The Saltmarsh Murders (12 page)

Well, I had to usher the Bradley into the vicarage, for the rain began to come down pretty heavily, and we both got pretty wet, walking from the Moat House. Nothing would satisfy Mrs. Coutts, who had taken a violent fancy to Mrs. Bradley, than to rig her up in dry clothes, shoes and stockings and have a fire lighted. Daphne grabbed me in the hall when the two of them had gone upstairs, and said:

“Oh, Noel! Uncle's been talking to the inspector who's in charge of the case, and he says there's sure to be a local crime wave for a bit. He says these crimes get imitated—these sort of crimes. I think it's horrible.”

The talk at tea was about the murder, of course. Mrs. Coutts spread herself on Immorality, as usual, and Mrs. Bradley listened, and prompted her when she seemed like drying up. I was pretty well fed with the conversation, and so was Daphne.

At six the Bradley tore herself away and beckoned me to follow her. I went, of course. I really don't know why. She saps my will power, that woman. I had intended to stay with Daphne and discuss the Harvest
Festival, but I followed Mrs. Bradley as meekly as a dog and we took the road which leads towards the stone quarries and then stops abruptly halfway up the slope. She said, as we journeyed onward, shouting against the wind:

“I know Mr. Burt's little game. Are you afraid of him?”

“Of course I am,” I yelled.

“Yes, yes, I know,” she bellowed. “Why don't you like me, Mr. Wells?”

I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just went pretty hot and stammered a bit, of course. She mouthed at me:

“I want your help. It would be easier if you could overcome your prejudice.” She paused and, added, fortissimo, “I could overcome the vicar's, if you liked, you know.”

“What is his?” I shrieked.

“You want to marry his niece,” she screamed. The wretched women seemed to be wise to everything. “And I know a few bishops and things,” she added at the top of her voice. I halted and looked down at her. I hope my face was grim.

“You are trying to bribe me, Mrs. Bradley,” I ejaculated.

“Yes, yes, of course, dear child,” she hallooed into my left ear. Horribly moistly, of course.

“It's a bargain. Come shake hands.”

She took my hand in her skinny, yellow claw. Heavens! What a grip she had! Harder even than Mrs. Coutts', with her pianist's wrists and fingers.

“Stay here,” she shouted. “If I don't emerge from
Mr. Burt's bungalow in half an hour from now, inform the police!”

“Do you think Burt is the murderer?” I yelled. Horrible thing to have to shout at the top of one's voice. So libellous, of course.

“I believe he is a violent man when roused,” shrieked Mrs. Bradley. I settled the dog-collar with a hand that trembled.

“I'm coming too,” I shouted in her ear.

“Hero!” retorted Mrs. Bradley, letting out her unearthly screech of mirth. Incidentally, she was speaking the truth, of course. I was carrying a blackthorn walking stick. I surveyed it doubtfully and then quietly parked it at the side of the road. Unarmed, I might be less liable to attack, I thought. I quaked and was in anguish as we mounted the rough track. Heavy clouds raced across the sky, driven by the same strong wind as was almost blowing us backwards down the hill. The quarries were silent and deserted. The workings were no longer used, and the deep holes were supposed to be fenced in. It occurred to me with horrible clearness just how simple it would be for a man like Burt to throw us over the edge where the fences had rotted away. Cora's presence might have saved us, but Cora, where was she? According to all accounts she was touring in the North-East of England with a show called
Home Birds.
Still, I took comfort from the indomitable-looking little old woman at my side. Her yellow face was set, and her thin lips were tightly closed as she concentrated all her energies upon forcing an uphill way against the buffetings of the wind. She turned and yelled at me:

“You didn't mind coming before!”

“No!” I yelled in agreement, holding on to my hat with both hands. “It's the Gattys. They're both mad, I think!”

“Both what?”

“Mad!”

“What?”

“Mad!”

“Oh, yes.” She grinned, and waved her hand. Burt was standing at the gate of his bungalow. To my astonishment he waved back, ran to meet us, put his great hand at Mrs. Bradley's back and literally ran her up the hill in the teeth of that dreadful wind. When, panting and nearly cooked, I arrived at the Bungalow, it was to find Mrs. Bradley seated comfortably in an arm-chair drinking beer, and Burt straddled across the hearthrug, his back to a blazing fire, roaring and slapping his leg at one of the lady's queer jokes. Cannot understand them, myself. He also had a glass in his hand. Foster Washington Yorke had admitted me, of course, and, as soon as I had accepted Burt's cordial invitation to be seated, he brought me a glass of beer, too.

