I charged out to dig up the old man, closely followed by William. Daphne came out on to the landing. She had her blue dressing gown on—rather jolly. Her hair was rumpled, of course. Small kid sort of effect. I managed a hasty but quite charmingly satisfactory salute. She rubbed it off, absentmindedly, of course, and told us gratuitously, of course, about the mob of sans culottes at the front. Mrs. Coutts, up and dressed and not a hair unbrushed, joined us, and we all goggled out of the landing window. The populace had stopped chucking the soft fruit and other bouquets, and were beginning on the chunks of soil and the stones course. The dining room windows seemed to be copping it rather badly, and a chunk of rock about the size of a large grapefruit crashed through my bedroom window and broke a picture called Nymphs at Play which used to hang over the head of my bed. I didn’t like the picture, but it served to annoy Mrs. Coutts, and she used to push in every morning, to my certain knowledge, and turn it face to the wall, before the maid came to make the bed.
The general din brought old Coutts out. He had arrived at the shirt and trouser stage and had not shaved. Nothing would satisfy him, when he had had a look at the ancient society of rock-chuckers, but to harangue them.
“Useless to do so from the open window of a bedroom,” he said, surveying the two-foot hole in my casement. “I will go into the garden and enquire into this disgraceful demonstration.”
Even Mrs. Coutts, who usually represents the Church Militant in times of stress, thought this a damn-fool idea, and I am compelled to state that I upheld her. At least, I upheld her until I caught Daphne’s eye. When I did, I said that if he went, I would go with him. He didn’t even stop to put his coat and waistcoat on, but marched out at the front door and began by booming at them. His voice, on this occasion, was the voice he keeps for weekdays when we have the schoolchildren en masse in church, and they hoof the fronts of the pews and surreptitiously play football with the hassocks, and whack each other’s shins with the edges of the hymnbooks, and cough aggressively after the first six minutes of the address until the pronouncement of the Benediction.
“Good people,” megaphoned old Coutts, “what is the meaning of this?”
A dozen voices answered him in a kind of chant:
“Where be Meg Tosstick’s babby? Where be Meg Tosstick’s babby? Us ask the landlord! He don’t know! Us ask his missus! Her don’t know! Where be Meg Tosstick’s babby?”
After that, it sounded like the new setting we had to the Te Deum last September, or a dog fight at the Battersea Kennels, and the air was filled with stones. Suddenly there was a sharp report, and somebody on the outskirts of the crowd yelled:
“Duck your heads, lads! They’m shooting at us!”
Sure enough, young William’s airgun spoke the second time, and there was a decidedly anguished yelp from the ranks of the besiegers. The vicar swung round.
“William!” he yelled. “Stop that! Do you hear!”
“All right!” screamed William. “But I’ve got another slug ready for whoever bungs the first brick. You howling cads!” he continued, addressing the villagers. “If my aunt and sister weren’t holding the seat of my bags, I’d come down and make you sit up!”
The vicar took advantage of the diversion created by his nephew to announce that he would receive a deputation after Morning Prayer if they had a grievance. They were so used, I suppose, to cheesing their conversation when the old lad spoke, that they listened fairly quietly while he laid down the law about damage to property and unprovoked assault, and, at the end of his decidedly spirited address— delivered on an empty stomach, too, of course—they melted away without much backchat, and the vicar and I returned to the fortress and assessed the damage.
“I shall pay for the window out of the Bible Class Social Fund Box,” said old Coutts, sucking his finger which he had advanced too near the jagged edge of what was left of the pane.
“And in the meantime, Noel will have to sleep with William,” interpolated the woman.
“Not on your life!” I hastily, but, of course, ill-advisedly remarked. Mrs. Coutts spent breakfast time in recriminatory remarks directed chiefly at me. The village, I gathered, thought I had sneaked the baby. I let her run on. Really, it’s the only way.
I must confess that I felt a bit like the first missionaries must have felt as we walked into church behind the choir that Sunday morning, but the service was allowed to run its usual course, and although the tougher element of the village sat at the back and chewed gum, there was no disorder and no interruption. After the Benediction had been pronounced, the vicar stood on the steps of the chancel, cleared his throat, looked all round the church, and said:
“I am ready to meet in the vestry any person or persons with a grievance against me or against any of my household.”
He was not belligerent, but he sounded dangerous. However, two youths and an older man were at the vestry door when we were ready to go back to the vicarage for lunch. The older chap, a respectable bloke, but an atheist and a postman, was the spokesman. He took off his cap when old Coutts invited him into the vestry, and spoke quite respectfully, but there was no mincing of words. He said bluntly:
“I wasn’t at your house throwing they stones. I don’t hold with misdirected violence nor ’timidation. But us wants to know what you and your good lady done with that poor girl’s babby, Mr. Coutts. Us knows you be the father, but where be little un?”
Old Coutts went most frightfully red.
“My good man,” he said, in a kind of choking gargle, “you are being profoundly, utterly and ludicrously slanderous. Your remarks are actionable. Be careful what you say.”
He paused and scowled at the postman fiercely, snorting somewhat.
The man stuck to his point.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Coutts,” he said, “but that poor girl was living under your roof when it happened, wasn’t she?”
“She was,” said the vicar, grimly.
“Unless it were Mr. Wells,” said the frightful fellow, suddenly turning on me.
“I deny it,” I said feebly.
“I’ll let the lads know, then,” said the postman, “but I doubt whether they’ll be satisfied with plain denials. It’s facts we’re after, Mr. Coutts.”
“Then you can go to hell to get them,” said old Coutts, irascibly, forgetting, of course, where we were.
So the bird slouched off, taking the two youths with him.
“I’m going to get Burt and his negro and Sir William to put out anybody who causes a disturbance at Evensong,” said the old boy, grimly. He’d been a missionary at some period in a probably purple past, and seemed well on to the psychology of the thing, for a disturbance at Evensong there certainly was. In fact, a bally riot would perhaps convey a more correct and enlightening impression.
Whether the second lesson was an unfortunate choice, or whether the time for the hurling of the first hymnbook had been pre-arranged, we shall never know;—any more, I suppose, than we shall know the same thing about the stool chucked by the old Scotswoman at Archbishop Laud’s backer in the year sixteen-thirty or forty something. Anyway, it came whizzing along, and only just missed me. I was reading the lesson, of course. I didn’t know what to do, but the vicar’s voice behind me said:
“Carry on, Wells,” and I was aware that he was standing beside me at the lectern. Suddenly the air was full of hymnbooks, and amid the frightful din—I stopped reading, of course—I had to—I could hear Mrs. Gatty’s voice declaiming:
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
Most inapposite, of course.
CHAPTER X
sundry alibis, and a regular facer
« ^ »
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 fe
rvour 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?”
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