The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (23 page)

What, then, was the conclusion the Vicar arrived at by result of his experiment? Simply that Tregarthan had
not
been shot from the cliff-path.

But the Vicar was prepared to go further than this. He was prepared to accept the fact, with absolute certainty, that Tregarthan had not been shot by any man on land at all. He knew, then, that his suspicions were correct. His theory held water.

Tregarthan had been shot from the sea!

In his moment of triumph the Vicar had no doubts about this. A small boat fairly close in under the cliff—what simpler explanation for the scattered shots? A man in a rocking boat would have the greatest difficulty in taking accurate aim. There was, at all times of the day, a strong current sweeping round the head of the ness. The boat would not only rock, but drift. Wasn't that drift indicated by the fact that the three shots had been fired from three different points? It was a more than feasible theory.

The Vicar triumphed.

If the shots were fired from the sea, according to the evidence collected by the Inspector, neither Ruth nor Ronald Hardy could now be incriminated. Their alibis were perfect. Ruth was seen on the cliff-path by Mrs. Mullion. Ronald was seen by Bedruthen in his car up on the Vicarage road. The only possible landing-places along that line of coast were Towan Cove and the cove at Boscawen itself. It would have been impossible for Ronald to have left Cove Cottage at 8.40 (on evidence supplied by Mrs. Peewit), driven his car down to the cove, boarded a boat, pulled out to the ness, shot Tregarthan, pulled back to the cove and be seen on the Vicarage road at nine o'clock. No—if his theory was correct—the reason for Ronald's sudden disappearance had nothing to do with the murder.

Other facts emerged. The strange lack of footprints on the cliff-path, for example. Now it was obvious. The murderer had evolved a foresighted scheme in which footprints were non-existent.

What to do then?—the Vicar wondered. Might it not be a good scheme to walk along to Towan Cove and borrow Joe Burdon's boat. He could then row along under the cliff and put his new-found theory to the acid test. If, at a short distance from the land, the low cliff did not intervene between the boat and the french windows, it was pretty well certain that this was the method of approach adopted by the murderer.

Leaving his strings in position, since they would aid him in his immediate project, he returned with a brisk step to fetch his hat from the sitting-room. Entering the hall, however, much to his confusion and annoyance, the front door was flung open and Inspector Bigswell entered.

“Still here, Mr. Dodd?”

“Yes ... yes,” stammered the Vicar. “Still here. A little matter I had to clear up, Inspector. A ... private matter.”

The Inspector crossed into the sitting-room. His voice rang out sharply.

“In the name of heaven, Mr. Dodd, what the thunder's all this?”

Realising that the cat was hopelessly out of the bag, feeling rather like a small boy caught in some nefarious act, the Vicar offered a hasty explanation. The Inspector listened in profound silence. At first he was sceptical, but when the Vicar came to the point of elucidating the discrepancies between the supposed and actual flight of the three bullets, the Inspector sprang to his feet and whistled.

“I believe you've hit on a valuable clue, sir! Can't think why the idea didn't occur to me. Here, let's go down to the cliff-path. This is going to mean something, if I'm not mistaken! Something pretty conclusive, Mr. Dodd.”

With long, eager strides the Inspector crossed the little lawn and vaulted the wall. The Vicar, secretly enjoying the Inspector's amazement, continued with his explanation.

“You see how I mean, Inspector? Those poles are over six feet apart.”

“Oh, I get it all right!” growled the Inspector. “No doubt about the shots having come from three different points. It beats me! What's your explanation, sir?”

The Vicar pointed with a solemn look at the glittering spread of the Atlantic.

“The sea!” exclaimed the Inspector. “A boat!”

“Exactly.”

With a diffident air, as if excusing himself for propounding a theory in the face of a professional detective, the Vicar ran over the reasons for his assumption.

“Well, it seems reasonable enough, Mr. Dodd,” acknowledged the Inspector grudgingly. “If you're right then, of course, it knocks my idea of the Ruth Tregarthan-Ronald Hardy collaboration on the head. But wait a minute. Not too fast! You said just now that no man in his senses would fire a revolver, holding it at an arm's length above his head. Quite right, sir! He wouldn't. But suppose our man was not on the cliff-path but on the wall—what then, eh?”

“On the wall?”

The Inspector rapidly unfolded his idea about the hurdles, the possibility that Hardy had climbed along the wall and dropped his revolver by accident on to the cliff-path.

