The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (28 page)

“What makes you think that?”

“For one thing, I always leave the boat keel upward in the winter. She was right side up. What's more, she was full of water—salt water, mind you. There was a rime of salt on her bows. I didn't have time to set matters right then as it was getting dark and I had no lamp with me. But she's been tampered with, right enough. Somebody's been out in her. No mistake about it!”

“Any idea as to who it is?’

“None. All the chaps in Towan Cove own their own boats.’

“I see. Well, I'll look into the matter and let you know if I find out anything. In the meantime, I'll slip along to this address.” The Inspector rose. “By the way, have you a telephone here?”

“Yes—in the shop.”

“And this lady—is she on the phone?”

“No.”

The Inspector, satisfied that Jeremy Crook would be unable to put the woman wise before his cross-examination, shook hands with the tailor at the bottom of the dingy stairs and went off up the street.

He had no difficulty in finding No. 8 Laburnam Grove. The lady was in and quite ready to do all she could to help the Inspector. Yes, Mr. Crook had arrived there about seven-fifteen on Monday night and left shortly after eleven. He had not been out between those hours. Yes, it was true that they were now engaged, though the engagement had not yet been publicly announced. It was kind of the Inspector to offer his congratulations—the first she had received. At this, the brief interview terminated.

“So,” thought Bigswell, as he trudged back to headquarters, dispirited, “it's a blind-alley line of investigation after all! Somebody else used the boat. That's obvious. But who?”

He realised that when he had found the answer to that question he would have answered the even more vital question—who murdered Julius Tregarthan? The search, at any rate, was narrowing down. The sign-posts were all converging on one point. Good!

But the vital question remained—who?

CHAPTER XXI

THE MYSTERY SOLVED

O
N
Saturday morning Inspector Bigswell proceeded, at once, to the Boscawen Vicarage. He had two reasons for this visit. He had good news for Ruth Tregarthan and bad news for the Vicar. Overnight he had put in his report at Greystoke headquarters, with the result that he was called in to interview the Chief Constable. The Chief, in view of the circumstances which had prompted Ruth to conceal information at the inquest, was inclined toward leniency. She was prompted to commit perjury from a motive which, although it formed no excuse in itself, was quite understandable. She wished to shield the man she loved from suspicion. As luck would have it, twenty-four hours after she had committed perjury, the young man had cleared himself of suspicion, thus enabling the girl to make a true statement of the facts. The Chief's attitude was that Ruth Tregarthan had not maliciously withheld information from the police. She had acted wrongly and, according to the letter of the law, criminally. But taking all the circumstances into consideration he decided that the police need take no further action in the matter. No charge would be brought against her.

Ruth was naturally delighted when Bigswell informed her of the Chief's decision. Not that she had really given much thought to the matter. It was quite obvious that she was far too absorbed in her reconciliation with Ronald, to worry her head about extraneous affairs. No sooner had she had a few words with Inspector Bigswell than she left the Vicarage post-haste for Cove Cottage. Every minute spent away from Ronald was, to her way of thinking, a minute wasted!

The Inspector then settled down to have a chat with the Reverend Dodd, whose intellect and deductive abilities he was beginning to admire. The Vicar, he realised, had imagination coupled with a fine sense of the practical.

“Well,” said the Vicar as they settled into their respective arm-chairs. “Were you barking up the wrong tree?”

“We were!” acknowledged the Inspector. “Nothing doing, sir. A blind-alley line of investigation. Mr. Jeremy Crook has established his alibi all right. Cast-iron. No doubt about it. But the fact remains that his boat was used on Monday night. Crook hadn't taken it out for months. So the question we've got to answer is, who
did
borrow the
Nancy
on the twenty-third, and why did he borrow it?”

