“Surely not,” said the little old woman, making no attempt, as a lesser personality would have done, to snatch the laurel wreath from my head and bung it on her own. It was my little hour, and she let me get away with it. A bit sardonic of her, really, I suppose. The ‘sufficient rope’ idea, I expect, if the truth were known, although the word ‘rope’ in a tale of murder is a bit sinister, of course. But little Gatty wanted his money’s worth.
“Well, what about Cora McCanley, then?” he demanded, “Did he prevail upon someone to murder her too?”
“Well, to understand all the points in connection with the murder of Cora McCanley,” said Mrs. Bradley, “we have to consider, not only the peculiar psychology of the murderer, but the psychological and physiological type to which Cora McCanley belonged. Right from the very first I could not understand how she could bear to spend long months in that lonely bungalow without any amusement or mental relaxation whatever. I soon came to the conclusion that she was not without amusement, and immediately I suspected the presence, in or near Saltmarsh, of a lover. But how was it, I asked myself at first, that a jealous stag among men like Burt should be unaware of what was going on? Their last quarrel, which was partly overheard by William Coutts, assured me that Burt was not deceived.
“The smugglers’ passage explained a good deal of what otherwise would have been mysterious in Cora’s actions. That she had a lover seemed to me absolutely certain, but I could not decide how they managed to meet secretly, until I heard about the smugglers’ passage. The passage was their secret way, the Cove their meeting place. When Burt was out on his smuggling excursions, which some of you do not know about, Cora and her lover met, very comfortably, in the Bungalow itself. At the first sign of Burt’s return, the lover made his escape. He went by the underground passage if Burt came overland home, and out of the skylight if Burt returned by way of the underground passage. There he crouched on the roof until the coast was clear. Then, as soon as Cora gave the signal, he would drop from the roof to the ground—see the advantages of a bungalow over a house! —and would made his escape past the stone quarries and back to the Mornington Arms and so home. You realise the importance of the position of the Mornington Arms? It was built well away from the village and the village’s gossiping tongue.”
“Then when Cora heard Mr. Gatty on the roof that night, she must have thought Low—her lover had gone mad,” I said.
“She must have been frightfully alarmed when Burt fired his revolver,” said William.
“Go to bed, William,” said Mrs. Coutts, apparently aware for the first time of his presence in the select group. William was about to argue the point when Daphne said:
“Yes, come on, Bill. I’m coming as well. We’ll talk through the wall if you like. We’ve heard all the thrills.” So off they went. I formed the impression that Mrs. Bradley was glad to see the back of them. I rather gathered that their youthful presence cramped her style a bit.
“You don’t think that Cora and Lowry were at the Bungalow enjoying themselves together while Burt and Yorke were savaging me by the Cove, do you?” enquired old Coutts.
“Impossible, Bedivere!” snapped the woman, handing her spouse the marital back-chat, as usual.
“Why impossible?” asked old Gatty. “Quite a sensible idea.”
“If you want to know,” said Mrs. Coutts, “I saw them dancing together in Sir William’s park. I saw them distinctly.”
“You would,” I thought, remembering her habit of snooping round, and her perfectly beastly mind.
“They were very well-conducted, too,” went on Mrs. Coutts, as though she felt she was scoring off somebody. “I remember thinking that they set a very good example to everyone there, if only the village could be induced to profit by a good example,” she concluded bitterly. “Their behaviour compared very favourably with that of nearly every other person in the park.”
“I don’t doubt it for an instant,” said Mrs. Bradley, politely. “I suppose you remained in the park all the evening?”
I avoided Mrs. Bradley’s eye, which seemed to be seeking mine, in case I should begin to giggle. Not that I am an hysterical subject, of course, but I do sometimes giggle at the wrong time.
“All the evening,” said Mrs. Coutts, unwillingly. She seemed to resent Mrs. Bradley’s questioning, although she had been all over her at one time, of course.
“All the evening until you went home and found that Mr. Coutts was missing from home,” I reminded her. Old Coutts glowered. He hated to be reminded of that evening. I suppose he did get pretty badly knocked about by Burt and Yorke.
“But about the murder of Cora McCanley,” said little Gatty. “I take it that Cora and Lowry left the park together at about the same time as Mrs. Coutts went back to the vicarage, and—”
“Oh, no!” I burst out. “Mrs. Bradley has already shown that Cora was murdered on the Tuesday.”
“Ah,” said little Gatty, showing his wolf’s fangs. “Then I will try again. Lowry, the inn-keeper, was Cora McCanley’s lover, wasn’t he?”
The Coutts and Mrs. Gatty assented. Mrs. Bradley smiled like the crocodile that welcomes little fishes in, and Sir William scowled at the carpet. Only Bransome Burns, the financier, made no sign at all. He hadn’t, all along, of course.
“Well, Cora McCanley was blackmailing him for some reason—”
“Burt kept her short of money,” I interpolated.
“Ah,” said Burns, waking up, “silly game, blackmail. Always get the worst of it in the end.”
“Well, she did, rather, didn’t she?” I said. “Getting done in, I mean. Funny both the girls were strangled.”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Well, you would think the second murder would have been done a different way.”
“Oh, murderers usually repeat themselves,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Yes, but in this case,” I said, intending to remind her that possibly we were talking of two murderers, not one; but Gatty interrupted me.
“She was blackmailing him on the Tuesday when he joined her at the Bungalow, then?”
“How could he know it was safe to join her at the Bungalow?” asked Mrs. Gatty.
“Why, Burt was at the Cove and along the beach with us on that guarding and patrolling stunt, and Yorke was at the cinema in Wyemouth,” said I.
“Yes, very well. He strangled Cora and dragged her body up that secret passage to the inn—” said old Gatty.
“But he couldn’t!” interrupted Margaret Kingston-Fox, who had been following the story with very close attention.
“Why not?” asked Mrs. Gatty, to everybody’s surprise.
“Because it was bricked up, and had spiders’ webs all over it,” said Margaret. All those present knew that, of course, by this time, because Mrs. Bradley had announced it at the lecture.
“You forget Mrs. Gatty’s health and cleanliness campaign,” said Mrs. Bradley, laughing.
“What?” I said. “Do you mean that that was a put-up job?”
“Completely,” said Mrs. Gatty, beaming. “Mrs. Bradley said she had to know whether that passage had an outlet at the inn.”
“You see, Noel,” said Mrs. Bradley, turning to me, “when that bomb was dropped about the blocked-up end to the smugglers’ passage, I thought for one wild instant that my whole theory of the crimes was wrong. It seemed to me that the passage must open into the inn. Then it occurred to me that if I had proof that the passage had a new exit, also in the inn, my case would be stronger than before. Besides, I had felt all along that the outlet in the cellar, which is now under the garages, you remember, was much too public a way for anybody to be able to use in safety. So Mrs. Gatty and I put our heads together, and it was her brilliant idea that if a man wanted to be away from the world for a longish period of time, the best thing for him to do would be to lie and soak in his bath. When Mrs. Gatty discovered that the Lowrys’ own private bathroom was on the ground floor of the inn, it was all over bar the shouting. The fact that Lowry and Mrs. Lowry were brother and sister and not man and wife was sufficient to explain everything else.”