“What then? The eye-level is about right if a man was kneeling up on the wall, isn't it? And besides, what about the revolver? Oh, I know Mrs. Mullion's evidence was turned down by the Coroner—but I have an idea that Miss Tregarthan was not telling the truth.”

“But that would be perjury, Inspector!”

The Inspector grinned.

“It's not unknown. Young ladies wishing to shield their young men commit perjury—I was going to say—as a matter of course. There's another point which makes me believe that the girl wasn't telling the truth. The broken impression of a revolver. I found it midway along the path here.” The Inspector crouched down and examined the drying mud. “You've just about hammered your darned stick right through the centre of it! But it was there right enough. You can take my word for it. I verified the measurements after the inquest and they tallied. A Webley .45. How are you going to account for that, Mr. Dodd?”

“Simply,” replied the Vicar in a genial voice. “Dear me, Inspector, the more I look into my assumption, the more clearly I see the whole truth of the matter. Suppose after murdering poor Tregarthan, the man rowed in close to the cliff. He had only to toss his revolver up on to the path to add an extremely confusing factor to the case. Because you believed the revolver to have been on the cliff-path you naturally assumed that it had been dropped by somebody on land. As it happens, you suspect it was dropped by accident from the wall. But surely, Inspector, if Hardy was on the wall when he shot Tregarthan—as you suppose—isn't it highly improbable that he'd fire the shots from three widely different points? The hurdles, I see, are over there, to the left. That means he mounted the wall at that corner. Now what on earth possessed him to crawl, not only to the middle of the wall, but very nearly to the far end of the wall, when we can see quite clearly that Tregarthan would have been visible from any point on the wall? Peculiar, isn't it, Inspector?”

Bigswell nodded dolefully. Already he could see his carefully erected case collapsing like a house of cards.

“It certainly looks as if you're right,” he admitted.

“I've been barking up the wrong tree. What do you propose now, Mr. Dodd? I can tell you—your lines of investigation,” he pointed with a wry smile at the three strings emerging from the house, “have properly upset mine!”

The Vicar apologised.

“I fear I've been a trifle presumptuous. But as things stood—I feel sure you understand, Inspector?”

“And now?”

“Well, my idea was to borrow a boat and have a look at things from the murderer's point of view.”

“A good scheme,” agreed the Inspector. “I'll come with you, if you've no objection, sir.”

The Vicar laughed.

“It's rather fantastic, isn't it? But I want you to realise, Inspector, that as far as my very amateur attempts at deduction are concerned—well, shall we say, I hand them over to you? It's Ruth I've been thinking of all along. The rest doesn't matter a farthing to me. It's your job, Inspector—not mine. Shall we say no more about it? You can rely on my discretion.”

Later, as they were walking along the cliff-path to Towan Cove, the Vicar said:

“There's just one person I'd like to take into my confidence over this—Doctor Pendrill. It's not often I get the chance of astonishing him. It will give me a certain ascendancy, I feel, over his confirmed agnosticism. He's inclined to poke fun at us clergy as impractical visionaries. I should like to disillusion him, Inspector. Who knows? A man's first step along the road to salvation is often brought about by the absurdest and most irrelevant events!”

CHAPTER XVII

ENTER RONALD HARDY

L
EAVING
the Inspector to look round Towan Cove, the Vicar climbed up out of the gully on the far side and made his way along the cliff-top to the slate quarries. He found Joe Burdon, his eyes protected by a pair of monstrous goggles, trimming up the raw edge of a thick, green-grey slab of Cornish slate. The man touched his hat.

“Morning, Burdon,” said the Vicar affably. “I've come to ask a favour of you.”

“Aye?”

“I want the loan of your boat for about half an hour. Can it be done?”

“Aye, sir. You're welcome, such as she is. Not much of a tub to look at, I reckon—rather too broad in the beam for speed. Still, she's just had a fresh lick o’ paint and she's seaworthy enough.” He pushed up his goggles on to his forehead and peered inquiringly at the Vicar. “Going fishing, sir?”

The Vicar shook his head.

“Not exactly, Burdon. I want to have a look at something along under the cliff.”

“Maybe it's something to do with the murder, eh? I heard as there's an Inspector on the job.” He pointed down into the cove, where a little blue figure was strolling along the rocky quayside.

“That's him, maybe?”