“As I see it,” said the Vicar, “there are three reasons why the boat was borrowed. Any one of these three reasons may be the correct one. Firstly, it may have been borrowed because the murderer had no boat of his own. Secondly, because the murderer's boat was under repair. Thirdly, because the
Nancy
was a less cumbersome boat to manage than the boat which we are justified in supposing was owned by the murderer. I say justified, advisedly, because it seems to me, Inspector, that whoever handled the
Nancy
on Monday must have been an extraordinarily good seaman. He must have owned his own boat or at least had the use of a boat lying over at Towan Cove. According to the Constable's list all the boat-owners are accounted for. As far as we know, nobody at Towan Cove relies on another man's boat when he wants to fish or anything of the sort. There are six boats in the cove. These boats are owned, as I happen to know, by Jack Withers, Parkins, Staunton, Burdon, Haskell and our friend Jeremy Crook. To my knowledge there is nobody else living in the cove who can handle a boat. Haskell's son, I believe, is a fairly proficient oarsman, but scarcely capable of undertaking the sort of trip which the
Nancy
took on Monday night. To my mind then, Inspector, we can dismiss the first reason as to why the murderer needed the
Nancy
. And we can go further—we can safely say that the man we are looking for is on our list of the Towan Cove boat-owners. Jeremy Crook we can dismiss. That leaves us with Jack Withers, Parkins, Staunton, Burdon and Haskell. Withers, I think, has an alibi. You may remember that Mrs. Mullion was returning on Monday night from the Withers’ cottage. Jack Withers was present when the midwife left the cove.”

“Quite right,” put in the Inspector. “Mrs. Mullion mentioned the fact that Withers lit her lantern before she set off along the cliff-path.”

“Exactly! Which means that he would not have had time to put off in the boat and murder Tregarthan before Mrs. Mullion saw Ruth on the cliff-path at Greylings. That leaves us, therefore, with Parkins, Staunton, Burdon and Haskell. Now we come to the other reasons for the murderer's need to borrow the
Nancy
. Was his own boat under repair? Was his own boat too cumbersome for the job? Now I dare say, Inspector, that among the six boats which we examined last night one of them was considerably larger than the others. That's the
Towan Belle
—Haskell's boat. Is Haskell the man we want? That's one question we've got to answer. On the other hand you may also remember that the boat we used was freshly painted. That was Joe Burdon's boat. Is Burdon the man we want? That's another question we've got to answer. Assuming that we've exhausted all the plausible reasons why the murderer borrowed the
Nancy
, you see how we have narrowed down our search? Haskell or Burdon. Which?”

“With the possibility,” grinned the Inspector, “that we're once more barking up the wrong tree!”

“Dear me—yes. I'm not suggesting that my assumption is unassailable. It's full of theories which may or may not hold water. But with your permission those are the lines of inquiry along which I should like to work. Whether you want to work side by side with me is another matter. You may have formed an entirely new set of theories. Inspector—knowing my own intolerable weakness for making mistakes, I sincerely hope you have!”

“And what exactly do you propose to do, Mr. Dodd? Question these two men?”

“Gracious me—no! At any rate, not yet. My idea was to sit in this arm-chair for a couple of hours with a cigar—a policy of splendid inaction. At the end of that time I hope I shall have solved another little problem which has been worrying me for some time. I want you to understand, Inspector, that I'm not asking you to stand aside while I carry on. Far from it. But I'm going to ask you to give me a couple of hours in which to turn things over in my mind. If, at the end of that time, I'm no nearer a solution of the mystery, then I see no reason why you shouldn't cross-examine Haskell and Burdon. But until then, as a special favour, I'm going to ask you to adopt a similar policy to mine. Splendid inaction, Inspector! Will you grant me this?”

The Inspector considered the Vicar's strange request for a moment and then gave his promise. He would pursue no further enquiries that morning—at any rate where the two men were concerned. He decided to spend the time making a further examination of the six boats.

The moment Inspector Bigswell had left the Vicarage, with a promise to return for lunch, the Vicar took out his copy of that mysterious note which had caused him so much speculation.

I'm not wanting your money. I shall hold my tongue not for your sake but for his. I've no wish to hear further about this. M. L.

