August 4th.
Arrival of Mrs Bradley.
Mrs Bradley interviews the Tebbutts.
August 7th.
Mrs Bradley interviews the Misses Harper.
Jones and Mrs Bradley interview Mrs Pike.
August 8th.
Mrs Bradley takes the vicar to London and interviews Constance Middleton’s mother.
August 15th.
Mrs Bradley brings the vicar back.
August 16th.
Jones becomes an elemental spirit.
August 17th.
Uproar in the castle ruins. Rain.
8. HORNS AND A TAIL. One of the most curious and interesting features of the general mentality, if such a term is permissible, of the inhabitants of Saxon Wall, was a noticeable inability to distinguish between essential good and essential evil. For instance, they thought that the long thin man who was buried on the hill-top was a sleeping devil and yet they called the hill itself Godrun Down. They conceived Jones to be the manifestation of this devil, and yet they took it for granted that Jones was on Hallam’s side. Incidentally, the village accepted unconditionally the Scriptural interpretation of madness, i.e., demoniacal possession. It had also some of the traditional Oriental respect for mentally deranged persons. (It is not proposed to enter the old-fashioned arena of the great Aryan Controversy in support of this last statement.)
9. DRUGS AND INSANITY. Valerian (see Part II, Chapter XVI) and hyoscin hydrobromide are sometimes used as soothing, quietening and sleep-inducing agencies in cases of extreme violence and excitement. A drug used in cases of melancholia is paraldehyde. No doubt Tebbutt understood how to treat Middleton’s outbursts and usually had him pretty well under control. Middleton, like most lunatics, however, was cunning as well as crazy, and, having waited his chance, killed Tebbutt with the (heavier) poker. He seems to have shocked himself into sanity, as was also the case after the murder of his wife.
This, at any rate, was Jones’ opinion, but Mrs Bradley’s possibly more scientific theory was that in each case the murder was actually the culminating point—the peak, as it were—of the period of insanity, and that the subsequent descent into sanity (or near-sanity) was in the natural sequence of events.
10. MRS TEBBUTT’S FEARS. (See Chapter XV).
(a) She was physically afraid of Hanley Middleton.
(b) She could not trust Mrs Passion and/or Mrs Fluke, and, most unwisely had put herself into the power of them both. She had given Mrs Passion an alibi for the night of the murder, and therefore had none for herself, and she knew that Mrs Fluke was privy to the plot to kidnap Hallam and disapproved of it because she had been refused a share of the spoils of blackmail. (Incidentally, it never transpired to what extent the Tebbutts had blackmailed Middleton.)
(c) She was afraid of Doctor Mortmain, who guessed what was going on, and whose sense of humour was beyond her understanding.
(d) She was afraid of Tom, a violent and undutiful boy, and only administered an emetic after poisoning him when she realised that he so hated and feared his father that he would be the last person to cause trouble when he learned that his father had been murdered.
(e) She mistrusted Mrs Bradley, and suspected her of knowing almost as much about the murder as Mrs Bradley really did know.
(f) She was alarmed because she could not keep Passion permanently in bed at Neot House to impersonate Tebbutt. It may be remembered (see Chapter XIV) that Passion broke away in order to accompany little Richard to gather water-cress. Passion was the most unreliable of allies, and, like many mentally defective persons, was curiously and obstinately wilful in spite of his apparent meekness.
11. EXTRAORDINARILY ACCOMMODATING BEHAVIOUR OF THE CHIEF CONSTABLE. This, and the curiously anomalous position occupied by the farmer Birdseye, are the most interesting and sinister features of the whole affair, and are equally inexplicable. It is true that Sir Odysseus was afraid of Mrs Bradley, and that she had known his mother, but this hardly accounts for the almost inspired manner in which he kept out of her way and left her to her own devices.
As for Birdseye, only a student of early Liturgical drama and of Miracle and Mystery plays would be able to account for the part he played. ‘Noises Off’ may cover ‘more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!’
GLADYS MITCHELL
February, 1935.
MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
Mystery Mile
Police at the Funeral
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
The Fashion in Shrouds
Traitor’s Purse
Coroner’s Pidgin
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Hide My Eyes
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
Cargo of Eagles
E. F. BENSON
The Blotting Book
The Luck of the Vails
NICHOLAS BLAKE
A Question of Proof
Thou Shell of Death
There’s Trouble Brewing
The Beast Must Die
The Smiler With the Knife
Malice in Wonderland
The Case of the Abominable Snowman
Minute for Murder
Head of a Traveller
The Dreadful Hollow
The Whisper in the Gloom
End of Chapter
The Widow’s Cruise
The Worm of Death
The Sad Variety
EDMUND CRISPIN
Buried for Pleasure
The Case of the Gilded Fly
Holy Disorders
Love Lies Bleeding
The Moving Toyshop
Swan Song
A. A. MILNE
The Red House Mystery
GLADYS MITCHELL
Speedy Death
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop
The Longer Bodies
The Saltmarsh Murders
Death at the Opera
The Devil at Saxon Wall
Dead Men’s Morris
Come Away, Death
St Peter’s Finger
Brazen Tongue
Hangman’s Curfew
When Last I Died
Laurels Are Poison
Here Comes a Chopper
Death and the Maiden
Tom Brown’s Body
Groaning Spinney
The Devil’s Elbow
The Echoing Strangers
Watson’s Choice
The Twenty-Third Man
My Bones Will Keep
Three Quick and Five Dead
Dance to Your Daddy
A Hearse on May-Day
Late, Late in the Evening
Fault in the Structure
Nest of Vipers
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Copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1935
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First published in Great Britain by Grayson & Grayson in 1935
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