Saltmarsh Murders

CHAPTER XVIII

the last straw

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We gasped.

“What?” said old Coutts. “We actually buried the wrong girl?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If it had come off, you see, it would have been a splendid move to avoid discovery. No difficult and dangerous digging up of graves in the churchyard at night. No risk that the undertaker would recognise that the girl for whom the coffin was prepared was not the girl whose sweetheart had been arrested for murder—”

“But what on earth made you think of having the body exhumed?” demanded Sir William.

“Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, “granted all the rest of the story, including the fact of the secret passage, it was the obvious thing to do, wasn’t it? The only thing I cannot understand, dear people, is why on earth you have all jumped to the conclusion that Lowry was the murderer. Why, you can’t really imagine a girl like Cora McCanley falling in love with Lowry! Lowry is incestuous, he is cowardly, and he was blackmailed into assisting the murderer. But the actual murderer of Meg Tosstick and Cora McCanley—”

“No, no!” shrieked Mrs. Coutts, and fainted.

It was the second time in our respective existences that I had clasped Mrs. Coutts to my breast. Heaven knows I didn’t want to, but noblesse oblige, of course. I looked round helplessly. She was no light weight, and she hung on my arms, which were clasped strongly but inelegantly round her waist, more like a sack of flour than the languishing lily with whom I have heard a fainting lady compared.

The settee was cleared and we laid her down. She was a rather unnerving bluish colour, and her lips were drawn back from her teeth almost in a snarl. Mrs. Bradley stepped forward, knelt by the couch and did all the things that people in the know do do on these, to me, positively demoralising occasions. But it was not the slightest use. Mrs. Coutts was dead.

People withdrew, of course, as decently and quietly as they could, and I was going, too, when old Coutts, who, with myself and Mrs. Bradley, had remained behind in the room, grabbed me by the arm.

“Stay with me, Wells,” he said. “I suppose we must telephone for a doctor.”

Mrs. Bradley, to whom the suggestion seemed to be made, shrugged her shoulders.

“I can write the certificate if you like,” she said. “I am qualified to do so.”

“Yes… Thank you,” said old Coutts.

He sat down and put his hands to his face.

“This is my fault,” he said. Mrs. Bradley sat down, too, and motioned me to a seat.

“Let us not talk of faults,” she said gently. “Perhaps I am at fault, too. I knew that I was going to cause her death. I had to choose between killing her through shock, or as an alternative—”

Old Coutts lifted his head.

“As an alternative?” he repeated heavily.

“Letting her stand her trial,” said Mrs. Bradley.

“She did commit the murders, then?” Coutts asked. He did not seem in the least surprised.

Mrs. Bradley inclined her head.

“And she would have committed others,” she said. “That is why I had to make a choice.” She looked gravely and sadly at the body. “I have made it,” she concluded. “There was Daphne to consider…”

“Yes…” said old Coutts. “Thank you.” He got up and stumbled out of the room. We could hear him walking up and down his study. Up and down… up and down.

“I had better tell you everything, Noel, I think,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Poor boy. You look tired.”

“I’m ill,” I said. I went outside, and, for some reason, was horribly sick. When I came back, fit for society but shaking at the knees, Mrs. Coutts’ body had been covered. I could make out its thin, rigid, pathetic outline under a dark-blue bed-cover.

“She murdered Meg Tosstick on the Monday, Cora McCanley on the Tuesday and made an attempt on Daphne Coutts on the following Saturday week. You remember the incident at the organ? As soon as you told me about that, I knew all the rest. The vestry door was the clue.”

“But that wasn’t Mrs. Coutts, surely?” I said. “Why, she was prostrate in bed with one of her fearful headaches when we arrived home.”

“She was prostrate in bed with a heart attack brought on by rage, excitement, and the expenditure of nervous and physical energy,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did you know her heart was weak?”

“Well, more or less, I suppose,” I said.

“And, of course, her nervous system had been in a state of attrition for years,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Terrible. Poor, poor woman.”

She sounded so genuinely sorry that I gazed in astonishment. After all, this was the “poor, poor woman” who would have allowed Bob Candy and the innkeeper, Lowry, to be hanged for her crimes.

“Mr. Coutts allowed temptation to overcome him in the matter of Meg Tosstick while she was a servant in his house,” said Mrs. Bradley in a level voice that did not comment, criticise or condemn, “and, of course, Mrs. Coutts found it out. Do you remember the first time she came back from the inn when she had seen the mother and the newly-born child?”

“Oh, yes, I remember her coming in,” I said. I did, of course, very vividly. “But you are wrong about one thing. She did not see the mother and baby. The Lowrys refused her admittance.”

“I know she said they did,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But I am sure that was an untrue statement. They did let her in, and it was she who ordered them not to admit anyone else because the baby took after her husband in appearance. She had a fairly firm hold over the Lowrys, remember.”

