Crossword Mystery (3 page)

“I understand, sir,” Bobby went on to Major Markham, “that Mr. Winterton doesn't give any grounds for his suspicions of foul play? Or for thinking he's threatened himself?”

“No; what actually happened was that he got a bit excited, and burst out that very likely what had happened to his brother would happen to him, too, if he wasn't careful. After that he calmed down and wouldn't say any more, and then he rolled up with this extraordinary request for police protection. I should have wanted to turn it down, even though he's willing to pay all expenses, except for one thing – a rather curious thing: an assault on one of my men that happened some little time before the accident to Archibald. Early in the spring we got word that a strange motorboat had been seen lying off the entrance to Suffby Cove. Well, there's a certain amount of smuggling goes on now that, thank God, we've stopped being the world's dumping-ground. If you can run a consignment of cameras or Paris frocks through to London, it pays very well. Now and again, too, an alien tries to slip in without a passport, or an undesirable who's been expelled tries to get back. And there's always the drug traffic. So we have to keep our eyes open, and when, very early one morning last April, my man there – Jennings – saw a motor-boat lying in the creek that runs into Suffby Cove, he thought he had better have a look at it. But, as he was passing some pine-trees, someone from behind dropped a sack over his head. You haven't much chance when you've got a sack over your head, and, though I expect Jennings put up a good fight – and he's quite a hefty young fellow – they roped him up to a tree, and there he was found by his sergeant a little later. The motor-boat had disappeared, of course, though it had been seen leaving the Cove under sail. It was fitted up with mast and sail as well as its motor. And nothing's been seen of it since. We found out that the sack was of Dutch manufacture, but we couldn't trace it further. There were a few vague footprints, but none plain enough to be of any value, and no other clues that we could find; and no more's been heard of the motor-boat.”

“Sounds like a spot of smuggling,” observed Mitchell.

“It does,” agreed the Major, “only – there's this. By a lucky coincidence a special watch was being kept on the roads that night. We had had word – as you may remember, Mr. Mitchell; it was the O'Reilly gang – that London burglars were in the district. A sharp look-out on all roads was being kept, therefore, and we are fairly confident that no contraband was landed; anyhow, it was not taken inland that night, and next day the whole of the neighbourhood was thoroughly searched.”

“Easier to hide than to find,” murmured Mitchell.

“Agreed, agreed. But you don't land silk frocks or spirits or watches or cameras to stuff them up the chimney, or keep them buried in some hole or a hollow tree; and a very careful watch has been kept ever since. I don't think anything could be moved without our knowing it. I expect the whole lot of them down in the village would smuggle anything they got a chance at, but there's no sign of anything unusual there; no one suddenly more prosperous or spending money they can't account for; no gossip going on or anything like that. A reward's been offered and no one has tried to claim it. If there's been smuggling, I am pretty sure no one in the village knows anything about it. You must remember it's a very small community indeed – not more than a score of families; all of them know each other's business, and if one were in a smuggling game, all would be. But I think it's certain that's not the case, or somehow, somewhere, something suspicious would appear.”

“Could Mr. Winterton, either the living brother or the dead one...?” Bobby asked.

“It's possible; it's been considered,” the Major answered. “But is it conceivable that two well-to-do retired business men of the highest reputation would go in for smuggling on a big scale at their time of life? Well-to-do people smuggle like blazes, of course, when it's a new silk frock for a woman, or when a man buys a new watch abroad and pretends he got it in London, or tries to slip a new camera past the customs house officer. But doing the thing on a big scale is rather different. No, I can't think the explanation's there. I'm inclined, for my part, to say that the motorboat and the attack on Jennings meant some undesirable slipping into the country – perhaps some refugee from Germany without money, but with friends here ready to shelter him. And Archibald's death was probably purely accidental and George's dream just crab salad, as Mrs. Cooper hinted.”

“Who gets Archibald's money? Was it much?” Mitchell asked.