“Oh, yes,” said Burt, as one who was continuing a conversation which my entrance had interrupted. “We did push him into the crypt. I told his wife where he was, you know, and made sure she'd go along and let him out. The little snoop was rubbering round the cove (Burt's words, of course, not mine), and we collected him and tied him up until we had finished our job. I forgot him after that.”

“Mr. Burt,” said Mrs. Bradley, calmly. “I think
you will have to promise me that your fortune-hunting is over. No more cargo must be landed at Wyemouth Cove and brought to this house. You understand, don't you? And—er—about your quarrels with your wife——”

She spoke gently, but her terrifying, black, witch's eyes never left Burt's angry face. I was horribly alarmed to see Burt's furious expression. The odds were too frightfully unequal. Unostentatiously I bent and picked up the poker. It was a nicely balanced, fairly weighty weapon, and swung prettily between the fingers. I dangled it, getting the feel and the balance of it. Mrs. Bradley was grinning with a kind of fiendish blandness at Burt, whose neck was beginning to swell.

“You wouldn't commit a murder, Edwy, would you?” asked the terrible little old woman.

“
I—don't
—
know!
” said Burt, taking a stride towards her. “I
might
—if I were
hard pressed
!”

“Tut! tut!” observed Mrs. Bradley. She pointed a yellow talon at him. “Naughty boy! Sit down!”

Burt sat down. He even grinned, sheepishly, of course. I replaced the poker, as unostentatiously, I trust, as I had taken it up. He glared at me.

“Damn your eyes, you poodle pup!” he said. I smiled, weakly, of course. Mrs. Bradley said:

“Why were you so rough with the vicar, Edwy?”

“He put up such a fight,” said Burt. “He knocked poor old Foster about. If Foster weren't a black, he'd have had a face like a rainbow.”

All sorts of things began to emerge from the back of my mind, and take shape, and slip into place. The vicar had mentioned two men with blackened faces. Why on
earth hadn't it dawned upon me that one of them might have been a real negro? Mrs. Bradley had started from that point, probably, and argued the whole matter from Foster Washington Yorke to Burt. The Bungalow was much the nearest dwelling house to the cove, of course, and smuggling was much the most obvious thing to connect with the appearance of the ship which Coutts had seen, although Sir William had scouted the notion when his butler had put it forward.

“I suppose the whole thing connects up with Lowry, the landlord of the Mornington Arms,” I said to Mrs. Bradley, as the boisterous wind nearly blew us off our feet and into the village below. I believe Mrs. Bradley was going to dismiss this idea as absurd, when suddenly she prodded me in the ribs in an ecstasy of joy.

“My dearest, dearest child!” she observed, cackling like a hen with an egg. “What a sweet idea! No, just fancy! I should never have thought of connecting Landlord Lowry with the smuggling!”

I was not as surprised as she seemed to be. My experience of the sex, consisting, as it does, of a knowledge of the vagaries of such different ornaments of womankind as Mrs. Coutts, Mrs. Gatty, my mother, my sisters and Daphne, has led me to the inevitable conclusion that, outside certain well-defined and exceedingly narrow avenues of knowledge, women are singularly ill-informed. Mrs. Bradley might have deduced that Burt was a smuggler, but apparently the fact that wines and spirits were the smuggled articles had completely escaped her. I dare say she was not even aware that such imports are dutiable. I gave her a short, but I trust, informative discourse, upon the subject of
import duties. We were almost running down the hill, and the wind was tearing and shouting behind us. My talk was a summary of the first of my winter lectures to the Boys' Club, of course, a series of talks entitled, “Great Englishmen.” The first lecture was to be the life of Sir Robert Walpole. She seemed interested, I thought, and certainly thanked me warmly when we arrived at the Manor House. I was relieved when she had gone. Daphne and I talked about the Harvest Festival and other matters until supper time. After supper, to my surprise, I received a summons from Sir William to go at once to the Manor House, as Mrs. Bradley wished to see me. Had the message come from Mrs. Bradley herself, I am strongly disposed to believe that I should have ignored it, or, at any rate, sent an apology in lieu of going to see her. But a message from Sir William was a different matter. I begged the vicar not to sit up for me, took my hat and waterproof, for the night had set in wet once the great wind had dropped, and was soon on my way to the Manor House.

