Crossword Mystery (22 page)

Mrs. Cooper had come into the room on some trifling household errand or another, just in time to hear this remark. She looked at the two young men somewhat queerly and then went out again.

“Oh, Miles,” Mary Raby protested, “don't talk like that. Mrs. Cooper heard you, and didn't you see how she looked?”

“Well, it's what everyone's thinking,” Miles grumbled, “police especially.”

“They think just the same of me,” Colin pointed out; “perhaps they think now we did it together.”

“Oh, lor',” exclaimed Miles, and then no more was said, and Bobby, sitting near, was silent, too, thinking more and more of that lost crossword puzzle he could not help believing, if only he could find it, would throw some light upon the mystery.

Then he got up suddenly to leave the room, and, as he did so, passing behind Colin, was just in time to see him push his open
Ruff's Guide
over scraps of papers that seemed covered not so much with figures as with scribbled letters, incomplete words, and other jotted notes that looked very much as if what Colin were working at was no turf calculation of weights and ages and so on, but rather some crossword puzzle. Bobby stopped and said: “Hullo, you've got the crossword fever, too?”

“It's the one in the
Announcer
this morning I was trying,” Colin muttered, crumpling all his notes together in his hand. “That's all.”

Two or three days passed with no apparent change in the situation so far as Bobby was aware, though journalists still haunted the neighbourhood in the hope of picking up stray crumbs of “exclusive” information, and though officers of the county police still bustled to and fro on mysterious errands.

At Fairview, life had fallen back into an accustomed household routine under the firm and competent direction of Mrs. Cooper. Cooper himself, apparently quite recovered from the danger of the breakdown with which the shock of recent events had seemed at one time to threaten him, was now going again, as usual, about his ordinary duties, and was displaying, too, a somewhat unexpected dexterity in dealing with the eager newspaper men. He provided them with a stream of quite unimportant information, made opportunities for them to take innocuous photographs, and generally went out of his way to give them all the help he could, yet without ever saying or doing anything indiscreet. It was from him, however, that the
Announcer
special correspondent got the first hint of the theory he elaborated at some length in his paper that the murder was the work of unknown burglars, and that Mr. Winterton, hearing someone moving about outside the house, had ventured forth to see what was happening, and had then been attacked and murdered by those he had interrupted.

“The use of the weapon employed – a brick apparently picked up at random from a heap behind the house – suggests very strongly that the crime was entirely unpremeditated,” declared the
Announcer
, quoting Cooper almost textually, and quoting also his testimony to the popularity Mr. Winterton enjoyed with all who knew him; for, indeed, both the Coopers were stout upholders of the complete innocence of Colin Ross, as of that of the entire household.

“Asking questions the way they do, you would think the police suspected us all,” Cooper grumbled to almost everyone who came near him. “Me and my missus and all, and young Mr. Bobby Owen, too, though he has only been here a day or two and never met the master before, and, Lord knows, the missus and me, we've nothing to gain by losing a good place. Why, Mrs. C. used to say it was almost like having your own house, with no one to interfere with you or the work or nothing – and there's not so many places you can say that of. And if it was anyone in the house, how did they manage to get the poor gentleman out there on the lawn?”

All this duly appeared in the
Announcer
, where Bobby read it and mused upon it in the long hours he spent going over and over again in his mind every detail of the deaths of the two unfortunate brothers, and trying, but in vain, to fit into one coherent whole the story of these two crimes that he was now well persuaded were so closely connected. Then at last a message came that he was to report at once to Mitchell in London, and, glad of the prospect of action to relieve the intolerable strain of his ceaseless consideration and re-consideration of a problem that seemed insoluble, Bobby got out his motor-cycle and covered the distance to town at a rate that would have fully justified the immediate reimposition of the speed limit.

Arrived at headquarters, he was sent up at once to Mitchell's room, where he found the Superintendent expecting him.

“Anything new to report?” Mitchell greeted him.

