The Saltmarsh Murders (13 page)

“I hope,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that you didn't mention Burt?”

“Not a syllable, on my word,” I replied eagerly, frightfully thankful, of course, that I had put that particular temptation behind me. “I didn't think it would be wise. Fancy his smuggling liquor, though,” I added, with an amused but tolerant smile.

“He doesn't!” said Mrs. Bradley. Her usually mellifluous voice was so sharp, and her scowl so particularly ferocious that I merely said:

“Oh, doesn't he?” And left the rest to fate. Mrs. Bradley changed the subject so abruptly that my suspicion that she was side-tracking the truth became amplified. However, I judged it wiser to lie low for a bit.

Sir William said:

“What evidence do they offer against Candy, besides the motive?”

“Opportunity,” said Mrs. Bradley, “He was at the inn when the murder was committed. There is an odd
fifteen minutes of his time that he can't account for satisfactorily.”

“It's simply horrible,” said Margaret. “He
couldn't
have committed a murder! Why he used to be in my Lads' Bible Class.”

“He isn't capable of it,” exclaimed Sir William. I was glad to hear them championing the man so warmly and I glanced from face to face to see whether they all agreed. I was surprised at the peculiar expression on Bransome Burns' unprepossessing countenance. His lips were drawn back from his ugly teeth in a malicious smile.

“Good heavens!” I thought. “He believes Sir William did it!”

Almost as though I had spoken the words aloud, Mrs. Bradley observed:

“Of course, there is this point to be considered.
You
do not believe that Candy was capable of murder. I believe he was.”

“But——” thundered Sir William. At least, he would have thundered the sentence had he been permitted to conclude it, I think. But Mrs. Bradley interrupted him.

“I am not convinced of Candy's innocence. I believe that Candy was capable of murder, but I also know “—she looked at each of us in turn—” that there are
others
in this village who are potential murderers. Take Sir William, for example.”

Sir William got a bit purple at that, of course, and was obviously working himself up into one of his terrible rages, when Mrs. Bradley checked him.

“Don't show off, dear host,” she said. “Mr. Bran-some Burns will bear me out.”

Bransome Burns—I rejoice to think that Mrs. Gatty called him a shark—he was a blue-nosed shark if ever I saw one—I never have seen one of course—stuck his forefinger behind his collar stud and made polite, deprecating noises. All the same, there was a cold gleam in his nasty, fishy eye. He had not forgotten the day he kicked the dog. I could read the man's mind like a book.

“Then,” said Mrs. Bradley, turning suddenly on me and leering with a kind of fearful joy, “there is our young friend, Mr. Wells.”

“I a murderer?” I ejaculated. It was laughable! I
had
picked up the poker at Burt's bungalow, of course. And (I should admit it if pressed) I had picked it up with the idea of swiping Burt a meaty, fruity slosh over the head if he kicked up rough or turned in any way nasty. But the Bradley was biting the hand that would have defended her. I could hardly say so, of course.

“Then there is Mr. Burt,” said Mrs. Bradley. I could agree to that. I myself had heard Burt confess to her that he would kill if he were forced by pressure of circumstances so to do.

“Then there is Mrs. Coutts,” said Mrs. Bradley, “although I confess up to the present I have no proof except psychological proof (which is incontrovertible, but not acceptable yet to the lay nor the legal mind)—that Mrs. Coutts is a potential murderess. And then,” she added, grinning at us, “there is myself. I actually have a murder to my credit. I was tried for it and acquitted, but I did it, boys and girls, I did it.”

She shook her head sadly, and then turned to me.

“Do you really believe that Candy was incapable of murder?” she asked.

“I have not heard you prove anything which persuades me that he murdered Meg Tosstick,” I said.

“You will at least allow that he
could
have murdered her,” she said. “Why, child, he had the virus in his blood!”

“Well, Lowry knew of that fact, and yet risked employing him as barman and as chucker-out,” I said.

“Yes, so he did,” admitted Mrs. Bradley. I forbore to press the point, except to add:

“The moral is obvious to me.”

