“He doesn’t!” said Mrs. Bradley. Her usually mellifluous voice was so sharp, and her scowl so particularly ferocious that I merely said:
“Oh, doesn’t he?” And left the rest to fate. Mrs. Bradley changed the subject so abruptly that my suspicion that she was side-tracking the truth became amplified. However, I judged it wiser to lie low for a bit.
Sir William said:
“What evidence do they offer against Candy, besides the motive?”
“Opportunity,” said Mrs. Bradley, “He was at the inn when the murder was committed. There is an odd fifteen minutes of his time that he can’t account for satisfactorily.”
“It’s simply horrible,” said Margaret. “He couldn’t have committed a murder! Why he used to be in my Lads’ Bible Class.”
“He isn’t capable of it,” exclaimed Sir William. I was glad to hear them championing the man so warmly and I glanced from face to face to see whether they all agreed. I was surprised at the peculiar expression on Bransome Burns’ unprepossessing countenance. His lips were drawn back from his ugly teeth in a malicious smile.
“Good heavens!” I thought. “He believes Sir William did it!”
Almost as though I had spoken the words aloud, Mrs. Bradley observed:
“Of course, there is this point to be considered. You do not believe that Candy was capable of murder. I believe he was.”
“But—” thundered Sir William. At least, he would have thundered the sentence had he been permitted to conclude it, I think. But Mrs. Bradley interrupted him.
“I am not convinced of Candy’s innocence. I believe that Candy was capable of murder, but I also know”—she looked at each of us in turn—“that there are others in this village who are potential murderers. Take Sir William, for example.”
Sir William got a bit purple at that, of course, and was obviously working himself up into one of his terrible rages, when Mrs. Bradley checked him.
“Don’t show off, dear host,” she said. “Mr. Bransome Burns will bear me out.”
Bransome Burns—I rejoice to think that Mrs. Gatty called him a shark—he was a blue-nosed shark if ever I saw one—I never have seen one of course—stuck his forefinger behind his collar stud and made polite, deprecating noises. All the same, there was a cold gleam in his nasty, fishy eye. He had not forgotten the day he kicked the dog. I could read the man’s mind like a book.
“Then,” said Mrs. Bradley, turning suddenly on me and leering with a kind of fearful joy, “there is our young friend, Mr. Wells.”
“I a murderer?” I ejaculated. It was laughable! I had picked up the poker at Burt’s bungalow, of course. And (I should admit it if pressed) I had picked it up with the idea of swiping Burt a meaty, fruity slosh over the head if he kicked up rough or turned in any way nasty. But the Bradley was biting the hand that would have defended her. I could hardly say so, of course.
“Then there is Mr. Burt,” said Mrs. Bradley. I could agree to that. I myself had heard Burt confess to her that he would kill if he were forced by pressure of circumstances so to do.
“Then there is Mrs. Coutts,” said Mrs. Bradley, “although I confess up to the present I have no proof except psychological proof (which is incontrovertible, but not acceptable yet to the lay nor the legal mind)—that Mrs. Coutts is a potential murderess. And then,” she added, grinning at us, “there is myself. I actually have a murder to my credit. I was tried for it and acquitted, but I did it, boys and girls, I did it.”
She shook her head sadly, and then turned to me.
“Do you really believe that Candy was incapable of murder?” she asked.
“I have not heard you prove anything which persuades me that he murdered Meg Tosstick,” I said.
“You will at least allow that he could have murdered her,” she said. “Why, child, he had the virus in his blood!”
“Well, Lowry knew of that fact, and yet risked employing him as barman and as chucker-out,” I said.
“Yes, so he did,” admitted Mrs. Bradley. I forbore to press the point, except to add:
“The moral is obvious to me.”
“Oh, yes, so it is to me,” said Mrs. Bradley hastily. Anxious apparently, to change the subject, she remarked:
“About Burt’s smuggling, Sir William. You are here in your private capacity, and not as a Justice of the Peace? That is understood?”
“Well, not exactly. Perhaps I’d better go,” Sir William said. Huffy, of course, at being called a murderer. Margaret followed him out, but Bransome Burns stayed with us.
“What made you think of liquor?” enquired Mrs. Bradley of me. She seemed amused.
“Obvious,” I said.
“Yes,” she retorted swiftly. “Obvious that it couldn’t have been liquor. If it had been, do you not think that every soul in this village, man, woman and child, would have been aware of the fact, and would have got his pickings out of it? But nobody knew. Nobody was interested. And why? Because Burt smuggled books, not liquor. Banned books, dear child. Nasty, pornographic literature, dirt and offal, dear child, and did not even make a fortune out of them, so his conduct really was inexcusable!”
She hooted with outrageous laughter. Bransome Burns said nervously,
“How beastly. What’s happened to his wife, by the way? I used to talk to her down at the post office sometimes, but I haven’t seen her since the murder.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Mrs. Bradley answered, before I had a chance to do so. “She is absent from the Bungalow.”
“Oh, really?” said Burns. “Nice-looking girl. Pity she married that rotten fellow.”
So we talked about the Burts until I took my leave.
CHAPTER VIII
bob candy’s bank holiday
« ^ »
I was not as much surprised as I might have been. Burt was exactly the opposite of my conception of a distributor of indecent literature, it is true; on the other hand, his language was of that revolting type which revels in causing embarrassment to those that hear it. I frowned judicially and stared in dignified displeasure at the carpet. I did not really know what to say, of course. Luckily, Mrs. Bradley was at no loss for words. She continued, after giving me sufficient time to digest the tidings.
“Of course, he won’t be able to carry on the good work.”
“Certainly not,” I agreed. “I say! I bet Lowry was in on the game, whether it was books or beer! He’s a proper old miser, you know, and not one to let good money slip past him—well, bad money, I mean, of course!”
I laughed at my own joke, but Mrs. Bradley did not seem frightfully amused. I take it, from my fairly close observation of the sex, that women have not a very keen sense of humour. I played my trump card, however, and caused the old lady to sit up a bit, I fancy.
“You see,” I said, “he must have used Lowry’s secret passage sometimes to escape detection, and he could hardly do that without Lowry’s connivance, could he?”
I don’t know why it is, but the mention of a secret passage always interests people. It interested Mrs. Bradley, and she asked me a lot of questions about it. I could not tell her much more than the fact that there was such a smugglers’ passage leading from Lowry’s cellars to the Cove, that it had been blocked up, but that I did not see why it shouldn’t have been unblocked by Lowry and Burt.
“Why choose the Cove, if not for the secret passage?” I asked, triumphantly. Mrs. Bradley still looked interested.
“A baby could have seen through that lonely bungalow business,” she said, at last. “If ever the situation of a house shrieked that something illegal was going on, the situation of that one did so. Add to that an occupant, who, far from observing the most elementary precautions, goes out of his way to waylay and half-murder the local vicar, and plays a silly and cruel trick on a little jackal like Gatty, and places himself, as you say (I hadn’t, of course!) in the hands of a fox like Lowry, and something is bound to go wrong. If I hadn’t put two and two together, someone else would have done so, and then—”