“All right. If you don’t go, our Sue, I shan’t go neither,” said her mother unreasonably.
“I’ll go by myself, but I won’t go along with you,” said Susie, suddenly changing her mind about the visit to John. “Start her up, Mr. Roy,” she added to the chauffeur.
She was quite ready. She had only to slip into hat and coat. Mrs. Cozens, on the other hand, was still in her kitchen garb. Roy was in a hurry, so, with a half-promise flung over his shoulder to Mrs. Cozens that he would return for her later, he started up the engine, and soon the car was lost to sight in the thick white mist which was already blotting out the daylight.
The car crawled along the old main road through the thick mist, and Susie, seriously alarmed at the prospect of an accident, began to suggest to Roy that he should drop her at the cross roads and make some excuse to the squire. Roy, who knew that if Susie and her mother did not come to the rescue, the servants, equally with the squire, would get no evening meal, invited her to think again, and drove on, carefully but steadily, through the white vapour.
It was very cold. Hedges would loom suddenly out of the mist. Once they were almost ditched. It was uncomfortable and terrifying. At last they reached the big house, managed the turn at the lodge gates, and the journey was over. It was then, according to Susie’s wrist-watch, which she had set right that morning by the 10.30 a.m. broadcast signal from Greenwich, just after half-past four. It had taken an hour for the car to do the three and a half miles which lay between Susie’s house and the big house. Once they had stopped while Roy gave directions to a man who had lost himself in the mist.
“You’d better go straight back for mother,” said Susie, as she got out of the car. She stood at the side of the drive and watched while Roy circumnavigated a clump of bushes round which the drive made a circle. The car crawled away. Susie waited until she could hear it no longer, and then went round the house to the side door, where she was admitted by the kitchenmaid. About a quarter of an hour later Roy appeared.
“Didn’t you go back for mother?” asked Susie. He grinned and shrugged.
“Had enough of driving in this fog for one day,” he informed her.
“Well, she won’t come on her own two legs, not mother won’t,” said Susie. “So you better get a move on. I can’t manage a dinner by myself.”
Roy swore at her.
“Thought you’d parted brass-rags and wouldn’t have her come with us,” he said.
“Never mind that,” said the inconsistent Susie. “You get out that car and go after her. As it is, she’ll only be in time to see to the sweet. Get on out of here.”
“Start up the dinner and leave Fatty to look after it,” suggested Roy, indicating the fifteen-year-old kitchenmaid, “and come along with me, then.”
Susie demurred. Roy insisted. The kitchenmaid giggled. In the end, Susie had her way, and remained behind, and Roy, very sulkily, went off alone. He returned at six to find that Susie had disappeared. Susie’s mother sniffed, and went on with the dinner, presumably where Susie had left off. The kitchenmaid, questioned by Roy, announced that Susie had gone “out the back” and had not returned. A little later, a man, well-muffled, came to the back door and inquired for Susie.
By ten o’clock that night three of the squire’s guests had telephoned to say that their cars were fog-bound, the dinner was eaten, and it was declared impossible for Mrs. Cozens to find her way home that night. So she was given a camp-bed in the kitchenmaid’s room, and by eleven o’clock all lights in the big house were extinguished and everything was quiet. Later on in the week, Mrs. Cozens told several sympathizers, including the gentlemen of the press, that she did not sleep a wink all night
“I had them premonitions,” she declared, “d’reckly I saw that man. Like a commercial he was, only more so. Asked right out for her as bold as brass, and her engaged to one man and as good as half-promised to another. I soon sent him off with a flea in his ear. I’ve got a good eye for picking out faces, and if he wasn’t the very spit and image of that monster—what was his name, now? —I remember thinking it suited him right down to the ground!—oh, Cutler. That’s it. Cutler. I don’t read the Sunday papers for nothing. Got a regular gallery of murderers, I have, in the back of me head, and although he was let off with a caution, I reckon he’s a murderer as sure as eggs is eggs. So now! Some folks can remember figures and dates and things; some can remember the fashions of King Edward’s day; it’s murderers every time with me. Kind of an ’obby it is. Poor girl! Ah, well, you never know what’s going to ’appen, do you?”
chapter xiii: fog
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Neither young Spratt nor Roy was moved to vengeance by the discovery of the murdered girl’s body. Their attitude was understandable. In effect, what it amounted to was that she had evidently been deceiving both of them. What they hated was the thought that she had made fools of them, not the realization that a scoundrel had done her to death.
The bathrooms at the “Swinging Sign” were three in number. It was in the smallest one that the girl was found drowned. Helm was not apprehended. Mrs. Cozens, the dead girl’s mother, proved to be such an extremely unreliable witness that the police felt justified in ignoring her unsupported testimony that she had seen Cutler that day, and the police inquiry had to proceed along lines other than those which assumed that he was guilty.
The explanation given by the villagers was simple. The inn was known to be haunted. In some dark manner the powers of evil had enticed the girl thither, and there, by the agency of the same powers, she had met her death.
The police, foiled in one direction, soon formulated, another theory—namely, that young John Spratt knew something of the matter. It was suggestive, they considered, that Susie’s death had taken place in the home of her fiancé. John was questioned, and had to make some damaging admissions. Susie had been invited to the inn and might have gone to the squire’s house very much against her will. It was obvious that she had never had any intention of remaining there longer than the minimum time for preparing the dinner, and it was suggested that she had arrived at the inn without being recognized on the way, owing to the density of the fog, had quarrelled with John—although the boy and both his parents strenuously denied this—and the murder had been the result. When it was further shown that Susie was in the habit of taking a bath at the “Swinging Sign” on Sundays, owing to the fact that her mother’s cottage contained no bathroom, further speculation appeared vain. John was arrested and charged with having murdered his sweetheart.
Mrs. Bradley was seated in the pleasant morning-room of the Stone House, Wandles Parva, a bright fire burning, breakfast at the toast-and-marmalade stage, and her young friend, Aubrey Harringay, home for the Christmas holidays, sprawling companionably all over the hearthrug, reading a detective story. She read the account of the murder and the result of the police investigations up to the moment of going to press, and observed, in her rich, full tones:
“Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear! Something more than fiction, something less than fact, makes the poor psychologist wonder how to act!”
She concluded this surprising couplet with an even more surprising hoot of laughter. Aubrey looked up.
“Dry up, love,” he said. “You ruin my powers of concentration.”
“Put the book aside when you’ve finished the next chapter, child. I want to tell you a nasty, harrowing story,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Honest to God?”
“I am not accustomed to refer my integrity to the Almighty,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly.
“Sorry. Merely a figure of speech.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and placed it between the pages of his book. “Come on.”