‘Well,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘we will see what can be done to ease Mr. O’Hara’s mind.’
‘It’s eased already,’ said O’Hara.
‘Bless their hearts!’ said Laura sentimentally, for she was at the age when she felt like a mother to all boys two years her junior. ‘How much of the yarn do you think was true?’
‘I think we may proceed on the assumption that it is all true,’ her employer replied.
‘What do you think Sir Ferdinand will say?’
‘It all depends upon what you and I find out in the meantime, child.’
‘Oh, we are going to look into it, are we? I rather hoped we were. The first job, I take it, is to clear this spiked-shoes person out of the way… you know, the one who was sacked from the club for dirty running. It couldn’t have been he, so we’d better prove that it wasn’t.’
‘An intelligent suggestion,’ Mrs. Bradley replied, ‘but perhaps not quite the first thing on our list.’
‘What about the pickpocket, then?’
‘The pickpocket?’
‘Well, I thought that if we could look into the antecedents of the two obviously criminal members of the club… people who didn’t commit murder… if it is murder… and argue from cause to effect — ’
‘ “And so grow to a point,” ’ said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. ‘I think it might take some time, and I feel it might also be wasted labour, child. I believe it might be better to discover the antecedents of the young man named Firman.’
‘Oh, rather! Yes, of course! We certainly ought to check up on him,’ agreed Laura, with some excitement. ‘Well, how do we begin? What is my first assignment?’
‘To proceed to the bathroom and wash the inkspots from the ends of your eyebrows,’ Mrs. Bradley responded. ‘Then I think you might eat your lunch. I heard the gong some three minutes ago. Which of the young men did you prefer?’
‘Oh, Adonis, I think,’ said Laura, after a brief pause for thought.
‘Mr. Gascoigne?’
‘Yes. Which did you?’
‘I like nearly all young men,’ said Mrs. Bradley sincerely.
‘They are almost always delightful. I also like all very young women… or very nearly all.’
‘Present company excepted from the whole of that statement!’ said Laura. ‘By the way, I call the saturnine one… O’Hara… a “dark Celt.” Kipling knew them, didn’t he? There’s something different about that lad from the other. Wouldn’t you say that “dark Celt” somewhere tips him off?… And yet you could scarcely mistrust him!’
‘He has, at any rate, stepped into a dark adventure, child. Do you know, I have a fancy for this business. It promises to be of extraordinary interest. The nature of the countryside, the dead man kept warm by the application of hot-water bottles, the mysterious journey taken by the car, the decidedly sinister touch of the circle of standing stones, the badly-frightened woman who declared untruthfully that she was alone in the house except for an invalid suffering from an infectious disease, the plot (as I see it) to murder Mr. O’Hara…’
‘ What?’ shouted Laura, in horrified delight.
‘… these are deep matters, child, which cry out for our attention. There is a smack of minor Elizabethan drama about them which I find highly absorbing.’
Laura regarded her narrowly.
‘You do believe what those boys told us, don’t you?’ she enquired. Mrs. Bradley cackled, and prodded her in the ribs with a bony forefinger.
‘We shall see what I believe,’ she responded. ‘Go and wash, there’s a good child. After lunch we will take George and the car, and go to this farm and invent spells and recite charms. Did you know that the Neolithic inhabitants of this island had the name for being cannibals?’
‘In a strictly religious sense, of course,’ said Laura. ‘You don’t mean that the people who murdered this heavy man were cannibals, do you? Because, if so, I’m dashed if I’m coming with you. I don’t mind the risk of being killed, but I’m jolly well not going to be eaten. Of course,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘it would tend to solve a murderer’s chief difficulty, wouldn’t it? I never thought of that before.’
‘It would only do so if the murderer had the attributes and appurtenances of the elderly gentleman in Through the Looking Glass, child.’
‘Eh? Oh, you mean Old Father William?’
‘Yes. He finished the goose with the bones and the beak… Ah, well, let us see what cook has done about lunch.’
‘I’m not sure that I’m hungry,’ said Laura.
Chapter Five
—«♦»—
‘All the day long she flew about in the form of an owl, or crept about the country like a cat, but at night she always became an old woman again.’
Ibid. (Jorinda and Jorindel)
« ^ »
Mrs. Bradley had one characteristic in particular which her young and lively secretary was child enough to appreciate. It was that when she planned a thing the plan was carried out without delay. Too many older people, Laura Menzies had always thought, put forth fascinating ideas and made rash and delightful promises, only to drive their youthful protégées demented by loitering, gossiping, or remembering duties which had to be performed, until the dust and ashes of frustration and disappointment completely covered the bright gold of the pleasure in store.
Mrs. Bradley was free from this regrettable fault. When she planned an outing it ‘stayed planned’ as Laura had once gratefully and inaccurately observed. Therefore it was with pleasant feelings of excitement and interest that Laura ordered the car after lunch, convinced that when Mrs. Bradley said ‘five to two on the gravel,’ she meant just that.
At five to two, therefore, Mrs. Bradley’s car appeared at the front of the house, and by two o’clock Mrs. Bradley, accompanied by Laura, and with the chauffeur, George, at the wheel, was out on the Cuchester Road.
‘We are not going quite as far as the farm in this,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Some of our investigations would be better conducted on foot. Have you brought the map?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve also brought your revolver.’
‘Tut, child. It’s daylight, and we shall be home before dark.’
‘I feel safer with it,’ said Laura doggedly. ‘I don’t like all these corpses and hot-water bottles. Besides, I’m a pretty good shot, and I wouldn’t mind trying my skill. So if any ugly blighters come into my line of vision I shall know what to do, that’s all. One can always plead self-defence.’
She stretched out her five foot ten of abundant muscle, bone and firm flesh, and grinned contentedly.
The car, travelling south and a point towards the east, came opposite the Early Iron Age fortress from whose mighty battlements O’Hara had tried to follow the movements of Gascoigne the hare.
‘And now,’ said Mrs. Bradley, as George pulled up on the turf, ‘George shall take the car round to where Mr. O’Hara says that he met this man who directed him wrongly, and we will pick up the car again when we have followed the route which Mr. O’Hara says he took before he met with this man.’
‘Ah, checking up on O’Hara’s story,’ said Laura, approvingly. ‘Intelligent, if I may say so. And I’d like to say that we ought to check Gascoigne’s, too.’
‘You may say what you please, child,’ said Mrs Bradley with her usual good-humour. ‘Those are, I should say, the obvious things for us to do.’
‘Yes, we must explore all avenues,’ agreed Laura. ‘You know, I feel I’m going to enjoy this business. There’s a smack of Edgar Allan Poe about it which rather appeals to my sense of the bizarre and the macabre.’