“No, sir,” Bobby answered.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” demanded Mitchell next.

“Just thinking,” Bobby explained.

“Ah, then, you've been busy,” Mitchell said, and the influence of Bobby's public school training was so strong on him still that at first he thought this comment was sarcastic and implied a rebuke, for, indeed, England is the only country in the world in which the stammering excuse of a junior, beginning “I thought,” is at once cut short by a severe and crushing: “You aren't paid to think.”

However, a second glance told Bobby that Mitchell was quite serious, and really considered time spent in thinking to be time well spent.

“The hardest part of my job,” Mitchell added with a faint sigh, “is to get men to think; tell a man he's to start for the Hebrides by the next train and he's all bright and alert; tell him to go and think it over, and he crawls off looking like a Channel passenger after a rough December crossing. Thinking get you anywhere?”

“No, sir. But I noticed Colin Ross working at a crossword puzzle, and it seems now he cuts the one out of the
Announcer
every morning.”

“Interesting,” muttered Mitchell. “I suppose the one you say Mr. Winterton was trying to compose hasn't made its appearance anywhere?”

“No, sir. Miss Raby told me she made a copy of it once with the idea of helping, but when she found Mr. Winterton wanted to work it out alone she put it aside and now she can't find it. She thinks it was most likely destroyed with her ‘try-outs'; she always has a lot to burn after completing a puzzle. She says she is quite certain she hasn't got it now, and she can't remember much about it, except that ‘gold' was one of the words used.”

“Pretty sure to be,” commented Mitchell; “the poor chap had gold on the brain all right. It's a pity we can't get hold of it, but if it's been lost or destroyed, there's no chance. Anyhow, I can't quite see why Colin Ross should be taking a sudden interest in the
Announcer
puzzles, unless it's just to pass the time. I take it he knows he is very likely to have to stand his trial?”

“He says he is ready to face arrest,” Bobby answered gravely. “He says no one can prove anything against an innocent man.”

“He would have had to face it already but for one thing,” Mitchell remarked grimly. “Major Markham would have proceeded to arrest before this only for that wire – the ‘released prisoner' wire. We've tracked, questioned, traced, examined, every single soul, man, woman, or child, released from gaol about that date, and we've proved pretty conclusively that it is simply not possible for there to be any connection between any of them and this affair. It seemed the most certain, promising clue a poor worried detective could be supplied with, and it's simply gone out – like that.” Mitchell, as he spoke, blew out a match he had used to light a cigarette. “Markham was very let down – so was I, for that matter. I believe he's been trying the asylums, but the wire said quite plainly ‘gaol.' The only thing I can think of is that it must have been a code telegram, meaning something quite different from what it said.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby, very doubtfully; “but it seems an odd phrase to use in code.”

“I know,” agreed Mitchell, “but there it is – we've checked up on every living creature released about that date and it seems clear the telegram simply can't refer to any one of them. Unluckily, it's had a bad effect on the investigation. Markham was so sure he held the clue to the whole thing in his hands that other lines of inquiry have been rather neglected, I'm afraid. I daresay I should have done much the same. If you see a broad, straight road leading direct where you want to go, it's natural to follow it. Unluckily, this time it's led straight to a blank wall, and now Markham has got to go back and start fresh from the very beginning, after losing valuable time – and losing time in an investigation of this sort is often fatal.”

“The telegram must have meant something,” Bobby persisted; “someone must have sent it for some reason.”

“That's what counsel for the defence will say if Markham decides to arrest Colin Ross,” Mitchell observed; “someone sent it; it wasn't Ross; it was the murderer; therefore Ross is innocent, and where's your chance of getting a verdict? That's what Markham sees, and, if you ask me, it's making him shirk the responsibility of arresting Ross. My own idea is that he means to use the inquest as a kind of ‘try-out,' and then, if the jury returns a verdict of ‘wilful murder,' he can act on it, and the responsibility will be theirs, not his. You see, he's an Army man, and the one thing you learn in the Army is to obey orders, which means leaving the responsibility to someone else.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “I suppose the sender of the telegram can't be traced?”