“Quite right. It is something to do with the murder. I'm not in a position to tell you more than that, I'm afraid, but it's a matter of some importance to the police.”

“Well, you know the boat, don't you, sir? Black with a white line. You can't mistake her.”

And, touching his hat once more, Joe Burdon lowered his goggles and returned to his slate-trimming.

“There are six boats here,” said the Inspector when the Vicar had joined him on the diminutive quayside. “Six boats—six possibles. That's from Towan Cove alone, and Lord knows how many there are over at Boscawen.”

“A fair sprinkling,” said the Vicar. “I don't think it's going to be easy.”

The Inspector grunted his agreement and they climbed into the boat. She was a tubby little craft of a dinghy type, broad in the beam, yet astonishingly easy to handle. The Inspector took the oars and the Vicar sat in the stern, attending to the rudder-lines. In a short time the boat shot clear of the sheltering cove and responded to the long, slow swell of the open sea. Keeping well in under the cliff, they nosed along at a fair speed until the roof of Greylings hove in sight just above them.

“Now,” said the Inspector, “we'll manipulate the boat so that we can find the nearest point to land from which Tregarthan would have been visible. This will give us some idea of the distance from which the shots were fired.”

After one or two false starts, where, due to strong currents, they overshot the mark before being able to check up, the Vicar suddenly cried: “Now!” The Inspector brought the boat up short. A hasty look satisfied them that their assumption was not only feasible, but in view of their proximity to the cliff, a highly probable one. The distance, in all, could have been little over fifty feet. Given the fact that Tregarthan was silhouetted against the bright light of the room, it would not have been difficult shooting. Although the marksman was moving, the target was static, and with six bullets at his disposal the murderer had more than a fair chance of success.

“What about the gravel?” asked the Vicar. “You told me that you found gravel under the window. Is the distance too great, do you think, for our man to have flung a handful against the glass?”

“Oh, he'd reach the house easy enough. The wind was behind him, remember, blowing off the sea. Besides, he may have moved in a bit closer and flung it.”

“Which means,” said the Vicar, “that we're probably on the right track?”

“Almost certainly,” agreed the Inspector. “Take a look at those lines of yours. If they were projected they would just about meet the sea at this spot. That's what we should expect. You see, Mr. Dodd, how it's all fitting in?” The Inspector dug a single oar into the water and smartly pivoted the boat. “Now I want to get hold of a complete list of all boats and their owners. Then, with your help, Mr. Dodd, I'd like to eliminate the probables from the possibles and the possibles from the impossibles.” Adding dismally, “If there are any impossibles!”

Later, when they parted at Greylings, the Inspector held out his hand.

“I'll see you later, Mr. Dodd, if there are any developments. Mind you, I still hold to the theory that Tregarthan
could
have been shot from the wall. Hardy's disappearance hasn't been accounted for. Can't overlook that fact. Then there was that revolver of his found in the ditch. He
had
a revolver with him on the night of the murder. If he is innocent then why doesn't he come forward? And what about Miss Tregarthan's curious behaviour on Monday night and her behaviour at the inquest? Can't overlook that either. She, for one, thinks Hardy did it. That's why she perjured herself. And if she
thinks
he did, then we have every reason to suppose that he did do it. I'm sorry, Mr. Dodd. I know all this goes against your—what did you call it?—intuition theory, eh? But facts are facts and until I can find an explanation for every single one of ’em, then I'm bound to keep Hardy and Miss Tregarthan on my list of suspects,” adding with a smile, “unless, of course, you can decorate this new road of inquiry with a few more signposts. It's a possibility anyway, and I'm going to follow up your supposition even if it does end in a blank wall. I promise you that, Mr. Dodd.”

The men parted. The Vicar returned at once to the Vicarage, whilst Bigswell returned by car to the Constable's office. From there he and Grouch proceeded to the cove, where a number of boats were lying, like a catch of fish, on a concrete slipway. These the Inspector examined carefully, one by one, but no clue was forthcoming. He felt, therefore, that the only thing left for him to do was to draw up a list, with Grouch's help, of all those men who owned boats either in Boscawen itself or at Towan Cove. There was a chance, of course, that the boat had set out from a harbourage further up or down the coast, but, for the time being, Inspector Bigswell dismissed this idea as improbable. The storm had come up quickly and, accepting the fact that the murderer had reckoned on a thunder-clap to cover the sound of the shots, it seemed fairly conclusive that he had set out along the coast from a nearby point.