“She couldn’t make some excuse to slip down to the Post Office, could she?” I asked. “I could talk to her better there.”
“Sure she can,” said Peachey. “She’s not doing anything, and madam’s making herself pleasant to a shooting party from London, and the boss is out, I know.”
There was no-one else in the bar, so I leaned towards Peachey and asked quietly:
“What’s been going on here, Peachey? Was there ever a baby or not?”
He wiped a few spots of beer off the counter and then said:
“It’s rum, ain’t it, Mr. Wells? There was a babby all right, because we all heard un cry. Ah, but what’s happened to that babby is a rare mystery.”
“Well, look here,” I said, feeling somewhat Sherlock Holmesian, of course, and beginning to pant like a bally bloodhound when it sees land in sight, “what do you yourself think? Hang it, man,” I said, “you knew Bob. Presumably you knew something of the dead girl. What was it all about? Who
Peachey said, doubtfully:
“I don’t know as I ought to talk. You ain’t the police, Mr. Wells. Still, if you won’t let it go no further—”
I promised, but said that I should like to talk things over with my friends. However, if he wanted me not to, I wouldn’t.
“The little sharp party from the Manor?” he said. I assented.
“Oh, all right then. Mind, I don’t
“Oh, quite,” I said.
“Well, then, I reckon it’s that there Mr. Burt. And what’s more, I reckon he had a rare facer when poor young Bob got taken up. He meant to fix it on the boss.”
I gave the man a shilling for his trouble, as he was not of our own flock, and sauntered out as soon as I had finished my drink. Sure enough, by the time I had strolled to the Post Office and helped Mrs. Bradley choose a couple of picture postcards, along came Mabel Pusey, the barmaid, looking extremely scared. She asked for a three-halfpenny stamp, stuck it on the letter she was holding and we all walked out of the shop. We had taken no notice of Mabel, of course, while we were inside the Post Office, but as soon as she had posted her letter, we foregathered. Mabel was certainly in a pitiable state.
“Oh, ma’am,” she said to Mrs. Bradley immediately, “I know it’s going to get poor Bobby hanged, but how was I to know? How was I to know? Mrs. Lowry said before she went as we might need some more pale ale and perhaps a dozen of stout up, and how was I to know? I’d have bitten out my tongue before I’d have told the police Bob was down there for a quarter of an hour, and after nine o’clock, too, but how was I to know they’d twist it into the time he murdered her?”
“Listen, Mabel,” said Mrs. Bradley, kindly, in her wonderful voice. “You want to help Candy, don’t you?”
“Oh, I do, I do!” said the girl. “Why before Meg Tosstick had him—” She stopped, but it was easy to finish the sentence. The poor girl was in love with Candy, and she felt that words of hers were sentencing him to death. Decidedly an unpleasant thought, of course. We nodded sympathetically. Mrs. Bradley said:
“And how many bottles did he bring up out of the cellar that night?”
Mabel answered:
“About three dozen. Certainly not less.”
“Where is the cellar, Mabel?”
“It’s under the garages now, where the old house stood before we was rebuilt. To get down the cellar we have to cross the bit of yard and go in the first lock-up, and the trap door to the cellar is in the far right-hand corner. You switch on the electric light on the wall of the lock-up over the trap door, and that lights up in the cellar and down you go. It’s where that old passage used to end.”
“And ought it to have taken Bob Candy fifteen minutes to bring up three dozen bottles, Mabel, do you think?”
“Well,” said Mabel, hesitating in order to consider the question, “in court I’d say it would, perjury or no perjury, I would, and of course, the knife and boots, little tyke, wasn’t there, so you can’t hardly say, what with one thing and another.”
“What difference would the knife and boots boy make, Mabel?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“The knife and boots had ought to be there at the top of the steps to take the bottles from Bob and deposit ’em in a little soap-box on wheels Bob made, and wheel ’em into the jug and bottle,” replied Mabel, “but the knife and boots was at the fete. Said the missus had given him the whole day, and he wasn’t coming home till morning. And he never, neither, the little runt.” She spoke with honest indignation. “He didn’t half get a flea in his ear, neither. They was just locking up for the night when he come tearing in. It was nearly one o’clock then. ‘Boys will be boys,’ says the master, but madam, I thought she’d have fetched him a clout side the head.”
“What did Bob do when he first heard that Meg was going to have a baby?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Mabel shrugged.
“He cursed a bit and got drunk, but got over it after a bit, you know,” she said. She sighed. “Chaps aren’t like us maids, ma’am. Oh, Bob got over it all right, I’d say, and
CHAPTER IX
the village speaks its mind
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