Furious Old Women by Leo Bruce Page A

only pulled at my old ship’s bell instead of just pressing the electric one he would have awakened me.”
    â€œDid you go out at all that day?”
    â€œTo early Mass, yes. Father Slipper said it that morning. We’ve managed to persuade Father Waddell to have a daily Mass though he has to call it Communion. The Griggs contingent would have a fit if he didn’t….”
    â€œBut later in the day?”
    â€œLet’s see. I don’t think I did. It was cold, I remember.”
    â€œNot in the afternoon or evening, anyhow?”
    â€œI’m sure I didn’t. I always do the flowers on Tuesdays and Saturdays at the church. No. I stayed in that day. Like a dormouse.”
    â€œYou heard or saw nothing which might be helpful?”
    â€œNothing, I’m afraid. My good Mrs Rumble told me her husband was digging a grave for Chilling, I remember.”
    â€œYou didn’t enter the church?”
    â€œNo, Mr Deene.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s anything else I need ask you, Miss Vaillant. Unless you care to throw any light on one of the small mysteries—that of your reconciliation with Millicent Griggs. It does puzzle me that after years of antagonism she should have come here twice in a week.”
    â€œIt puzzled me,” said Grazia Vaillant immediately. “But I’ve told you all about it.”
    â€œI haven’t yet met Miss Flora Griggs. Do you think she shared in her sister’s kindlier feelings?”
    I’m not sure that Millicent’s feelings were kindlier. If they were, Flora certainly did not share in them. She has a sort of Old Testament hatred for poor me.”
    Carolus’s eyes went back to that landscape—the only beautiful thing in the room.
    â€œAh—you’re looking at my Constable,” said Grazia. “Fine, isn’t it? “She threw out her hand. “Good-bye!” she said.
    Carolus said good-bye with some relief and left Grazia Vaillant among her antiques.
    It was still raining and a dark night but the ship’s light over the door had been switched on and he could go quickly down the crazy pavement path to his car.
    He started the engine, but when he switched on the lights he saw someone hurrying towards him, gesticulating to indicate that he should wait.
    There came into his head absurd things like Mrs Stick’s warning—’ you oughtn’t to be hanging about after dark, either. If they can do for an old lady they can do for you’. And Commander Fyfe’s questions about people ‘hanging about’.
    When he recognized the approaching figure he remembered also Fyfe’s description of him as ‘a dangerous character, lawless, violent’. For the man who had stopped him was Mugger.

9
    M UGGER had a thin insinuating voice. It might have been that in which Brer Fox addressed Brer Rabbit. He brought his long solemn face, with its ginger hair visible under his cap, to the window of Carolus’s car, and Carolus opened this by a few inches. The rain was pelting down on him but seemed to have no effect as though his very skin were rainproof.
    â€œI want to speak to you,” he said.
    â€œYou’d better get into the car,” Carolus told him and the long thin man twined in, scarcely opening the door. There was a silence.
    â€œIt was Rumble told me about you,” said Mugger at last, the tone of his voice not changing. “He said it would be all right if I told you.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œSomething,” said Mugger promptly and flatly.
    Carolus with his usual patience, waited.
    â€œYou’re not a copper, are you?” said Mugger.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t say anything?”
    Carolus was greatly tempted to give a promise. But he had to come out with the old prim line which sounded so odd, spoken here in half-darkness in the rain-washed car.
    â€œIt depends on what you tell me. I’ll only promise to