The nodding canaries mrs.., p.1
The Nodding Canaries (Mrs. Bradley), page 1
Titles by Gladys Mitchell
Speedy Death (1929)
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1930)
The Longer Bodies (1930)
The Saltmarsh Murders (1932)
Death at the Opera (1934)
The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935)
Dead Men’s Morris (1936)
Come Away, Death (1937)
St Peter’s Finger (1938)
Printer’s Error (1939)
Brazen Tongue (1940)
Hangman’s Curfew (1941)
When Last I Died (1941)
Laurels Are Poison (1942)
Sunset Over Soho (1943)
The Worsted Viper (1943)
My Father Sleeps (1944)
The Rising of the Moon (1945)
Here Comes a Chopper (1946)
Death and the Maiden (1947)
The Dancing Druids (1948)
Tom Brown’s Body (1949)
Groaning Spinney (1950)
The Devil’s Elbow (1951)
The Echoing Strangers (1952)
Merlin’s Furlong (1953)
Faintley Speaking (1954)
On Your Marks (1954)
Watson’s Choice (1955)
Twelve Horses and the Hangman’s Noose (1956)
The Twenty-Third Man (1957)
Spotted Hemlock (1958)
The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959)
Say it With Flowers (1960)
The Nodding Canaries (1961)
My Bones Will Keep (1962)
Adders on the Heath (1963)
Death of a Delft Blue (1964)
Pageant of Murder (1965)
The Croaking Raven (1966)
Skeleton Island (1967)
Three Quick and Five Dead (1968)
Dance to Your Daddy (1969)
Gory Dew (1970)
Lament for Leto (1971)
A Hearse on May-Day (1972)
The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)
A Javelin for Jonah (1974)
Winking at the Brim (1974)
Convent on Styx (1975)
Late, Late in the Evening (1976)
Noonday and Night (1977)
Fault in the Structure (1977)
Wraiths and Changelings (1978)
Mingled with Venom (1978)
Nest of Vipers (1979)
The Mudflats of the Dead (1979)
Uncoffin’d Clay (1980)
The Whispering Knights (1980)
The Death-Cap Dancers (1981)
Lovers Make Moan (1981)
Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982)
Death of a Burrowing Mole (1982)
The Greenstone Griffins (1983)
Cold, Lone and Still (1983)
No Winding Sheet (1984)
The Crozier Pharaohs (1984)
Gladys Mitchell writing as Malcolm Torrie
Heavy as Lead (1966)
Late and Cold (1967)
Your Secret Friend (1968)
Churchyard Salad (1969)
Shades of Darkness (1970)
Bismarck Herrings (1971)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © The Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1961
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer Seattle, 2014
www.apub.com
First published Great Britain in 1961 by Michael Joseph.
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E-ISBN: 9781477869048
“A Note about This E-Book”
The text of this book has been preserved from the original British edition and includes British vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation, some of which may differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, with only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.
To all my friends at Matthew Arnold School Ave atque Vale
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE S.O.S.
CHAPTER TWO Pigmy’s Ladder
CHAPTER THREE Nodding Acquaintances
CHAPTER FOUR Friends and Other Nodders
CHAPTER FIVE Nodding Ladies
CHAPTER SIX The Magpie’s Mother
CHAPTER SEVEN The Beri-Beri
CHAPTER EIGHT General Meeting Extraordinary
CHAPTER NINE The Subterranean Canaries
CHAPTER TEN Antiques and Archives
CHAPTER ELEVEN Moonshine Without Wall
CHAPTER TWELVE The Treasure Hunt
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Nodding Killer
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Neighbourly Nodders
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Trail of a Murderer
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Croesus and Other Nodders
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Referred to Knossos
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
S.O.S.
“Days that in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night.”
Richard Crashaw
Nodding is so much a market town that the fact of its being also a Cathedral city can be, and very often is, overlooked. The Cathedral, imposing and beautiful, does not seem to be the heart of the city in the same way as is the Cathedral at Salisbury, for example. All the same, the Dean and Chapter have been able to maintain the tradition that no buses run on Sundays until after Early Service and that none are routed to pass the precincts during Matins. On the other hand, the Cathedral close ends, on the west, opposite what used to be the turkey market and on the east at a ferry.
There are two other markets in Nodding. The enormous space between St Hilary Godsend and the new City Hall is filled daily with lane after lane of stalls, each with its gaily-striped awning, and chaffering goes on all day long. On Saturday mornings the big cattle market is held on another considerable area of the city which lies between the castle and the new post-office. Beasts are brought from all parts of the county to be bought and sold, and the noise is considerable and lasts from early morning until noon. The pubs are allowed an extension on Saturdays.
