Saltmarsh Murders mb-4

by Gladys Mitchell

  “No. I’ve come with rather serious news,” I said. “The vicar can’t be found. Er—we believe he had some sort of a dust-up with Sir William late in the afternoon, and it struck us, perhaps—”

  “That the poor man may be lying at the bottom of the stone quarries with a broken neck,” said the frightful little old woman.

  “I’m not joking, you know,” I said stiffly. Her remark seemed to me in poorish taste, of course.

  “Neither am I, young man,” she said, poking me in the ribs with a forefinger like the end of an iron bolt. “So come along at once, in case he isn’t dead.”

  “But is Sir William at home?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “And in any case I don’t believe he would do the vicar any harm, but we’ll go and see.”

  “But not the stone quarries?” I said.

  “Why not? I’ve often thought them a perfect gift to a simple-minded murderer who could retain sufficient gumption to push his victim over the edge and then leave the thing alone, and keep his mouth shut and his nerves in working order.”

  “Footprints?” I said.

  “Grandmothers!” retorted Mrs. Bradley with, I am bound to confess, a certain tartness in her tone which jarred upon me. I mean, I am one of those men who have simple faith in woman being the gentler sex and all that. Anyhow, the next thing I knew was that we were walking through the park, dodging the crowds. We called at Constable Brown’s house and took him and his two lodgers, a couple of second year undergraduates named Miller and Bond who had been spending a few weeks in Saltmarsh to do some quiet reading, along to the vicarage to find out whether the vicar had turned up. He had not, so, shutting our ears to William’s entreaties to be allowed to accompany us, we set out for the quarries. Mrs. Bradley had a powerful torch, Brown had his policeman’s lamp and the two undergraduates carried a bicycle and a car lamp respectively. I walked with Mrs. Bradley, and, as we mounted the uneven track which led uphill to the quarries, an idea occurred to me which I communicated to Brown.

  “Mr. Burt,” I said, “who lives just over yonder at the Bungalow, would help in the search, I’m sure. Shall I go and knock him up?”

  Brown, who seemed oppressed with a sense of personal responsibility for the vicar’s uncanny disappearance, assented, and we all took the road to the Bungalow. Two rooms were lighted up. I knocked at the door, but nobody came. Queer, of course. I knocked again, and waited, but there was no answer. Apparently Burt and Cora were still at the fête, so we proceeded with our search.

  Even by day the stone quarries give me the hump. By night I found them quite alarming. I kept thinking of all the holes that weren’t fenced, and tried to remember the paths where they were. We picked our way carefully along narrow paths made partly by men’s feet and partly by sheep and ponies. We shouted as we went along, and queer echoes came back at us. We travelled in Indian file for a time, until Mrs. Bradley said:

  “I think we ought to separate at the next junction of the paths.”

  Having no light, I decided to follow her. Miller came with us, and Bond and the constable bore away from us to the left. For two hours, I should think, we called and listened. It was useless to descend the quarries, of course, as well as extremely dangerous. We could check the position of the other party by the lights they were carrying. At last, as though by mutual consent, although nothing had been said, we foregathered and decided to return to the village. I think the constable still wondered what on earth induced us to come to the stone quarries, and I myself was beginning to think ridiculous my idea that the squire had done the vicar some mortal injury as a result of their quarrel.

  “He’s probably at home by now, cursing me for keeping him out of bed,” I said to Mrs. Bradley.

  “I am sure I hope so, young man,” said the little old woman. I offered to escort her home, but she would not hear of it. However, I hope I know my duty to the sex, so I followed behind, and, in Indian file, we crossed the park, whence all the revellers had departed, and gained the front door. Sir William himself opened it. He was in pyjamas.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and where did you leave the vicar, Sir William?”

  “The vicar?” said Sir William. “On the sports field, damn his eyes! The interfering, muddle-headed, self-opinionated damned ass! Yes, and you can tell him so from me, Wells!” he continued, suddenly spotting me behind Mrs. Bradley.

  “Then you haven’t made away with him?” I said idiotically.

