Saltmarsh Murders

CHAPTER X

sundry alibis, and a regular facer

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By the time I had struggled out of my surplice and coat, the riot was nearly over. The last stalwarts among the attacking party were being thrown out among the tombstones by Burt (who seemed to be enjoying himself), the vicar (who was trying not to seem to be enjoying himself), and Foster Washington Yorke, who, to the strains of “I got wings” was doing his bit with zealous fervour and Christian impartiality. Coming in at the death, so to speak, I put my boot behind a youth named Scoggin, whom I had been longing to kick for nearly eighteen months, and we barred the church door and continued the service. The vicar cut the sermon down to thirteen minutes by my watch, and, at the conclusion of the service, instead of going out into the vestry, he marched straight down the aisle to the West door, and, unbarring it, strode into the porch. I followed him, of course. There were the attackers lining the path, waiting for us. Our appearance immediately at the conclusion of the service was unlooked for, however, and it was obvious that we had taken them by surprise. The vicar gave them no time to recover, but, raising his arm and pointing first at those on the right and then at those on the left, he said:

“You have committed sacrilege. You have also disturbed the peace. I shall lay an information with the constable, and you will be called upon very shortly to give an account of yourselves. You may go.”

Of course, I don’t like old Coutts, but one can’t help admiring him. The lads looked at each other and licked their lips. Then they began to shamble off. There were fifteen of them. Some were not from our parish, but from the neighbouring village of Stadhemington.

“Interesting, of course,” said Mrs. Bradley, when she heard about it.

“Well, it shows what the villagers think,” I said.

“Yes,” said the little old woman. She grinned.

“And why do they think it?” she asked.

I shook my head and murmured something about smoke and fire, also about throwing mud and it sticking. Mrs. Bradley pursed her little beak and shook her head.

“Mrs. Coutts,” she said. “The camel bites and squeals. Anonymously, dear child.”

“You mean the Gatty visiting cards?” I said.

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Those cards came to the vicarage from the vicarage. What do you say to that, young man? Is the vicar innocent? Is he mad?”

“Oh, come,” I protested. She grinned again.

“Take your choice, my dear,” she said. “Do you believe he is the father of Meg Tosstick’s child? His wife believes it. That has been her trouble all along.”

“Never!” I exclaimed, hypocritically, of course. I knew quite well that Mrs. Coutts had believed it from the beginning. A most frightful woman! Most frightful!

“The point is,” continued Mrs. Bradley, “upon what, I wonder, does she base her opinion? Does she base it upon Certain Knowledge, as a friend of mine would say? Does she deduce it from information in her possession? Does she suspect it, and is attempting to prove it by driving her husband to confide in her? Or what? Especially the last named.”

As I had not the faintest inkling of what she meant, I grunted and tried my best to look intelligent.

“If the vicar were the father, that would let Bob out,” I said, after a moment’s pause.

“Why so?” enquired Mrs. Bradley.

“Well—” I recalled the show put up by old Coutts against Burt and the negro before they got him chained up in the pound—his knuckles couldn’t have looked worse if he’d knocked out a tree—and the way he had shot those roughnecks out of the church on the Sunday. Squeezing a girl’s neck would be a mere nothing to a man like that. I propounded this theory to Mrs. Bradley. She merely grinned.

“Well, you must admit that if he’s the father, he had a good enough motive for shutting the girl’s mouth,” I said doggedly.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but why wait until the baby had been in the world over a fortnight? It’s of no use, Noel, my dear boy. If you are going to pin that murder on to the baby’s father, you’ve got to explain why he waited so long.”

“Well, the vicar paid for Meg’s keep at the inn, I understood,” said I.

“You understood? Don’t you know?”

“No. I was given to understand that he did,” I replied. After all, I reflected, Daphne had not actually denied this.

“Not good enough,” said Mrs. Bradley, firmly. “Ask yourself whether it is.”

“I could ask the Lowrys, I suppose, to make quite sure,” I said, “or Coutts himself, of course.”

“I imagine that Mrs. Coutts did that at the time the child was born,” said Mrs. Bradley, drily. “I think, too, that all three persons concerned returned an evasive answer.”

“On which she based her suspicions?” I asked.

“Oh, no. I expect she had had her suspicions from the first,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “If she had not, why did she dismiss the girl from her service? A woman of Mrs. Coutts’ mentality could have had an exceedingly interesting time torturing the girl with the dreadful instruments of charity and forgiveness. Cruel people don’t let their victims escape them unless there is a good reason for it.”

Well, the old lady scored there, of course. Lifting the fallen (with inquisitorial accompaniment) was Mrs. Coutts’ great stunt.

