Saltmarsh Murders

CHAPTER XI

reappearance of cora

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Our village hall, just before the commencement of one of our annual concerts, is as good a place as I know for the exchange of confidences. I had been up to see Burt about Cora. After what Mrs. Bradley had suggested, I was resolved upon making a few guarded enquiries. He gave me beer and answered my questions with what I could only regard as suspicious readiness. I made the village concert the excuse for introducing the subject. As a matter of fact, I pretended not to know that Cora McCanley was to be absent for any length of time from the Bungalow, and represented myself as an agent from Mrs. Coutts with the request that Cora would do us a song and dance item if she returned from her tour in time. Of course, had Burt known Mrs. C. as I do, he would never have swallowed this. Anything less like Cora McCanley’s idea of a song and dance show than the average item in the average village concert in Saltmarsh can scarcely be imagined. Mrs. Coutts exercises a rigid censorship over the concert programme and would be about as agreeable to the Folies Bergère taking part as to anyone of Cora’s reputation doing so. Burt, however, was not wise to this, and he answered, quite civilly, that Cora was off to God-knows-where in some bleeding high-kicking revue, and would only return when the boss bunked with the gross takings. His expressions, of course, not mine.

“Oh,” I said, affecting to be considerably dashed. “Then you don’t think she will be back by to-morrow week?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t even the faintest idea where she is. I don’t even know the name of the people who are running the show, and, except that she is supposed to be touring the North-Eastern counties with the soul-destroying, hick and hayseed, damnation stuff, I couldn’t put a finger on Cora for the next few weeks for any money you offered me.”

I went away, a sadder, and, of course, a wiser man. Horrible suspicions nestled like adders in my mind.

“And when she does come back,” said Burt, as he saw me off the premises, “she’ll get what’s coming to her. That’s how.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. He explained. Cora was “going gay” as I believe the saying is. A man, and so on. His remarks were expressive, but not edifying. A bit of a brute, I should say. And yet, of course, if he really thought she was coming back, he couldn’t possibly have murdered her. And yet, again, if he wished to disprove any wild rumours of her death—I went straight to Mrs. Bradley and confided to her my doubts and fears. For or against Burt, so to speak. She shook her head.

She said, “Please don’t say anything to him about my suspicions of Cora McCanley’s death. I don’t want the poor boy going round with a hatchet.”

“Poor boy!” I snorted. At least it was intended for a snort. They are not easy words to snort, of course. “Do you know he used to beat her?”

“Well, I don’t suppose she minded that,” said Mrs. Bradley, noting it down. As Daphne had said practically the same thing, I couldn’t very well call the old woman a fool. Besides, she did not give me the opportunity to do so, for she continued, almost without a pause, but with her frightful grin:

“Sadist plus masochist equals happy marriage.” I blinked, and very slowly translated the idiom into reasonable English.

“Oh, cave-man stuff?” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Bradley. She cackled. I am prepared to wager that, if there was any cave-man stuff in either of her marriages, it was on the distaff side, so to speak.

“Let it pass,” I said, quoting from my favourite author. “But about poor Cora McCanley. We ought to inform the police.”

“I have done so,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “I informed them while you were up at the Bungalow this afternoon.”

“What did they say?”

“They said,” replied Mrs. Bradley, “that they would make enquiries. They thought—” she emphasised the word very slightly, “that I was suffering from murder-phobia.”

“From what?” I asked, trying vainly this time to cope with the patois.

“That isn’t a scientific term,” explained Mrs. Bradley. “I mean that the police are accustomed to receive scaremongers’ tales in any district where a murder has been committed. They will go up to the Bungalow, interview Burt, get this story, check it as far as Wyemouth Harbour main line railway station, and, if it checks with Cora’s movements on the day she was murdered, they will let it go at that unless I can give them some further proof that my assertions are the truth.”

“And can’t you?”

“Plenty, speaking psychologically. None, speaking in the language of the police.”

