“Well, I’m damned,” I said. Apparently Mrs. Coutts was, too, for she never said a word, and she is usually on to a little strong language like a terrier on a rat.
We sat and drank it in about the passage.
“Then they got Meg Tosstick’s body to the sea along the passage,” I said, “and the baby, too—”
“He went along the passage to kill Cora McCanley in the Bungalow,” said old Gatty, who seemed to be getting quite a sleuth-hound, “and brought her body back to the inn the same way—as I said just now.”
“So that’s that,” said Sir William.
“Not quite,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I’ve a piece of positive proof about the use of the smugglers’ passage which may interest you. You remember the substitution of Cora McCanley’s body for that of Meg Tosstick in the coffin, don’t you? Well, of course, the substitution was made at the inn. At this point Lowry showed an amount of audacity which really deserved to come off. But, acting upon his own initiative, the police inspector had got on to the undertaker who was given the job of arranging Meg Tosstick’s funeral. It took him some time, because the undertaker was not a local man. He did not come from Wyemouth Harbour, either, as most people believed, but from a place called Harmington in the next county. He got the job, he thought, because he was some sort of connection of Lowry. It was a motor-funeral, you remember, so that distance was no object, and in any case the town the undertaker came from is less than twenty miles away. The advantage of that particular town was that, for Lowry’s purpose, it was sufficiently obscure.
“Well, greatly to their credit, the police got on to this man, and persuaded him to try and recall the build and features of the girl whose body he had screwed down in the coffin. He was shown photographs of about fifteen young women, including those of Meg and Cora, and, despite the evidences of strangulation with their resultant disfigurement, he unhesitatingly picked out Cora as the girl whose coffin he had actually supplied. He gave us the measurements then. Oh, it was Cora, without a doubt, for whom Meg Tosstick’s coffin was made. They proved it to the hilt. You remember what a fine big girl she was, compared with Meg?”
CHAPTER XVIII
the last straw
« ^ »
We gasped.
“What?” said old Coutts. “We actually buried the wrong girl?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If it had come off, you see, it would have been a splendid move to avoid discovery. No difficult and dangerous digging up of graves in the churchyard at night. No risk that the undertaker would recognise that the girl for whom the coffin was prepared was not the girl whose sweetheart had been arrested for murder—”
“But what on earth made you think of having the body exhumed?” demanded Sir William.
“Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, “granted all the rest of the story, including the fact of the secret passage, it was the obvious thing to do, wasn’t it? The only thing I cannot understand, dear people, is why on earth you have all jumped to the conclusion that Lowry was the murderer. Why, you can’t really imagine a girl like Cora McCanley falling in love with Lowry! Lowry is incestuous, he is cowardly, and he was blackmailed into assisting the murderer. But the actual murderer of Meg Tosstick and Cora McCanley—”
“No, no!” shrieked Mrs. Coutts, and fainted.
It was the second time in our respective existences that I had clasped Mrs. Coutts to my breast. Heaven knows I didn’t want to, but noblesse oblige, of course. I looked round helplessly. She was no light weight, and she hung on my arms, which were clasped strongly but inelegantly round her waist, more like a sack of flour than the languishing lily with whom I have heard a fainting lady compared.
The settee was cleared and we laid her down. She was a rather unnerving bluish colour, and her lips were drawn back from her teeth almost in a snarl. Mrs. Bradley stepped forward, knelt by the couch and did all the things that people in the know do do on these, to me, positively demoralising occasions. But it was not the slightest use. Mrs. Coutts was dead.
People withdrew, of course, as decently and quietly as they could, and I was going, too, when old Coutts, who, with myself and Mrs. Bradley, had remained behind in the room, grabbed me by the arm.
“Stay with me, Wells,” he said. “I suppose we must telephone for a doctor.”
Mrs. Bradley, to whom the suggestion seemed to be made, shrugged her shoulders.
“I can write the certificate if you like,” she said. “I am qualified to do so.”
“Yes… Thank you,” said old Coutts.
He sat down and put his hands to his face.
“This is my fault,” he said. Mrs. Bradley sat down, too, and motioned me to a seat.
“Let us not talk of faults,” she said gently. “Perhaps I am at fault, too. I knew that I was going to cause her death. I had to choose between killing her through shock, or as an alternative—”
Old Coutts lifted his head.
“As an alternative?” he repeated heavily.
“Letting her stand her trial,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“She did commit the murders, then?” Coutts asked. He did not seem in the least surprised.
Mrs. Bradley inclined her head.
“And she would have committed others,” she said. “That is why I had to make a choice.” She looked gravely and sadly at the body. “I have made it,” she concluded. “There was Daphne to consider…”
“Yes…” said old Coutts. “Thank you.” He got up and stumbled out of the room. We could hear him walking up and down his study. Up and down… up and down.
“I had better tell you everything, Noel, I think,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Poor boy. You look tired.”
“I’m ill,” I said. I went outside, and, for some reason, was horribly sick. When I came back, fit for society but shaking at the knees, Mrs. Coutts’ body had been covered. I could make out its thin, rigid, pathetic outline under a dark-blue bed-cover.
“She murdered Meg Tosstick on the Monday, Cora McCanley on the Tuesday and made an attempt on Daphne Coutts on the following Saturday week. You remember the incident at the organ? As soon as you told me about that, I knew all the rest. The vestry door was the clue.”
“But that wasn’t Mrs. Coutts, surely?” I said. “Why, she was prostrate in bed with one of her fearful headaches when we arrived home.”
“She was prostrate in bed with a heart attack brought on by rage, excitement, and the expenditure of nervous and physical energy,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did you know her heart was weak?”
“Well, more or less, I suppose,” I said.
“And, of course, her nervous system had been in a state of attrition for years,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Terrible. Poor, poor woman.”
She sounded so genuinely sorry that I gazed in astonishment. After all, this was the “poor, poor woman” who would have allowed Bob Candy and the innkeeper, Lowry, to be hanged for her crimes.
“Mr. Coutts allowed temptation to overcome him in the matter of Meg Tosstick while she was a servant in his house,” said Mrs. Bradley in a level voice that did not comment, criticise or condemn, “and, of course, Mrs. Coutts found it out. Do you remember the first time she came back from the inn when she had seen the mother and the newly-born child?”
“Oh, yes, I remember her coming in,” I said. I did, of course, very vividly. “But you are wrong about one thing. She did not see the mother and baby. The Lowrys refused her admittance.”