  “I’d like to,” said Sir William, savagely, “Are you coming in, or going out? One or the other, only make up your mind quickly, because I’m going to shut this damned door.”

  “Good night. Good night, Mrs. Bradley,” I said, as curtly as I could. Then I ran back to the vicarage. Brown and the undergraduates were there, but Mrs. Coutts was not. She came in about ten minutes later, sat down at the table with a face like chalk, and her fingers went drumming, drumming, on the cloth. She said that she had searched Sir William’s shrubberies from end to end. Old Brown had his helmet off and was scratching his head in the intervals of assuring us all that there was nothing more to be done until the morning. William was standing by his aunt and looking washed out and scared stiff. My poor little Daphne was crying, and the two undergraduates were trying to stifle their yawns and betray their concern at one and the same time. Of course, it was after twelve midnight by this time, and we were all just about all in.

  I was able to assure them that I felt certain the squire had done Mr. Coutts no bodily injury. This had its effect. Brown and the undergraduates made a move towards the door. Daphne sat up and dried her eyes. Two spots of colour came into Mrs. Coutts’ cheeks. Suddenly young William hooted:

  “I say! Mrs. Gatty’s locked him up, I bet! Like she did Mr. Gatty in the crypt! You know!”

  There was a sensation. Dash it, it seemed quite feasible. The poor woman was bats enough for anything. So off I went with Brown to the Moat House, leaving Bond and Miller to hold the fort at the vicarage.

  The Gattys were in bed, and were not too pleased at being disturbed. Old Gatty was distinctly querulous, in fact, and wanted to know what the hell, and a lot of things like that when we hiked him out of bed to answer a few leading questions. He is one of those weird birds who wear night shirts. Most embarrassing!

  When he heard the news, however, he calmed down and was most obliging. He went into the bedroom—we were interviewing him just outside his bedroom door with two startled maidservants goggling at us over the banisters of the landing above—and dug Mrs. Gatty out of bed. She appeared in curling rags and a dressing-gown and with her gold-rimmed pince-nez stuck firmly on her nose. I suppose she slept in them, or didn’t feel dressed without them, or something.

  “The vicar?” she said.

  “Yes,” we said.

  “Dear me!”

  “Yes.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know,” said Mrs. Gatty, in the voice of one who sees a great light, “he must have fallen down the stone quarries. Most dangerous, those workings. I’ve always said so.”

  You know, she really sounded quite sane, and old Gatty looked at us as one who should say:

  “All done by kindness, mesdames and messieurs!”

  We took our leave, and Brown returned to his home and I to the vicarage. We sent William to bed, and, in the end, I persuaded the others to go, too. Mrs. Coutts, I expect, lay awake all night, but having left the door unbolted, so that, if the vicar should return, he could let himself into the house with his key, I rolled into my bed and was soon asleep. I was pretty well tired out, you know, what with one thing and another.

  CHAPTER VI

  a student of dickens

  « ^ »

  At about five-thirty next morning I was awakened by William Coutts. His shining face, wet with perspiration and beaming with unholy joy and fierce excitement, loomed over me as I opened my eyes.

  “I say, Noel! Oh, do wake up, you fool! Listen! I say! Noel! Noel!”
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br />   He thumped me vigorously and blew into my right ear, which was uppermost. My first thought was that I was back at school, so I sat up in bed with the idea of getting some rotter’s head in chancery and jolly well giving him beans. Then the identity of my assailant dawned on me, and so I merely rubbed my eyes and prepared to curse him.

  “Get up!” commanded young William, before I could produce the book of words germane to the situation. “I’ve found him!”

  “What!” I said, wide awake, of course. “Where?”

  “In the pound,” said William, “and I can’t get him out. He’s chained up.”

  Without stopping to reflect upon the peculiar nature of the tidings, I put on my shirt and trousers, thrust my feet into my boots, tied the laces, of course, and in about twenty seconds I was tearing after William down the stairs.

