To my astonishment, the Chief Constable of the County was with Sir William and Mrs. Bradley, and Sir William’s first move, after bunging my name and station at the great man, was to clear out and leave the three of us in possession of the library. I was given a nice notebook, a set of beautifully sharpened pencils, and a comfortable, workmanlike seat at the big table. The other two sat in armchairs on either side of the fire.
“Now, Mr. Wells,” said the Chief Constable, beaming. He looked like an inspector of schools, or like the gently smiling crocodile of the classic. They are awfully alike, you know, both in appearance and character.
I hitched my chair forward rather nervously, and grinned.
“At your service, sir,” I replied, suitably I hope.
“You have been sent for to act as Mrs. Bradley’s secretary. You are under pledge of secrecy on account of everything that is said in this room from now onwards, until you are released from that pledge,” he said. (I have been released from it by now, of course, or I should not be discussing these matters.)
I bowed, feeling rather like a League of Nations Conference on the White Slave Traffic, of course.
“Please take down everything that is said, in your beautiful shorthand, Noel, my dear, and later, when you have read it over to me, transcribe it into your nice legible longhand,” said Mrs. Bradley kindly. “Are you ready?”
Well, they talked, of course, and I took down. That’s about all it amounted to.
“You think, then,” the Chief Constable began, “that the unfortunate lad will be acquitted?”
“If the police could possibly discover the murderer of Cora Mc-Canley, I think it would be certain,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “The bodies of Meg Tosstick and the baby have not been found yet, I take it?”
“No. The police have followed up every possible clue. I don’t think they have left a single stone unturned,” the Chief Constable replied, “but, so far—nothing!”
Mrs. Bradley grimaced, I suppose, at this. I didn’t look up from my notebook, so, of course, I can’t be certain, and there was a longish pause. At last she said:
“The criminal is rather a remarkable person. Let me outline to you what I think he has done. I am assuming, by the way, that we are dealing with one criminal who committed both crimes; not with two murderers.”
“You say ‘he,’ as though it could not be a woman’s crime,” said the Chief Constable.
“My mind is open on the point,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be a woman’s crime. Of course, Cora McCanley was a big girl and Meg Tosstick a little one, but both appear to have been stunned before they were strangled.”
“Oh, so Cora was strangled too,” I thought to myself, as I waited for the next remark to take down.
“Yes. Surprise is a great factor, of course, in a strangling crime,” said the Chief Constable. “And there are such things as drugs, of course, or the victim being attacked during sleep. She had quite a lump on the back of her head, as you say. She may certainly have been stunned first.”
“During sleep,” said Mrs. Bradley, thoughtfully. There was a long pause. Then she went on, “You mean that she was sleeping beside her murderer, and that he attacked and killed her?”
It occurred to me that Mrs. Bradley was determined to shield Sir William.
“Well,” said the Chief Constable, slowly, “if she had a lover, you see, and was expecting to go off with him—I wonder where she was killed! That’s what the inspector and his people have been trying to get at. But the trail stops dead at Wyemouth Harbour Station.”
“The Pier-head Station?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Oh, no. The main line Central Station,” replied the Chief Constable. “She took a ticket for London, as we should have expected her to do if her story of going to join the touring company were true. The next thing we know for certain is that she did not join the company. We can’t prove whether she actually went to London or not. It’s as though, when Cora McCanley stepped past the barrier to board the London train, she stepped into thin air.”
“Have you considered the possibility of her having crossed the line by the footbridge and boarded a train which was returning to the Pier-head Station?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“But what could she do at the Pier-head Station?” demanded the Chief Constable. “She could do nothing but swim, unless she chartered a boat.”
“Surely she could have returned to the Bungalow by way of the seashore, if she wished?” said Mrs. Bradley.
“She could. Your argument, then, is that she returned almost immediately to Saltmarsh?”
“That is what I think. You see, you have to take the girl’s temperament into account. Hoodwinking her partner would bê the chief appeal to her. She was bored, you see. To have a lover under Burt’s very nose would tickle her sense of the humorous more than actually going off with someone.”
“I see. Then you think she walked along the sands from Wyemouth Harbour Pier-head Station—or, of course, she could have walked along the cliffs if the tide were full—we can check the state of the tide, of course—and risked running full tilt into Burt?”
“I think she felt pretty secure,” said Mrs. Bradley, “so far as Burt was concerned. Have you heard of the smugglers’ passage from the Mornington Arms to Saltmarsh Cove?”
“I’ve heard of it, yes. Why?”
“I happen to know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that Burt, who is rather an extraordinary young man, spent a good deal of his spare time in digging a transverse to that old tunnel from his bungalow.”
She gave me time to get this down, and then asked me for a sheet of paper and a pencil. She sketched quickly and badly, but comprehensibly, a plan of the chief houses in Saltmarsh and dotted in the old tunnel and Burt’s new bit.
“Like that, wasn’t it, Noel?” she asked, handing it to me. I assented and the Chief Constable studied it.
“You see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I think Cora walked as far as the Cove—(knowing that the chances were at least a thousand to one against her meeting anybody she knew)—dived into the Cove, followed the passage—(whose entrance at the Cove end is so cleverly concealed that I spent two hours there with a powerful electric torch before I located it)—reached the transverse to the Bungalow, went along the transverse, and was actually under or in the Bungalow when she was murdered.”
“But—but they always slept together!” I yelped, as soon as I had dashed the theory on to paper. Both the polite conversationalists stared at me as though I had gone mad.
“They what?” said the Chief Constable, concentrating upon the somewhat salient point I had indicated to them.
“Always slept together. They’ve both told me so at different times. You know, shared a bed,” I said.
“This is important, isn’t it?” asked the Chief Constable.
“Well, it is important in view of the fact that Burt and Cora had a serious quarrel on the morning of the day she was murdered,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But it is not particularly important in this instance, because Burt was one of the night watchers at the Cove, wasn’t he, Noel?”
“Oh, yes, of course. I had forgotten that,” I said, feeling a fool.
The Chief Constable produced papers and a notebook. He donned horn-rimmed glasses and, looking rather like Mr. Pickwick, perused the literature he had dug out of his dispatch case. “Burt seems to confess to the quarrel,” he said at last. “Yes,” he went on, “he certainly seems to confess to the quarrel. It was very bitter, apparently, and was with reference to the stinginess of Burt in withholding the greater portion of his income from McCanley. He gives as his reason for behaving thus that she was extravagant.”
Mrs. Bradley nodded.
“Cora was angry about having so little money,” she ventured. I could see, of course, that she did not intend to give Burt away about the smuggled books, if she could help it; and, after all, if the man had seen the error of his ways, it was surely right to guard him from punishment.