“They’ll have to let me off,” he kept saying, twisting his hands together, “because I never done it, see? They can’t hang me if I never done it! That aren’t the law, Mr. Wells, that aren’t.”
“But look here, Candy, old fellow,” I said, desperately anxious not to put the wind up the poor chap, of course, but just as keen not to let Mrs. Bradley down, “they may think you did do it. And, look here, Candy, there are some very rich and clever people interested in you, and they’re going to get you off, but they can’t do it unless you tell everything you know.”
He sat there as dumb as the Mona Lisa, and looking about as soft, and the way he kept twisting his fingers got on my nerves. He wouldn’t say a word, so, at last, knowing that time was passing, I determined to try a bold shot. I leaned forward and said in my sternest rebuke-of-the-old-Adam tone, which, in a priest, of course, amounts to about the same thing as an army officer’s parade voice:
“Why don’t you confess that you spent the evening with the murdered girl?”
He jumped so suddenly that I jumped too.
“You—!” he said. “It weren’t the evening, damn you, it were only the afternoon!”
“Everybody knows about it, Bob,” I said, gently, hoping that the lie would be forgiven me. “So why don’t you make a clean breast of it? It was in the evening that you saw Meg Tosstick.” Sheer bluff of course, and I was ashamed of it.
“I didn’t do it, I tell you! I didn’t do it!” he said.
“I know you didn’t, you fool!” I said, trying a little savaging. “But what chance do you give anybody, if you won’t tell the truth?”
He licked his lips. A muscle at the side of his jaw twitched and twitched.
“Here you are, then,” he said sullenly. “I didn’t have no heart to go to the fête, and I knew we wouldn’t be busy at the Arms until the evening, so I get Mr. Lowry to give me the morning and afternoon off, and I promise to be back by six. Well, we open at half-past six, see, and they chaps at the fête be getting thirsty by then. I get away to Little Hartley, because I told the vicar I didn’t want to play in that there old cricket match against Much Hartley, and I wander about the woods and the common, and have a bit of dinner I brought along, and in the afternoon I sneak back to Saltmarsh to see Meg, and have a few things out with her. I have no chance before to talk to the poor maid because Mrs. Lowry was always for keeping me away. Afeared I’d do her a cruel turn, I do suppose,” added Bob, his face darkening.
“Did she say that?” I asked. He shook his head.
“No. Her would always say maid was too bad, or too tired, or was asleep, or was suckling, or some excuse, to keep me from her.”
“Then you didn’t see Meg to speak to from the time the child was born until August Bank Holiday?” I asked.
“That’s in the way of it,” he answered. “Anyway, I knowed the master and missus and all the gals and men ’ud be at the fête in the afternoon, so, with them thinking I was away to a day’s holiday on my own, I could see it were my chance to get speech with Meg. I wasn’t going to frit the poor maid; only ask she, pleasant-like, who was her fancy chap, and did she prefer him to I, and suchlike. But not rancorious, Mr. Wells…” He looked at me pleadingly, but I said nothing at all, so at last he continued:
“Well, Meg looked proper frit when I walked in. Her was white and looked weary. Couldn’t see nothing of babby. Her had it too close and all covered up not to have its looks give nawthen away, I reckon.
“ ‘Why, Bob,’ her says in a whisper, ‘How be?’
“ ‘I be fine,’ I says, ‘How be you?’
“ ‘I be all right,’ her says, ‘Oh, Bob, have ee come to upbraid me? Don’t ee upbraid me, Bob, nor yet miscall me, my dear,’ her says, ‘for I can’t abide no hard words, I be that weak. And don’t ee ask Babby’s surname, neither,’ her says. So we set and talk, and at last her says:
“ ‘I do know I lost ee for good and all, Bob,’ her says, ‘but do ee lay thy face down on pillow beside me, and give me a bit of comfort, my dear.’
“So I lays down my head on pillow, ah, and body, too, on top of quilt, and puts arm over she, having took off collar and tie for comfort first.”
“The—the knitted silk tie?” I gasped. He nodded, and then smiled sardonically, and said,
“Ah. Funny bit, that there, weren’t it? Well, like silly chap, happen I fall asleep, what with the quiet and the warmth and such, and first thing I know, Meg shaking I and telling I to get up and go away. Sure enough, when I look at clock, five past six her say, so I hop up in a hurry, part my hair with Meg’s comb, put on collar and can’t see tie. Meg say she’ll find un and hide un, but I must go. Poor maid seem so set on it, and so frit to think somebody might see me there, that I pack up and go. I get another tie from my own bedroom, put on my barman’s overall, and step down into the bar. Mr. and Mrs. Lowry wasn’t back from fête, but the gals and Charlie Peachey, the other barman with me, soon come in, and we open as usual. But master and missus never come in until goodness knows when that night, for Charlie and I close the house at half-past ten, and he go back to the fête for the dancing, and the gals with him, and I go upstairs. I tap at Meg’s door, but get no answer, so I twist the handle, but the door was locked, so I go along to my bed.”
“At what time, exactly, would you say you got to your own room?” I asked. Candy considered the question.
“Not before a quarter to eleven and not after eleven o’clock,” he said. “But, of course, it’s that there quarter of an hour I were down the cellar they’ve got against me.”
I spoke a few reassuring words to him, but I knew that that quarter of an hour was the snag. At last I took my leave, for my time was up.
“So you see,” I said to Daphne, as we sat at tea, “the poor girl must have been murdered before Candy went up to bed that night. The medical evidence at the inquest put the time of death between nine o’clock and ten-thirty.”
“Just the time,” said Daphne, “when Candy would be kept busy, and could not interfere.”
“Just the time,” I said bitterly, “when the damn fool decided to go down the cellar and bring up some more beer for the jug and bottle department, presided over by Mrs. Lowry.”
“Well, I suppose she asked him to go down the cellar!” retorted Daphne.
“How could she? She wasn’t in the house at all,” I replied. “Bob told me that both the Lowrys were out, and that he doesn’t know when they came home. Mrs. Lowry simply left word that some time during the evening the job was to be done.”
“Hm. It looks beastly suspicious to me,” said Daphne.
“My dear girl, do be reasonable,” I said.
“Well, Noel, it’s rather funny that just at the time when they’re out of the house and no suspicion can attach to either of them, poor Meg gets murdered, isn’t it? Not to mention the fact that it was also the very first time Mrs. Lowry had left her to herself!”
“But, Daphne,” I said—laughing, I must confess, at her simplicity —“naturally the murderer would prefer to attack somebody in the Lowrys’ house while they were not there. It’s only common sense to suppose that the murderer has some gumption, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, I hate those Lowrys,” said Daphne. “I’m sure there was something fishy when they took Meg to live with them in the first place.”
“But your uncle, I understood, paid for her board and lodging,” I said weakly.
“Oh, did he?” said Daphne. Nor could I persuade her to add anything to the rather moot point suggested by the question.