“Well, what do we do?” I asked. “Hang it all, it was you who suggested that Meg’s seducer was also her murderer.”

Mrs. Bradley grinned fiendishly, and, picking up one of those little pieces of paper which the packers place between layers of cigarettes, she printed on it:

“If you persist in this foolish policy, your husband will be hanged.”

She placed the slip in an envelope, printed Mrs. Coutts’ name and address on the outside, and stamped the envelope.

“I’m going to be anonymous, too,” she said. “Come along. We’ll go and post it. And now about these alibis.”

“What alibis?” I asked, accompanying her to the front door and down the drive. “Oh, you mean Coutts and the murder!” I laughed. “He wasn’t the murderer, of course,” I said, “but still he was O.K. until the row with Sir William about the Sports finals. After that, there was the attack by Burt, but we haven’t any very clear idea of the time the attack took place. So that leaves him unaccounted for from the time he left the fête until the time he was attacked by Burt and Yorke.”

I glanced at her. She nodded. Her black eyes were gazing straight ahead, down the gravel drive. There was a gentle, appreciative smile on her lips. At least, I hope it was appreciative.

“According to Coutts’ own story,” I continued, “he went for a walk over the stone quarries towards the sea. He thinks he left the house at about nine o’clock, or perhaps later— By Jove!” I said. Mrs. Bradley’s eyes opened. She grinned again.

“Exactly,” she said. “Suppose he did not go for his walk towards the Cove until after the murder! Suppose he knew that at the Cove he would be attacked by Burt! Suppose Meg Tosstick did die by the vicar’s hand, after all! What a score for Mrs. Coutts’ maggot! And how awful for Mrs. Coutts!”

I shook my head, although I myself had voiced the theory, but a little while earlier, in the Manor Library.

“He wouldn’t kill anyone,” I said. Suddenly, in spite of my own previous arguments, I felt convinced of this.

“Facts are facts,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and the fact that emerges clearly from our consideration of the vicar’s movements on the night of the murder is that he had the time and the opportunity to murder Meg Tosstick before he was set upon by Burt and the negro. Added to that, if his wife is right, and the villagers are right, and he is the father of Meg Tosstick’s child, he had a bigger motive than Candy for wanting the girl out of the way. But we have discussed that before. His question all the time would be: ‘How long will the girl keep my secret?’ Nasty, unpleasant situation for the shepherd of Saltmarsh souls!”

I was somewhat appalled, of course. Not, as I say, that I believed in the vicar’s guilt. I don’t believe I ever had, except intellectually, so to speak. The case, as put, however, certainly did hang together. I mean, apart from everything else, there was the point that, while, upon all the evidence, even that of the police who had arrested Candy, poor Bob had had a bare fifteen minutes in which to commit the murder and bring three dozen bottles of assorted beers out of the public house cellar, the vicar had had a possible hour to an hour and a half. I thought I wouldn’t put this point to Mrs. Bradley. She wasn’t safe!

“I’ll see Burt,” I said, “and find out exactly at what time the vicar was attacked.”

“Splendid,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I’ll come with you. You don’t mind going the longer way, via the post office, do you? I really must post this letter.”

Burt was up in his loft. He came down rather obligingly, gave us drinks, and started laughing and talking about the riot in the church.

“Look here, Burt,” I said, “you know the night of August Bank Holiday, when you tied the vicar up in the pound—”

“Oh, dash it!” said Burt, “Let bygones be bygones, can’t you? After the stout work I put in on his behalf yesterday evening at the kirk— look here!”

He pulled up his trousers and showed us two badly-hacked shins. We sympathised, and I thanked him for what he had done.

“I only wanted to ask you the time when the vicar was first set upon at the Cove,” I said. “We want some sort of defence for Candy when his trial comes on.”

Burt put it at twenty-past ten or perhaps half-past. Curiously enough, he didn’t seem sufficiently interested in the murder to ask how the attack on the vicar would assist Candy.

“Not earlier?” I asked, my heart beginning to thump rather horribly.

“Oh, couldn’t have been earlier,” said Burt. “I left the fête as soon as it got round about six o’clock, came back here and had tea, and then went down to the Cove and helped the ‘Sans Baisers’ to land the tomes. My beautifully exact translation of ‘Les Soeurs de Matabilles,’ dear boy.” He patted my knee. “Eighteen and six a copy in England, Mrs. Bradley,”—he had the hardihood to wink at her—“and sold strictly sub rosa and under the ‘snow’ laws, but dirt cheap at the price. Do you still read Browning? Wouldn’t you like to ‘grovel hand and foot in Belial’s gripe’? But anyway, it’s too late, laddie. A gent’s word is his bleeding bond. Besides, the lady opposite would jug me if I so much as touched the dust-jacket of the ‘Soeurs’ now, wouldn’t you, Mrs. Bradley?”