“Between forty and fifty thousand,” Markham answered. “It all goes to the widow and children except for a few small legacies. George Winterton and the Town and Country Bank are executors. There is one thing. I managed to get out of the bank people that Archibald, some time before his death, realised securities for a large sum – between ten and twelve thousand pounds.”

“Nearly a quarter of his whole fortune,” Mitchell observed.

“It was transferred to Holland.”

“Where the sacks come from,” murmured Mitchell.

“After Archibald's death, the whole sum was repaid by George Winterton, by cheque. The explanation is that they had been speculating together in exchange – quite common nowadays – and Archibald's death resulted in the transactions coming to an end, without, for that matter, either great loss or gain.”

“I suppose, sir,” Bobby suggested, “it isn't likely there had been quarrelling between the brothers over that? Or any possibility that George Winterton–?”

“You mean there may have been big profits, and George murdered his brother to keep the profits for himself? I think, out of the question, on score of character and opportunity alike. The brothers were good friends; retired, respectable, well-to-do stockbrokers don't turn into murderers. The evidence both of Mrs. Cooper and of her husband is conclusive that George was in bed and asleep at the time his brother was drowned. It happens that Cooper remembers that at six o'clock, when he got up, there was a strange cat – one from the village probably – on the sill of Mr. George Winterton's window. It happened to be a black cat, and Mr. Winterton has the common superstition that black cats bring luck. This time it brought bad luck, which is partly why the incident made an impression on Cooper. At the time he hesitated whether to drive the cat away for fear of its wakening his master or leave it there as a bringer of good luck. Finally he tried to shoo it away, but it wouldn't go, so he got a ladder and fetched it down, and in doing so saw his master in bed and asleep – the window open, as it always was. That was about six o'clock. At seven, as usual, he took in a cup of tea, and Mr. Winterton was still asleep. That's a fairly complete alibi, if one were needed.”

“Yes,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully. “Yes – ye-es.”

“Thinks he sees something,” observed Mitchell. “Thinking it depends on Cooper's testimony, and can he be trusted, eh?”

“Oh, as for that, it's confirmed by Mrs. Cooper,” Major Markham said. “She remembers the incident of the black cat perfectly, because of the bad luck it brought, instead of the supposed good luck. She says, too, that Mr. Winterton slept a little later than usual, most likely because he had been sitting up late with one of his crossword puzzles. He is a crossword ‘fan,' as they call them now, you know. And,” added the Major, a little slowly, “I don't think either Cooper or Mrs. Cooper would go out of their way to commit perjury for their employer's sake. He – well, he has the name of being a little mean about money, and of always suspecting other people of trying to cheat him. He makes sure he gets value for every penny, watches the books carefully, and so on. It's the same with them all. The gardener, for instance, has to account for all the fruit, and there's no doubt Mr. and Mrs. Cooper rather resent it; in fact, all the staff do. Archibald was quite the opposite; rather free-handed.”

“Not enough to make them want to murder him, I suppose,” Mitchell remarked. “I suppose that isn't what's making our gentleman nervous.” He turned to Bobby. “You've heard it all,” he said. “Your job now is to look like a summer visitor having a good time at a friend's house by the sea, and meanwhile try to find out if Archibald Winterton's death was accident or murder, to see that neither accident nor murder happens to George Winterton, to find out who tied up Constable Jennings, and why motor-boats sail into Suffby Cove and out again without saying by-your-leave to anyone, what it was they landed if they landed anything, and where it is now. And when you've been as long in the force as I have, you'll learn that police work is generally like that – making bricks without straw. You haven't asked yet what sort of man Mr. George Winterton is, apart from being a retired stockbroker of the highest character, as all stockbrokers have to be, because if they get found out, then they aren't stockbrokers any more.”

“No, sir,” said Bobby. “I didn't ask, because I understand I shall be seeing him soon.”

