The greenstone griffins.., p.1
The Greenstone Griffins (Mrs. Bradley), page 1
Titles by Gladys Mitchell
Speedy Death (1929)
The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop (1929)
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)
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 1983
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 1983 by Michael Joseph
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
E-ISBN: 9781477869338
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 RUTH SHEATH, with loving gratitude for all her help with my books and for her friendship
Contents
PART ONE Jessica Denefield
1 Longwater Sedge
2 A Party at the Hall
3 Tragedy and an Inquest
4 The Griffins Again
5 A Kind of Window Shopping
6 Police and Worse
7 The Haunted Flat
8 Visitors
PART TWO Mrs. Lestrange Bradley
9 Preliminaries
10 The Miller’s Widow
11 The Late Vicar’s Wife
12 At the Cow and Lasher
13 Indoor Servants
14 Excursions
15 Alarms
16 The Past Rears Its Head
17 The Show-Down
About the Author
PART ONE
Jessica Denefield
1
Longwater Sedge
Among Jessica Denefield’s earliest memories were the reeds and willows alongside the river. There was a muddy path behind the reeds and from it, as she and her aunt made their way towards the little stone bridge, the child could catch glimpses of the water.
At the bridge she and her aunt made their first halt. There was ritual attached to the walk, for, when they reached the middle of the bridge, Jessica was lifted on to the coping with her four-year-old fat legs dangling over the water, bidden to look for fish.
The water flowed fairly fast under the bridge and swirled round the sturdy piers, for there was a weir further upstream. Jessica could not remember ever having seen any fish, but she remembered the mesmeric movement of the water and of how the river weed bent bridgewards under its flow.
Sometimes there were dragonflies near the bank; very occasionally a kingfisher flashed across the reedbeds; more often there was a heron, stilt-legged and watchful, fishing in the shallows.
From this upstream side of the bridge the view was of reedbeds and willows, but here and there a patch of grass, bordered by rosebay willow-herb, went down to the water’s edge. Sometimes Jessica and her aunt would picnic at such a spot and Jessica be allowed to paddle and to attempt to catch the minnows which darted about close inshore.
From the other side of the bridge the view was different. Instead of the long curve of the river beyond which was the weir, there was a straight stretch of water, bounded, as far as Jessica was concerned, by the mill which was her aunt’s objective, but between the mill and the stone bridge there was another bridge. This was made of wood and was intended only as a cattle-drive to bring the pasturing beasts from the water-meadows back to a farm to be milked. Its importance to Jessica was that from it she learned to swim from side to side of the river.
The path to the mill was broader and less muddy than the one on the other side and it was not so near the water. The last part of it traversed the water-meadows and here in May were the spotted flowers of fritillary, which her aunt called snakes-heads, and in early June, where the grass was short enough, there were the green-winged orchids following the earlier cowslips.
To a cottage-born child, and before she had been to the Hall, the mill house had almost the dimensions of a palace. It was a white building with a mansard roof, three plain sash windows on the first floor, and two more, one on either side of a dignified Georgian doorway, down below. Jessica’s parents were not on visiting terms at the mill, so it was only when she spent an afternoon with her aunt that she was ever taken to socialise with the miller’s wife, who had the name for being the biggest snob in the parish. She was invariably kind, however, to the child and provided cake and home-brewed ginger-beer and an occasional glass of raspberry cordial before the aunt and niece returned to the riverside cottage.
This was a tied cottage, like Jessica’s own home. Her father was an undergardener at the Hall, but her uncle was the river-bailiff for the estate through which some miles of the river ran. There was nothing but coarse fishing to be had, but some of the visitors to the Hall enjoyed angling for barbel, roach, chub, and pike. One or two of them—friends of the squire’s son—even took an eight-foot rod and the flies which Jessica’s uncle tied so neatly and, where the water was clear and when the day was warm, tried fly-fishing for dace.