I returned to the Manor with my worst fears confirmed. The vicar could have had ample time to commit the murder at the inn and get over to the Cove by twenty minutes past ten.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Bradley. “That is only one. Come along. Let us check Sir William’s movements.”

“But he came straight back here after the quarrel with the vicar, didn’t he?” I asked.

“He did,” said Mrs. Bradley.

“Then that must be that,” I said, surprised that she had brought his name forward.

“Yes, that must be that,” Mrs. Bradley agreed. I gazed at her rather hard, but could make nothing whatever of her amused smirk. After a moment she said:

“Very well. Let us try Edwy David Burt. Mark this, child. If the vicar had no alibi, neither had Burt.”

“Nor Yorke,” I interpolated, cheering up. “We ought to get hold of Yorke. He’s simple and will tell us about Burt, I should think, because he won’t see what we’re getting at.”

“An excellent idea,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

“What, now?” I asked.

“Why not?” asked Mrs. Bradley. So off we trailed again, up the hill and past the quarries and in at the front gate of the Bungalow. Instead of snooping round the back and taking cover behind the water-butt as preliminaries to our seeing Foster Washington Yorke without Burt seeing us again, Mrs. Bradley led the way to the front door and rang the bell. Burt himself opened the door. His hair was rumpled and his eye was wild, and he had a fountain pen in his hand. He stumped down the passage and flung the door open and scowled at us. He looked positively murderous. Not at all the genial host of an hour earlier.

“Go to hell! I’m busy!” he said, and banged the door in our faces.

“That being that,” said Mrs. Bradley, with her unnerving yelp of laughter, “we will now concentrate upon our objective.”

She led the way to the back regions, and we found the negro chopping wood.

“Did you know Burt wouldn’t want to see us?” I asked the old lady.

“Of course. He always writes at this time of the day,” she answered. “Surely this is a much nicer way of interviewing our friend with the axe than if we had darted from currant bush to currant bush to avoid being seen by the master of the house?”

She hooted, and dug me in the ribs. Yorke grinned. He seemed pleased to see us, and, guided, of course, by Mrs. Bradley’s questions, he gave us a very clear account of the manner in which he and Burt had spent August Bank Holiday. Mrs. Bradley skilfully steered him past the uninformative hours of nine a.m. to nine p.m. but after that his story was interesting—at least, I thought so. It dove-tailed so beautifully with Burt’s that I was fascinated. Burt had left the fête at about six o’clock, it seemed, and had returned to the Bungalow for tea. After tea, he and Yorke had taken advantage of the fact that all the village would be at the fête, to receive the copies of the scrofulous book from the ship which, later, was seen by the vicar. The volumes, which were German-printed copies, in English, of Burt’s translation of a French book, were landed in packing cases marked “Hefferton Carlisle School, Bootle: Social History.” The ship’s boats brought the packing cases to land. Apparently the job was always done openly, boldly, and at dusk. Burt trusted that if one of the packing cases were opened by a customs official or by order of the county police, the fact that it contained copies of a book which had not even been officially banned in England would be sufficiently uninteresting to prevent any further notice being taken. The Customs, said Burt, had no soul for literature.

“Hm!” said Mrs. Bradley to me later on. “If I had to classify Edwy David, I should place his name under the heading of Criminal Optimist. I suppose it never occurred to him that anyone might open the book!”

The phrase “Criminal Optimist,” stuck in my mind. Burt was big enough, ruthless enough, lawless enough, amoral enough to commit even such a beastly crime as the strangling of that poor girl… I allowed my mind to dwell on the idea. I was rather attracted by it. The only flaw seemed to be that Burt had not once been separated from Yorke during that hour and a half during which the murder had taken place. They provided each other with a perfectly watertight alibi. Suddenly I switched my mind on to Yorke the negro. The more I thought of Yorke the more likely it appeared to me that he was the murderer, and that Burt was covering him. Burt would, of course. After all, strangling a girl like Meg Tosstick was so un-English a crime that it was much more probable that Yorke rather than Burt had committed it. I thought of Yorke’s pink-palmed sooty-backed hands with their beautiful, long, thin, fingers. I remembered the way they were curled round the handle of the axe, and I could imagine them curled round a girl’s thin throat. She had had a throat like a child. I could remember the swallowing motion she had made with it when Mrs. Coutts dismissed her. Very pathetic and trying, of course. But what a perfect nuisance that their stories coincided so completely! To me it had all the appearance of being a put-up job. And still one had to take one’s choice. Yorke or Burt? Burt or Yorke? Either? Neither? Both? Stymied, I thought, disgustedly. I was distressed, too, since everything still pointed to Coutts.

