“Ah lock dat back door soon as we’m all fixed in fer de evening,” replied Foster. “Ah takes no chances wid folks”—he shivered, and rolled his eyes—“walking in at dat back door and coming peeking ober my shoulder after de sun goes down. Mr. Burt lock de front door when dey go up to bed. Ah don’t nebber hab no sorter truck wid dat front door. Dat’s why Ah surprised myself walking in and out dere dat Tuesday.”
“What did you do when you returned?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“I done get de supper fo’ Mr. Burt, but he ain’t wanting no supper.”
“Too tired?” said I, remembering what I myself had felt like after six hours’ patrolling of that wretched beach.
“He took a coupla three whiskies, hot, into him,” said Foster, “then he done go up to bed.”
“At what time was this?” Mrs. Bradley asked.
“Dat was half past one o’clock in de mawning to a tick,” replied Yorke. “Ah looked at dat clock up dere special. Mr. Burt done took off his boots and threw ’em at dis po’ nigger, and he cuss good and plenty, and den he go ’long to bed. Den Ah done go to bed again, too. Ah bin in bed once. Den Ah go to bed again.”
Mrs. Bradley nodded, and rose to go.
“Thank you, Foster,” she said. She paused at the back door. “Do you often go to the pictures in Wyemouth Harbour?” she asked. The negro grinned.
“Seem like Miss Cora she mean me to go dat ebening, anyway,” he said. “She gib me a ten shillun note and tip me de wink. ‘He done go to de pub to-night, ’cause he can’t sleep good widout Ah’m in de bed wid him or else he’s full ob sperrits,’ she say. ‘You done go make a night ob it, too, down Wyemouth Harbour, yo’ black ole image.’ ”
“Well?” said Mrs. Bradley, as we walked down the hill together. “What about that?”
“Something in what you said about Cora returning to the Bungalow that night,” I said. “She was the person who locked the back door, I suppose?”
“Yes. A curious trick for her mind to play her,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The desire for concealment and secrecy, you see. I don’t suppose she realised for an instant that she had done it.”
“The negro might have done it,” I hazarded.
“Most unlikely,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It was a settled habit with him to use the back door, you see, when he went in and out. He would have locked it, but not bolted and barred it, against his return.”
“You don’t think Burt did it in the early evening?” I asked.
“You are determined to hug your delusions to the last, dear child,” she said. “Where do you suppose he hid the body? Even the secret passage was not safe enough for that, you see. No, no. I am pleased with our last little bit of work, though. We clear the way to the truth, dear child.”
“Are you going to get the police to check up Yorke at the pictures?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
“But suppose he didn’t go!” I exclaimed. “He was very anxious to tell us that Cora had given him leave to go. Suppose he were in the house when she returned to it, and thought she was an apparition, and fell upon her, and strangled her—”
“And hid her dead body in the underground passage and bundled it down to the churchyard without Burt’s knowledge, and dug up poor Meg Tosstick, and substituted Cora, and took Meg’s dead body to the seashore and cast it into the water, and—”
“You’re pulling my leg,” I said.
“Surely not!” said Mrs. Bradley, in mock amazement.
“You mean,” I said, “that Foster Washington Yorke wouldn’t handle dead bodies?”
Mrs. Bradley cackled, and patted me ironically on the back.
I talked things over with Daphne again that night when the others had gone to bed. Suddenly she got jumpy and said she could hear something outside the window. I laughed and said it was only a rose tapping against the glass. She said it was not. I went to the window and drew aside the curtain. A face was pressed against the glass. I suppose I gave an exclamation. I know I was rather startled. Daphne screamed. Old Coutts came tearing downstairs to see what was up. Together we went to the front door, and called out to know who was there. Daphne was just behind us. She would not stay in the room alone.
It was Foster Washington Yorke. The thought that a murder had taken place in the Bungalow had proved too much for the poor chap. He had come to the vicarage for shelter. We hardly knew what to do. In the end, I had to have young William in my room and we gave the negro a camp bed in William’s room. A bit thick on me, of course, and the whole incident had not exactly strengthened Daphne’s nervous system, but the poor black was in such a state of frenzy that we thought it best to humour him and send him back in the morning.
I woke up once in the night, and, the partition wall being thin, I could hear him softly moaning and praying. The poor fellow must have been in the dickens of a state. It was rather dreadful to think what he must be going through. One conclusion which I came to was that it was useless and ridiculous to suspect him of the murder. He would never have had the nerve for it. It was a comfort to think that there was some other male in Saltmarsh besides myself who would not have had the nerve to commit the murder of Cora McCanley.
CHAPTER XVI
mrs. gatty falls from grace, and mrs. bradley leads us up the garden
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At this interesting juncture, Mrs. Gatty decided to start her games again. It must have been frightfully disheartening for Mrs. Bradley, of course. The first inkling we received at the Vicarage of Mrs. Gatty’s lapse was by word of mouth from William Coutts.
“I say,” said William, bursting into the dining room where Daphne, and I, during the enforced absence—thank heaven!—of Mrs. Coutts at a Bazaar Committee Meeting, and of the old man at a local football match, were working out colour schemes and furnishings from a Maple’s catalogue—“the old dame’s broken loose again. We’ve been chasing her all over Saltmarsh. She’s got hold of an ox-goad and she’s prodded old Brown in the seat with it!”
“What old dame?” said I, thinking wildly of Mrs. Bradley.
“Mrs. Gatty,” said William. He was flushed, dirty, of course, and grinning. “She thinks she’s a sanitary inspector now, and she’s going round condemning all the ash-pits.”
“A sanitary inspector?” I said.
“Rather,” said William. “And she told old Lowry at the pub that he kept his coals in the bath. She wouldn’t go away until he’d taken her along and proved that he didn’t.” William chuckled. “I suppose just because the bathroom the Lowrys use for themselves is on the ground floor—well, of course they have to let the visitors use the upstairs ones!—she thinks the Lowrys don’t wash. So old Lowry informed her that he lies and soaks for about two hours at a time and Mrs. Lowry bore him out. So Mrs. Gatty’s given him a certificate of purity signed William Ewart Gladstone, and old Lowry says he’s going to frame it. She’s going round now demanding to look at everybody’s ears to see whether they wash them!” He whooped with extreme joy. “I hope she asks to see Aunt Caroline’s ears!”
Daphne was not smiling.
“I say, Noel,” she said, in a troubled voice, “it’s rather awful, isn’t it? I mean, she was a bit funny before, but that awful Mrs. Bradley seems to have made her worse!”
Well, honestly, it did seem like it. Even the murders paled into insignificance before Mrs. Gatty’s latest exploits. Her old mania of comparing people with animals returned with renewed force. She waited until Burt was stuck, trying to get Daphne’s kitten out of our apple tree, and then she planted a bun on the ferrule of her umbrella and offered it to him and called him a brown bear. She informed Margaret Kingston-Fox that she was a shy-eyed delicate deer, and insisted upon referring to old Burns the financier as Lady Clare. She offered him a chrysanthemum to put in his hair because the season for roses was past. If it had been anybody but Mrs. Gatty, one would have said that our legs were being pulled. But, of course, we knew Mrs. Gatty of old. She dogged me, for instance, all over the village one morning, bleating like a sheep, and informed me, at the top of her voice, and to the great entertainment of a crowd of schoolchildren—it was Saturday, of course—that I had changed for the better. As, before this, she had always compared me with a goat, not a sheep, I presume that some kind of scriptural allusion was intended. I escaped by taking to my heels, pursued by the shouts of the children and Mrs. Gatty’s insane bleating.