Uncoffind clay, p.1
Uncoffind Clay, page 1
part #57 of Mrs Bradley Series
Uncoffin’d Clay
Gladys Mitchell
Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley 57
1982
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A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
click for scan notes and proofing history
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Contents
chapter 1: a look around the neighbourhood
chapter 2: lower gushbrook and aries st. peter
chapter 3: crime wave
chapter 4: the man-trap
chapter 5: enter a godmother
chapter 6: four and three
chapter 7: beating the bounds
chapter 8: the waterlogged punt
chapter 9: effie winters
chapter 10: farmer breedy
chapter 11: an inquest and after
chapter 12: hamid aziz comes clean
chapter 13: martha lorne
chapter 14: a sheikh and a school
chapter 15: the monstrous regiment of women
chapter 16: another murder
chapter 17: unwinding a skein
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St. Martin’s Press New York
Copyright © 1982 by Gladys Mitchell
For information, write: St. Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys, 1901-
Uncoffin’d clay.
1. Title. II. Title: Uncoffin’d clay.
PR6025.I832U5 1982 823'.912 82-5586
ISBN 0-312-82857-8 AACR2
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd.
* * *
For CHARLES and PATRICIA
with thanks and love
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Beaminster, Melplash, Mapperton, Hooke
And Toller Porcorum; none named in this book.
For I have changed a vital fact or two.
So this tall story never could be true
* * *
chapter 1
A LOOK AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
^ »
It all began last Spring while I was staying with my brother Innes and his wife at the house they had bought in a little town called Strode Hillary. They had bought it when Innes retired from his editorial post to become a freelance writer, and Mary had given up her singing so that they could spend more time together than had been possible while both were working. Mary had been often away from home when her concerts took her to distant counties or abroad, and she had confessed to me that she was quite prepared to abandon a career on the concert platform and ‘dwindle into a wife’ as soon as Innes was free.
They were a lively, hospitable couple — Innes distinguished-looking, witty and apt at quotation, a lavish host and extremely sociable; Mary a poised and beautiful woman, ash-blonde, blue-eyed, serene and very charming. They had lots of friends, and I thought it was good of them to invite a widower brother to stay with them and occupy the guest-room to the exclusion of people they might have preferred. The atmosphere was always civilised and harmonious in their company, and I had always enjoyed my visits to their previous home.
This was the first time I had seen the new house. It was modern and convenient and I was looking forward to a leisurely and pleasant week. However, this visit turned out to be vastly different from anything I had expected and it began — now I look back on events — to show its altered character on the very first morning of my stay.
I had arrived in time for dinner on the previous evening. On holiday I am usually an early riser and the next morning, I remember, I had bathed, dressed and shaved by the time Mary called out from their bedroom, ‘Tea’s up, Michael!’ I had known her for so long that I was always invited into their room for the early cup and looked forward to this introduction to the day, for there was vicarious romance in sitting on a bed at the feet of a lovely woman, even though her husband was present. (Not that I grudged Innes his good fortune. My own marriage had been a happy one and my feeling for Mary was almost entirely brotherly, although I was aware that Innes kept his eye on me. This flattered me unduly and made me feel younger and happier than I usually did, so, far from objecting to it, I took his watchfulness as a compliment.)
As for Mary, she had no brother of her own, so I merely filled a family gap so far as she was concerned. I understood this, and kept myself well within bounds. I cherished my visits to her and Innes, and had no mind to risk their being terminated by any lapse of good taste on my part.
I accepted a cup of tea, mutely pledged her with it and, when she had gone off to take her bath, I said to Innes, as I got up and strolled towards the window: ‘Well, how are you going to like it here?’
‘Very much,’ he replied, getting out of bed and joining me. ‘The house is what we wanted, the people round and about are kind and we get invitations from everywhere and give our own little parties, of course. There’s a very good music society which we have joined, I am getting bits of work to do for my old journal just to keep my hand in and myself out of mischief, and Mary — bless her heart! — is as happy as Larry. Things couldn’t be better!’
‘Famous last words!’ I said. He laughed.
‘Be that as it may, look at the garden and the view!’
My own bedroom window in his house looked over the pleasant enough aspect of a wide square which made a turning-point for cars in a cul-de-sac which terminated at the closed end with a fenced bank, and at the open end in a quiet road which veered left towards the town. The view at which I was looking was wider and very different. I gazed appreciatively out over the countryside and promised myself some early-morning walks.
Some miles away — I did not know how far — there rose a conical, tree-clad hill. Against it, and appearing to dwarf it because the distance between them was so great, was the golden-grey, pinnacled tower of the parish church.
