‘“I had just begun counting the ninth hundred when I saw her returning. In her arms she was holding one of the statues from the sunk garden. I could not decide which one it was until she came much nearer.
‘“‘You know,’ she said, ‘we’re very careless. We left that tarpaulin rolled back, and there are some very obvious bloodstains. Luckily the new cement had set quite hard and the body seems to have left no other impression. I thought I’d drown this, though. It is a terrible thing. Look at it!’
‘“It was the statue of the little mermaid. It had never appealed to me very much, but my sister seemed to regard it with such extreme aversion that to oblige her I helped her to put it in the middle of the lake just over the place where we had dumped the body. My sister then stripped off her clothes, leapt in, and fastened statue and corpse together. She dried herself on one of the towels that are kept in a laundry basket in the bathing-shed and resumed her garments. She then returned to the sunk garden and I to my hut. Very fortunately Yeomond is a sound sleeper. I removed my clothes and put on my pyjamas. Then I looked over every inch of my garments for bloodstains, or other evidence of the night’s work. There were none. I began to put on my trousers again with a good deal of unostentatious noise. It is not easy to make a good deal of unostentatious noise merely by getting into one’s trousers, so I deliberately overbalanced and cannoned heavily against Yeomond’s bed. This had the desired effect of waking him, and his immediate and indelible impression was of his roommate just getting up in the morning. I learned afterwards that my sister’s ruse was also entirely successful. Nobody seemed to question a word she said.”’
‘I say, they cut it rather fine,’ said Bloxham, as Mrs Bradley put down the papers. ‘Why, I should think that just about the time they first left the gymnasium Amaris Cowes must have entered the grounds. They were lucky she didn’t spot them, weren’t they? Is that the end? I suppose he’s signed it?’
‘He confesses to the second murder, too,’ said Mrs Bradley. Bloxham, impatient of listening, held out his hand for the papers.
‘Does he, by Jove!’ he exclaimed.
Mrs Bradley relinquished her hold on the manuscript, and smiled like an alligator that has enjoyed a satisfying meal.
‘Perhaps you had better read the next part for yourself,’ she said. ‘He becomes rather scathing on the subject of the police. I fancy that he did not admire your methods.’
Bloxham laughed.
‘Can’t say I was excited by ’em myself,’ he said. ‘But we seem to have got the goods now.’
He read on, with his mouth puckered into a rueful smile and his brows knit.
‘Oh, here’s the second murder,’ he said. ‘Seems to have had a pretty hefty motive this time!’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘The whole thing was premeditated. He knew that Anthony had accompanied Kost to the lecture, and he knew enough of Kost’s habits to be pretty certain that Anthony would come home alone.’
‘Interesting about the Roman swords,’ said Bloxham. ‘It seems that Anthony was the person who exchanged them and took the statue’s sword to Colonel Digot’s place in return for borrowing the real Roman gladius—’
‘No. The model of a Roman gladius,’ Mrs Bradley interpolated. ‘Made of best steel, that dreadful weapon, and had edges like those of razors.’
Bloxham read on with growing interest. ‘By Jove!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do listen to this!’
Mrs Bradley nodded, although she almost knew the entire confession by heart.
‘“From nine o’clock onwards I waited with growing impatience for the return of Anthony,’ read the inspector. ‘“I had excused myself from table, for dinner that evening was unendurably protracted, and I stood on the terrace in the darkness waiting for the sound of his steps. He had to die. He had spoken his own doom three days before by accusing me of the murder of Jacob Hobson and citing my sister as my accomplice. He could not have known the truth of what he said. He had invented it. It was probably part of his ridiculous policy in attempting to scare us away from Longer. One with the bloodstained javelin and that rubbish. For all I knew, he was going to call the others in the house and accuse them and their sisters of participation in the crime also. My alarm came from the fact that in our own case the accusation happened to be true! Besides, I feared that sinister little old woman at the Digots. Long before she wrote to me I knew she knew. I would have killed her had I dared. She has been playing cat and mouse with me for weeks! I have seen it in those terrible black eyes—the eyes of a soulless bird of prey. I have seen it in her dreadful, mocking smile. I believe she is the devil.”’
