[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening

Late, Late In The Evening
Gladys Mitchell


Contents
Part One: Evidence
1. Margaret And Kenneth
2. Mr Ward
3. The Sheepwash
4. Tea-Party And After
5. Mrs Kempson Puts Pen To Paper
6. All The Fun Of The Fair
7. Margaret, Kenneth And Lionel
8. Mrs Kempson Again
9. Letters
10. The Hermit's Cottage
11. Our Special Correspondent
Part Two: Verdict
12. Mrs Lestrange Bradley Takes A Hand
13. The Children's Crusade
14. The Hill Village Irregulars
15. Mrs Lestrange Bradley Again
16. The Wrongful Heir
17. No Alibis
18. The Penny Drops
19. Margaret And Kenneth


This Large Print edition is published by BBC Audiobooks Ltd, Bath, England and by Thorndike Press, Waterville, Maine, USA.
Published in 2004 in the U.K. by arrangement with the author's estate.
Published in 2004 in the U.S. by arrangement with Gregory & Company Author's Agents.
U.K. Hardcover ISBN 0-7540-7688-1 (Chivers Large Print)
U.K. Softcover ISBN 0-7540-7689-X (Camden Large Print)
U.S. SoftcoverISBN 0-7862-5948-5 (General)
Copyright © 1976 by Gladys Mitchell
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
All situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
The text of this Large Print edition is unabridged.
Other aspects of the book may vary from the original edition.
Set in 16 pt. New Times Roman.
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mitchell, Gladys, 1901-
Late, late in the evening / Gladys Mitchell.
p.cm.
ISBN 0-7862-5948-5 (lg. print: sc : alk. paper)
1. Bradley, Beatrice Lestrange (Fictitious character)-Fiction.
2. Women detectives-England-Oxfordshire-Fiction.
3. Oxfordshire (England)-Fiction. 4. Large type books. I. Title.
PR6025.I832L38 2004
823'.912-dc22 2003060182


To REG,
with happy memories of Auld Lang Syne


Part One
Evidence


Chapter 1
Margaret And Kenneth
The village looks different now. It has become an urban overspill area. Factories have grown up, a motorway runs nearby and what used to be open country, including Lye Hill and the vast common we called The Marsh, has been given over to council houses and tall blocks of flats. Even my grandfather's four or five arable acres have gone and in their place there is a housing estate of small, neat bungalows, each with its patch of front lawn and small back garden.
In my early childhood the village occupied only two streets and these were at right-angles to one another. On the road which ran steeply uphill to the manor house my grandfather had built two imposing semi-detached villas. They had flights of broad stone steps up to the front door, basement kitchens which opened into very large, non-basement sculleries at the back and they were furnished with back and front staircases. Grandfather and his widowed daughter, our Aunt Lally, occupied the villa with the passion-flower plant at the side of the front door and the other house, which had trails of periwinkles down the side entrance, belonged to Uncle Arthur and Aunt Kirstie. Both houses had long back gardens with end-gates which opened on to grandfather's small-holding.
My mother and father, who had shared grandfather's house when they were first married, moved to a London suburb after Kenneth was born, so neither he nor I regarded ourselves as natives of the village, although we spent our summers there. When it was term-time we attended the village school. I remember very little about it except that children of all ages were taught in a large room which had been built as a chapel and that (I suppose because of the age-range of the twenty or so pupils) we older ones spent a great deal of our time in an exercise called Transcription. This meant that, in our best handwriting, we copied chunks of history, geography and poetry out of dog-eared, grimy, tattered text-books. I cannot remember that our work was ever tested or corrected, but at any rate it put no strain on the intellect.
When Saturday came there was our pocket-money to spend. Where the bingo hall now stands there used to be old Mother Honour's little post-office and general store and where Miss Summers had her shop, that and a few cottages have been pulled down and a supermarket built.
In our day we usually patronised Mother Honour. She was a shrewish old lady who detested children, but if the brass bowl on her pair of scales hovered uncertainly, she would (grudgingly) drop in another sweet, whereas Miss Summers, who sold bread and buns as well as confectionery, faced with the same problem, would be content to leave the scales wavering always slightly to her advantage, never to ours. She was gushing, blonde and plump, and was said to have designs on the baker who came from the town to deliver the loaves which she sold to the villagers.
The only reason we ever gave her our custom was that she sold so-called brandy balls, hard, dark-brown, glistening, strongly-flavoured sweets which Mother Honour did not stock. They could be pouched in the cheek and made to last a good long time. I think the two shopkeepers must have had some kind of gentleman's agreement not to duplicate their stock, so that there should be no poaching on one another's preserves. 'Live and let live' seemed to be their motto, and although neither woman was conspicuously prosperous, nor did either of them fail to make ends meet.
We had several sets of relations in and around the village, but when we played with other children it was not with our cousins, who were mostly older than we were, but under the leadership and guidance, not to say protection and patronage, of a biggish girl known as Our Sarah. We were pleased to belong to her band, although she bossed us about, as she did all the other children. I always felt, though, that Kenneth and I were mere hangers-on, for she never addressed us by