Struck by a sudden thought, I said to Mrs. Courts:
“I suppose the poor girl did have a baby?”
She said:
“Whatever do you mean? There was no doubt at all that when she left my service she was pregnant.”
“Ah, well, that’s that, then,” I said. “It had just struck me that, as no one seems to have seen this baby, and as it has completely disappeared since the murder, it might never have existed.”
A bright and thoughtful opinion, I considered.
“You need not worry,” said the woman, viciously. “That baby has been moved, with the connivance of the Lowrys, to some home approved of by its natural father. Nobody was allowed to see that baby, my dear Noel, for a very good and sufficient reason. You mark my words! That baby resembled somebody too closely for its father’s comfort. That’s the reason for all this mystery surrounding the baby.”
She snapped out the words as though they had been said on a typewriter.
“So you think the father killed the mother, in case she should give him away?” I suggested, going on with what seemed to me the logical sequence of the story. “That is the police theory, too, I believe.” I was wrong about that, of course.
Mrs. Coutts suddenly swayed, and pitched forward. I had never seen anybody faint before. She went dead off. I was fearfully alarmed. It was the merest luck, or sheer instinct, or something, which prompted me to freeze on to her before she struck her head. Dicky heart, of course. She had looked very groggy since she had reported old Coutts’ absence on the night of the fête. Very groggy.
The police from Wyemouth Harbour and an inspector and the Chief Constable of the County all came down during the course of the day, and the village positively hummed. We got a fair crop of reporters, too, all seething with enthusiasm, and hosts of amateur detectives (holiday-makers from Wyemouth Harbour, chiefly), hunting for clues—or rather, souvenirs of the murder. Frightfully ghoulish, the many-headed, of course.
William Coutts went snooping, too, and apparently walked into a hornets’ nest up at the Bungalow. He had spent a hot and dirty couple of hours in and about the Cove and the quarries, and then decided to call at the Bungalow to pick up any fresh trail, he said, but I concluded that he meant to see whether he would be asked to stay to lunch. The front door was open, as usual, so he walked in, and was just going to barge into the dining-room, whence he could hear voices, when it was borne in on him that Burt and Cora were having the most frightful row. He didn’t stay, of course. He heard the words:
“—get a damned good hiding if I hear any more of it! Yes, and that Tired Business Man! Blast his eyes!”
“—beastly old hole, enough to make a pig homesick!”
“—pig is what I said! And now get on! You’ll miss that train.”
Then he came away. I imagine that Cora and Burt quarrelled a good deal. They were both hot-headed, I had decided, and as I said before, it couldn’t have been much of a life for a gay-living high-spirited young woman of Cora’s type and mentality.
But all minor excitements paled before the great blaze of terror and thrills that followed the discovery of the murder.
William, I know, slept with his heaviest catapult under his pillow, and I shrewdly suspect that Mrs. Coutts used to put the kitchen poker on the chair beside her bed. I took care to accompany Daphne even into the garden to pick gooseberries and garden peas. At night I made a point of tapping upon her bedroom door and enquiring whether she was all right. She always was, of course.
On the Tuesday afternoon and evening the men of the village, headed by the squire and the vicar, who had sunk their private differences in this terrible affair of the murder, and supported strongly by William Coutts and the local Boy Scouts, determined to track down the beast who had killed the poor girl. I dug out Burt, who, with his brains and physique certainly would have been a match for any murderer. He agreed willingly to help us, the more so as he was feeling a bit at a loose end, for Cora McCanley had received an offer by telegram that same morning to appear in a piece called Home Birds which was touring the provinces, and he supposed he would not see her again until after Christmas. Not that he seemed to care much. The row, I suppose.
Our first task was to patrol the shore by the Cove, but, although we kept it up from seven in the evening until nearly one in the morning, nothing happened at all. Personally, I could not believe that there had been no connection between the attack on the vicar and the murder of the girl. We were harbouring Thugs in the village. When we arrived home, Mrs. Coutts, William and Daphne were all in bed. The vicar went into his wife’s room, and the next moment I heard him calling me.
“Get some sal volatile from Daphne,” he said. It was rather nice to see Daphne asleep, but I was compelled to wake her for the stuff.
It appeared that Mrs. Coutts had been out to look for us when it got dark, had missed her way and nearly fallen down one of the unfenced quarries. She was rather bad.
And, blow me, if, on the Wednesday, another beastly mysterious affair didn’t occur which put the most fearful wind up Daphne and myself.
As Mrs. Coutts was so very groggy, and complained of her heart and a bad headache and shock to the system, Daphne had to go down to the church and play the organ for the Women’s Weekly Prayer Meeting and Devotional.
This was Mrs. Coutts’ job really, so Daphne, who was rather taken on the hop, thought she had better go along at about half-past six that evening and practise the hymns. Although I say it that love her, Daphne is not at her best on the organ unless she’s had considerable practice first. So we arranged to put in an hour from six-thirty to seven-thirty when the meeting was billed to begin.
I say “we,” because, since the attack on William and myself outside the Bungalow, Daphne had been exceedingly nervous, and so I had fallen into the habit of “standing by.” We kept this pretty little fact to ourselves, because Mrs. Coutts would not have approved.
So I accompanied Daphne to the church and worked the beastly bellows for her. She was in the middle of “Lead, Kindly Light,” and doing well, when I heard the music stop.
“Gee up!” I said loudly and encouragingly. There was no answer, so I slid round, to see what was what.
“Oh, Noel!” said Daphne. She threw her arms round me, clutching me tightly.
“Somebody put their hands on my neck! Somebody put their hands on my neck!” she said.
It was about five past seven then, and the verger came and lit up, and the earliest arrivals began to trickle in. I thought, to be quite honest, that Daphne was suffering from nerves. Nobody had come into the church unless they had come in from the vestry, and that was always kept locked. We ourselves had come in by the. west door so as not to bother old Coutts for the keys.
“I shrieked your name as soon as I felt the hands on me,” said Daphne, when the meeting was over and we were on our way home. Old Coutts had stayed behind to talk to some of the congregation, of course. Although the incident had given me quite a jolt, I would not discuss the subject with Daphne. I was certain really she had been imagining things. But I promised to stand by more closely than ever, and advised her to lock her door at night as an antidote to nerves. We were all suffering from nerves, more or less, that week, I think.
I told Mrs. Bradley about it, of course. She looked more grave than I expected.
“Don’t let her go about alone, Noel,” she said. “After all, no arrest has been made yet for the murder of Meg Tosstick. It may take place to-day. But keep close to little Daphne. They may not arrest the right person, you know!”
She gave her ghoulish chuckle and patted me on the shoulder.