Saltmarsh Murders

CHAPTER VII

edwy david burt—his maggot

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The police arrested Bob Candy, of course. It seems that in these murder cases the police are always looking out for two things; motive and opportunity. Well, it appeared that poor Bob headed the list of possible suspects very easily on both counts. In fact, I mean, if one didn’t know Bob Candy, it looked a clear thing. Nobody denied that he had walked out with the girl; everybody denied that it was his baby. If it had been, he would have married Meg Tosstick, according to the local custom, and there would have been an end of the matter, except for the nine or ten children that the two of them would produce, and the two or three out of those nine or ten that would eventually live to become adult, and, in their turn, to procreate others. Bob denied paternity of the baby, and everybody, even the police, believed him, because the police took the view that jealousy was the motive for the murder. As for opportunity, well, the two of them were living under the same roof and it would have been the simplest thing in the world for Candy to have sneaked into Meg’s room at night and strangled her as she lay in bed. As far as the method of doing the girl to death was concerned, there was no doubt at all but that she had been strangled with the man’s knitted silk tie which was still round her neck when her dead body was discovered by Mrs. Lowry next morning. The tie was proved to have been given to Bob on his birthday by the dead girl, who had knitted it, as her weeping old devil of a father bore witness, “with her own hands for him.” In reply to this, Bob was understood to state that the tie was his, but that, thoroughly upset by the birth of the baby, he had cast it aside and had sworn never to wear it any more. Pressed, he said that he could not remember exactly where he had put it. He thought he had thrown it away, and then again, he might have thrust it into a drawer, carelessly, but, on the other hand, he had a vague recollection of having used it as a lead for a lurcher he had had to bring to the public-house from the railway station the Saturday before Bank Holiday. He admitted, sadly, that it was a wonderfully strong tie. It was, of course.

Sir William undertook to pay for the man’s defence, and he took some trouble to broadcast his belief in Candy’s innocence. Curiously enough, our own Constable Brown also refused to credit Candy with the murder. It was the inspector from Wyemouth who ordered the arrest after the adjourned inquest. Poor old Brown was quite upset about it.

“It’s like this, Mr. Wells,” he said to me. “These town chaps is all right in their way, but it isn’t like knowing a chap. Now, I’ve knowed Bob Candy since he were seven or eight years of age, and I know he never done this ’ere murder. I tells the inspector so. ‘Proof,’ he says, ‘proof!’ I scratches my head, at that, Mr. Wells, because, things being how they are, it looks black again him. No doubt of that. So they arrests him. Well, I look at it this way. Somebody done it, didn’t un? And that somebody weren’t Bob. So what we got to do is to find out who that somebody were before this ’ere old trial of Bob’s come along, and make an end of poor young chap.”

Right on the meat, of course. But there was the beastly motive. After all, who on earth, except Bob Candy, had any motive for killing the girl? I put this to old Brown. He took off his helmet and wiped the inside of it with his handkerchief.

“Don’t you think, Mr. Wells,” he said, “that the father of the baby might have done it?”

“Yes, perhaps,” I said. “On the other hand, the baby was born about a fortnight before the murder, and the cat was well and truly out of the bag, so to speak. I mean, in the classic cases, the murder is to prevent the birth of the child, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” said old Brown. “Anyway,” he added, stoutly, “I’m going to keep my ears and eyes open, Mr. Wells. There’s been some very funny things happening, and poor old Bob can’t be held responsible for all of them. He hasn’t got the head on him, for one thing, and he hasn’t got no accomplices, for another. What about the parson being put in that there old pound?”

Well, of course, as soon as you got on to the subject of poor Bob’s brains, where were you? It was another point against him that there was that unfortunate affair of the escaped lunatic in the middle of his family tree. I mean, it seems as though this game of strangling young females is a proper lunatic’s trick, and Bob Candy’s ancestry told against him somewhat heavily.

I was returning from visiting rounds in the parish one afternoon during the second week in August when I encountered Mrs. Bradley.

She was walking along with her eyes fixed on the ground and did not see me until I said, “Good afternoon.”

“Ah, here you are,” she said. Quite brisk and businesslike. I gazed round for assistance but there was none available. “I want you,” she said, fixing me with the most frightfully basilisk eye, “to introduce me into the bosoms of certain families in this village. Dear little Edwy David Burt for example. Are you really friendly with him?”

Well, I was at the time, of course. Burt had upheld the cocoanut shy nobly during my enforced absences on August Bank Holiday, and I had indicated as much to him. A stout fellow, Burt.

“What about him?” I said cautiously.

“I’m on the track of the person who murdered that girl,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and I want to clear a few things out of the way.”

“Including Burt?” I asked, with an attempt at facetiousness.

“Including funny little Burt,” said Mrs. Bradley, gravely. She grasped my sleeve. “You and Constable Brown and I are going to bring a murderer to justice,” she said, with the most frightful leer.

“You mean—” I burbled.

“I want your help,” she said. “I require your invaluable assistance, child. Who so respectable as the earnest young curate? Who so universally adored as the handsome, untidy, almost illiterate young man who has not had occasion yet to quarrel with his bishop?”