The city itself, apart from the post-office, the huge modern town hall which flanks the market, and the one wide street which runs for a mile or so between the railway station and the bus station, retains its mediaeval character. The streets are narrow and some of them are cobbled. There is the wonderful flint-work of the old town hall (near the market); there is a fifteenth-century inn now dignified by the name of the Gauntlet Hotel, and, not far away, there is a magnificent thirteenth-century hall which was once the frater of a wealthy and powerful Benedictine monastery and which is now used for the annual music festival and the flower show. There are so many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century churches in the city, built in the flourishing days of the wool trade, that some of them have been closed, and one has been de-consecrated and is now a museum. There is also the flint-faced Bethlehem, turned nowadays into the Evening Institute of Embroidery, but once a mad-house for women. There are houses with upper floors of oak which slope alarmingly, and there are shops which have an entrance on one street and another entrance on the parallel street behind. There are stretches of the old city wall (although the gates are gone), watch-towers on the river and a fourteenth-century bridge. There is also The Wattle, just outside the Cathedral close, where the turkey market used to be held and the birds shepherded on their own tarred feet to London.
In a flat above a bookseller’s shop just off The Wattle lived a schoolmistress. Her name was Alice Boorman and, unfashionably, (for the profession has taken enthusiastically to the lifting of the ban on married women), she was still a spinster. One would hesitate, however, before saddling her with the questionable title of old maid, for, although she was rigidly virtuous, she was also tough, athletic, and in charge of the physical education of girls at the most modern of the Nodding City schools.
She lived alone, by preference, but was hospitably inclined, particularly with regard to two friends she had made at College, Kitty Trevelyan (by this time Mrs. Rafe Vinnicombe and the mother of three) and Laura Gavin (née Menzies), the mother of a determined individualist named Hamish, which onerous chore she combined with that of acting as secretary to a psychiatrist.
Other welcome visitors were the ex-Warden and the ex-Subwarden of Athelstan Hall, one of the hostels attached to the college. These visitors were, respectively, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, Laura’s employer, and young Mrs. Jonathan Bradley, who had begun life as Deborah Cloud and had lectured to the First Year English groups before she married Dame Beatrice’s nephew.
Kitty, who designed hair-styles to suit the spring and autumn collections of the haute couture, usually took a vacation at Whitsun, when Alice’s school was closed for the week. Laura, unless the circumstances were out of the ordinary, could take a holiday whenever she chose, so by late May or early June the three usually had made plans to spend Whitsun week together. It was with considerable surprise, therefore, that, less than a month after this annual beano, Laura received a letter from Alice Boorman one Friday morning, begging her to return to Nodding and, if it was possible, to bring Dame Beatrice with her.
Laura, who was at breakfast with her employer in the Stone House, Wandles Parva in Hampshire, when she received the letter, handed it to Dame Beatrice with the comment:
“If I’d had this from old Kitty, I’d know what to think, but, coming, as it does, from young Alice, I should imagine she’s deeply in the soup in some way or other, and looks to us to extricate her. As she never, on principle, squeals unless she’s at the point of extinction, I regard this letter as a very serious plea for succour. Do you think you can make it? There’s nothing in the diary that won’t wait, so far as I can see.”
Dame Beatrice read the letter. She nodded.
“Of course we must go,” she said. “The very fact that Miss Boorman gives no indication whatever of the nature of her predicament makes me apprehensive on her behalf. Finish your breakfast and then order the car.”
They were on their way by ten o’clock and in Nodding in time for lunch at the Gauntlet. Alice Boorman, they knew, always had lunch at school because she coached games during the dinner-hour, so they made a very leisurely meal and then drove to the school to meet Alice at four o’clock, when the children were dismissed and she would be free.
“I’ll oil in, shall I?” suggested Laura, as the first of the children appeared. “I know where the games store is, and that’s where she’ll be, I’ve no doubt.”
By twenty minutes past four Alice was ready to go home. She said nothing about her letter until well after they had arrived at her flat. There she made tea and cut wafer-thin bread and butter (which Dame Beatrice dearly loved) and fed Laura and herself on baked beans and poached eggs on toast. Whatever was worrying her she put resolutely and characteristically into the background until the meal was over and cleared away. Then she and Laura went into the kitchen to wash up, leaving Dame Beatrice in the pleasant sitting-room.
“Well?” said Laura. “What’s biting the girlhood friend?”
“I’m in a spot, I think,” said Alice. “It may mean the police.”
“Golly! What have you done? Embezzled the school fund?”
“Nothing so simple, Dog. I may be had up and charged with attempted murder.”
“Tried to slaughter a kid, do you mean? Doubtless most of ’em could do with it.”
“It isn’t a girl. It’s Staff. Two nearly dead in the hospital here.”
“You have been doing it!” Laura spoke lightly, but felt cold with fear. She was very fond of Alice. “Hadn’t we better sort it out in the hearing of Mrs. Croc.? It’ll be tedious for you to recite the history twice.”
“Oh, Laura, I’m so glad she was able to come! It is good of her! She’s my only hope.”
“Faint not, nor fear,” said Laura, with a heartiness she did not feel. “Incidentally,” she added, “have you done whatever it is you’re supposed to have done?”
