The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics)

by John Bude

  “I don't know what to think, yet,” snapped the Inspector. “I'll come up to Greylings straight away. Meet me there, if you will. We'll go through those personal effects again.”

  He rang off and, fastening his cape, strode to the door. Just as he was about to climb into the car, Grouch came up followed by a thin, meagre individual with a ferrety face and shifty, bloodshot eyes. The Constable saluted.

  “Well?” asked the Inspector impatiently.

  “Ned Salter, sir. He wishes to make a statement.”

  “To corroborate Bedruthen's evidence, I suppose? I can't see to it now, Grouch. Take down the statement yourself and get the witness to sign it. I'll be down here again later.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The car thrummed up the hill, whilst Grouch, followed by the somewhat penitent and chastened figure of the poacher, disappeared into the little office.

  The Inspector was worried. This matter of the money was puzzling. He felt quite certain that when he had gone through the pockets of the dead man on Monday night, save for a handful of silver and copper, Tregarthan had no other money on his person. Moreover, the Vicar had, on Tuesday morning, gone through the desk which stood in the sitting-room, and obviously had not come across the notes there. Where, then, had the money vanished? Was it possible that Tregarthan had spent the full forty pounds after leaving the bank at Greystoke? That seemed an unlikely hypothesis. According to the Vicar's explanation over the phone, this money was a sort of monthly allowance set aside by Tregarthan for the payment of wages and ordinary household expenses. It seemed improbable that he had spent the lot in a single day. The Inspector sighed. It looked as if a new complication was on the way. Robbery. But surely Tregarthan had not been murdered for the sake of the forty pounds in his pocket? There was no indication that the murderer had gained access to the sitting-room after the crime and taken the notes from the dead man's wallet. The wallet had been there. He remembered that. An ordinary soft leather wallet containing a few visiting cards—his own and other people's—a couple of tickets for a charity concert at Greystoke, a new gun licence—but no Bank or Treasury notes. Moreover, if, as he suspected, Ronald Hardy was the man they were looking for, what on earth would induce the fellow to risk his life for a measly forty pounds? No man of Hardy's calibre would murder for money—at least, not for such a paltry amount. Something was wrong somewhere. But what?

  “Confound it!” thought the Inspector. “Is this going to knock my unassailable little theory on the head? We don't want the experts—bless ’em!—shoving in their noses at this stage of affairs.”

  It was in a mixed mood, therefore, of annoyance and bewilderment that Inspector Bigswell met the Vicar on the Greylings drive and preceded him into the sitting-room. The burly Constable in charge declared emphatically, when questioned, that nobody had entered the sitting-room since he had been on duty. Both the keys of the french windows and the door had not left his pocket. Nothing had been touched.

  The Inspector, on Monday night, had collected the various articles found on the dead man and locked them away in a small attaché case bearing Tregarthan's initials. He himself had kept the key since Monday night.

  This case he at once opened and, selecting the pocket-book and the wallet as the only possible hiding-places for the notes, he carefully searched them. There was no trace of the money!

  “But this is incredible!” exclaimed the Vicar, who had anxiously watched the Inspector's proceedings. “Ruth swears that her uncle drew the money from the bank on Monday morning. He went over to Greystoke expressly for that purpose.”

  “Well, it's not here now,” said the Inspector bluntly. “D'you know where Tregarthan banked?”

  “The London and Provincial. I bank there myself. I've met Tregarthan there more than once.”

  “Then it will be an easy matter to find out if he did draw the cheque as Miss Tregarthan supposes. But it may prove a more ticklish matter to find out what happened to the money after he left the bank. Does Miss Tregarthan know if her uncle had the money on him, say, at dinner on Monday evening?”

  “I really can't say,” said the Vicar. “I didn't feel justified in asking her any questions on my own account. But if you care——”

  The Inspector nodded.

  “I think it advisable, Mr. Dodd. This may or may not have some connection with the major crime, but in any case the matter's got to be investigated.”

  Leaving word with the Constable to relock the door and pocket the key, the two men climbed back into the car and were driven to the Vicarage.

