“That last remark Mabel made is important, don’t you think?” asked Mrs. Bradley, as we walked on together. I considered it.
“Why, especially?” I asked, feeling fogged, of course.
“Bob had got over his resentment long before the murder,” said Mrs. Bradley. “It rather knocks the motive on the head, doesn’t it?”
“One moment,” I said. “This Mabel Thingummy herself. Could she have done it, do you think?”
Mrs. Bradley pursed her thin lips into a kind of little beak, and then shook her head.
“You need strong hands, and a lot of nerve, and even then it must be a very unpleasant way of killing anybody,” she said. “You are arguing from the point of view that Mabel is in love with Bob and might have wished Meg Tosstick out of the way. I don’t think there is much in it. Mabel doesn’t strike me as the jealous, vindictive possessive type of lover. Besides, if she were fond of Bob and had committed the murder herself, she would confess in order to save him, wouldn’t she? Still, we could keep her in mind. It’s a point, certainly, that Bob was not the only person who had a motive for putting the girl out of the way.”
“Thank you,” I said, quite bucked, of course, that she had not turned the idea down flat. “Pray sum up will you? Shall I take down?”
“It would be nice of you,” said Mrs. Bradley. We had been walking towards the Manor House, and as she spoke, we entered its gates. In a few moments we were in the library.
“First,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I believe if Candy could give the story of that Bank Holiday afternoon to the Court as he gave it to you, any jury in the land would acquit him. It was very affecting, and very possibly true. Secondly, it is obvious that if he could provide himself with an alibi for that quarter of an hour in the beer cellar, the case against him would fall flat. Personally, I think the police acted very hastily and ill-advisedly in arresting the young man so soon, even on the strength of that quarter of an hour. It was exceedingly unlucky for Candy that the knife and boot boy should not have been there to perform his usual duties, wasn’t it?”
“The trouble is,” I said, “that everybody was at the fete, of course. And, because of that fact, everybody in the village will have much the same alibi. Even if their friends can’t vouch for them—”
“Everybody in the village will
“Yes,” I replied. “Poor little thing. It must be deformed, mustn’t it? Or do you think he did see it, and was lying for some reason?”
“There are so many kinds of deformity,” said Mrs. Bradley, seriously. I waited to hear what more she had to say, but apparently her remarks for the day were concluded. She did not even bother to answer my last question, but, just as I was about to take myself off, she looked me in the eye and said:
“You really do still believe in Candy’s innocence, I suppose?”
“I’d pledge my soul!” I exclaimed.
“Rash Faustus,” retorted the little old woman, and her evil cackling pursued me down the drive. As I walked back through the twilight from the Manor House to the vicarage, I found myself still wondering what had become of the baby. Nobody seemed interested in the fact that apparently it had disappeared since the murder. I called at Constable Brown’s cottage and put the point.
“It’s funny you should ask that,” he said. “See here, Mr. Wells, what do you make of this, like?”
He produced from a drawer a visiting card. It had Gatty’s name on the one side and on the other, in roughly printed capitals, the words:
“Where is Meg Tosstick’s baby?”
“Who did this?” I asked.
“Ah,” said the constable, scratching his chin with the edge of the small rectangle of pasteboard, “there, sir, you do me; proper you do me. I don’t know. It weren’t given to me, of course. May be you’re thinking it was. Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Coutts brought me this here, about two o’clock this afternoon. ‘Here, Brown,’ she says, holding it like it would have a nip of her hand if she didn’t look to it, ‘what’s all this?’
“ ‘All this, mum,’ I says, like I might say it to you now. ‘All this, mum,’ I says, sort of silly like. ‘Why, I don’t know,’ I says. ‘What
“ ‘I’ve brought it to you to find out,’ she snaps. Well, beg your pardon, Mr. Wells, but she do snap. Snaps like my brindled whippet bitch used to. You remember her, I daresay. Master William wanted one of her last litter, but his aunt put the cash in a missionary box. Well, I looks it over and I can’t make nought out on it except what it says. ‘I’ll look into it, mam,’ I says. ‘Wants investigating carefully, this do.’
“Course, I haven’t done nothing about it, Mr. Wells, because, to tell you the truth, I don’t know where I are. One thing is quite certain, how I look at it. It isn’t a Gatty job.”
“A Gatty job?” I said.
“A Gatty job,” repeated the constable. He turned the card over and showed me the name and address.
“Don’t mean to tell me, Mr. Wells,” he said, “as Mr. or Mrs. Gatty sent this, when they could have come along themselves to the vicarage and said it. If they wanted it kept secret who they were, why send a visiting card? It aren’t sensible, Mr. Wells.”
I agreed. Curiously enough, Mrs. Coutts met me at the front door of the vicarage with a similar bit of pasteboard in her hand.
“What? What?” I said.
“I know it can’t be the Gattys,” said the woman, pushing the visiting card at me, “but do just run along to the Moat House and see.”
I groaned, but went, of course. The Gattys were in, and denied all knowledge of the printing on the back of the card. They handled it pretty freely, but then, so had I, and so had Mrs. Coutts and the rest of them. Fingerprints, I mean. No good for fingerprints. I clawed the card away from them and went back to the vicarage.
