“Very angry, it seems,” said the Chief Constable. “She made Burt very angry, too. In the end he chased her with the intention, as he very frankly admits, of wreaking vengeance upon her person, whereat Cora rushed to the edge of the stone quarries and threatened to throw herself over if he did not instantly and finally give up the intention of beating her.”
“Quite a melodramatic scene, in fact,” said Mrs. Bradley. I could not help feeling rather relieved that William Coutts had missed this bit.
“Exactly,” said the Chief Constable. “So melodramatic that I don’t suppose for one instant that anything of the sort happened at all. I’ll get the inspector along to question Burt about this underground passage business. I had never thought of Cora McCanley having been murdered in the Bungalow itself. Of course, during what one may call the suspicious hours of that Tuesday, Burt seems to have a pretty complete alibi.”
“Well, as the doctor who examined Cora’s exhumed body refuses to commit himself as to the time that death took place, we don’t know whether Burt’s alibi was complete, do we?” asked Mrs. Bradley, quietly.
“If you will be kind enough to excuse me,” said the Chief Constable, slowly digesting this point—“I will just step into the hall and telephone the Wyemouth Harbour inspector and his people. They will be glad to get on to Burt again. They have been very suspicious of him all along, I know.”
“One moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. She hesitated, and then continued, “Of course, I cannot control your actions, but may I suggest that Burt is not your man?”
“No?” said the Chief Constable, surprised. “But everything points to it, and if his alibi is not as good as it seems we have no check on him before seven-thirty p.m., you see.”
“Not quite everything points to it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “To begin with, what do you think Cora McCanley’s object was in affecting to go to London to join that touring company?”
“To free herself from Burt in order to meet her lover,” said the Chief Constable. “I thought the whole argument rested on that assumption.”
“Yes, it does,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Think it out, dear Sir Malcolm. Think it out, before you telephone the police.”
“You are not suggesting to me that Cora and her lover spent the night, or that part of the night which passed before she was murdered, in Burt’s bungalow without Burt’s knowledge?” asked Sir Malcolm.
“That would certainly be Cora McCanley’s idea of girlish fun, and a very good idea of it, too,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Oh, I’m sorry about Cora! She was bored and became naughty, just like a child, and her punishment was far too heavy for her sin!”
“Sin?” I said, when I had dotted down the above.
“Think it out, child, think it out,” said Mrs. Bradley waving her hand.
“But you don’t call that kind of behaviour sinful,” I said.
“I don’t,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But some people do.”
They both nodded. Then Mrs. Bradley said:
“If I were you, Sir Malcolm, I should ask the inspector to find out how tired Burt was that night, or rather, early morning, when he returned home.”
“If he felt anything at all like I did,” I said, “he was pretty anxious to get to bed.”
“That’s an idea!” said the Chief Constable, disregarding my contribution to the discussion. “I’ll just leave it at that, then.”
“I should,” said Mrs. Bradley. “After all, if you really think the murderer was Burt, you still have to ask yourself what he did with the body between the time the murder was committed and the time it was put into Meg Tosstick’s coffin.”
“Yes, that coffin business,” said the Chief Constable, scratching his jaw, “is a regular facer, isn’t it? The sheer damned impudence of it really tickles me! I can’t think how you deduced it, though.”
“It was obvious really,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The whole thing turns on the murder of Meg Tosstick. I hope they reprieve young Candy.”
“Ah, what do you think about young Candy?” asked the Chief Constable.
“The result of the trial, do you mean?”
“No. I wondered whether you yourself had come to any conclusion, quite apart from the trial and its very unfortunate result, as to his innocence or guilt.”
“As I have said to Noel here,” replied Mrs. Bradley, “I believe either that Candy was absolutely innocent, or else that Candy was incited to the murder by someone who knew the poor lad so well that he or she, the inciter, could deduce exactly what Bob’s reactions would be to the suggestion that Meg, his sweetheart, had permitted herself to be seduced by a negro and had borne a half-caste child.”
“What!” shouted Sir Malcolm and I, in one breath. Mrs. Bradley turned to me.
“Don’t you remember, Noel, that you managed to find out for me what the village as a whole thought of mixed marriages? Don’t you remember Mr. Coutts’ sermon on brotherly love, and the subsequent discussion among the villagers, skilfully fanned and guided by yourself?”
She turned to Sir Malcolm.
“The whole difficulty, to my mind, of connecting the first murder with anybody at all was the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of accounting for the time when it was done.”
“The time?” said Sir Malcolm. “Do you mean that you didn’t agree with the doctor’s evidence of the time of death?”
“Oh, I don’t mean that,” Mrs. Bradley hastened to assure him. “I never disagree with expert witnesses upon principle.”
“Upon principle?” said Sir Malcolm, puzzled.
“Yes. I am sometimes called in the capacity of expert witness myself,” Mrs. Bradley explained. “I mean that it puzzled me to think that the murder was committed eleven days after the baby’s birth. I could not help considering that if Bob, or the baby’s father, killed Meg Tosstick when all the village knew that she had had an illegitimate child, some other reason, besides the facts of seduction and illegitimacy, must have caused that murder. For two or three weeks, faced with the twin facts, seemingly contradictory, that the murder must have been committed by Bob and yet Bob would have had much less motive then to kill Meg, eleven days after the birth of her child, than, say, six months earlier, when he received the shocking news that she was pregnant, I was forced to the conclusion that some other factor had entered into the case. I have come to the conclusion that Bob may have been incited to murder Meg by being told by someone who had an interest in causing Meg’s death, that she had been seduced by Foster Washington Yorke, Burt’s negro servant, and had borne a half-caste baby. I also deduce, partly from the disappearance of the baby, that this was a lie.”
“From the disappearance of the baby?” said the Chief Constable.
“Partly, yes. If you will get on the telephone now to Mrs. Lowry, and ask a few questions about the baby, I think that you will at least discover it was not a little half-breed.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Bradley,” the Chief Constable objected, “the police have already driven the unfortunate Lowrys, both man and wife, the one to blasphemy and the other to hysterics, by their repeated questionings. I am sure we can get nothing further from the Lowrys. Still, I can try, if you like.”
“By the way, Sir Malcolm,” I said, looking up, “I know both the Lowrys have a good alibi for the Bank Holiday murder, but what about the Tuesday?”
He smiled paternally, and turned out his despatch case again.
“Naturally,” he said, “the inspector and his people have been very severe with the Lowrys, as the first murder occurred in their house, although, as you say, they were not on the spot at the time, and can in no way be held responsible for what happened during their absence. But, my dear fellow, there is nothing at all to connect them in any way with the murder of Cora McCanley.”