“Oh, Dog, of course not!” Alice looked horrified at the suggestion. “Of course I haven’t! But I can see it looks as though I might have, and I can’t see that there is anyone to give evidence that I didn’t. I so easily could have done it, you see. I have to admit that.”
They finished the chores in silence and then went back to the sitting-room.
“Now,” said Laura, stretching her long body in a comfortable armchair, “let’s have the dope, young Alice, straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“You shouldn’t mix your metaphors,” said Alice, “but this is what happened.”
“Dope and horses aren’t a mixed metaphor nowadays.”
“One moment,” said Dame Beatrice. “May I know, before you begin…”
“She’s been trying to murder the Staff,” said Laura. “Not all of them, of course. Just the two she didn’t much like.”
“I see,” said Dame Beatrice, gravely. “I should wish to take notes, Miss Boorman, if you do not object.”
“I’d like you to write something down. It might give a glimmer, although I haven’t really much hope,” said Alice.
“Of course, she didn’t do it,” said Laura. “So much even the meanest intelligence (my own) can grasp.”
“So much I supposed. Now, Miss Boorman?”
“It begins some time back,” said Alice, “when three of us bought a caravan. It didn’t last long because, after we’d spent half-a-dozen weekends and one whole Easter and one whole autumn half-term holiday in it, and then four weeks in Scotland the next summer, we decided that it was too cramped an existence. You see, whenever we had a holiday in the beastly caravan, it rained. Of course, we did go out in the rain—we had to—but it was quite a problem getting clothes dried and, anyway, not much fun always going out and getting wet, so we decided that the caravan had a jinx and we sold it.”
“So far, I follow the plot,” said Laura, knitting her brows, “but where does it get us?”
“That’s only the beginning. Perhaps you remember, Dog, that I took a special one-year P.E. course, after we’d left College a year or two, to qualify myself to be put in charge of a gym, do you?”
“Sure I remember. Didn’t I come to the passing-out display?”
“That’s right. You did. It was after I’d finished there that I got the post at Fieldingstone, and then I got this one.”
“All straightforward so far. What was the snag?”
“Well, oddly enough, Pettinsalt and Betsy.”
“What? The revered and (by old Kitty—remember?) the detested gymnasiarchs of the dear old college? I can’t believe it. Why, Pettinsalt used to pronounce your name with awe, and Betsy used to bite holes in the trampoline in her ecstasy at your virtuosity.”
“Don’t be silly, Dog. We didn’t have a trampoline in those days. No, what happened was that Pettinsalt and Betsy put their heads together, it seems, and decided to run me for Organiser of the area. It’s a pretty good job and it was advertised two months ago. I applied, backed by the two of them and my present head and because I’ve had County colours for netball and the half-mile—don’t go in for that sort of thing now, of course, on account of my age…”
“Too old at twenty-nine,” said Laura, shaking her head.
“…so it was thought that I had some sort of chance, especially as I do Modern Dance as well.”
“Her school gymnastics team have been on television, too,” said Laura. Alice shook her head.
“I don’t think that made any difference. The point is that, of course, I wasn’t the only candidate. There were two other people in the running.”
“Aha! Two niggers in the wood-pile, eh?”
“I wouldn’t have called them that. There was nothing hidden or suspicious about the matter. These Organisers’ jobs are sought after, naturally, and a whole bevy of people applied from all over the place. We were all interviewed and three of us were short-listed and had to attend another session in front of the small selection Committee. I heard privately that Pettinsalt moved heaven and earth to get a seat on that committee, but, as she was known to be an interested party, there was nothing doing. Actually, I was rather glad, because she and Betsy had already pulled a good many strings for me and I was a bit embarrassed about that. If I get anywhere, I want to do it under my own steam.”
“Noble, independent, priggish, and ungrateful,” said Laura. “Still, don’t ever listen to destructive criticism. I never do. Carry on.”
“Yes, well, as I said, three of us were called to this second interview and it was to be held at the unreasonable hour of eight-forty-five last Saturday evening. One of the girls had to come up from Devonshire for it and the other one was from Scotland, so, of course, I suggested that they should roll up at my flat on the Friday night or the Saturday morning and go to the interview from there.”
“White of you. And did they come?”
“I do so much wish they hadn’t, Dog, but, of course, they did, and that’s just the trouble. The one from Devonshire turned up at about ten o’clock on the Friday night and the Scottish girl took the night train from Edinburgh and rolled in early on the Saturday morning.”
“Nice girls?”
“Ever such decent souls. Very well qualified, too, and both with teaching experience in Grammar Schools, which I thought would clinch the issue for one of them. I hadn’t a hope it would be me.”
“I don’t see why not. You can probably make rings round the pair of them.”
“Not any longer. I’ve withdrawn my application. I felt I had to.” Alice was in complete control of her voice, but her hands were clenched and she went white as she spoke. Laura looked away and asked,