  Ruth was in the drawing-room sitting over afternoon tea with Ethel Dodd. On learning that Inspector Bigswell wished to see her in the study, she hesitated, paled a little, apparently disconcerted by this sudden request. But realising that the interview was unavoidable she crossed the hall, followed by the Vicar, and went into the study.

  The Inspector touched his hat.

  “Sorry to trouble you again, Miss Tregarthan,” he said, watching the girl closely. “But I've come about——”

  He hesitated deliberately.

  “Yes?” demanded Ruth with patent anxiety.

  “I've come about this money which your uncle drew out of the bank on Monday morning.”

  Her relief was obvious—a fact which did not escape the Inspector's notice. Had she thought, perhaps, that he had other more disagreeable news to impart? The announcement, perhaps, that Ronald Hardy had been run to earth, and under the pressure of cross-examination made a full confession to the crime.

  “Well, what about it, Inspector?”

  “Simply, Miss Tregarthan, that we've been through the effects which were on your uncle's person and the notes are not there.”

  “Not there? But he had them on him at dinner on Monday night. I remember asking him for a couple of pounds for household purposes, and he took out his wallet and handed me the two notes.”

  “Putting the wallet back into his pocket?”

  “Into his inside breast-pocket. Yes.”

  “And you imagine the full forty pounds was in his possession then, Miss Tregarthan?”

  “Oh, I'm certain of it. Thirty pounds of it was in five-pound notes and the remaining ten in pound Treasury notes. He took out the whole amount and placed it on the table, counted roughly through the amount, and handed me the two pounds.”

  “Can you account for the fact that the money was not found on his person later that same evening?”

  Ruth shook her head. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the mystery.

  “I can't understand it at all, Inspector. The only other place where he might have hidden the notes was in his cash-box. But, Mr. Dodd, as you know, went through my uncle's desk yesterday morning. The cash-box was always unlocked since my uncle thought it sufficient safeguard to lock the desk itself. As a matter of fact the lock on the cash-box was broken.”

  “And you found nothing in that box, Mr. Dodd?” asked the Inspector, turning on the Vicar.

  “Nothing.”

  Bigswell pondered for a moment, as if seeking for a new line of attack, then he said briskly: “You'll have no objection, Miss Tregarthan, if I verify your statement as to your uncle's action on Monday morning?”

  Ruth looked surprised. A quick flush of resentment heightened the colour of her cheeks.

  “You doubt my word?”

  “No, it's not that. I would just like to make sure that there has been no mistake about the amount.”

  “Very well,” said Ruth coldly. “I'll make the enquiry straight away if you wish. I happen to know Mr. Potter, the local manager of the bank. He lives over the premises. So if you're amenable, Inspector, I'll ring through to him now and find out what you want to know.”

  “I should be grateful,” said the Inspector graciously, not in any way ruffled by the girl's unconcealed asperity.

  He felt that he was within the bounds of possibility that Ruth had invented this story about the forty pounds, in order to put him off the scent. If Ruth guessed that he w
as suspicious of Hardy, she might have invented the story to confuse him as to the motive for the murder. He was taking no chances.

  But ten minutes later he knew without any doubt that the girl had told the truth. Tregarthan had drawn a cheque for forty pounds. Mr. Potter himself had attended to the matter. He had handed Mr. Tregarthan six Bank of England notes for five pounds and ten one-pound Treasury notes. Had he the numbers of the Bank of England notes? But most certainly he had. If the Inspector would like—— . The Inspector did like, and there and then he copied down the numbers in his note-book. Then, with renewed apologies for breaking in on Miss Tregarthan at tea-time, he returned to Greylings.

  The next step in this additional mystery was to question the Cowpers. They alone had access to the sitting-room after the murder was committed and before Ruth Tregarthan had found her uncle's body. The idea that Ruth herself had taken the notes from her uncle's wallet he dismissed as absurd and fantastic. The girl was genuinely shocked by the tragedy and, in any case, there would have been little enough time for her to have slipped the wallet from Tregarthan's pocket, extracted the notes, replaced the wallet and hidden the notes on her person. According to the Cowpers’ evidence, she called out to them the moment she had entered the room and found her uncle shot. This left him with the Cowpers.