‘Your charms don’t seem to have appealed to the champion cyclist,’ said Bloxham, laughing.
‘Oh, very few young men really appreciate me,’ said Mrs Bradley, grinning. ‘Their sisters usually prove to be far better judges of character than they are. Do go on. The whole literary style of the passage gains so much from your masculine interpretation of its beauties.’
Bloxham looked at her suspiciously, but Mrs Bradley’s face was grave. He snorted, and continued:
‘“It was an awful mistake only to score the exact two hundred at the fair.”’
‘What was that?’ he demanded, looking up.
‘Oh, darts,’ said Mrs Bradley, waving her unsavoury-looking hands. ‘Such a neat murder. Such a neat score. Just enough done to obtain the desired result in both cases. What the police would call’—she rolled her birdlike black eyes as though searching for the words—’er—corroborative evidence. But do go on. I am enjoying this so much!’
Bloxham cleared his throat.
‘“At last I heard him coming. I went out to the gate of the sunk garden to meet him. It was Anthony all right. And alone.
‘“‘Hi, you!’ I said, affecting to be overcome by wine.
‘“He stopped and shone his torch into my face.
‘“‘Oh, it’s you, Crippen, old duck,’ he said, giving me a slight push. I staggered as a drunken man might do, and clutched at him as though to save myself from falling.
‘“‘Dear old fella,’ I said, clinging affectionately to his arm. ‘Dear old fella.’ And, still clinging to him, I led him towards the statue of the gladiator.
‘“‘Betcha can’t push that chap and make him hold your arm, dear old fella,’ I said, with a realistic hiccup.
‘“‘You’re nicely canned, boy,’ Anthony said, ‘And because you’re nicely canned I’ll show you something really interesting because you won’t remember it in the morning.’
‘“It was then that he reached up and unhitched the gladiator’s sword.
‘“‘Don’t try and shave with it,’ he said, and he put in into my hands. It was heavy and keen. I stuck it into the heap of gravel the builders had left and held on to him more firmly. He himself had chosen the weapon for his death. Good. I would use it. I said to him:
‘“‘Betcher can’t pot his helmet with a stone from the other side of this heap of gravel.’ I lurched against him as I spoke.
‘“We both shone our torches on to the gravel and picked out two smooth large pebbles of good weight.
‘“‘What do you bet, you mutt?’ said Anthony. He was always hard up.
‘“‘Five to one in fivers,’ I said. He insisted on writing it down and having me sign it.
‘“‘Now, not a row,’ he said. ‘You first.’ I raised my stone as a man gets the weight into position before he puts it from him. Then I lowered it.
‘“‘It’s understood no chucking,’ I said, with another drunken hiccup. ‘Gentlemen don’t throw. They put. Put and take.’
‘“‘Yes, not half,’ said Anthony. ‘You put and I’ll take—twenty-five pounds, boy! Go on.’
‘“‘I put the stone in my best manner, but of course in the darkness I missed my footing and stumbled in the middle of my movement. The shot went wide. Anthony used his torch freely to find out the limitations of our imaginary putting circle, and then took up his position.
‘“I
took up mine. The gladius was now in my grasp. I had the torch in my other hand.
‘“There is a point in the action required for putting the shot when the athlete turns completely round, so that his feet are pointing in the opposite direction from that in which they started. It was this turn, and the moment of releasing the shot, that I was waiting for.
‘“At the first sound of movement, I switched on my torch. I must make no mistake . . . Have you ever seen a man put the shot? Anthony hurled his body on to the point of the keen-bladed gladius as I held it true. Nothing could save him. He did not even cry out. The stone flew wide. He would have lost the wager, anyway. I lost my own balance with the force of the impact, and for a minute or two we both lay still there—he the dead and I the living man.”’
Bloxham looked up, puzzled.
