uncovering what had always been a mystery to her spouse, for Osbert knew that, in spite of his mother’s favourable opinion of him, he was anything but an eligible parti. ‘Pop acted kind of tough when I broke the news,’ Dora Ellen went on, ‘and if I hadn’t of gotten this Swinburne idea I guess I would have listened to his arguments.’
‘But who was Swinburne?’ asked Osbert. He had wished to ask before, but had lacked the courage. His wife looked at him with pity and contempt.
‘All I can say, honey,’ she remarked, ‘is that I guess I’m aiming to see that Alfrist gets a better education than you appear to have gotten for yourself.’
‘I was too delicate to be sent to school,’ said Osbert. ‘I was educated at home.’
‘I wonder what that explains?’ said Dora Ellen, handing the baby to the nurse. ‘The first thing you do, honey, you put his name down for a dozen or two of these Eton and Harrow schools. That way we’ll be sure he gets in somewhere good when he’s old enough. A boy with the name of A. C. Swinburne has got to be going places.’