  Suppose the Cowpers had heard the shot fired. Suppose they had heard Tregarthan's body crash to the floor and thereafter no further sound. Suppose Cowper had gone into the sitting-room to investigate and, finding his master dead, stolen the money, closed the door, and thereafter acted as if he had no previous knowledge of the tragedy. This was a possible explanation. It would have given him time to plant the notes in a secret place. It was also within the bounds of feasibility that he did not know that Tregarthan had been shot when he entered the room. Any ordinary duty might have taken him in. The rest was a mere matter of seizing the opportunity, with the very likely chance that the theft of the notes would be connected with the murder.

  It was on these lines, therefore, that the Inspector intended to work, when he once more entered the sombre, grey-stoned house and proceeded without delay to try to unravel yet one more tangled thread which was woven into the yet more tangled skein of the major crime.

  CHAPTER XII

  THE OPEN WINDOW

  WHEN the Inspector re-entered Greylings he found Mrs. Cowper clearing away the tea-things in the kitchen. The Constable had his feet up before the range and, in his unbuttoned tunic, was enjoying a pipe. On seeing his superior in the doorway, he jumped to his feet and hastily started to rebutton his tunic. But the Inspector waved him back into the Windsor arm-chair.

  “It's all right, Fenner. It's not you I'm after. You can finish your pipe.” He turned to Mrs. Cowper. “Your husband is about, Mrs. Cowper?”

  The housekeeper nodded toward a second door which led into a large scullery.

  “He's through there, sir. Sawing logs in the woodhouse. He finds it good for his liver when there's not much to be done in the garden. Keeps him out of mischief, too.”

  The Inspector grinned affably.

  “Mischief, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. Horse-racing. Always slipping off to study what he calls ‘form’ and such. If I didn't keep a tight hand on his wages we'd be a good deal poorer than we are. And that's saying a lot!”

  Bigswell appeared interested.

  “You mean he likes to have his little bit on—is that it?”

  “Yes—and it would be more than a little bit if he had his way. He's got it into his head, has Cowper, that horse-racing means easy money. And so it does, sir ... for the bookmakers.”

  The Inspector agreed heartily. He realised, at once, from Mrs. Cowper's manner that she was riding one of her favourite hobby-horses. It was obvious that her husband's predilection for gambling was a thorn in her side. This voluntary information about Cowper's hobby might prove a useful factor in building up a theory later on.

  “I wonder if you could spare me a moment, Mrs. Cowper,” he went on. “Perhaps we could go into the dining-room.”

  A little worried and disturbed by this sudden request, Mrs. Cowper followed the Inspector across the hall. She wondered, uneasily, if she had opened her mouth too wide about her husband's weakness. She was not certain how the law stood toward betting on race-horses. She was immensely relieved, therefore, when the Inspector, without further mention of her husband, returned to her own movements on the night of the murder.

  “Now I want you to try to remember exactly what you did, Mrs. Cowper, when Mr. Tregarthan finished his dinner. According to your previous statement you took in his coffee at a quarter to nine. Now, previous to that, what did you do?”

  Mrs. Cowper pondered for a moment, as if desirous of marshalling her recollections, before setting them out in front of the Inspector.

  What had she done? Well she and Cowper had cleared the dinner-table and taken the dirty crockery into the butler's pantry. Yes—they always washed-up in the pantry. Whilst her husband was stacking logs into the trudge, she had made the coffee and taken it in to Mr. Tregarthan. Before retiring from the sitting-room she drew the curtains across the french windows. She then arranged with Cowper that he was to do the washing-up, after he had taken in the logs, as she wanted to sort out the soiled linen. The laundry van always called early on Tuesday morning. She then went upstairs and proceeded to do this, returning to the kitchen only a few minutes before Miss Tregarthan entered hurriedly through the side-door.

  “You were upstairs for about twenty-five minutes then?”

  “About that, sir.”

  “And during this time—where was your husband?”