House-tops in the high street of the quiet old town cut off the base of the tower from my view, but, between the jumble of roofs and that part of Innes’s garden which was directly below the window, stretched a long green paddock and to the right of the paddock rose an equally grassy hill. This was crowned by a row of dark, sparsely planted trees below which was a well-kept hedge. The effect, I thought, was that of a mildly beneficent god with his hair on end and a necklace of jade around his neck.
This reminded me of a gift I had picked up in New Bond Street when I had accepted Mary’s invitation.
‘I’ve brought her a present,’ I said, half-turning away from the window.
‘Have you? How kind,’ he said. ‘How do you like the garden? We had it landscaped.’ Immediately below the window there was a broad stone terrace from which there descended one fairly steep and one shallow step to a partly paved sunken garden. The paving enclosed a considerable rose-bed, not, of course, yet in flower, and outside the paved portion were broad borders of spring flowers backed by plants and shrubs already in bud.
On the terrace itself were two enormous tubs of teak which had been brought from the delightful cottage which Innes and Mary had had near Tring. The tubs, as I had always seen them at that time of year, were filled with what, to me, was the tumultuous glory of the April daffodils, flowers which, for some reason, always reminded me of Mary herself, although ‘tumultuous’ was hardly a word which expressed what I knew of her.
A hedge separated the garden from the paddock, and at one end of it was a slightly leaning, grey-boled walnut tree, too old now to bear fruit, but of gracious symmetry, and neighbouring it were two close-leaved, dark-green cypress trees. At the other end of the hedge, but not in the garden itself, swayed a sapling ash as graceful as a young silver birch tree.
Nearer the house, on the opposite side of the garden and behind the border plants, there was a bush of myrtle, sacred to Venus, and the tree beneath which Phaedra had waited for Hippolotos, exerciser of horses. While Phaedra had waited, I remembered, she had pierced the myrtle leaves to while away the time, and the prickings can be seen on every leaf to this day. So much for legend which can always explain the otherwise incomprehensible.
My thoughts carried me further. In ancient Israel the Hebrews believed that by eating myrtle leaves they could detect the presence of witches. I mentioned this to Dame Beatrice when, later on, we met. She greeted the remark with an eldritch cackle of laughter and remarked that she numbered a notorious witch among her ancestors, a statement I had no difficulty in believing. I added, I remember, that there was a Gentile, if not exactly a Christian, belief that by crushing the myrtle leaves in the closed palm of the hand it was possible to test the faithfulness of the marriage partner. If the leaves crackled, divorce was probably the best solution. I did not mention murder, but another of those disquieting cackles indicated that, as my friend Michele Slung would say, Dame Beatrice even then had crime on her mind.
Mary, looking rosy and smelling delicious, came back into the bedroom.
‘Out you go,’ she said to me. I retired obediently, went downstairs and picked up the morning paper from the front-door mat. I am an avid reader of newspapers when I am at home, but on holiday I cannot be bothered with them, so, after settling myself on the long couch which was sideways-on to the french windows, I scanned the headlines on the front page and then put the paper down and picked up the parish magazine which was lying beside me.
It was an impressive little booklet, I thought. On its crimson cover, apart from the price (which argued some wealthy subscribers at ten pence a copy), was a heavy black cr
I had questions to ask at breakfast.
‘We don’t know the origin of the names,’ said Mary. ‘We’ve only been here a matter of months. If Michael is interested, Innes, why don’t we take a run in the car this morning and let him see something of the countryside?’
‘Why five parishes?’ I enquired. ‘Are they very close together?’
‘No, quite widely scattered and some are not all that easy to reach. This town, Strode Hillary, used to have a vicar all to itself, and I suppose the other parishes had theirs, so either this lumping them all together under one incumbent is an economy measure, or else there aren’t enough vicars to go round, one would think,’ said Mary.
‘Or not enough churchgoers to warrant five livings,’ said Innes. ‘Would you like a cross-country trip, Mike?’
‘I see they’re going to beat the bounds,’ I said. ‘There’s a sketch map in the parish magazine.’
‘Well, we can follow the same route, if you’re interested. You’ll still be here at the time they do it, so we can show you the lay-out. We can even join in the doings if you like. It’s a church thing — blessing the sowing of the crops, and all that — so it’s being carried out on Sunday, beginning at Ropewalk, and then going to one of the farms to the south and finishing at Aries St. Peter, at the vicarage there.’
‘That’s a very strange name,’ I said, as we started out. ‘What on earth has the first sign of the zodiac to do with the keys of heaven?’