For some time after this conversation, we were both busy over Bob, and on account of the concert, and we did not meet again until the evening of the entertainment. Mrs. Bradley had been up to London twice, I knew, to talk matters over with her son, Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, the defending counsel, and I had visited Bob Candy, of course, two or three times, and tried to cheer him up, for, as the time of the trial grew nearer, he seemed to be sinking into a morbid condition of the utmost melancholy and depression, and talked of pleading guilty and so getting the trial over more quickly.

“Oh, you can’t do that, Bob!” I exclaimed. “Think how unfair it would be to all the people who believe in you!”

He promised that he would drop the idea, but I wondered whether Mrs. Bradley were right, of course, and the poor fellow, in a mood of desperation, had done the deed of which he was accused. She had not said she believed Bob was guilty, but her manner indicated it. Commonsense asserted itself, however, in my own case. Why had Bob waited until eleven days after the birth of the baby, when he must have known for nearly six months that Meg was to be the mother of a child? My three years in London slums had taught me that in cases of this kind the jealous lover invariably tries to take his revenge before the birth of the child, and, as I saw the thing, Bob was in the position of jealous lover. And what had become of the baby? Killed, I supposed, and not by Bob. Ah, but then, I did not believe that Bob had killed Meg either.

At the concert, which was held in the village hall, of course, I was seated in the front row at the far left-hand side, and Mrs. Bradley sat next to me. On her right was little Gatty. Mrs. Gatty’s name was on the programme in a one-act sketch. I was surprised. We had never dreamed of asking Mrs. Gatty to take part in the concerts before. I pointed out the name to Mrs. Bradley.

“This is your doing,” I said accusingly. She nodded and grinned.

“The completion of my cure. I think you will find that Mrs. Gatty’s maggot has been destroyed for good and all,” she said.

“No!” I exclaimed. It was so, of course. But I anticipate the sequence of events.

“You were asking me about Cora McCanley,” said Mrs. Bradley, suddenly. “The police have done little more than I said they would, especially as Burt received a letter from her three days ago.”

“Genuine?” I asked. She nodded.

“Cora had written it, certainly,” she said. “It was dated for the day previous to that on which Burt received it, and was postmarked at Leeds.”

“Leeds is a big city,” I remarked, idiotically.

“Quite. That fact, however, did not prevent the police trying to find out whether a show called Home Birds was put on during the past few weeks.”

“And it wasn’t!” I exclaimed. “Good heavens!”

“Of course it was,” Mrs. Bradley retorted. “The person who murdered Cora McCanley and Meg Tosstick isn’t a fool, young man.”

“But Cora—” I began.

“Had changed her stage name, according to Edwy David Burt, but he doesn’t know what the new one was. Flossie Something, he thinks. Oh,”—she cackled wildly—“and the naughty boy told me that he had tunnelled a cross-passage from the foundations of the Bungalow to meet the old smugglers’ passage from the inn. He used to get the books along that way when for any reason the overland route was dangerous or the weather was very bad. So Lowry did not come into the smuggling business after all, you see. Never mind! It was a very good idea of yours, dear child.”

She poked me in the ribs and laughed again, very heartily. I shrugged my shoulders and returned to the real subject of our conversation.

“And the show possessed no Flossie?” I asked, keenly.

“On the contrary, it possessed two Flossies,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Flossie P. Kennedy, and Flossie Moran. Take your choice.”

“You mean that neither of them is Cora?”

“Of course neither of them is Cora. Burt and the police both think that Cora went off with a lover, and never had any intention of joining the show. We shall hear next, I firmly believe, that Cora never received any telegram inviting her to join the show. What happened, I think, was that Cora and her lover, between them, worked that letter. In the reprehensible speech of the day, a stunt like that is old stuff. The lover got Cora McCanley to write it and send it to a friend in the company, with instructions that it was to be forwarded to Burt when the company arrived in Leeds. Probably the letter was written and sent off on the very day the poor girl was murdered. Are you getting hold of any salient point, child?”

“You mean that Cora did have a lover just as the police say, and that he murdered her just as they were planning to do a bunk together? The letter was to cover their tracks,” I suggested.

“Quite good. Go on.”

“Well, I mean, it’s the murder part that I don’t see—why shouldn’t the police and Burt be right in supposing that Cora has merely gone off with another man? That type always does, you know.”