“No hope that it was either Burt or the negro,” I said to Daphne that same evening. I didn’t mention her uncle to her, of course.

“What’s collusion?” asked Daphne, suddenly. I didn’t explain, of course. I don’t care to discuss with Daphne the vocabulary of the divorce courts; but the question gave my own idea more weight, so I hastened to the Manor House immediately after tea, to lay my argument before Mrs. Bradley. She scoffed, of course. I had thought she might. What motive would Burt and Yorke have had, she wanted to know, for making up a tale? When did I think the books had been landed, if not before they set upon the vicar and impounded him?

“Burt might be the father of the child,” I said, “and want it kept a secret from Cora.”

“You mean that Burt is the murderer?” said Mrs. Bradley, “and that Yorke knows it?”

“There’s no reason against it, except the ridiculous alibi supplied by Yorke,” I exclaimed. “And you must realise as well as I do that Burt’s morals would allow of anything—adultery, seduction, murder —anything. A man who translates that kind of filth into the English language—”

I found myself almost hysterical upon the subject of Burt’s morals.

“I am glad that you enjoyed the book,” said Mrs. Bradley, calmly. “Of course,” she added, before I could say anything, “as you say, Yorke could have been the murderer, except for this ridiculous alibi supplied by Burt. And Yorke’s morals, for the reason that he is not even a white man—!”

She began to cackle, softly at first and then louder, until she was screeching with hideous merriment. I felt very uncomfortable, Sometimes I could not rid myself of the terrible suspicion that the woman was as mad as a hatter, madder than a March hare, and almost as mad as Mrs. Gatty; and of a second terrible suspicion that sometimes she might be laughing at me.

“However,” she said at last, reassuringly, “I dare say we shall manage to get Candy off. I’m sure I hope so. I hate these hangings. They are barbarous anachronisms, are they not?”

“It isn’t a case of getting Candy off,” I declared with a certain amount of vehemence. “It is a case of proving his innocence to the hilt.”

“Ah, that’s another matter,” said Mrs. Bradley, calmly. “Do you understand the Einstein theory of relativity, dear child?”

I hastened to assure that I did not. I also attempted to convey the impression that I didn’t want to.

“Ah, well,” she said, “if your mind were capable of grasping that theory, there might be some possibility of proving Candy’s innocence.”

A frightful thought struck me. Not, of course, for the first time.

“I say,” I said. “In spite of all you’ve said, you do believe that Candy is innocent, don’t you?”

Mrs. Bradley sighed.

“If only I could prove who fathered the baby!” she said. “If only I could prove it.”

“I suppose you believe poor Bob Candy was guilty of that, too!” I said, hotly. The old woman gazed gravely at me.

“Why, no. I thought we were agreed that in that case there would have been no murder,” she said.

“You mean they would have married, and that would have been that,” I replied, grasping the salient point in the social ethics of the village.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Bradley. But her answer, for some reason, did not satisfy me. Somewhere in our conversation, I felt sure, some vital point had been left untouched on. I racked my brains, but I could think of nothing. At last, more to continue the conversation than for any other reason, I said lamely:

“Funny where the baby can have gone. Do you think the father, whoever he is, can have it in his keeping?”

“Yes and no,” said Mrs. Bradley. She grinned. “The villagers thought it was at the vicarage, didn’t they?” she said. She nodded, slowly, rhythmically and continuously, like those absurd mechanical dolls they use for advertising purposes.

“The prosecution will probably accuse Candy of murdering both mother and child,” she said. “I hope they will, anyway.”

I spent the night in trying to work things out, but couldn’t manage it, of course. Also, I could not get my mind off Burt. He was just the sort of loose-living, foul-tongued man to have illegitimate children, and commit murders, and get drunk, and fake alibis, and engage in criminal conspiracies with his serving-man, I thought. My mind passed on to Lowry and Mrs. Lowry. Unfortunate that they should have been out just when the murder was committed at their place. Well, fortunate in a way, for them, of course. Suddenly I stiffened. My feet curled with excitement. What of Lowry? What of that gross and hairless man? What of the pig, as Mrs. Gatty had called him? Why had he given Meg Tosstick shelter, food and care? Why had he promised her a job as soon as she was well enough to take it? The thing was crystal-clear. He was the father of Meg Tosstick’s child! Then why, I asked myself, rising on my elbow in the bed to ask the question, why had he killed the girl? Pat came the answer. He was afraid she would betray him to her lover. He feared Bob Candy’s vengeance. And Bob, the dupe, the wronged, the innocent—Bob was being held on the capital charge, while this arch-egg, hairless, gross, bestial and poisonous, got away with two murders, those of the poor deluded girl and her innocent new-born child!