That Jessica was on visiting terms at the mill was owing entirely to the status of her uncle. As the miller’s wife put it to the aunt, “Your man be hobnobben with the nobility and gentry. Stands to reason some of it rub off.”
Jessica’s visits to her uncle’s riverside cottage were not very frequent. They occurred when the squire gave a dinner-party or had weekend guests. On these occasions extra hands were needed at the Hall and Jessica’s mother was called upon “to help out.” The aunt, who was childless, was always willing to have the little girl, so her mother would take her to the riverside cottage in the morning and return for her when the festivities at the Hall were over. This meant that the little girl had to stay the night, since it was well past her bedtime before her mother was free. When her mother returned to take her home, there were treats waiting for her from the Hall, such as cream cakes, the remains of a tipsy-cake (the village name for a trifle in which the sponge cakes were liberally soaked in sherry), a tumbler of wine jelly, and rich soup which only needed re-heating.
The squire was not dependent upon the estate for his income. He had business interests elsewhere and these, in the end, affected Jessica’s future. Some years were to pass before this came about, and six weeks before her fifth birthday she was accepted as a pupil at the village school so that she could begin the autumn term at its commencement in early September. To everybody’s astonishment except her own, it was discovered that she could read.
For this, as for the fact that she could swim, her uncle the water-bailiff was responsible. He was a silent man of whom the child was somewhat in awe. She connected him vaguely with what she had heard about God and had once asked her mother whether God smoked a pipe. She learned by instinct, without having been told, that he disliked childish chatter, so, although she would prattle away to her aunt when they were alone, she would sit silently by while watching her uncle as he turned over his box of flies or experimented with fascinating bits of fur and feather.
Then, when tea was over, down from the shelf would come Oliver Twist or David Copperfield, and, with the four-year-old standing beside his chair, the Dickens-loving river-keeper would point with a flowering rush or a stripped stem of gypsy-wort while the child repeated each word after him.
On the following morning they would go over the short passage again and then the instructor would turn to another page and require Jessica to pick out all the words which she recognised. Six words earned a halfpenny, for the old coinage was still in use. It was a rough and ready method of teaching reading, but Jessica was quick to learn and very anxious to please her uncle, apart from the rich rewards when she succeeded. The consequence was that, by the time she went to school, the child, if not fluent, was at least equal to the six-year-olds and, just after her fifth birthday, she was upgraded to join them.
As for learning to swim, tuition had begun when she was only three. Paddling in the shallows accustomed her to cold water and soon, with her uncle’s forefinger under her rounded chin and his firm grasp of the back of the flannelette bathing costume her aunt had made for her, she was splashing and floundering in a couple of feet of water.
The next step was a little frightening at first and involved the wooden cattle-bridge. Her uncle contrived a broad sling made of sacking to which he attached a rope.
“You’m goen to be a big girl and swim acrorst river,” he said. “Do ’ee strike out nice and bold, now, and be sure I have ’ee safe on end of rope.”
Perhaps a fisherman made the best swimming instructor the child could have had, for he knew instinctively when it was safe to let the line slacken off a little as Jessica gained in confidence, and it was not long before she was supporting herself in the water or, rather, knowing that it was capable of supporting her so long as she trusted it. Her uncle, as usual, said very little, but she knew that he approved of her progress.
The next step was when she waded in from the left bank without the sacking sling, but having it dangled just in front of her as she swam so that if she suddenly panicked she could snatch it. Knowing that it was there, she never did panic and by the time she was seven she was untidy but safe in the water. No other children used that part of the river. Trespassers were not encouraged on estate property, so there was nobody to whom she could show off her prowess except her mother and her aunt.
Except during school hours she was—or might have been, if she had ever thought about it—a lonely child, for all the other children lived in the village, but Jessica’s home was a couple of miles outside it. The cottage in which she lived was not more than a hundred yards from the stables which were at the back of the Hall. The head gardener had a much better cottage, but there were no children there for playmates. The head gardener was an elderly man whose wife was dead and whose sons had emigrated. The only other near neighbours were a curmudgeonly old couple already pensioned off by the squire. They lived next door and Jessica was afraid of them.