“Oh, yes, so it is to me,” said Mrs. Bradley hastily. Anxious apparently, to change the subject, she remarked:

“About Burt's smuggling, Sir William. You are here in your private capacity, and not as a Justice of the Peace? That is understood?”

“Well, not exactly. Perhaps I'd better go,” Sir William said. Huffy, of course, at being called a murderer. Margaret followed him out, but Bransome Burns stayed with us.

“What made you think of liquor?” enquired Mrs. Bradley of me. She seemed amused.

“Obvious,” I said.

“Yes,” she retorted swiftly. “Obvious that it couldn't have been liquor. If it had been, do you not think that every soul in this village, man, woman and child, would have been aware of the fact, and would have got his pickings out of it? But nobody knew. Nobody was interested. And why? Because Burt smuggled books,
not liquor. Banned books, dear child. Nasty, pornographic literature, dirt and offal, dear child, and did not even make a fortune out of them, so his conduct really was inexcusable!”

She hooted with outrageous laughter. Bransome Burns said nervously,

“How beastly. What's happened to his wife, by the way? I used to talk to her down at the post office sometimes, but I haven't seen her since the murder.”

“No, you wouldn't,” Mrs. Bradley answered, before I had a chance to do so. “She is absent from the Bungalow.”

“Oh, really?” said Burns. “Nice-looking girl. Pity she married that rotten fellow.”

So we talked about the Burts until I took my leave.

I
was not as much surprised as I might have been. Burt was exactly the opposite of my conception of a distributor of indecent literature, it is true; on the other hand, his language was of that revolting type which revels in causing embarrassment to those that hear it. I frowned judicially and stared in dignified displeasure at the carpet. I did not really know what to say, of course. Luckily, Mrs. Bradley was at no loss for words. She continued, after giving me sufficient time to digest the tidings.

“Of course, he won't be able to carry on the good work.”

“Certainly not,” I agreed. “I say! I bet Lowry was in on the game, whether it was books or beer! He's a proper old miser, you know, and not one to let good money slip past him—well, bad money, I mean, of course!”

I laughed at my own joke, but Mrs. Bradley did not seem frightfully amused. I take it, from my fairly close observation of the sex, that women have not a very keen sense of humour. I played my trump card, however, and caused the old lady to sit up a bit, I fancy.

“You see,” I said, “he must have used Lowry's secret passage sometimes to escape detection, and he
could hardly do that without Lowry's connivance, could he?”

I don't know why it is, but the mention of a secret passage always interests people. It interested Mrs. Bradley, and she asked me a lot of questions about it. I could not tell her much more than the fact that there was such a smugglers' passage leading from Lowry's cellars to the Cove, that it had been blocked up, but that I did not see why it shouldn't have been unblocked by Lowry and Burt.

“Why choose the Cove, if not for the secret passage?” I asked, triumphantly. Mrs. Bradley still looked interested.

“A baby could have seen through that lonely bungalow business,” she said, at last. “If ever the situation of a house shrieked that something illegal was going on, the situation of that one did so. Add to that an occupant, who, far from observing the most elementary precautions, goes out of his way to waylay and half-murder the local vicar, and plays a silly and cruel trick on a little jackal like Gatty, and places himself, as you say (I hadn't, of course!) in the hands of a fox like Lowry, and something is bound to go wrong. If I hadn't put two and two together, someone else would have done so, and then——”

“Yes, all for the best. After all I do think that the public morals——” I began, but Mrs. Bradley cut me short.

“I never did, and I never shall, believe that vile things affect the minds of any but the vile,” she said, firmly. “Besides, evil and filth are the most incomparably dull, boring, surfeiting things in the world.
See the published works of George Bernard Shaw.” She hooted. “Corruption, as he indicates, is not only nauseating to the senses, but it palls upon the imagination. Evil is the devil's worst advocate. Refer again to the above-mentioned sources. Why, child, you, as a priest, should know that it is the little insidious vices, treachery, malice, envy, jealousy and greed, covetous-ness, slandering, sentimentality and self-deception that enslave mankind, not filthy postcards and erotic literature, Mrs. Grundy, my dear.”