She yelled with laughter, let go of my sleeve and dug me in the ribs.

“Do you believe Bob Candy did it?” she said.

“No,” I replied truthfully, “I am sure he did not.” I moved out of the reach of her claw-like hand.

“Then up with the bonnets of bonny Dundee,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking my arm. “To Burt’s bungalow—boot, saddle, to horse and away!”

Burt was out, of course. This did nothing to deter my frightfully energetic companion.

“Never mind,” she said, “let us go and see Mr. and Mrs. Gatty. There are one or two questions that I am simply bursting to put to that delicious pair!”

Mr. and Mrs. Gatty were at home. He was snipping off the dead roses and she was mowing the lawn. Both stopped working when they saw us and came to greet us.

“We’ve come about the murder,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I suppose you two dear people will sign a petition for poor Bob Candy?”

“But he hasn’t been convicted yet,” objected little Gatty.

“We want to be prepared,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly. “Do come indoors and sign. It won’t take a minute. Come along, Mr. Wells. You will have to witness his signature. Mrs. Coutts is getting up the petition, of course,” she explained to old Gatty, who had put down his scissors and gardening gloves on the wheelbarrow and was meekly accompanying us into the house. He gazed with distaste at the entrance hall of his gloomy residence.

“I do wish I could persuade Eliza to move,” he said. “I do hate and fear this beastly house, but she’s quite attached to it.”

I must confess that this remark by Gatty nearly flabbergasted me. It was generally understood in the village that Mrs. Gatty was in a terribly nervous state owing to the influence of the ex-lunatic asylum upon her system. Now, to hear Gatty seriously asserting that he was the nervous one and that his wife was the one who was determined to stay on at the house, was rather a jolt. I was about to enter into an argument with him about it when Mrs. Bradley forestalled me by saying:

“I thought your wife disliked the house?”

“Far from it,” replied Gatty. “Where’s this petition you want me to sign?”

He grinned. Well, he was rather like a wolf, of course. A sudden thought struck me.

“I suppose it wasn’t you on the roof of Burt’s bungalow that night?” I said.

He looked a bit flummoxed, but answered up like a shot.

“It was, Mr. Wells.”

“Well, but, well, I mean to say!” I said.

“What do you mean to say?” asked Mrs. Bradley, turning a none too cordial glance on me. At least, it looked a bit frosty when I met it, which I did, squarely, of course. I believe the woman thought she was going to intimidate me!

“Well, I mean to say, he might have murdered somebody,” I stuttered, anxious in a way to placate the old lady, who was now looking too fierce for my comfort. Besides, I was anxious too, very anxious, of course, to know what he meant by bunging slates at me that night. “What’s the idea?” I continued, severely to Gatty. Gatty wilted a bit. I stand five feet eleven in my socks.

“It was Burt’s fault,” said Gatty, getting a bit red round the ears. “He shouldn’t have locked me in that horrible crypt. I had no idea that he would play me such a prank.”

I was about to exclaim when Mrs. Bradley accidentally knocked Gatty’s fountain pen out of his hand, and we all bent and groped for it. It took us so long to find it—(my private belief is that Mrs. Bradley had had it in her hand for several minutes, for she was the one who eventually handed it back to him)—that my remark faded. Mrs. Bradley had a large sheet of paper on which were several signatures, and Gatty wrote his name under the rest, and we prepared to take our leave. We waved to Mrs. Gatty, who was at the further end of the garden, and regained the road.

“Some time,” said Mrs. Bradley, thoughtfully. “I must go into the question of lying much more thoroughly. I wonder why Mrs. Gatty lies? Is it for fear, compensation or wantonness, I wonder?”

“But does she lie?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And, by the way, young man, if you are to be of any real assistance to me in this enquiry, you must not ask direct questions of the people I am interviewing. You’ll spoil everything if you do. Tell me some more about the roof of Burt’s bungalow,” she added.

“About Gatty, do you mean?” I asked.

“About Gatty. So nice to know it wasn’t a thug,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding her head. “All the details, please.”

So I told her the tale all over again.

“I must go back to the Moat House,” she said, when I had finished. “There is just one thing I must get clear. You stay here, dear child.”

“Not much,” I said. She seemed such a little old woman, and I didn’t like those wolf-teeth that Gatty showed when he smiled. Gatty and his wife had changed jobs. He was mowing the lawn now, and she was attending to the roses.

“Here are Mrs. Crocodile and Mr. Goat,” she called to her husband. He let go the mowing machine and came toward us. I could not but admire Mrs. Bradley’s forthright methods. She said at once:

“How did you say you got down into the crypt?”

“I was thrust down there by Burt and his negro,” said Gatty. I gasped. He had distinctly told me that he went there as the result of a bet. Apparently he had forgotten that. So both the Gattys were liars, it seemed!

“Why?” asked Mrs. Bradley. “Had you annoyed him in any way?”

