Noonday And Night
Gladys Mitchell
Beatrice Adela LeStrange Bradley 51
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
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Contents
CHAPTER 1: Pottery and Porcelain
CHAPTER 2: The Missing Coach-Drivers
CHAPTER 3: Hulliwell Hall
CHAPTER 4: Dantwylch, Below the Knoll
CHAPTER 5: The Bishop’s Palace
CHAPTER 6: Devil-Porter It No Further
CHAPTER 7: The Watchman Waketh But In Vain
CHAPTER 8: The Hotel on Loch Linnhe
CHAPTER 9: Saighdearan, Place of Soldiers
CHAPTER 10: The Bungalow
CHAPTER 11: Pistol and Dagger
CHAPTER 12: No Coaches on the Roads
CHAPTER 13: The Story of a Disappearance
CHAPTER 14: Conradda Mendel Speaks
CHAPTER 15: So Does Basil Honfleur
CHAPTER 16: Confession of an Avenger
CHAPTER 17: Sunset and Evening Star
NOONDAY and NIGHT
Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is called in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two touring motor-coach drivers and uncovers a racket in stolen antiques, smuggling – and murder.
MAGNA PRINT BOOKS
Bolton-by-Bowland Lancashire . England
First Published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1977
Large Print Edition by Magna Print Books 1978
by arrangement with Michael Joseph Ltd, London
© 1977 Gladys Mitchell
ISBN 0 86009 100 7
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 prior permission of the copyright owner.
Printed and Bound by Redwood Burn Ltd. Trowbridge and Esher
Noonday and Night
CHAPTER 1
Pottery and Porcelain
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The invitation to dinner was accompanied by two slightly unusual requests. One was that Dame Beatrice would bring another woman with her, preferably one who was interested in ceramics; the other was that she would also bring her two blue-dash English delftware dishes, chargers which had been made round about AD 1640, although whether in London or Bristol was uncertain.
One sentence in Basil Honfleur’s letter appeared to explain this otherwise curious request. ‘I’ve recently become possessed of a particularly fine early nineteenth century Welsh dresser, and I would love to see how your two pieces look on it compared with some which my crockery scout Vittorio has managed to pick up for me.’
This, Dame Beatrice thought, was an elliptical way of indicating that, if her pieces looked well on his shelves, there would be an offer to purchase them. After the dinner, she supposed, the company would adjourn to the kitchen and the dishes would be put on display. Then would follow a bargaining battle between the knowledgeable woman Dame Beatrice would have brought with her if she could think of anybody suitable, and Vittorio (whoever he was), to fix upon the price to be offered.
Dame Beatrice was not particularly attached to her delftware, which had been left her by a distant relative for whom she had had little affection. It was neither uncommon nor, she supposed, very valuable. She considered it, in fact, to be rather ugly and, compared with her collection of Sèvres porcelain (actually made in the factory at Vincennes before that was transferred to Sèvres itself), extremely crude. One charger was decorated with a figure on horseback which might or might not represent Prince Rupert; the other showed Adam, Eve and the serpent, Adam chastely upholstered in an apron of fig leaves which appeared to depend upon faith alone for its support, Eve content apparently with her Godiva-like mantle of hair. The serpent, writhing down from a loaded fruit-tree, was focusing its attention upon the apple (or whatever) which was being passed from hand to hand by the other two.
‘Take Conradda Mendel,’ said Laura Gavin, the secretary, when Dame Beatrice showed her Basil Honfleur’s letter. ‘They’ve got another thing in common besides an interest in antiques.’
Laura meant by this that both Honfleur and Miss Mendel had once upon a time attended Dame Beatrice’s clinic for psychiatric treatment. It had happened, Dame Beatrice remembered, that she had arranged for the decorators to take over her Kensington house where, at that time, her clinic was held, and so she had fitted up a room on the first floor of her Hampshire residence, the Stone House on the edge of the New Forest, and for a few weeks she had carried on her work there. Those whose commitments did not permit them to attend had been referred to another psychiatrist in London and their case histories handed over to him.
Both Honfleur and Conradda had found the change of venue acceptable and, in Honfleur’s case, convenient, since it saved him the longer journey to London. He and Conradda had met at the Stone House on one or two occasions, owing either to unavoidable delays on the road or to the vagaries of the train services, and had taken tea together at the Stone House.
Honfleur had been in a Commando unit during the war; Conradda had suffered persecution under the Nazis. He was now well settled in an occupation which suited him. Conradda was a dealer in antiques who did a little very high-class pawnbroking on the side, although her clientèle was not subjected to the sight of three golden balls above her extremely exclusive Mayfair premises. It was she who had found the Sèvres for Dame Beatrice and it was her proud contention that the only collection which could match it was that at Waddesdon, the former home of Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild.
Dame Beatrice knew that this statement on Conradda’s part was a wild distortion of the truth, but she treasured her pieces and no servant was ever allowed to put a finger on them. She had seen Miss Alice de Rothschild’s collection in the enormous French-Renaissance-style mansion administered nowadays by the National Trust and had admired but did not covet it, and she had treated Conradda’s contention with mirth.
‘Conradda Mendel?’ she said, in answer to Laura’s suggestion. ‘I thought perhaps you yourself would like to come. It may be a dinner well worth eating, and you would do better justice to it than I shall.’
‘No,’ said Laura. ‘Reading between the lines, this Honfleur wants to get his hooks on to your dishes. You take Conradda and watch the fur fly when she and this Italian really go into a clinch over the price. If it isn’t an impertinent question, shall you consider selling?’
‘Oh, yes, I expect so, if Mr Honfleur wants them; I don’t at all care for the chargers.’
‘Me neither, as Fowler would hardly permit us to say. Shall I ring up Conradda, then? They do actually know one another, don’t they?’
‘Yes, they met here at the Stone House when I had that room next to mine converted into a consulting room for a while.’
Conradda, apprised over the telephone by Laura of the probable reason for the invitation, accepted it with alacrity, but warned her that if Vittorio was also ‘in the business, although I do not know anyone of that name,’ he would know her by repute if not by sight.
‘I might call myself Leah Cohen, don’t you think?’ she suggested. Laura said firmly that Dame Beatrice would not like that.
‘Besides, Honfleur knows you, even if this Italian does not. Anyway, we mustn’t go in for subterfuge,’ she said. ‘Not ethical.’
‘Business precautions, that is all,’ said the Jewess. ‘Will it be a good dinner? I do not insist upon kosher food.’