Nodding canaries, p.1
Nodding Canaries, page 1
part #34 of Mrs Bradley Series
The Nodding Canaries
Gladys Mitchell
Bradley 34
* * *
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
click for scan notes and proofing history
* * *
Contents
1: S.O.S.
2: Pigmy’s Ladder
3: Nodding Acquaintances
4: Friends and Other Nodders
5: Nodding Ladies
6: The Magpie’s Mother
7: The Beri-Beri
8: General Meeting Extraordinary
9: The Subterranean Canaries
10: Antiques and Archives
11: Moonshine Without Wall
12: The Treasure Hunt
13: The Nodding Killer
14: Neighbourly Nodders
15: The Trail of a Murderer
16: Croesus and Other Nodders
17: Referred to Knossos
* * *
SEVERN HOUSE
* * *
THE NODDING CANARIES
Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is called upon by a schoolmistress friend, Alice Boorman, to extricate her from a situation in which she may have to face a charge of attempted murder. She has been shortlisted, with two others, for an important promotion, but, as a result of an expedition the three young women have planned just before the final interview for the post, the other two are rescued in the nick of time from some ancient flint-mines.
Dame Beatrice, certain that Miss Boorman is innocent, enters the arena, discovers a corpse and uncovers some unexpected facts. She also unearths what may be a most unusual motive for murder.
* * *
By the same author
dead man’s morris • come away death • st peter’s finger • printer’s error
brazen tongues • hangman’s curfew • when last i died • laurels are poison
the worsted viper • sunset over soho • my father sleeps
the rising of the moon • here comes a chopper • death and the maiden
the dancing druids • tom brown’s body • groaning spinney • the devil’s elbow
the echoing strangers • merlin’s furlong • faintley speaking • watson’s choice
twelve horses and the hangman’s noose • the twenty-third man
spotted hemlock • the man who grew tomatoes • say it with flowers
This 1987 edition from
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
40-42 William IV Street, London WC2N 4DF
First published in Great Britain 1961 by Michael Joseph Ltd.
Copyright © 1961 by Gladys Mitchell
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys
The nodding canaries.
I. Title
823'.912 [F] PR6025.I832
ISBN 0-7278-1490-7
Printed and bound in Great Britain
* * *
To
all my friends at
Matthew Arnold School
Ave atque Vale
* * *
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 week-ends 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,
‘Whatever happened?’
‘Miss Boorman is about to explain to us,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘You see, I thought I ought to entertain them a bit, as they were staying with me, so I planned to show them as much of Nodding as we had time for. We went over the Cathedral and the castle, visited the cattle market – they liked that very much – and then the ordinary market, and had lunch at the Gauntlet. Then the girl from Devonshire mentioned Pigmy’s Ladder and asked whether there would be time to go there before the interview. Well, of course, there was plenty of time, and it seemed a good idea, so we went there in my car.’
‘The suggestion was made by one of the others, and not by you,’ said Dame Beatrice, noting down this fact.
‘We got there by half-past three,’ Alice continued. ‘It’s a prehistoric flint-mine, as you probably know. We were the only ones there and the man wanted to see whether some more people turned up before he opened the entrance to the main shaft, but we explained that we hadn’t much time, so he let them go down.’
‘Them? Not you?’
‘No. I went down once, on a Guiders’ outing, but I got claustrophobia in those narrow, low, little workings, so I certainly didn’t want to experience the same sort of feelings again, especially with the interview so near.’
Laura nodded.
‘I went once. I rather enjoyed crawling about down there and seeing other people’s ghostly hands, clutching candles, come eerily round corners. I felt quite Tom Sawyer,’ she said.
‘Well, I didn’t enjoy it a bit, the time I went, so, when we got out of the car, I bullied the man, as I said, into unlocking the place for the other two, and told them I wouldn’t be going down, and saw them down the ladder. I’d supplied them with small electric torches, as being more manageable than the candles you find at the bottom of the shaft, so, having told them they’d better not be more than a quarter of an hour or so, I went for a stroll across the heath.’