“A hold over them!” I said. This, of course, was a new one to me.

“They were incestuous,” said Mrs. Bradley. She paused. “I suppose it is because we have inherited the Jewish code of morals that incest is considered to be a sin,” she continued, watching my face. “Biologically I believe there is no weighty reason against it. However, most people regard it as a somewhat undesirable social foible, and Mrs. Coutts certainly put pressure on the Lowrys—blackmail, some people would call it—when she discovered that they were brother and sister and had indulged at some time or another in an illicit relationship.”

“Oh, yes. She would find it out, if there was anything nasty going on,” I said, bitterly. “She loved evil. It fascinated her, I think.”

“She had her punishment,” said Mrs. Bradley, seriously. “She found out that Meg Tosstick was with child, and she guessed that it was her own husband who had seduced the girl.”

“Didn’t she know for certain?” I asked.

“Not until the birth of the child, I think. The resemblance then was unmistakable. Some new-born babies bear a most extraordinary resemblance to one of their progenitors, as I said; this resemblance tends to become less marked as the child grows older. I am sure that Meg did not confess, and I don’t think Mr. Coutts was very likely to do so, was he?”

“His life was pretty much of a hell as it was,” said I. “I don’t suppose he wanted to make matters worse.”

“Yes, it must be hell to be compelled to lead the existence of a monk when one’s urge for procreation is very strong,” said Mrs. Bradley. “That was the trouble, of course.”

“But surely—” I said awkwardly, lacking her beautifully scientific detachment—“Cora McCanley, I mean—”

“Oh, Mr. Coutts was not Cora McCanley’s mysterious lover,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Nor was Sir William Kingston-Fox.” She smiled wickedly at me. I could have kicked myself for jumping to conclusions. “Don’t you remember telling me what a long holiday Mr. Bransome Burns was spending in these parts?” she said. “Burns was a financier. That, to the impecunious Cora, meant a good deal, of course. She had dug enough money out of Burns to go for that jaunt to London that I spoke about, and had made up her mind to go. Then, as I told you— only you were convinced I was talking about Sir William—Burns telephoned to put her off, and she arranged to hoodwink Burt, and, later, return to the Bungalow. The idea of deceiving Burt, with whom she had quarrelled violently, appealed to Cora, just as I said before, and the story I told of her return and the manner of it was also true. I don’t know how long she had been at the Bungalow waiting for Burns, who couldn’t get away from you all on the seashore that night, when Mrs. Coutts arrived by way of the underground passage from the inn. Cora must have been fearfully annoyed at first, and then fearfully alarmed. Mrs. Coutts strangled her to death after having stunned her with the poker. Do you remember Burt’s poker? And do you remember that the Chief Constable told us Cora had had a blow on the back of the head?”

I nodded, and shuddered, of course; I remembered how I myself had picked up that poker once with the intention of knocking out Burt with it.

“And, of course, if anybody had seen Mrs. Coutts on her way back from the Bungalow that evening, she had her reason ready. She pretended she had gone out to look for you all and persuade you to come home, didn’t she? Do you remember that? Only, she gave the wrong time, I expect, to her husband. She went to the Bungalow much earlier than she said, and she had to race back to the inn to get hold of Lowry and tell him he must remove Cora’s body.”

“I remember how fearfully knocked out she was on that Tuesday night,” I said. “It’s a wonder her heart stood the strain of the two murders, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Mrs. Bradley. “She probably considered that she was doing the will of God in ridding the earth of what she considered to be two dreadfully depraved and wicked people. She knew that Cora was an actress, and she knew that the vicar had yielded to temptation in the form of Meg Tosstick. She grew suspicious even of little Daphne, you remember, and it is a very good thing, Noel, that you were sentimental enough to mount guard over the girl as you did. Of course, as the mania took root, there is no doubt that she would have considered herself a crusader against all sexual intercourse. She was the wrong age, my dear Noel, to make the discovery that her husband had deceived her. It was an awful tragedy, that meaningless death of poor Cora McCanley.”

“Do you think Coutts will get over it?” I asked.

“Yes, when the trial of Lowry is over, I am sure he will,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He’s had a shock, but it isn’t as though he was fond of her, you see.”

“Then how did Lowry come in?” I asked.

“He was paid by Mr. Coutts to look after Meg Tosstick,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and I think it was his own idea, not Mrs. Coutts’, to change the bodies of the two girls when she had made him drag the body of Cora to the inn. Do you realise he had no alibi (except that supplied by his sister) after the bar opened on that Tuesday evening?”

“And the baby?” I said.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Bradley, “the baby is alive somewhere, I have no doubt. Mrs. Coutts wanted to kill it, I expect, but found she couldn’t. Women are strangely inhibited from killing children, Noel, my dear.”