“Yes, but why was Meg Tosstick murdered?” demanded Mrs. Bradley.

“But, good heavens, you don’t think that Bob murdered Cora, do you?” I asked. She shook her head.

“Of course I don’t,” she replied. Then she added, “I am giving the police about five days in which to discover that all of Cora’s old or new associates can be accounted for. And you will note, my friend, that nobody has left the village of Saltmarsh since Cora’s disappearance. Therefore, presuming that her lover is still in Saltmarsh, she cannot possibly have gone off with him. Therefore, where is she?”

I looked at my watch. “We’re eight minutes late in starting,” I said.

Mrs. Bradley nodded.

“You have solved the problem of the identity of this mysterious lover, of course?” she said, after a pause.

“Oh, yes,” I replied. “Lowry.”

“I think not,” she said. “In fact, I know not.”

“Oh?” I said, racking my brains. But nothing came except the thought of Sir William Kingston-Fox.

“Not—the Manor House?” I suggested. She looked surprised, but rather pleased, I thought.

“Clever child,” she said. “Yes. From the Manor House, as you so discreetly put it. How did you know?”

“It was a mere guess,” I replied modestly. “How did you get to know?”

“Well, obviously Cora McCanley would not be attracted by a poor man,” she said.

“No, of course not,” I agreed, thinking of Cora’s many quarrels with Burt over money matters.

“So I thought about everybody in the village and wrote down a list of all those men who would have sufficient money to attract the young woman. Then I used my powers of observation and deduction, such as they are, and fixed upon—our mutual friend.” She looked at me curiously. “But I can’t imagine how you got hold of the same idea,” she said.

“Well,” I modestly replied, “of course I have not the advantage of living under the same roof as the gentleman in question, but I hope I can use my common-sense.”

“Queer,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He used to be absolutely wrapped up in Margaret,” she continued, “but, I don’t know—since that quarrel about the dog last July matters have been different. Well, to cut the story short, dear child, I have received from his own lips an account of how he had arranged to go to London and meet Cora at the Whittier Hotel in the Strand. At the last minute he changed his mind—”

“Funked the publicity, I suppose,” I interpolated.

“—and telephoned Cora to say he wasn’t coming.”

“Telephoned?” I exclaimed.

“Yes. And Cora answered, and agreed that it was too risky. She then invited him to come on the Tuesday evening to the Bungalow, and he promised to go.”

“But he didn’t go!” I exclaimed. “He couldn’t have gone, because he was with us, patrolling the seashore, until one o’clock in the morning.”

“Exactly. He had no chance of letting Cora know that he had been roped in for that, because he could never get to the telephone at the Manor House without one of the servants or one of us being at hand and able to overhear what he said. So he trusted to luck that he would be able to give you all the slip in the dusk and go to the Bungalow after all.”

I chuckled.

“Not very easy to manage,” I said, “considering that for safety’s sake we all hunted in couples.”

“It was impossible to manage it,” said Mrs. Bradley, firmly, “and yet Cora has disappeared.”

“Yes, but hang it all—” I began doubtfully.

“You still don’t believe, then, that the poor girl is dead?” she asked. I shook my head. After all, I had thought of it, on and off, for a whole week, so I considered that my opinion was at least as valuable as her own. I had even discussed the thing with Daphne and we agreed in every particular.

“I think she’s left Burt, and our lover-friend too, for some other man. After all, that is the police theory and it is Burt’s own theory, and if she couldn’t get the Manor House one, she must have made up her mind to another.”

They put the lights out then, and the concert began with a part-song by the choir. Daphne played, and I conducted. I had not intended to conduct, but in the middle of the verse I could detect the tenors trying to force the pace, so I rose from my seat and kept the time for them. That is the sort of thing which makes one unpopular, of course, but what else can one do on these awkward occasions? The choir sang a second song, a madrigal this time, and received a round of undeserved applause. The usual recitations, solos, concertina, and cornet solo items followed, and the local morris team gave a good show. I like those bells we wear, and I rather fancy myself in the braces. Very hot. So were we, by the time the dances were over.