  We had an ancient pound in the village. It was upon the village green. It was practically a historical monument, of course. Never used. Anyway, the vicar was in it. A huge stake had been driven into the ground, and the vicar, gagged with a leather driving glove and an army puttee—(can you have it in the singular? I suppose you can! It was only one, anyway, of course)—was tethered to it by a collar and chain. His arms were bound, and he looked the wildest, filthiest, angriest, most disreputable person in creation. The collar was padlocked on him, but I managed to detach the end of the chain from the stake and to remove the gag.

  “Don’t attempt to talk, sir,” I said. “Good thing William found you so early in the morning.”

  He’d been pretty well knocked about. His mouth was pretty badly bruised and the knuckles of both hands were cut almost to the bone.

  “Yes,” he said, looking at his hands with what the books call gloomy satisfaction, “if my assailants were local people, it won’t be hard to pick ’em out. I think—I ra-ther think!—I’ve left my mark on them.”

  This was after he’d had a rest and some bread and milk. I shot a stiffish dose of brandy into the pig-food before he started on it. Mrs. Coutts remonstrated, but, for once in our lives, we ignored the woman. I’m all for temperance, of course, but if ever a man needed— needed, mind you!—a drop of the amber adder, it was poor old Coutts. He was pretty far gone, take him one way and another. I think it was only his frightful annoyance that kept him up at all. His tale was a curious one, and when we had heard it, I said immediately:

  “Mrs. Bradley is the person to get to the bottom of all this.”

  Briefly, the yarn was as follows:

  After having had the row with Sir William Kingston-Fox over the final of the choirboys’ hundred yards, old Coutts, in accordance with custom, returned to the vicarage, got himself a glass of lemonade and some bread and cheese and a handful of raisins, and settled down, with the wireless, to have a pleasant evening. However, what with the row he had had with Sir William getting thoroughly on his nerves, and the beastly wireless clicking a foreign station that would butt in and ruin the concert he was listening to, he got thoroughly fed, and decided to go out for a walk as far from the fête as he could.

  He had been tinkering with the radio set for some time, trying to cut out the interference, and had taken a bit of time to get his meal and eat it, and so forth, so that it must have been, he thinks, round about nine o’clock when he left the vicarage, but it might have been later. With the idea of getting clear away from the fête, the raucous music of the roundabouts and all that, he walked up towards the stone quarries and down to the beach by Saltmarsh Cove. He walked fast, and was pretty tired when he reached the cove, so he sat on a bit of rock and gazed at the sea and decided it was a good chance for a swim. Bit of a Spartan, old Coutts, of course. It was getting dark by that time. (You can’t reach the cove in less than an hour and a half from the vicarage, even going all out.) He stripped off his flannels— he had been playing cricket during the day, of course, against Much Hartley—and pushed them just into the entrance to the Cove, as the tide was almost out. He had his swim—a lazy one, he admits—and was rubbing himself as dry as he could on a handkerchief—ever tried it?—when he was surprised to see a lantern swung rhythmically three times out at sea, apparently from the rail of a ship. He was interested, because there was no reason that he could think of for a ship to anchor out there. She must be taking a risk, he thought, to do so. She must be lying off an uninhabited island called Skall Rock, but the channel between the island and some totally submerged rocks was known to very few people indeed, and those strictly local men. No big ships could make the passage, and even small ones ran considerable risk in attempting it. Besides, there was no point in attempting it, as the way into Wyemouth Harbour was clearly charted, and was marked, where necessary, by buoys. He screwed up his eyes and thought he could just make her out. Suddenly, as he was thinking all this out, a beam from the ship’s searchlight fell clear upon him, and was immediately withdrawn. At the same time a lantern was swung three times again, this time from higher up—from the bridge—he thinks it must have been from the bridge—it looked high off the water anyway. It was all a bit queer, but he was getting chilly, so he ran about a bit to finish drying, put on his clothes and was about to reach for his straw hat when somebody behind him, who must have come up like a cat, gave him a terrific shove in the back, and down he went. Before he knew what was happening, some great bloke fell on him. He put up a good show, he said, and, if his knuckles were anything to go by, I should say he did! However, another fellow came up and they got him gagged at last, blindfolded him, tied him up and carted him along, by devious ways, to the pound. Weird! They must have spotted our torches and dodged us—Brown, Mrs. Bradley, the two students and myself,—while we were searching for him. Or he must have been in the pound by then. Everybody else was still at the fête, or else in bed. They didn’t meet a soul, anyway, Coutts thinks. Well, I mean, they couldn’t have done! What a neck, though! Both his captors had blackened faces, he thought. An old poachers’ trick, that, to avoid being recognised. And neither spoke a word. They communicated with one another in series of grunts. Well, I mean, it’s jolly difficult to recognise a chap by his grunt, as witness those frightful parlour games we all have played at times. One is called “Mum” and the other, I believe is known to the trade as “Squeak, Piggy, Squeak.” Anyway, they grunted their intentions to one another, and one drove the stake into the middle of the pound and they both chained him up as I’ve already described. They left him gagged, but took the bandage off his eyes. We tried to get him to make a guess at the fellows’ identity, but he couldn’t hazard a single one. It was very dark, of course. He hadn’t seen them clearly at all. We had to look out, he said, for two big fellows, one of whom had a face that looked as though it had been hit by the front of an express train.