I remember grinding my teeth. I suppose I lay down and slept after that. In the morning, as I ate my breakfast, and allowed the usual early-morning, eight forty-five-edition of Coutts v. Coutts to go in at one ear and out at the other, I made up my mind to go myself to Lowry and confront him with the truth. One thing only prevented my carrying out this resolve. One person, rather. Mrs. Bradley. I was afraid of the old lady. I admit it, frankly. The idea of doing anything in the case without her full approbation and consent became repugnant to me. After breakfast, on pretence (a subterfuge which I had been obliged to shelter behind some half-dozen times before to cloak my frequent visits to the Manor House) of visiting the sick, who were, of course, much better off without me, I went to lay my new suspicions before Mrs. Bradley. She immediately damped my ardour.

“I’m sorry for your sake, dear child,” she said, “but I took the liberty immediately I heard that the murder had been committed, of checking Lowry’s alibi by making discreet but very searching enquiries round the village, and it seems that not one minute of the day was he alone, or even in the sole company of Mrs. Lowry. I learn that he collected a large party of friends and treated them to all the fun of the fair. Part of the time he was seen minding the cocoanut shy, or watching your fortune-telling tent, Noel, my dear child, wittily inviting all and sundry to enter. He danced with sixteen maids and matrons, including Cora McCanley, and it was nearly twelve o’clock when he returned to the Mornington Arms. His alibi is hole-proof, fool-proof, and destruction-proof. And, of course,” said Mrs. Bradley, at the end of this unusually energetic outburst, “there is no reason to suspect that so perfect an alibi conceals more than it reveals, dear child. I believe the landlord of the Mornington Arms is a very popular man. He certainly is a very good-humoured one.”

I grinned. “Yes, I can’t see that we can do much with Lowry, after all,” I said. “He couldn’t have committed the murder by proxy, could he?”

I smiled weakly at my own joke, and then suddenly stiffened. The word proxy always leads me to think about Queen Mary Tudor, and from Queen Mary Tudor it is an easy transition to Mrs. Coutts.

“What about Mrs. Coutts?” I said, excitedly. “Motive enough there, and heaps of opportunity! Look here! After dusk she began her usual snooping about the park in search of courting couples, so you can jolly well bet that nobody spotted her or can swear definitely to her having been at any particular place at any particular moment. She can take cover like a Red Indian! What was to prevent her slinking off to the inn, murdering the poor girl while the barmen and Mabel Thingummy were busy serving in the pub, and going home to the vicarage and raising that hue and cry! Why, hang it all!” I exclaimed, getting all hectic, “That hue and cry might only have been a blind! She may have waited and waited for the evening of the fête to afford her the opportunity for the murder! How’s that?”

“Very creditable indeed,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I see Bob Candy being carried shoulder-high out of the court! Oh,” she broke off, “it’s not Bob I’m worrying about. I firmly believe that we can get him off. Ferdinand will eat the prosecution. The police arrested the lad too soon.”

“How do you mean—you are not worried about Bob?” I asked. “Do you mean that something else is worrying you?”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “The second murder—the murder that nobody has mentioned, the murder without a corpse—is worrying me to death, because I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Whatever can you mean?” I gasped.

“The murder of Cora McCanley,” replied the little old woman astoundingly.

“But she isn’t murdered,” I said. “She’s on tour with a show called —called—”

“Home Birds, ” said Mrs. Bradley. “But she isn’t, you know. That’s just my trouble. But I can’t get hold of any definite information.”

“She had a telegram,” I said. “She went off suddenly. Caught the 3.30 train or something. That’s all definite enough, I should think.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, mechanically, as though her thoughts were far away. “Who told you about the train?” she asked, waking up a bit.

“Burt,” I replied. “He told us both. Oh, no, he didn’t mention the train! Still, it’s the only possible train of the day, isn’t it? I say,” I went on, rather aghast, of course, “that row she had with Burt!” I had just remembered it.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. She did not speak mechanically this time. “That row she had with Burt, dear child, is both interesting and important. And so are all the other rows she had with Burt.”

“What other rows?” I asked.

“About money matters,” Mrs. Bradley replied.

“I thought that was just one long continuous row,” I said.