“That hallucination!” Herbert was out of breath. “Blood on my shoes — show them to her. Look! It wasn’t hallucination, Ruth. Rita was murdered on the bank and thrown in. We must drag Drunkard’s Leap.”
“Will one of you please explain—”
“Oh, all right then! I’ll tell you.”
It was Herbert who poured out the tale of the previous evening’s experiences, of his discussion with Ruth, and the reasons for their joint conclusion that he had suffered an hallucination.
“Then as I understand it, after what you’d seen, or what you only thought you’d seen, you came to this cottage, and — is this your mackintosh by any chance?”
The mackintosh was hanging on a peg in the hall. The sergeant pulled it out fanwise. The whole of the seat and part of the back were covered with congealed blood.
“How did that blood get there? On your mackintosh and on your shoes?”
“It must be her blood. That must have been done when I flopped on to the bench.”
“And what’s the matter with your hand that you’ve got that bandage?”
“Oh, hell to these footling questions! Sergeant, for heaven’s sake, do something! Can’t you see that she has been murdered?”
The sergeant had never handled murder. This was unlike any he had read about. For one thing, the suspect was actually directing the investigation!
While Tottle, at Ruth’s suggestion, was ringing the Lynmouth police to find out whether Rita had spent the night at Calder’s bungalow, Ruth went upstairs to dress.
On a hanger on the door was the yellow underbodice. She put it in her wardrobe. Over a chair hung the pale green sleeveless dress. As she picked it up, she caught her breath. At the back, a little above the waistline, was a distinct blood stain. For a moment she had a sense of eerieness, as if blood would meet her everywhere. Then she remembered.
“That was done when Herbert put his arm round me before I bound up his hand.”
She dropped the dress into the laundry basket — on top of the bloodstained yellow jumper. She looked down at them, trying to assess their danger to herself. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and went on dressing. She had an almost superstitious belief that if destiny intended her to atone for her crime it would protect her from the police.
By ten they had found the body in Drunkard’s Leap, its position explained by the fact that the iron bracket had jammed between two outcrops of rock some eight feet below the surface. By mid-day the county police were in the village in force. Detailed statements were taken from Cudden and Ruth, covering everything, even including Ruth’s visit to her solicitor to arrange for the conveyance of the cottage to Herbert Cudden and his wife. The police took away for microscopic analysis Herbert’s mackintosh and shoes and Ruth’s yellow jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress. The analysis revealed that the blood on Herbert’s garments had been exposed to the air for at least half an hour before it had adhered — which bore out his statements about the times of his movements.
Analysis of the skirt and jumper showed that the blood was newly shed when it had adhered — which bore out the joint statement that Herbert mistook Ruth, outside the cottage, for Rita and pawed her, after he had cut his hand by the pool.
The Coroner’s jury would have censured Herbert for his over-readiness to believe he had experienced an hallucination had not Ruth generously insisted that the blame, if any, should be wholly hers. The Court returned a verdict of murder against person or persons unknown.
The school term opened in a somewhat strained atmosphere. True that only three of the hundred and fifty pupils were withdrawn on account of the scandal. But there was an unhealthy interest in the events. The headmistress explained that poor Miss Steevens had been killed by a madman who did not know what he was doing — a theory that was helped by a Press attempt to link the case up with a maniac murder in the North of England.
Ruth let the backwash of the murder splash round her without giving it her attention. Scotland Yard rented all available rooms in the village inn. As there were apparently no clues they used the dragnet, checking the movements of every man within twenty miles and every automobile that could have been used. They would apply to Ruth now and again, mainly for information about the dead girl’s habits.
In three weeks they packed up, leaving a pall of suspicion over the whole countryside. In due course the mackintosh and the shoes, the pale green sleeveless dress and the yellow jumper, minutely documented, were sent to the Department of Dead Ends.
Herbert’s visits to the cottage became more frequent. At first he would sit in silence, assured of her sympathy. In time Ruth loosened his tongue and let him talk himself out of his melancholy.
The strong forces in her nature which had produced the brainstorm at Drunkard’s Leap were now concentrated upon the purpose with which she had successfully drugged her conscience. Herbert Cudden was overwhelmed by those forces at the moment of her choosing — which was as soon as the summer term ended.
Again we are not concerned with the detail of the methods by which that formidable will induced a transference to Ruth of the emotion which Herbert had felt for Rita. It suffices to say that it happened according to her plan. They could write to the headmistress after the ceremony, she said, but they need not announce their marriage until the autumn term. As they particularly wished to avoid newspaper publicity they would be married by registrar in the East End of London.
This can hardly be called a tactical blunder on Ruth’s part because, as far as the police were concerned, she had exercised no tactics. She did not know that a great many persons who wish to marry more or less in secret, particularly bigamists, regularly hit on that same idea. So the East End registrars invariably supply the police with a list of those applicants who obviously do not belong to the neighborhood.
They each took a “suitcase address” and applied for a seven-day licence. Detective-Inspector Rason received the notice on the second day.
“Oh! So it was a triangle after all!” he exclaimed without logical justification. “And now they’re getting married on the quiet. That probably means that they cooked up all the hallucination stuff together. Anything they said may have been true or may not.”
He took out the yellow jumper, the pale green sleeveless dress, and the mackintosh, which, with the iron bracket, was the only real evidence he had. In the garments there was no smell of gardenia.
“But Herbert said the dress Ruth was wearing was Rita’s dress and that it smelt of gardenia. Well, it doesn’t! Perhaps the scent has worn off in three months. Better put a query to the Chemical Department.”
He had difficulty in finding the proper form, still more difficulty in filling it out. So instead, he sought out his twenty-year-old niece.
“When you put scent on your dress, my dear, how long does the dress go on smelling of it?”
“Oh, uncle! You never put any on your dress. It isn’t good for the dress and the scent goes stale and your best friends won’t tell you. You put it on your hair and behind your ears.”
So if there had been a smell of gardenia it meant that Ruth had deliberately applied it — the other girl’s perfume!
Presently his thought crystallized.
“If Ruth was really wearing Rita’s dress and Rita’s scent, Herbert is telling the truth. If not — not! Wonder how far we can check up on the dress itself.”
He searched jumper and dress for a trademark and found none. “Then the dress must have been homemade. Or perhaps the village dressmaker.”
Deciding to take a long shot he was in Hemel the following afternoon.