  “I know I didn’t mark one of ’em, the bigger one,” he said, “because he kept out of my reach. But the other must look like the outside page of a kids’ comic paper. So if they’re local men—”

  He seemed not so keen on the idea of lugging Mrs. Bradley into it, but I put the point so forcefully that he agreed. Daphne and I went off to Sir William’s house, and I, for one, had a certain interest in seeing Sir William himself. He was biggish. True, I couldn’t quite imagine him blacking his face in order to escape recognition; neither could I see him calling in assistance, in the form of another black-faced desperado, to settle a private quarrel. Still, they had had a fearful row, he and the vicar, so really the whole thing was a bit of a coincidence. The Squire had the very devil of a temper, and the vicar’s peculiar code would probably forbid him to name the squire as his assailant even if he had recognised him…

  I was in the midst of decanting these theories to Daphne when we arrived at the lodge gates of Sir William’s park and, entering, began to cross the park to the house.

  Talk about the morning after the night before, or the abomination of desolation! The park was in a simply fearful state. The turf was torn, worn, wheel-rutted and strewn with bits of paper, banana and orange peel, broken bottles, confetti, a hat, thre
e odd gloves at least —(I speak of what we could see as we walked along!)—empty chocolate boxes, bits of cocoanut; the father and mother of a horrible, disgraceful mess. I’m a member of an anti-litter society, and so I know what the many-headed can do when it chooses, but, upon my word, I’ve never seen anything to equal the state of Sir William Kingston-Fox’s park on that August morning. It had not rained a bit during the night, which probably made matters a bit better than they might have been. And yet, I don’t know! It was awful!

  Sir William’s face was as usual. Not marked at all, I mean, except for the rather puffy eye he had received from the vicar at the sports. He heard our story, as did Mrs. Bradley, Bransome Burns, the financier, Margaret Kingston-Fox, and Storey, who was waiting at table. He coughed—Storey, I mean—as an indication that he had something to say.

  “If you please, Sir William—”

  “Well?”

  “It sounds as though the smugglers had begun their games again.”

  “Oh, rubbish! Rubbish! This is not America, Storey.”

  “No, Sir William. It just occurred to me, that’s all. Saltmarsh Cove was a regular smugglers’ hole in my great-grandfather’s time, sir, and there’s an underground passage to the inn, sir, or so I’ve heard tell, although I believe it is blocked up now.”

  “Ah, very likely. Wells,” he said, suddenly turning to me, “this is serious, you know. As a magistrate, I say that it is very serious indeed! The vicar of Saltmarsh to be assaulted in his own parish! Upon my word, it’s really monstrous! He marked the men, you say?”

  “One of them, Sir William,” I replied, trying to keep my face straight. Hang it all, he would have been the first person to assault the vicar in his own parish, had not the vicar assaulted him first! Daphne said:

  “Yes; his poor hands!”

  “Ah,” said Sir William. “Then all we have to do is to find the fellow the vicar marked so severely, and get from him the name of his accomplice, and get the couple of them a spell of hard labour, the damned scoundrels!”