The Longer Bodies by Gladys Mitchell Read Free Book Online

until after ten last night. And a bathchair
may
run downhill by itself, but
not
out of the door of a lockup shed that
is
locked up, Mr Hilary! So there it is! And then that javelin—I don’t like it. If you gentlemen
must
have your joke with the old lady, I
wish
you would be a little less
ghoulish
. Please, Mr Hilary!’
    Hilary looked at her and sadly shook his head.
    â€˜I suppose it’s a waste of breath to inform you, sister Caddick, that I didn’t so much as know that there were any condemned javelins about the place,’ he said. ‘Still, for what it is worth, I pass the information on. Neither is it my idea of a joke to attempt to scare an old woman of ninety.’
    He sighed.
    â€˜And to think that in you, sister Caddick, I fancied I had discovered a twin soul,’ he added sorrowfully.
    At twelve o’clock that night there were once more three young Flemish Giants in each hutch; and in the outer scullery, to which he had gained admission by methods peculiarly his own, Scrounger Joseph Herring was cleaning some yellowish clay off his boots.

Chapter Four
Friday Night and Saturday Morning
I
    PRISCILLA YEOMOND REMOVED her evening frock and hung it up in the wardrobe. She closed the wardrobe door, picked up the candle from the dressing-table, and walked over to a long Venetian mirror on a writhing wrought-iron stand, and, holding the candle aloft, stood for a moment studying her very pleasing reflection in the glass. At last, with a little sigh, half of satisfaction, half of amusement at knowing herself satisfied, she replaced the candle on the dressing-table and began to brush her shining, short, dark hair.
    It was nearly one o’clock. She had intended coming to bed earlier, but when Great-aunt Puddequet retired at nine o’clock they had put on the gramophone and there had been dancing. Then at half-past eleven she had accompanied Celia up the stairs, but had lingered in the girl’s room, talking, and had only just wished her good night. She liked Celia. She wondered what Amaris Cowes was like. Dick Cowes was queer. Perhaps Amaris was a freak. She was a plucky freak, anyway. She had cut loose from her family and had struck out on her own. It was sink or swim, thought Priscilla. There was Celia, too. She was only eighteen, and yet she had work to do and earned money. Mentally she reviewed her own life. It seemed a trifle feeble and inadequate compared with the comings and goings of these Amazonian cousins.
    A sharp crack at the window caused her to start violently. For a full thirty seconds she stood there, her heart thudding. Recovering herself, but still trembling, she went to the casement, drew aside the curtains, and peered out. Even in the darkness, she thought, it was possible to make out a darker shadow below. She pushed open the window and called softly, but in a voice sharp with nervous tension.
    â€˜Who’s there?’
    There was no reply. Straining her eyes, she realized that the dark shadow was the new cypress tree which Great-aunt Puddequet had caused to be planted in the sunk garden that morning.
    The candle behind her flickered and sputtered in the draught from the open window. Priscilla was about to withdraw her head when the moon struggled out and showed with astonishing clearness a strange sight. Someone was pushing Great-aunt Puddequet’s bathchair round the cinder track at a fair running pace, and, so far as Priscilla could make out, Great-aunt Puddequet was in it! At one o’clock in the morning! . . .
    Suddenly the candle gave up the unequal contest and went out. At the same moment, in the enveloping darkness immediately behind Priscilla, someone coughed.
    Priscilla shut the window with trembling hands and swung round.
    â€˜Who—who’s there?’ she called. Her own high-pitched voice surprised her.
    There was no answer or sound of any kind.
    Priscilla suddenly realized that she was looking straight at the luminous dial of an