“I don’t think so. I believe he has some secret and that I was within an ace of finding it out. It was the night my car broke down outside Wyemouth and I had to walk home by way of the Cove and the stone quarries. I was just poking about when they seized me and carried me to the church. I can’t think why we didn’t meet anybody. When you had set me free, I decided to go to Burt’s bungalow and find out what I could, by way of revenge. Just fancy, I was in that dreadful place for about thirty-six hours! So I climbed on to the roof of Burt’s bungalow that night when I had had food and some rest, and tried to see down the skylight into his loft. I couldn’t see anything. It was much too dark. So I scrabbled about a bit and was unlucky enough to loosen two tiles. They slipped as Mr. Wells here and the lad Coutts came out on to the path. I was terribly alarmed. I thought at first the tiles had struck them. I was hiding behind the chimney stack out of reach of Burt’s horrible gun when they slipped from my hand. I still believe Burt’s got some game on, and I still mean to find out what it is!”

“Good for you,” said Mrs. Bradley, cordially. “Good luck to your mowing.”

He looked at her as though she was mad, sighed, and pushed the mowing machine forward. Mrs. Bradley turned to find Mrs. Gatty standing at her elbow.

“Darling Croc,” said Mrs. Gatty, “why do you talk with the wolf?”

“Dearest Cassowary,” retorted Mrs. Bradley, “who told you the wolf was in the crypt?”

“Nobody told me,” said Mrs. Gatty, beaming at us both through her gold-rimmed glasses like any comfortable woman of fifty. “I saw him down there. Oh, that’s wrong. Mr. Burt told me. He thought I should go and let him out, I think!”

She began to giggle at the recollection.

“And didn’t you try to get him out?” I asked. Mrs. Bradley suddenly prodded me in the ribs. I had forgotten her commands, of course. I muttered an apology, but the mischief, whatever it was, was done. Mrs. Gatty grew grave, and answered:

“No, I didn’t try to get him out. It was so right, you see. It was so satisfying. I peeped at him—he didn’t see or hear me—and then I came home and thought about him, and then, when I knew he was asleep, I went and spoke to him.”

I looked appealingly at Mrs. Bradley. In that instinctive way which women have, she seemed to understand me. Almost imperceptibly she nodded her head. Emboldened, I asked Mrs. Gatty what she had said to her husband while he was asleep in the crypt.

“I said, ‘Bogey! Bogey!’ ” replied Mrs. Gatty solemnly. I shouted with laughter. Mrs. Bradley laughed. Mrs. Gatty laughed, and up came little Gatty to know what we were laughing at. I pointed a shaking finger at his wife and feebly stuttered:

“She said, ‘Bogey! Bogey!’ ” Then I went off into fresh howls of mirth. I controlled myself at last and wiped my eyes. Old Gatty’s face was a study.

“How interesting it all is,” said Mrs. Bradley, when we had taken leave of the Gattys once more. “Child, it’s going to rain again. How provoking! You will have to take me into the vicarage for shelter, won’t you?”

Considering that we had to pass the gates of the Manor House to reach the vicarage, I thought this suggestion was a bit thick.

“With pleasure,” I said my heart sinking. She and the vicar’s wife were good for three hours if once they started gossiping. I believe the Bradley is going to put the Coutts into a book or something. There’s a sinister licking of the lips about her facial expression after she’s managed to get Mrs. Coutts to spread herself on her favourite topic. It makes my blood run positively cold to witness it. She’s a ghoul, not a woman. Mrs. Coutts’ favourite topic, of course, is Immorality, under which heading, since the dreadful death of Meg Tosstick and the removal of Cora McCanley, whom she hates, she has taken to including Daphne and me. She found me outside Daphne’s door on the night after Meg Tosstick’s murder, and promptly blew her cork out. I explained that I was only asking Daphne if she were all right and not scared, of course, but the woman insisted upon believing the worst. The next night she found me in the room, of course. I’m not going to be dictated to by a person with her frightful mentality, even if she is Daphne’s aunt.

Upon finding me seated upon Daphne’s bed she decided that the worst had happened. (It hadn’t, of course.)

“You’re enough to make it happen, aunt,” said Daphne, in tears at the nasty things which were being said. “Here, Noel, darling!” And she handed me the ring. I received it dumbly and dropped it into my pocket. Then we kissed with histrionic effect, and I stood aside to let Mrs. Coutts pass out. She didn’t budge, so I didn’t. I wasn’t going to leave Daphne to be chewed up after I had gone. In the end she went, and I followed her out. I gave the ring back to Daphne next day, of course, and she explained that she had only returned it to save her bally aunt throwing a fit. Mrs. Coutts’ nerves and temper had been steadily deteriorating since the murder of Meg Tosstick. She chivvied her husband, who had been like a goaded bull since the village pound business, and also had practically said in so many words that he might think himself lucky he got off as well as he did. She muttered something about seducers and the cloth which sounded to me rather hotter even than her usual diatribes. The remark was equally divided between the Reverend and myself, of course. I believed the woman was mad. Really I did! I would have married Daphne on the morrow if it could have been managed, to get her out of it all, for it was beginning to tell upon the poor kid, but, apart from the fact that a curate can’t very well get married at a registrar’s office, I had passed my word to old Coutts to hold off until Daphne was older.

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 half way 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 woman 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.”

“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. Bransome 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.