Well, I felt just the same about this murderer business. All along I had felt that Lowry’s name was on the very tip of my tongue, and as soon as Mrs. Bradley actually pronounced it I sort of realised, as it were, that I had known it all along. Daphne was openly, blatantly and really rather vulgarly triumphant.
“I knew it! I knew it!” she shrieked. “Didn’t I say he was a horrid fat pig!”
We shut her up, of course. It wasn’t decent to talk like that. After all, the man would be hanged soon enough, and I have never agreed with those who would speak ill of the dead.
“But you don’t really mean that Lowry killed Meg Tosstick and Cora McCanley?” asked little Gatty.
“Remember the word ‘proxy,’ Mr. Gatty,” I said, feeling fearfully bucked, of course, to think that I had put my finger on the spot. “Mrs. Bradley’s point is that Lowry incited Candy to murder Meg by telling him that she had had an affair with the negro and that her illegitimate child was a half-breed.”
“Ah !” said Gatty. “Clever work, of course. But wasn’t that taking rather a lot for granted, Mrs. Bradley?”
“It was,” replied Mrs. Bradley, with her dry cackle.
“But, of course,” said I, fearfully conscious that Daphne was drinking me in, “these inn-keepers have to be pretty good psychologists. Can’t keep an inn unless you’ve got your wits about you, can you, Mrs. Bradley?”
“Surely not,” said the little old woman, making no attempt, as a lesser personality would have done, to snatch the laurel wreath from my head and bung it on her own. It was my little hour, and she let me get away with it. A bit sardonic of her, really, I suppose. The ‘sufficient rope ‘idea, I expect, if the truth were known, although the word ‘rope ‘in a tale of murder is a bit sinister, of course. But little Gatty wanted his money’s worth.
“Well, what about Cora McCanley, then?” he demanded, “Did he prevail upon someone to murder her too?”
“Well, to understand all the points in connection with the murder of Cora McCanley,” said Mrs. Bradley, “we have to consider, not only the peculiar psychology of the murderer, but the psychological and physiological type to which Cora McCanley belonged. Right from the very first I could not understand how she could bear to spend long months in that lonely bungalow without any amusement or mental relaxation whatever. I soon came to the conclusion that she was not without amusement, and immediately I suspected the presence, in or near Saltmarsh, of a lover. But how was it, I asked myself at first, that a jealous stag among men like Burt should be unaware of what was going on? Their last quarrel, which was partly overheard by William Coutts, assured me that Burt was not deceived.
“The smugglers’ passage explained a good deal of what otherwise would have been mysterious in Cora’s actions. That she had a lover seemed to me absolutely certain, but I could not decide how they managed to meet secretly, until I heard about the smugglers’ passage. The passage was their secret way, the Cove their meeting place. When Burt was out on his smuggling excursions, which some of you do not know about, Cora and her lover met, very comfortably, in the Bungalow itself. At the first sign of Burt’s return, the lover made his escape. He went by the underground passage if Burt came overland home, and out of the skylight if Burt returned by way of the underground passage. There he crouched on the roof until the coast was clear. Then, as soon as Cora gave the signal, he would drop from the roof to the ground—see the advantages of a bungalow over a house!—and would made his escape past the stone quarries and back to the Morning-ton Arms and so home. You realise the importance of the position of the Mornington Arms? It was built well away from the village and the village’s gossiping tongue.”
“Then when Cora heard Mr. Gatty on the roof that night, she must have thought Low—her lover had gone mad,” I said.
“She must have been frightfully alarmed when Burt fired his revolver,” said William.
“Go to bed, William,” said Mrs. Coutts, apparently aware for the first time of his presence in the select group. William was about to argue the point when Daphne said:
“Yes, come on, Bill. I’m coming as well. We’ll talk through the wall if you like. We’ve heard all the thrills.” So off they went. I formed the impression that Mrs. Bradley was glad to see the back of them. I rather gathered that their youthful presence cramped her style a bit.
“You don’t think that Cora and Lowry were at the Bungalow enjoying themselves together while Burt and Yorke were savaging me by the Cove, do you?” enquired old Coutts.
“Impossible, Bedivere!” snapped the woman, handing her spouse the marital back-chat, as usual.
“Why impossible?” asked old Gatty. “Quite a sensible idea.”
“If you want to know,” said Mrs. Courts, “I saw them dancing together in Sir William’s park. I saw them distinctly.”
“You would,” I thought, remembering her habit of snooping round, and her perfectly beastly mind.
“They were very well-conducted, too,” went on Mrs. Coutts, as though she felt she was scoring off somebody. “I remember thinking that they set a very good example to everyone there, if only the village could be induced to profit by a good example,” she concluded bitterly. “Their behaviour compared very favourably with that of nearly every other person in the park.”
“I don’t doubt it for an instant,” said Mrs. Bradley, politely. “I suppose you remained in the park all the evening?”
I avoided Mrs. Bradley’s eye, which seemed to be seeking mine, in case I should begin to giggle. Not that I am an hysterical subject, of course, but I do sometimes giggle at the wrong time.
“All the evening,” said Mrs. Coutts, unwillingly. She seemed to resent Mrs. Bradley’s questioning, although she had been all over her at one time, of course.
