So now! Some folks can remember figures and dates and things; some can remember the fashions of King Edward’s day; it’s murderers every time with me. Kind of an ’obby it is. Poor girl! Ah, well, you never know what’s going to ’appen, do you?”
chapter xiii: fog
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Neither young Spratt nor Roy was moved to vengeance by the discovery of the murdered girl’s body. Their attitude was understandable. In effect, what it amounted to was that she had evidently been deceiving both of them. What they hated was the thought that she had made fools of them, not the realization that a scoundrel had done her to death.
The bathrooms at the “Swinging Sign” were three in number. It was in the smallest one that the girl was found drowned. Helm was not apprehended. Mrs. Cozens, the dead girl’s mother, proved to be such an extremely unreliable witness that the police felt justified in ignoring her unsupported testimony that she had seen Cutler that day, and the police inquiry had to proceed along lines other than those which assumed that he was guilty.
The explanation given by the villagers was simple. The inn was known to be haunted. In some dark manner the powers of evil had enticed the girl thither, and there, by the agency of the same powers, she had met her death.
The police, foiled in one direction, soon formulated, another theory—namely, that young John Spratt knew something of the matter. It was suggestive, they considered, that Susie’s death had taken place in the home of her fiance. John was questioned, and had to make some damaging admissions. Susie had been invited to the inn and might have gone to the squire’s house very much against her will. It was obvious that she had never had any intention of remaining there longer than the minimum time for preparing the dinner, and it was suggested that she had arrived at the inn without being recognized on the way, owing to the density of the fog, had quarrelled with John—although the boy and both his parents strenuously denied this—and the murder had been the result. When it was further shown that Susie was in the habit of taking a bath at the “Swinging Sign” on Sundays, owing to the fact that her mother’s cottage contained no bathroom, further speculation appeared vain. John was arrested and charged with having murdered his sweetheart.
Mrs. Bradley was seated in the pleasant morning-room of the Stone House, Wandles Parva, a bright fire burning, breakfast at the toast-and-marmalade stage, and her young friend, Aubrey Harringay, home for the Christmas holidays, sprawling companionably all over the hearthrug, reading a detective story. She read the account of the murder and the result of the police investigations up to the moment of going to press, and observed, in her rich, full tones:
“Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear! Something more than fiction, something less than fact, makes the poor psychologist wonder how to act!”
She concluded this surprising couplet with an even more surprising hoot of laughter. Aubrey looked up.
“Dry up, love,” he said. “You ruin my powers of concentration.”
“Put the book aside when you’ve finished the next chapter, child. I want to tell you a nasty, harrowing story,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Honest to God?”
“I am not accustomed to refer my integrity to the Almighty,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly.
“Sorry. Merely a figure of speech.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and placed it between the pages of his book. “Come on.”
“A woman is found drowned at a school,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and there seems a possibility that a certain man of her acquaintance was in the neighbourhood. This man was once tried for drowning his wife, but was acquitted. Later, a woman escapes from his clutches by the intervention of two perfect strangers, who ought to have made it their business to interfere. There is no actual proof that he intended the woman any harm, but the facts were sufficiently peculiar to be significant. They were as follows: The woman had accepted an invitation to the house, and while she was there, he prepared a bath, ostensibly for himself, for he even went to the length of undressing and donning a dressing-gown and slippers, and, thus clad, he opened the door to the interfering couple aforesaid. The woman, presumably, was in the bedroom. The bath was in the middle of the living-room floor. These seemingly extraordinary preparations are to be explained by the fact that the dwelling-place was a converted railway carriage, and therefore not subject to the ordinary customs which govern life in a civilized English home.
“Later, viz., to wit, last Sunday as ever was, a young woman is found drowned in an inn not more than three miles from the railway carriage, and the dead girl’s mother, who appears to be a liar, by the way, swears that this same man called at the house for the girl on the afternoon of the day of her death. What do you make of that?”
“Q.E.D., of course,” said the boy. “Is it true?”
“So far as it goes, yes,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “At any rate, I think it wants looking at. I have a shrewd suspicion—at least, I hope it’s shrewd!—that the young woman of the bungalow and the dead young woman are the same young woman.”
“Good,” said Aubrey. “May I come with you?”
“No, child. But I will write and ask your opinion on any knotty points which require elucidation.”
“Oh, no, I say! Why can’t I come?”
“First,” said Mrs. Bradley, “your mother wouldn’t hear of it. Secondly, you would be in my way.”
“Oh, well, if you say so,” said Aubrey resignedly. He turned to his book again and was immediately absorbed in it. Mrs. Bradley grinned like an affectionately maternal alligator at the back of his fair head, and began to make notes, with several references to the newspaper, at the back of a little black book. Her first action, when she arrived in Bognor, was to seek out the cottage where the dead girl’s mother lived, and interview her. The old woman stuck to her story. Helm