I could not help thinking about the murder as I walked at a good brisk pace along the main road, away from the village. There are no cottages near the Manor, except for the dwelling of Constable Brown. It heartened me to remember that this ignorant but staunch keeper of the village peace was convinced of poor Bob Candy's innocence. It struck me, as I came abreast of his cottage, that it would be a good plan to stop there for a moment on my way to the Manor House and find out how far the Wyemouth inspector had gone in his investigations of the crime. Brown, I decided, would probably know all that there was to know, as he
went everywhere with the inspector and took copious, albeit laborious, notes of all that his superior said and did. The inspector, I suppose, was flattered by this proceeding, and suffered the constable gladly, fool though he considered him, I expect. He wasn't, of course. Not at all a fool. Brown, I mean.

I knocked at the door and it was opened by Mrs. Brown. She invited me in and showed me into the parlour, which was immediately inside the street door, of course. There I found Constable Henry Brown and his two lodgers. I had thought a good deal about those lodgers. After all, I argued, surely it was more sensible to suppose that a stranger had murdered Meg Tosstick rather than that one of our own villagers had done such a dastardly thing! I observed the young men narrowly, but could not conscientiously admit that either of them showed symptoms of abnormal depravity. Neither had they the nervous, hunted look that I associate with unconvicted murderers. Not that I had ever seen any, of course, at that time.

Brown had no real news to give me. The inspector, he said, had now finished interviewing everybody in the village who could possibly be expected to know anything at all about the murder, and it had advanced the case against Bob Candy no further. That was the most optimistic thing he could find to say, and it was not particularly cheering. Brown ventured the opinion that the prosecution would have an easy job of it at the trial.

“You see, Mr. Wells,” said the good fellow, “the police have got their case all mapped out, like. They don't really want no more evidence to hang poor young Bob with. They've been getting their witnesses ready,
that's all. Who to call, and who not, as you might say, sir. The inspector don't want to find anything now as'll put him in a muddle, don't you see.”

“Do you mean, Brown,” I said, rather horrified, of course, “that the police don't want to get at the
truth
?”

“Oh, they want the truth all right, as you might say,” Brown replied, waving his pipe, “but, you see, sir, they think they've got it. No doubt at all but, to their way of thinking, poor Bob done it. No, what the inspector has been going round for is to find something to
bolster up
the truth a bit. If he can't find anything, he can't, and no great harm done. The lawyers must do the best they can with what they've got already, that's all. But, on the other hand, he don't want to hit a snag, sir, do he? I mean, that 'udn't be human nature, saving your presence, Mr. Wells. As it stands, it's a very nice case! You wouldn't expect 'em to go out of their way to queer it.”

I nodded gloomily. So did the two young men. The point was well put, of course.

“I'll be going, then,” I said. “Thanks, Brown.”

“I'd heard tell that the little old party from London was a rare wonder at finding out things,” said Brown, escorting me to the door, “but I expect she doesn't take much interest in us country folks, sir.”

“Oh, I don't know so much,” I said, wagging my head a bit. I didn't think I ought to tell him that she had discovered that Burt was a smuggler, so, looking pretty mysterious, of course, I pushed on to the Manor House, and was soon telling the assembled company, which consisted of Sir William, Margaret, Bransome Burns and Mrs. Bradley, everything which Constable
Brown had said. I concluded by saying that matters looked utterly hopeless for Candy.

“Anyway, Brown seemed inclined to take your name in vain,” I said to Mrs. Bradley, “so I upheld your reputation as best I could.”

“I don't think you need have troubled yourself, Mr. Wells,” said Margaret, rather cuttingly. I perceived, of course, that I had dropped a bit of a brick, so I hastened to gather up the fragments.

“Oh, no, no! Of course, rather not,” I said, in my heartiest mothers'-meeting voice. “Of course not. Certainly.”