‘You’ll know when we get to the church,’ said Mary. We had set off at half-past ten, proposing to have a ploughman’s lunch at a pub and our cooked meal when we got home. Mary did most of her own cooking and, over the years, I had learned to look forward to her dinners, although, in the ordinary course of events, my appetite is capricious owing to the heavy-handed efforts of various ‘obliging’ domestic workers to sustain me since my wife’s death.
‘Come to think of it,’ said Innes, who was driving, ‘As we can’t very well call at the farms which will be, largely, the object of next Sunday’s exercise, we won’t be able to follow the actual route today, so we’ll just make it a sight-seeing tour, taking in the villages as we come to them. First we’ll have a general view.’
We turned away from the church and the houses and were immediately in open country. A road tunnel through a hill and a turning off to the right brought us to a wide area where was a famous viewpoint. Below us was the little town we had just left. Around were the hills and over them an April sky flecked with wind-blown clouds. Innes, aided by an Ordnance map, pointed out the approximate locations of the other four parishes.
‘We’ve never been to Aries St. Peter or Lower Gushbrook,’ he said, ‘so I hope I’ll be able to find them.’
‘But if you haven’t been there, how did Mary know that I’d realise, when I saw it, why the village is called Aries St. Peter?’
‘It’s in all the guide books,’ said Mary, from her seat in the rear, for they had insisted upon giving me the seat next the driver. We had to return to the town to begin the pilgrimage proper, and as we drove along the high street and past the market square, I realised, as I had not done on my drive through it in the darkness of the previous night, what a delightful old town Strode Hillary was.
There were houses of all periods — the lath and plaster of Tudor times; tall, narrow, dignified Georgians; a double-fronted coaching inn with a royally-collared stag as its sign; old-fashioned shops around the market square which had its butter-cross and its horse-trough; almshouses now restored to make a parish hall; a beautiful house — Queen Anne, I thought — set back from the road behind lawns and flower-beds; intriguing narrow streets opening off the main street and one of them leading to the church; and there was even a little river which entered the town unobtrusively at the eastern end and was soon lost to sight as it meandered out south-westwards away from the houses.
We took a right-hand bend out of Strode Hillary and almost immediately were in a countryside of hills and deep green valleys. The nearest of the parishes was Paulet Marquise. We pulled up opposite the church and got out of the car. From the roadside I gazed in frank disbelief at the edifice confronting us.
‘It isn’t real,’ I said.
‘According to the guide books, it’s a copy of the church which was first built here,’ Mary said. ‘Do you want to take a closer look at it?’
I am a devotee of church architecture and this was something quite out of the ordinary. It was a far too perfect copy of the earliest type of Norman church — squat, square tower, round-headed windows and doorways with chevron moulding around the arches, an apsed end — but it also had transepts and, on an outside wall, more chevron moulding where no Norman mason would have dreamed of putting it, since it served no purpose except that of incongruity.
Although the outside might have deceived an inexpert eye, the inside was so unorthodox that even a visitor unused to churchgoing must have been astonished. The altar, instead of being at the east end of the church where the apse was, had been placed at the end of the north transept and the apsed end was now a baptistry, complete with a late Victorian marble font on three stone steps.
The crossing and the south transept now formed the nave of the church and held the pews for the congregation. What had been the original nave was curtained off. There was nobody except ourselves in the church, so I went over and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. To my further astonishment this disclosed what was most obviously the parish hall. There was a platform at the west end for lectures or the performance of simple plays; a gymnastic box and horse and four balancing forms were at one end of the stage and a useful-looking cupboard stood in the opposite corner. A stack of chairs, of the kind which sit so conveniently on top of one another in order to conserve space, completed the furnishings.
‘Ah,’ said Innes, joining me at my peep-hole, ‘economical and admirable, don’t you think? When they beat the bounds there is going to be a tea-and-bun fight in here. If we join the revels we may be able to snatch a cuppa. Mary attends church once a month and also entertains the vicar at our house when he’s on visiting rounds, and she is doing a weekly stint in the school dinnerhour instructing the female adolescents in makeup and polite society manners, so I should think we’d be eligible.’
‘Do the local magnates join in the jamboree?’
‘Oh, sure to, for the look of the thing, you know. This is still hunting, churchgoing, magistrates’ bench, anti-poaching country — not that there isn’t a certain amount of bad blood between some of the notables. There are people you can’t invite to meet each other at cocktail or dinner parties, and there’s the local sheikh — not that he’ll be joining in Sunday’s procession, being, one supposes, a Moslem of rigid views.’
‘A sheikh?’
‘No less. He lives at Bourne Farley, the Paines’ old place.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I believe he’s got a string of names, like Royalty. I call him Abdul the Bulbul Ameer, after the student song, you know.’ He began to sing, a thing I myself would never have dared to do with a trained professional like Mary standing by.
