Lovers, Make Moan
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 60
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
Chapter 1: Windfall
Chapter 2: Read-Through
Chapter 3: Mouths of Babes
Chapter 4: Retractable Blade
Chapter 5: All Right on the Night
Chapter 6: Last Performance
Chapter 7: Bare Bodkin
Chapter 8: Speculations
Chapter 9: Coroner’s Court
Chapter 10: Further Suggestions
Chapter 11: Mytilus Edulis Has Orange Gills
Chapter 12: Six Characters in Search of a Psychiatrist
Chapter 13: Cut Down to Size
Chapter 14: Body on the Foreshore
Chapter 15: Identification of a Dead Boy
Chapter 16: Parade of Suspects
Chapter 17: Mute and Other Witnesses
Chapter 18: Threnody
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
fault in the structure
wraiths and changelings
mingled with venom
nest of vipers
mudflats of the dead
uncoffin’d clay
the whispering knights
the death-cap dancers
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd
44 Bedford Square, London WC1 — 1981
© 1981 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 2031 0
Printed and bound by Redwood Burn Ltd, Trowbridge and Esher.
This book is an unashamed, unrepentant, middle-of-the-road whodunnit which keeps the rules of that classic literary form by providing all the clues to the murderer for those readers who can be bothered to pick them up, as Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is compelled to do in order to solve the mystery.
One or two red herrings are thrown in to add piquancy to the narrative but the author, as in honour bound, eschews mysterious Chinamen, secret passages and poisons unknown to science. However, she has broken her oath by stealing part of the plot from another writer, for the story revolves around an amateur dramatic society’s performances of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Might’s Dream in which Pyramus kills himself.
Some readers may think they recognise the setting of the book as the port of Poole in Dorset. In that case, the grounds in which the open-air production is staged must be in or near the famous gardens of Compton Acres. Castle Island, however, is entirely fictitious, and so are any references to the tides in Poole Harbour.
To JULIAN with love
Time was, when we, beside a Highland burn,
Gathered bell heather and the fronds of fern,
Or squelched in mud and wet-through to the skin,
To watch for salmon leaping up the linn,
Or saw the summer snow on high Ben More,
And gathered pebbles by Loch Broom’s grey shore.
G. M. September 1977
Chapter 1
Windfall
“I’ll put a girdle round about the earth.”
^ »
The town was tripartite. Behind the quay with its Customs House, its ancient, partially restored inn, its eighteenth-century town hall, the old warehouses and the low-ceilinged shops which sold chandlers’ wares, yachting gear and marine stores of all kinds, lay the original guildhall, dating from the fourteenth century.
In the old town, a house, long due for preservation, incorporated some twelfth-century features in what had been a Tudor mansion and, behind and around all this, there was a strange, heterogeneous jumble of narrow alleys, public houses, shops old and new, and what had been the delightful dwellings of the eighteenth-century merchants, now either let out in flats or with their ground-floors converted into modern shop-fronts.
The ancient high street which led, with a dog’s-leg turn, down to the quay, had been made a traffic-free shopping precinct, but north of it were the supermarkets, the gas and electricity showrooms, the new public baths, the multi-storey car park, the new library and art gallery and a complex of even more recent buildings which included a theatre, a concert hall, a restaurant and rooms which could be hired for various public functions. Behind a beautifully maintained public park flanked by a shallow lake cut off from the vast harbour (almost an inland sea) by the railway embankment, lay the third part of the town. This was largely residential, but only to those who could afford to live there. Part of it faced the open bay, shallow and islanded, which disclosed large, shining sandbanks at low tide. To the east, west and north of it rose low hills on which the most desirable houses were built. They all faced the bay, a beautiful, natural harbour for small yachts. On the further shore, as the land curved round, there was a long ridge of higher hills and beyond these again were chalk cliffs and the open waters of the English Channel.
The setting, in fact, was picturesque, interesting and reasonably secluded, and Simon and Penelope congratulated themselves upon having acquired their property (on the strength of a legacy) before house prices soared beyond the reach of anybody who was not in the millionaire bracket, although maintenance was always a problem regarding both house and garden.
However, one fine morning of a biting January day, the unexpected cheque from CABO (Come and Buy One) fell like a ripe plum through the letter-box and was brought to the breakfast table by Carrie, the only indoor servant except for the cook, whom the Bradleys could afford to keep.
Simon opened the envelope and gave what the romantic novelists used to call ‘a choking cry’.
“Has the bank gone bust?” his wife Penelope anxiously enquired.
“Not so, but far otherwise.” He handed her the contents of the envelope, whereupon she exclaimed, almost in disbelief, “Good Lord! Pennies from heaven!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Simon. “Noice little cheque, Liza. Wot shall us do wiv it?”
“I thought that was a joke about the fitted bath in a council house,” said Penelope, who, although beautiful and in her own sphere intelligent, had a painfully pedestrian mind. “Didn’t they keep the coal in it, or something?”