“All the evening until you went home and found that Mr. Coutts was missing from home,” I reminded her. Old Coutts glowered. He hated to be reminded of that evening. I suppose he did get pretty badly knocked about by Burt and Yorke.
“But about the murder of Cora McCanley,” said little Gatty. “I take it that Cora and Lowry left the park together at about the same time as Mrs. Coutts went back to the vicarage, and——”
“Oh, no!” I burst out. “Mrs. Bradley has already shown that Cora was murdered on the Tuesday.”
“Ah,” said little Gatty, showing his wolf’s fangs. “Then I will try again. Lowry, the inn-keeper, was Cora McCanley’s lover, wasn’t he?”
The Coutts and Mrs. Gatty assented. Mrs. Bradley smiled like the crocodile that welcomes little fishes in, and Sir William scowled at the carpet. Only Bran some Burns, the financier, made no sign at all. He hadn’t, all along, of course.
“Well, Cora McCanley was blackmailing him for some reason——”
“Burt kept her short of money,” I interpolated.
“Ah,” said Burns, waking up, “silly game, blackmail. Always get the worst of it in the end.”
“Well, she did, rather, didn’t she?” I said. “Get-ting done in, I mean. Funny both the girls were strangled.”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Well, you would think the second murder would have been done a different way.”
“Oh, murderers usually repeat themselves,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Yes, but in this case,” I said, intending to remind her that possibly we were talking of two murderers, not one; but Gatty interrupted me.
“She was blackmailing him on the Tuesday when he joined her at the Bungalow, then?”
“How could he know it was safe to join her at the Bungalow?” asked Mrs. Gatty.
“Why, Burt was at the Cove and along the beach with us on that guarding and patrolling stunt, and Yorke was at the cinema in Wyemouth,” said I.
“Yes, very well. He strangled Cora and dragged her body up that secret passage to the inn——” said old Gatty.
“But he couldn’t!” interrupted Margaret Kingston-Fox, who had been following the story with very close attention.
“Why not?”
asked Mrs. Gatty, to everybody’s surprise.
“Because it was bricked up, and had spiders’ webs all over it,” said Margaret. All those present knew that, of course, by this time, because Mrs. Bradley had announced it at the lecture.
“You forget Mrs. Gatty’s health and cleanliness campaign,” said Mrs. Bradley, laughing.
“What?” I said. “Do you mean that that was a put-up job?”
“Completely,” said Mrs. Gatty, beaming. “Mrs. Bradley said she had to know whether that passage had an outlet at the inn.”
“You see, Noel,” said Mrs. Bradley, turning to me, “when that bomb was dropped about the blocked-up end to the smugglers’ passage, I thought for one wild instant that my whole theory of the crimes was wrong. It seemed to me that the passage must open into the inn. Then it occurred to me that if I had proof that the passage had a new exit, also in the inn, my case would be stronger than before. Besides, I had felt all along that the outlet in the cellar, which is now under the garages, you remember, was much too public a way for anybody to be able to use in safety. So Mrs. Gatty and I put our heads together, and it was her brilliant idea that if a man wanted to be away from the world for a longish period of time, the best thing for him to do would be to lie and soak in his bath. When Mrs. Gatty discovered that the Lowrys’ own private bathroom was on the ground floor of the inn, it was all over bar the shouting. The fact that Lowry and Mrs. Lowry were brother and sister and not man and wife was sufficient to explain everything else.”
“Well, I’m damned,” I said. Apparently Mrs. Coutts was, too, for she never said a word, and she is usually on to a little strong language like a terrier on a rat.
We sat and drank it in about the passage.
“Then they got Meg Tosstick’s body to the sea along the passage,” I said, “and the baby, too——”
“He went along the passage to kill Cora McCanley in the Bungalow,” said old Gatty, who seemed to be getting quite a sleuth-hound, “and brought her body back to the inn the same way—as I said just now.”
“So that’s that,” said Sir William.
“Not quite,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I’ve a piece of positive proof about the use of the smugglers’ passage which may interest you. You remember the substitution of Cora McCanley’s body for that of Meg Tosstick in the coffin, don’t you? Well, of course, the substitution was made at the inn. At this point Lowry showed an amount of audacity which really deserved to come off. But, acting upon his own initiative, the police inspector had got on to the undertaker who was given the job of arranging Meg Tosstick’s funeral. It took him some time, because the undertaker was not a local man. He did not come from Wyemouth Harbour, either, as most people believed, but from a place called Harmington in the next county. He got the job, he thought, because he was some sort of connection of Lowry. It was a motor-funeral, you remember, so that distance was no object, and in any case the town the undertaker came from is less than twenty miles away. The advantage of that particular town was that, for Lowry’s purpose, it was sufficiently obscure.
“Well, greatly to their credit, the police got on to this man, and persuaded him to try and recall the build and features of the girl whose body he had screwed down in the coffin. He was shown photographs of about fifteen young women, including those of Meg and Cora, and, despite the evidences of strangulation with their resultant disfigurement, he unhesitatingly picked out Cora as the girl whose coffin he had actually supplied. He gave us the measurements then. Oh, it was Cora, without a doubt, for whom Meg Tosstick’s coffin was made. They proved it to the hilt. You remember what a fine big girl she was, compared with Meg?”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAST STRAW
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?”
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“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.”
The Saltmarsh Murders Page 22