Mitchell consulted a paper on his desk.

“It was sent by someone who gave an address at the Brilliant, a small hotel off the Strand. The name given is illegible, but looks like Miller or something of that kind. The name in the hotel register is the same kind of illegible scribble, but looks like Miller, too – the hotel people had turned it into Mutton, which seems unlikely. He didn't say where he was going when he left, and he registered as coming from Dover. We've asked the Dover people to inquire as far as possible, but they've had no luck; couldn't expect it, with nothing more to go on.”

“No, sir,” agreed Bobby, and added somewhat dispiritedly: “This case seems all blank walls – lost crossword puzzles; footsteps in the dew that vanish while you're watching them; telegrams that don't mean what they say; deserted summer-houses with freshly swilled floors; strong swimmers that get themselves drowned in perfectly calm weather; dogs that don't bark and yet have their heads knocked in to prevent their barking.”

“Cases generally are like that,” Mitchell reminded him, “till you get the one right line to follow. By the way, how's your toothache? Face looks better.”

“Oh, quite gone now, sir, thank you,” Bobby answered. “I'm afraid one night it was so bad I disturbed the whole house walking up and down, but Mrs. Cooper had some laudanum by her and gave me some, and after that I had no more trouble.”

Mitchell drummed with his fingers up and down the table, and it was a long time before he spoke. At last he said:

“Yes, I see what you mean, but I don't see that it helps us much so far.”

“No, sir, not so far,” agreed Bobby.

“Well, carry on, carry on – till you come to another dead end like Markham with the telegram. Now he's trying to make up for lost time – a thing you never do – by following up other lines very energetically. He has tackled Laura Shipman. She sticks to it that she found the watch where and when she says; says that if it was lost at another place and time, then someone else must have picked it up and put it where she found it. A lie, of course, but the dickens to prove. She may decide to tell the truth after a time; they do occasionally. But it's quite clear that whatever she knows, if she knows anything, she had nothing to do directly with George Winterton's murder. There's no doubt when that happened she really was where she says. Jennings has been questioned, too, and owns up he bought the classy wireless receiving set he's got with two five-pound notes he received through the post anonymously. His story is that a lady driving a motor-car as nearly as possible killed him a little before – car skidded and missed him by inches. He says he was badly scared, and threatened to summons her, but afterwards thought perhaps it hadn't been her fault, and, as no harm had been done, didn't even report it. When the two five-pound notes came, he thought they came from her as compensation for the fright she had given him.”

“I wonder if that story's true,” Bobby remarked, half to himself. “I had an idea myself he had had some sort of windfall and that it might have been by way of a kind of compensation.”

“Only your idea was it might be to make up for the attack on him when he was tied up to a tree the morning the motor-launch visited Suffby Cove?” observed Mitchell. “Well, I can tell you this. Markham has had the two notes traced – luckily the wireless people Jennings bought the set from kept the numbers. Both notes were issued to Mr. George Winterton; and what do you make of that?”

“That the coming of the launch had something to do with him,” Bobby answered promptly, “and that he had something to do with the assault on Jennings, or knew about it, and tried to make up for it by sending him money.”

“Exactly,” agreed Mitchell. “And how much further does that take us? Another blank wall, it seems to me. You remember a City man named Shorton you saw at Fairview, and heard uttering threats against Winterton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, Markham, who has his own hands pretty well full following up lines he didn't want to bother with while he was relying on that unlucky telegram, wants me to interview Shorton, and I want you to come along, so you can make a full report to Markham when you get back. Seems Shorton is rather a dab at swimming.”

“I understand he had a good try at swimming the Channel one year,” Bobby remarked; “didn't quite manage it, but did well enough to win one or two bets.”