Jessica, however, was happy enough. Quarrels and rumpuses between neighbours were adult affairs. Once she was able to swim, she was allowed to roam the countryside during the school holidays very much as she pleased. She wandered alongside the river, called in on her aunt, watched her uncle at work with another man in the punt cutting river weed, most of which then had to be fished out later to prevent it fouling the miller’s dam downstream, watched other men cutting reeds for thatching, and sometimes helped her father in their own cottage garden when there were peas and runner beans to be gathered, potatoes to be picked up as her father lifted enough for next day’s dinner, currants and gooseberries to be picked from the bushes for pies or jam.
Although, so far as coin of the realm was concerned, the Denefields were poor, there were many compensations. For one thing, owing partly to the kindness of the cook at the Hall, Jessica grew up healthy, sturdy, and tall, for nourishing left-overs from the squire’s table and the servants’ hall were there for Mrs. Denefield to call for at the kitchen door, and, as they were offered in a spirit of goodwill and without overt patronage, Jessica’s mother, with a hardworking husband and a growing girl to cater for, was very glad of them.
There were frequent presents of fresh-caught river-fish, too, from the uncle, eggs from the Denefields’ own hens, jam and preserves from homegrown fruit, blackberries, and wild rosehips. There were hazelnuts and, when the corn was reaped, always a rabbit or two came to the Denefield pot or pie.
It was the normal life of any country child of the time and would have been more enjoyable, perhaps, had it not been taken so much for granted and if there had been just a little more money to spare for a trip to the sea or a railway journey.
It was when she was seven years old that Jessica first became haunted (as she thought of it in later life) by the greenstone griffins and was subjected to the strange and frightening experiences which she always afterwards connected with them. They were the property of the squire and she came upon them in a totally unexpected way and by what she looked upon as a quirk of Fate, one of those happenings which can be explained by superstition and a belief in the occult, but which resist rationality and appear to be subject to none of the natural laws.
Had she been a less solitary child, she might not have indulged in fantasy to the extent that she did, but, from the age of five onwards, she had peopled her own world, a world which, in many respects and like so many introspective children, she preferred to the real world. Looking back, long years later, she could see the fallibility of her childish beliefs, but she could never quite convince herself that the griffins had not been responsible for some, at least, of the sinister happenings which had fallen within her cognisance.
2
A Party at the Hall
Children’s parties, either to celebrate birthdays or at Christmas time, were not a feature of family life in the village, but the head teacher kept an eye on the registered birthdays of the five- and six-year-olds in her school. When Jessica’s turn came, she was summoned to the majestic desk, given a picture postcard and a sweet, and the school and the teachers sang “Happy Birthday to You,” although some young tongues boggled a bit over fitting the name Jessica into this ditty, for no child was ever allowed a diminutive of his or her name. The head teacher had a theory that it diminished human dignity if Thomas was called Tommy. Her own first name was Kathleen and she had suffered (as she saw it) in her youth from being known to one and all as Kitty, and this, she was convinced, had inhibited her for years.
There was one party a year for the schoolchildren, but it was not held in any of their homes. It took place after school in the head teacher’s garden in the middle of the raspberry season and was known as the Raspberry Tea. There was also, of course, the Sunday School treat, but Jessica never made enough attendances to qualify for participation in this. The church hall was very near the school and it was felt by her mother that, as the child had to walk to school and back five days a week, there was a good reason for allowing her to stay at home on Sundays.
Soon after Jessica’s seventh birthday it became known that at the coming of age (still twenty-one in those days) of the heir to the estate, there were to be great doings at the Hall. Among these was to be a party for all schoolchildren aged seven, eight, and nine. This was to limit the numbers to what the squire’s wife, in conference with the head teacher, decided would be manageable under the circumstances. The older and younger pupils were not to be forgotten. Each of the former was to be given an orange and a newly-minted shilling, the latter would receive bags of sweets.