The interval lasted for ten minutes, while Mrs. Coutts came from behind the scenes and talked to Sir William Kingston-Fox and, generally speaking, collared all the credit that was due elsewhere. Having shed my flannels and resumed mufti, I slid into my seat beside Mrs. Bradley, and waited, with a considerable amount of interest, for the play to commence. The play had been Mrs. Bradley’s idea, and she had coached the players. I was amazed at the result. Margaret Kingston-Fox had the part of a young wife and William Coutts was her kid brother. They were to the life. The young husband was played by a professional actor, a friend of Mrs. Bradley. It was a stiffish part, of course, and you could spot the professional style. But it was Mrs. Gatty who was the eye-opener. As a mischief-making spinster aunt, she was supreme. She was screamingly funny, absolutely unselfconscious and she never once over-played the part. I’ve never known the village enthusiastic over one of our concerts before, but they wouldn’t go home until they had had the sketch done right through for the second time.

“How on earth—?” I asked. Mrs. Bradley laughed.

“The poor woman only wanted to assert herself a little,” she said. “She wanted the limelight, child. Now she has got it. She won’t qualify for admission to an asylum just yet.”

“By Jove,” I said, in the intervals of clapping Mrs. Gatty, who was taking her fifth curtain, “you are a wonderful woman, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied. I dropped the subject, of course. You can’t do yourself justice when you try to compliment people who have that kind of impression about themselves. I said, rather nastily:

“And you don’t know where the body is?”

“Bodies are,” corrected Mrs. Bradley, as we rose to the National Anthem. I walked beside her as far as the gates of the Manor House.

“We shall have to search the stone quarries. It’s the only thing.”

“How are we going to get it done thoroughly?”

“Say you’ve lost a wad of Treasury notes there,” I suggested, grinning, “and you’ll get the quarries positively combed.”

She took up the idea with enthusiasm, and next day the news spread like lightning.

“Of course, if you are right, it won’t do for a child to find the body,” I said doubtfully. I hadn’t thought of that until the moment of mentioning it.

“Don’t worry,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “The bodies—plural, dear child!—are not in the stone quarries. My aim was to distract the attention of the village from the place where the real search will have to be made.”

“And where is that?” I asked. “Oh, of course, the sea-shore.”

“No,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “Use your bean—if any!”

I gasped. The woman read Wodehouse. There was hope for her salvation, I felt. Well, perhaps that thought is a little risqué for a wearer of the cloth. Anyway, I regarded her with a new respect. No woman could be completely bats who could not only read but appositely quote our greatest living author. (Opinion expressed without prejudice, and merely in the interests of constructive criticism, of course.)

“Forward the Light Brigade!” said I.

“To the churchyard,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a grim chuckle.

“To the churchyard?” I exclaimed, rather dashed at the woman’s frightful blasphemy.

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, impatiently. “I’m giving this elusive murderer of girls credit for possessing brains. A churchyard is such an obvious place in which to bury a dead body that very few people would think of looking there for evidences of murder.”

“But—but where?” I babbled wildly, torn between the most frightful curiosity I’ve ever known, and a conscience-stricken conviction that old Coutts ought to be on the spot to cope with the rather frightful situation which was beginning to take the chair.

“Of course, I’m not going to do anything illegal,” said Mrs. Bradley, impatiently. “But before I lose my wad of Treasury notes in the stone quarries, we must get an exhumation order. And we ought to have it at once. The body has been buried too long already. I don’t want squabbling over the identification of the corpse.”

“But you can’t exhume the whole churchyard!” I exclaimed, probably ungrammatically.

“Of course not, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley, patiently this time. “Meg Tosstick’s grave will be sufficient, I expect.”

Well, it was, of course. On the night, or rather, in the very early morning, after the villagers had searched for Mrs. Bradley’s wallet— and found it, of course—trust the old lady to do a job thoroughly—a party of us, including old Coutts and myself, Ferdinand Lestrange, a representative of the Home Office, and a fairly stout squad of police, including the police doctor, watched the exhumation of Meg Tosstick’s body. Only it wasn’t Meg Tosstick’s body. It was Cora McCanley’s.