“Wants to form his own judgments,” grunted Mitchell, “instead of taking them from his official superiors, as all good juniors do. Well, time we were all moving. Report every day, Owen, whether you've anything to say or not, and be careful to send your reports to the private address given you. Don't want the local postman to spot there's a letter going every day to the chief of the county police.”

“No, sir; very good, sir,” said Bobby.

After leaving Ye Olde Sunke Garden, Bobby rode quietly on his way, revolving in his mind the task that lay before him. On the whole he was inclined to think that Archibald Winterton's death was really one of those bathing tragedies every holiday season records in such tragic numbers, and that little importance need be attached to his brother's expressed suspicions. A formerly busy and active man, retiring suddenly from affairs, will sometimes let his mind play him strange tricks, as, missing its accustomed food, it seizes on any trifle in order to ascribe to it the significance in which life seems now so sadly wanting.

So George Winterton, having nothing now to occupy his thoughts formerly occupied with daily business routine, and having tried to find sustenance for them in crossword puzzles and so on, had allowed them to dwell on his brother's death till the tragedy appeared in heightened, exaggerated colours.

In the same way, Bobby thought, missing the importance his former position as partner in a prosperous and successful business had given him, he, or rather his subconscious for him (Bobby knew all about Freud and all the latest psycho-analytic theories), had tried to win back that importance by representing him to himself as the central object of some vast and dark conspiracy.

For, after all, who, Bobby asked himself without getting any answer – who, in the light of clear, calm common sense, would want to murder two quiet, inoffensive, retired business men, ending their days peacefully by the seaside?

“Who gains?” is a good working maxim, and Bobby, crawling along at a beggarly thirty m.p.h., hardly noticing that practically everything on the road passed him standing, couldn't see that there was anything to be gained by anyone, either by Archibald's death or George's.

No doubt he would be able to feel more certain about that after he had had a chance of studying the last-named at close quarters, and perhaps a chance of a chat or two with Mrs. Cooper, who, from what Major Markham said, seemed to be an intelligent woman. And, where the housekeeper has any intelligence at all, she probably knows more of her employer than any one human being ought to know about another – far more than mother, wife, or daughter can ever know, since emotion clouds insight.

There was certainly the odd story of the assault on the local constable, Jennings. But that was probably quite an unconnected affair; difficult to see any link between an assault on a policeman and an accidental drowning some weeks later. As for the hints about smuggling, it was hardly possible to conceive two respectable retired stockbrokers engaging in that sort of thing. There was certainly the story of the ten or twelve thousand pounds – a quarter of his total capital, apparently – that it seemed Archibald had been using in some transaction or another. But the explanation given – speculation in the exchanges – was reasonable in itself, and consonant with the previous habits and knowledge of the Winterton brothers; while so large a capital – especially if, as was likely, George had added an equal amount to his brother's contribution – would imply, if used in smuggling, operations on an extraordinarily large scale, far too large to be centred on little out-of-the-way Suffby Cove by the aid of one motor-launch. The smuggling story did not seem at all plausible to Bobby; drowning accidents are common enough, retired business men with nothing to do all day often get their mental life a little wrong, and as for the attack on the local man, Jennings, that might easily have been the work of someone who thought he owed the constable a grudge.

Thinking thus, almost persuaded already he had been detailed to find a mare's nest and would have little to do but enjoy a quiet holiday by the sea, Bobby turned from the road he had been following into one that ran between Yarmouth and Cromer, through Deneham, which lay eight miles north of the spot Bobby had now reached. Turning in the other direction – south – Bobby came soon to a belt of pine-trees beyond which lay Suffby Cove.

Here Bobby alighted from his cycle and stood for some minutes looking thoughtfully and admiringly at as peaceful, quiet, and lovely a scene as all the east coast could show; one, indeed, with which it seemed impossible to associate dark thoughts of crime and violence, even of murder perhaps. Bobby's half-formed conviction that Archibald Winterton's death must have been purely accidental received in his mind a confirmation of which he was quite unconscious.