“The—the knitted silk tie?” I gasped. He nodded, and then smiled sardonically, and said,
“Ah. Funny bit, that there, weren’t it? Well, like silly chap, happen I fall asleep, what with the quiet and the warmth and such, and first thing I know, Meg shaking I and telling I to get up and go away. Sure enough, when I look at clock, five past six her say, so I hop up in a hurry, part my hair with Meg’s comb, put on collar and can’t see tie. Meg say she’ll find un and hide un, but I must go. Poor maid seem so set on it, and so frit to think somebody might see me there, that I pack up and go. I get another tie from my own bedroom, put on my barman’s overall, and step down into the bar. Mr. and Mrs. Lowry wasn’t back from fete, but the gals and Charlie Peachey, the other barman with me, soon come in, and we open as usual. But master and missus never come in until goodness knows when that night, for Charlie and I close the house at half-past ten, and he go back to the fete for the dancing, and the gals with him, and I go upstairs. I tap at Meg’s door, but get no answer, so I twist the handle, but the door was locked, so I go along to my bed.”
“At what time, exactly, would you say you got to your own room?” I asked. Candy considered the question.
“Not before a quarter to eleven and not after eleven o’clock,” he said. “But, of course, it’s that there quarter of an hour I were down the cellar they’ve got against me.”
I spoke a few reassuring words to him, but I knew that that quarter of an hour was the snag. At last I took my leave, for my time was up.
“So you see,” I said to Daphne, as we sat at tea, “the poor girl must have been murdered before Candy went up to bed that night. The medical evidence at the inquest put the time of death between nine o’clock and ten- thirty.”
“Just the time,” said Daphne, “when Candy would be kept busy, and could not interfere.”
“Just the time,” I said bitterly, “when the damn fool decided to go down the cellar and bring up some more beer for the jug and bottle department, presided over by Mrs. Lowry.”
“Well, I suppose she asked him to go down the cellar!” retorted Daphne.
“How could she? She wasn’t in the house at all,” I replied. “Bob told me that both the Lowrys were out, and that he doesn’t know when they came home. Mrs. Lowry simply left word that some time during the evening the job was to be done.”
“Hm. It looks beastly suspicious to me,” said Daphne.
“My dear girl, do be reasonable,” I said.
“Well, Noel, it’s rather funny that just at the time when they’re out of the house and no suspicion can attach to either of them, poor Meg gets murdered, isn’t it? Not to mention the fact that it was also the very first time Mrs. Lowry had left her to herself!”
“But, Daphne,” I said—laughing, I must confess, at her simplicity —“naturally the murderer would prefer to attack somebody in the Lowrys’ house while they were not there. It’s only common sense to suppose that the murderer has some gumption, isn’t it?”
“Anyway, I hate those Lowrys,” said Daphne. “I’m sure there was something fishy when they took Meg to live with them in the first place.”
“But your uncle, I understood, paid for her board and lodging,” I said weakly.
“Oh,
“Well, anyway, while Bob’s story is fresh in my mind,” I said, “I think I’ll dot it down in shorthand, so that I can tell it to Mrs. Bradley in his own words, as nearly as I can remember them.”
I have rather a remarkable verbal memory, and I am a fairly accomplished shorthand writer. I can do my hundred and forty, of course. So, armed with Bob’s depositions, we returned to Saltmarsh, and I went immediately to the Manor House to see Mrs. Bradley.
“The first person to interview,” said she, after I had read Bob’s yarn to her, “is the girl who was taking Mrs. Lowry’s place in the jug and bottle department that evening. By the way, isn’t it rather unusual to have the host’s wife serving in that particular department?”
“It’s to cater for motorists,” I said. “It’s more like an off-licence department, really, only they stick to the old name so as to be able to keep it open on Sundays.”
“Ah, yes, that would be so, I dare say,” said Mrs. Bradley.
She cackled, as startlingly as usual, and we sallied forth to the Mornington Arms.
“You don’t know which maid was serving in the off-licence—I mean jug-and-bottle department on August Monday evening,” she said, as we walked along the road, “and so we had better have speech with Barman Charlie Peachey, I think. What kind of a man is Charlie?”
“Oh, all right, I suppose,” I said cautiously. “He doesn’t come to church. He’s a Roman Catholic.”
“Oh, well, he’s the less likely to be a murderer,” said Mrs. Bradley. I was still pondering this queer axiom when we arrived in front of the public house. The Mornington Arms is no longer the small, whitewashed, flat-fronted village inn that it used to be. It is set back from the road in its own tea-gardens, and was rebuilt, about three years before the murder, in the form of an Elizabethan half-timbered house. It can garage twelve cars and has ten bedrooms. The Lowrys were making a very good thing out of it, I believe. They catered solely for summer tourists and visitors, of course. During the winter months they did nothing beyond supplying the village with beer.
“You go in,” said Mrs. Bradley to me, “and have something to drink, and get Charlie to tell you the girl’s name. I’ll wait in the Post Office.”
I went in and ordered a gin and ginger, and tackled Peachey squarely. He was a thin, sandy-haired young man whom I hardly knew because of his Roman opinions.
“Who was in charge in the jug and bottle on Bank Holiday evening?” I asked.
“Mabel,” said Peachey. “Want to see her, Mr. Wells?”