  “As far as I know in the butler's pantry. When Miss Tregarthan called out for us to come, Cowper hadn't quite finished with the washing-up. I remember seeing him come out of the pantry at the same moment as I rushed out of the kitchen.”

  “And the wood had by then been taken into the sitting-room?”

  “Oh, he'd taken it in all right. Earlier, I suppose. The trudge was beside the fender where he always placed it. As a matter of fact, Inspector, seeing that nothing has been touched in the room, I expect it's still there now.”

  “It is,” agreed the Inspector. “I noticed it myself. Well, that's all I wanted to ask you, Mrs. Cowper. You might send your husband in to me here now.”

  When Mrs. Cowper had gone the Inspector swiftly rev-iewed the housekeeper's evidence. More than ever was he inclined to think that Cowper had something to do with the disappearance of the forty pounds—or to be exact, the thirty-eight pounds left in Tregarthan's wallet. He had been alone for nearly half an hour in the butler's pantry, though there was no reason why he should not have walked where he liked on the ground-floor without being seen by his wife. Cowper in his statement to Grouch spoke of his entry into the sitting-room at a quarter to nine or there-abouts. That was to say, a few minutes after Mrs. Cowper had taken in the coffee. But had he really entered the room at that time? Had he perhaps made a false statement of the time in order to make it look as if he entered the room when Tregarthan was alive. Knowing that his wife had taken in the coffee round about 8.45, he realised that if he claimed to have seen Tregarthan a minute or so later, there would not have been time enough for the murderer to lure him to the window and commit the crime. Grouch would naturally assume, as Bigswell had assumed, that Cowper was the last person to see Tregarthan alive. But what if this were not the case? What if Mrs. Cowper was the last to set eyes on the living Tregarthan? What if Cowper had not taken in the logs straight away, but remembered them later as an afterthought? Then there would have been ample time for the murder to have been committed. Cowper might have gone in, found Tregarthan shot, stolen the money and returned to the butler's pantry. Nobody was in a position to dispute his account of his own movements. He was, apparently, an inveterate gambler. He might have fallen into the bookmaker's clutches. Found himself in a hole—frightened, perhaps, of losing his job if the business came to light—seen the opportunity to cle
ar off his debts and, in a headstrong moment, seized it.

  All further supposition was cut short by the entrance of the man in question. Bigswell was astonished by his appearance. There was no doubt that Cowper's self-respect had considerably deteriorated since the night of the murder. His clothes were untidy and unbrushed. He wore no collar and the rim of his shirt was greasy with dirt. His eyes, heavily underlined as if through sleeplessness, were bloodshot and shifty, and his face had assumed a yellowish pallor. About his person hung a strong aroma of whiskey.

  “Letting himself go,” thought the Inspector. “Something uncomfortable on his mind by the look of it. Turned to the whiskey bottle for Dutch courage!”

  The man's manner toward the Inspector, too, was characterised by a sort of surly defensiveness and it was not until Bigswell adopted a peremptory tone that he showed any inclination to speak up. He repeated his story of Monday night, merely adding that after he had taken in the logs at 8.45 he had retired to the butler's pantry and proceeded to wash up the dinner things. He had remained there until Miss Tregarthan's cries had summoned him post-haste to the sitting-room.

  “You took in the logs,” asked the Inspector, “after your wife had gone upstairs to see to the laundry?”

  “Just after,” said Cowper shortly.

  “And this butler's pantry—where is it?”

  “Beyond the sitting-room—at the far end of the hall.”

  “Opposite the kitchen?”

  “That's it.”

  “I should like to have a look at the room,” said the Inspector tersely. “Now!”

  Cowper clip-clopped along the hall in a disreputable pair of felt slippers and opened the door of the pantry. The Inspector realised, with a certain amount of surprise, that it was adjacent to the sitting-room. A single wall had divided Cowper from the room in which Tregarthan had met his death.

  The pantry was not very large. A sink and a draining-board ran along one wall, whilst a large cupboard, with glass doors and shelves, occupied the wall next to the sitting-room. In the wall opposite the door was a smallish window set about four feet from the ground. Beneath this was a long, oak stool.