‘But this puts the murder of Anthony too early,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t killed until eleven forty-three.’
Mrs Bradley cackled.
‘You remind me of the staff officer during the war who said the position of the front-line trenches was wrong because it did not agree with his map,’ she observed.
Bloxham grinned.
‘I suppose I must read on to find the answer,’ he said, with his usual admirable good humour. He scanned the page, and then turned over.’
‘Ah, he goes straight on to make the point clear,’ he said, and continued to read aloud.
‘“My next problem was to hide the body. The courtesy of the landscape gardener’s men in having dumped the gravel there a day or two before made the point easy of solution. There was even a spade to hand. Anthony, of course, had fallen across the heap, as I had planned he should. I made a shallow grave beside him very hastily, for time was precious, and to prove an alibi important. Then I placed my foot on his body, and after a tug or two drew out the sword and replaced it on the arm of the statue when I had cleaned it by wiping it on Anthony’s clothing. Some blood probably flowed from the death-wound, but it must have soaked into the heap and been covered up by the fresh, unstained gravel which I shovelled in on top of the grave.
‘“Next I sought out my devoted sister and laid my case before her. Although suitably horrified at the thought of a second murder, she agreed that my personal safety probably depended upon the commission of the violent deed, and conceived what I believe to be the idea of a lifetime. She said, ‘Go with one of the others to his hut. Remain with him for the rest of the evening. Go on remaining with him. Make yourself as complete an alibi as you can, because at about a quarter to twelve tonight Timon Anthony will come home!’
‘“We discussed the plan for ten minutes longer. I then sought out Hilary Yeomond, and, after helping him remake his bed—the maids never turn the mattresses!—I invited him up to the house to play chess with me until the noises at the gate of the sunk garden proved that my sister had kept her word. We had previously arranged the business of setting fire to Yeomond’s hut to cover ourselves if necessary.”’
Bloxham’s mouth fell open. He put down the papers and gazed at Mrs Bradley with a face that was almost ludicrous in its expression of shocked amazement.
‘Setting fire to Yeomond’s hut? But—but that was those Cowes!’ he stated blankly.
Mrs Bradley nodded.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mrs Bradley Takes the Bun
‘BUT THE CONFESSION wasn’t signed,’ said Bloxham, ‘and he denied that he had written it. Still, we’ve got him tight enough, and he confessed all right to me when I’d arrested him. Funny he should have written that about the waterproof, though. We can’t find it where he stated, but, even if we had, I see now why his sister was so certain nobody would connect it with her. Of course none of us had ever seen her in it! She’s given us the slip, I’m thankful to say. Got away to South America.’
‘Thankful to say?’ exclaimed the newly released Miss Caddick, opening her pale eyes wide.
‘Yes, thankful to say,’ repeated Bloxham firmly. ‘That girl did nothing except try and keep her wretched brother out of taking the consequences of his crimes. I’m glad she got away with it. I still can’t make out, though,’ he continued, turning to Mrs Bradley—for the four of them, together with Clive and Celia Brown-Jenkins, Priscilla Yeomond and the Digot family, were at tea—‘how you got to know enough about things to force that confession from him—’
‘Which he denies having written,’ said Mrs Bradley, with her eldritch chuckle.
‘Yes, dear Mrs Bradley,’ said Miss Caddick, tenderly stroking Mrs Bradley’s yellow and black jumper sleeve, ‘do tell us how you knew that Mr Kost and I were not the wicked culprits.’
Mrs Bradley peered into her cup.
‘A flight of arrows and a heart—no, two hearts,’ she remarked abstractedly. Kost and the erstwhile companion-secretary, who was now a lady of independent means, for old Mrs Puddequet had obligingly unbelted the twenty-five thousand in a singularly sporting manner, exchanged loving glances and a gentle pressure of the foot beneath the chaperonage of the teatable at which both were seated.
‘Yes, you will recount to us, perhaps, your splendid methods,’ said Kost politely.