She spoilt it all, of course, by howling like a hyena and poking me in the ribs until I was forced to remove myself out of reach of her terrible yellow talons.

“‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,' you mean?” I suggested, by way of finishing the conversation. But she only shrieked louder than ever. A most extraordinary woman. Sincere, in her way, of course.

“Then I suppose that even murder——” I began, when the air was still again. I had not the slightest idea of how I was going to finish the sentence. My object was to change the subject of conversation. I never like people to know that they have worsted me in an argument. I feel that I owe it to the cloth to keep my end up and the Anglican flag flying.

“Oh, murder!” said Mrs. Bradley, fastening on to the word with grim relish. She wagged her head at me. “Murder is a queer crime, young man. If it
is
a crime.”

“Of course it's a crime,” I said. “It's a sin, too,” I added, buttoning the black jacket and composing the countenance into ecclesiastical lines.

“Rubbish, child,” retorted the Bradley, with spirit.
“Murder is a general heading for a whole list of actions, most of which ought to be judged merely as misdemeanours. The second division ought to be the special preserve of murderers.”

“It would be, wouldn't it?” I said. She waved aside the shaft of wit.

“Look at Crippen,” she said. As I have always looked upon the little thug as one of the hottest exhibits in the Chamber of Horrors, this suggestion fell flat so far as I was concerned.

“What about him?” I said. “The victim of an illicit passion, that's all.”

“The victim of an inferiority complex,” returned Mrs. Bradley. I chewed the thought.

“Hm!” I said. These psychologists frighten me. I don't talk their argot, of course, and that puts one at a disadvantage.

“Besides,” said Mrs. Bradley, warming to it, “most murderers are insane at the time of committing the murder. Take Patrick Mahon.”

“Oh, but that was frightfully nasty,” I said.

“You are confusing the two acts of the unfortunate man when you say so,” responded Mrs. Bradley.

“But he dismembered the body!” I protested. I mean, hang it all!

“Yes, that's what I am saying,” she said. I blinked.

“If a man laid an entirely false trail for the police, misled them, hoodwinked them, drew red herrings across the track and dived and doubled in order to escape them, you wouldn't say that he was any more of a villain than if he took no steps to secure himself
from arrest, would you?” she asked. I thought it over, and replied, cautiously, in the negative.

“Well, a man who dismembers a body and hides the head is only trying to secure himself against arrest,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You should try to think clearly, child.”

“But murderers who are found to be insane are lodged in Broadmoor,” I said, adroitly side-stepping once more.

“Ah, Broadmoor,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What a waste of public money! A painless death would be far the better method. There's a great deal of rubbish talked about death, young man. Mind you, there must be none of that dreadful period of waiting for the execution morning that obtains under our present inhuman and disgraceful system. I do not say abolish the death penalty, but, instead of a penalty, let it be a release. We must always have the moral courage to release from life those who are not fitted to bear life's burdens. Social morality, consisting, as it so largely does, in refraining from action, is to some minds an unachievable ideal, and to others simply nonsense.”

“Ah, but the duty of the church——” I interrupted. Then I stopped short, because, of course, the church is not primarily concerned with morals. At least, it ought not to be, for morals are not even the A.B.C. of religion. I doubt whether, at most, they are more than the pothooks and hangers of our spiritual life.

“Priests are but men,” I said, lamely, of course.

“Not always,” retorted the Bradley, with her frightful cackle. My trouble is that I never know when the woman is serious, but I found myself thinking of Mrs.
Coutts with her murky mind. Beside her, this queer little reptilian was like a rainbow or an iridescent shell of pearl. Mind you, you couldn't exactly guarantee what you would find underneath the shell, but I felt that while it would be possible to imagine the Archangel Gabriel blowing his trumpet in Mrs. Bradley's ear, it would be impossible for Mrs. Coutts even to recognise the Archangel and the sound of his trumpet on the last great day. There was something about the Bradley. I should be the last person to deny it. One felt, in the words of the rather Nonconformist hymn, that she was on the Lord's side. Curious.