Again and again the Vicar's thoughts had hovered over the exact meaning of this note. Again and again he had puzzled over the initials. M. L. suggested neither Haskell nor Burdon. Neither did the L fit in with the other two suspects on the list—Staunton and Parkins. Yet it was reasonable to suppose that the note had been written by a married woman or, at any rate, by a woman who was about to be married. The four possibles among the boat-owners at Towan Cove were all married. Burdon's wife had died some two years back but, since the note had obviously been sent to Tregarthan some time ago, it might just as well be his wife as Staunton's, Parkins’ or Haskell's. He tried to visualise these four women—their looks, their characters, their past behaviour, and gradually things began to clarify. A memory stirred, like a germinating seed, grew and grew, budded and flowered. Other past incidents came to his mind once this initial train of thought had been started. From doubt he passed to a partial acceptance of his theory, from partial acceptance to a curious feeling of certainty. The little bits began to fit together.

He rose and crossed to his desk. He took out a parish register. With fierce anxiety he turned the pages, running his finger down the list of names. Then he started. Remained quite still for a moment. Why hadn't he thought of that before? Considering the nature of the note, it was quite natural that the woman should have initialled it with her Christian names. Mary Louise! That was it, of course. She had omitted the third initial, perhaps with the subconscious fear that at some future date this note might be used as evidence against her. Not that
she
had acted criminally, of course. Tregarthan was the criminal. But it would have been an awkward situation to explain away to her husband if he had found out. But hadn't she offered an explanation? Obviously. And the reason for this sudden revelation of her unfortunate secret was obvious, too. The Vicar saw it all then, but he was not elated. He was stricken with a feeling of sorrow and compassion, wavering between a desire to throw the note into the fire and confess himself beaten, and his sense of duty which cried to him that justice had to be done. To destroy evidence, to withhold evidence from the police was, in itself, a criminal act. A murder had been committed. Murder was a terrible and dastardly thing. He could not condone it, however extenuating the circumstances.

He sat by the fire and, with an unsteady hand, poured himself out a glass of sherry. He shrank wholeheartedly from the task which lay before him.

Punctually at one the Inspector returned, but it was not until lunch had concluded, that the Vicar made any mention of his discovery.

“Time's up!” said the Inspector when they were alone. “Well, Mr. Dodd?”

The Vicar sighed. He knew there was no escaping the demands of duty, however unpleasant that duty might be.

“There's no question about it now, Inspector. I can see the whole thing clearly. I only wish it could have turned out otherwise.
But I know now who murdered poor Tregarthan!
”

“You know?”

Inspector Bigswell was astounded.

“As far as any man can know by deducing his facts from circumstantial evidence.”

“Then who is it?”

The Vicar shook his head.

“May I be allowed to work this in my own way and in my own time? Legally, of course, I have no right to keep back any information from you, Inspector. But somehow I should feel easier in my conscience if I could confront this man myself. You can be nearby—the Constable, too—concealed somewhere. But let me, I beg you, be the first to acquaint this poor man with the facts of the case. He's suffered already—God knows! Now it means more suffering ... perhaps, his life. Most certainly imprisonment.”

“Very well,” said the Inspector shortly. “I'll get hold of Grouch and we'll go straight away.”

The Vicar nodded.

“It would be best,” he said quietly.

An hour later Inspector Bigswell and P.C. Grouch were ensconced behind a couple of thick furze bushes on the cliff-top. Their eyes were fixed on a thin ribbon which serpentined up the rising slope of the common and, breasting the rise, disappeared beyond. Up that pathway, some fifteen minutes earlier, the Vicar had climbed. He held a police-whistle in one hand. In the other was the strange note.

The two men waited. The minutes dragged with intolerable slowness. Had the man made a dash for it? Had the Vicar been overpowered before he had time to blow his whistle? The Inspector was already beginning to kick himself for having let the Vicar have his way in the matter. It was a risk and a foolish one at that. Better to have made the arrest in the ordinary way—got out a proper warrant and made a workmanlike job of it. All this concession to a murderer's feelings was ridiculous. It was only out of respect for the Vicar's intelligence ... but a pretty fool he'd look at headquarters if the bird escaped from the net just when a capture seemed certain. Better, far better....

Grouch jerked his arm.

“It's all O.K., sir! He's coming back! Not alone either!”