‘My methods?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Well. I began by considering the most unusual feature of the case. That, of course, was the drowning of the little mermaid. After all, to have filled the corpse’s pockets with stones would have served the murderer’s purpose. Who would have chosen to sacrifice the statue? It was a frightful piece of work, judged as art. Was there an artist among those concerned? There was. Amaris Cowes. The rest was easy, and only required to be put to the proof. The disturbances at one o’clock on that Saturday morning were part of the practical jokes played by Timon Anthony. The body could have been put into the lake more easily in the light of day, or, at any rate, in the half-light of dawn, than in darkness, or even in the moonlight. Well, Amaris Cowes turned up at the house about an hour before dawn. That was the first point on which I disagreed with the inspector’—she grinned at him—‘for, although Amaris Cowes could not have been the murderer, she could have been, and in fact she was, the accomplice.
‘Whom would she have consented to help in such a matter at such extremely short notice? I gathered from Margaret here that the three branches of the Puddequet tree were not even on ordinary nodding terms with one another. It must have been her brother, then, whom she helped.
‘I could not convince the inspector about Amaris Cowes. I did try. As for Richard, his second alibi was really foolproof. The thing that I asked myself over and over again was where on earth Anthony could have been between the time Mr Kost went into the public house and the time that awful noise went on outside the sunk garden. As I could think of nothing else, I concluded that Anthony had been killed much earlier than had been supposed by the police, and that the noise at the gate was a blind. You remember,’ she added, turning to Bloxham, ‘I demonstrated to you how it would have been possible for Amaris Cowes, immediately she heard her brother and Hilary Yeomond shouting from the terrace, to run round the house and get to Miss Caddick’s bedroom door by using the back staircase.’
Bloxham nodded.
‘That brought me back to Richard Cowes again,’ said Mrs Bradley briefly, ‘and the business of burning down Hilary Yeomond’s hut.’
‘Did you know of the existence of the S.P.P.I.?’ said Rex Digot. ‘I’ve found out that there really is such a society, but Richard Cowes is not the president of it. I suppose it was just his vanity which made him say in his confession that he was.’
Mrs Bradley grimaced horribly. Then she said:
‘I suppose you all believe that that written confession was genuine?’
‘Well, he’s confessed the whole thing, verbally, to me since,’ said Bloxham.
‘My dear lady!’ exclaimed Colonel Digot. ‘Genuine! Why, just look into the facts for yourself!’
Mrs Bradley laughed, and, reaching out a skinny claw, she seized a currant-bun from the cake-stand and regarded it with rapture.
‘I have loo
ked into them,’ she said, ‘and I came to the conclusion that, if somebody had to be hanged, it might as well be the real murderer and not our friend Kost. Therefore, at the midhour of night, when all the world was sleeping, I took pen and paper and a good deal of thought, and wrote in my best copperplate the Confessions of Richard Cowes. After all, he himself told you in the little sitting room that day that he had committed both the murders, but you would not believe him!’
MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
Mystery Mile
Police at the Funeral
Sweet Danger
Flowers for the Judge
The Case of the Late Pig
The Fashion in Shrouds
Traitor’s Purse
Coroner’s Pidgin
More Work for the Undertaker
The Tiger in the Smoke
The Beckoning Lady
Hide My Eyes
The China Governess
The Mind Readers
Cargo of Eagles
E. F. BENSON
The Blotting Book
The Luck of the Vails
NICHOLAS BLAKE
A Question of Proof
Thou Shell of Death
There’s Trouble Brewing
The Beast Must Die
The Smiler With the Knife
Malice in Wonderland
The Case of the Abominable Snowman
Minute for Murder
Head of a Traveller
The Dreadful Hollow
The Whisper in the Gloom
End of Chapter
The Widow’s Cruise
The Worm of Death
The Sad Variety
The Morning After Death
EDMUND CRISPIN
Buried for Pleasure
The Case of the Gilded Fly
Holy Disorders
Love Lies Bleeding
The Moving Toyshop
Swan Song
The Longer Bodies Page 25