Free The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop by Gladys Mitchell Page B

amuse my guests instead of hanging about and being rude about people?’
    â€˜Your guests are all right,’ said Aubrey, with youthful optimism. ‘The major is still clinging tight to lovely Lulu – no, honestly, though, talk about “the face that launched a thousand ships” – she is a glorious kid, isn’t she? Young, too, you know. Not more than eighteen. Can’t be. She is bucked at having the old lad on her hands all the afternoon! And the mater is busy having a row with old Jim, and Mrs Bradley is hobnobbing with the doctor, and Margery has gone home to feed her rabbits, but she’s coming back immediately, and I – here am I!’ He put his black head on one side and smiled at her.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Felicity absently. ‘Aubrey, I wish you had buried that suitcase after all. It seems to me that even if the police had found it, they couldn’t have done much with it. But the thought that somebody was watching us all the time in those woods makes me crawl all over. I say, here comes Mrs Bradley. Do talk to her.’
    â€˜Not I,’ said Aubrey, making a bee-line for the gooseberry bushes which bordered the kitchen garden and divided it from the lawn. ‘You do your own dirty work, young child! I’m going to have a squint at your historic dust-heap.’
    â€˜I’ve been talking for hours,’ announced Mrs Bradley to Felicity. ‘How ill-natured one is always tempted to be when one gossips! The dear doctor was thus tempted. He fell.’
    â€˜Did he?’ said Felicity. She laughed. ‘Poor old thing! He loves to be malicious. Who was the victim this time?’
    â€˜Mrs Savile.’ She lowered her small, thin body carefully into a deck-chair and arranged her sulphur and green voile frock.
    â€˜You mean Lulu Hirst,’ said Felicity, sitting on the grass and gazing up into Mrs Bradley’s shrewd yellow face.
    â€˜Do I? That’s what the doctor seemed anxious to impress upon me.’
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜That I meant Lulu Hirst. But I’ve worked it out logically. Would you care to hear the conclusions?’
    â€˜Yes, please,’ said Felicity politely.
    â€˜What is your own opinion of the young person?’ Mrs Bradley enquired.
    â€˜I can’t stand any of them up at the Cottage,’ said Felicity. ‘They are such a queer crowd. Of course, one can understand Cleaver Wright. He is an artist.’
    â€˜But I thought personal peculiarities as part of an artist’s stock-in-trade had gone sadly out of fashion,’ demurred Mrs Bradley. ‘Where does he come from?’
    â€˜Somewhere in London.’
    â€˜And now he lives in the Cottage on the Hill. Did he give it that name? No? I thought not. That was the always-correct Mr Savile’s choice, wasn’t it? Yes? I thought so. And Lulu –’
    â€˜Surnamed the Unspeakable,’ muttered Felicity darkly.
    Mrs Bradley gave a sinister chuckle.
    â€˜How extraordinarily interesting!’ she observed.
    â€˜I don’t think it is interesting,’ said Felicity through her teeth. ‘I think she’s a little cat!’
    â€˜That’s where you are entirely wrong, child,’ said Mrs Bradley very seriously. ‘However, we will go into that later. I was about to remark that Lulu, in actual fact, is Mr Savile’s wife.’
    â€˜Then why doesn’t she say so, and have done with it?’ was Felicity’s spirited demand.
    â€˜For the simple reason, child, that Savile, a man of average prosperity and under no obligation financially to labour for his bread, likes to consider himself a painter. The craze for defying convention, I seem to remember, was still rife in the quarter of London from which he came, and therefore I imagine he considered it highly improper to be shackled by the matrimonial tie. To such an apostle of free thought, free love, and, I darkly suspect, free food and drink at the