mad?”
“Oh, come,” I protested. She grinned again.
“Take your choice, my dear,” she said. “Do you believe he is the father of Meg Tosstick’s child? His wife believes it. That has been her trouble all along.”
“Never!” I exclaimed, hypocritically, of course. I knew quite well that Mrs. Coutts had believed it from the beginning. A most frightful woman! Most frightful!
“The point is,” continued Mrs. Bradley, “upon what, I wonder, does she base her opinion? Does she base it upon Certain Knowledge, as a friend of mine would say? Does she deduce it from information in her possession? Does she suspect it, and is attempting to prove it by driving her husband to confide in her? Or what? Especially the last named.”
As I had not the faintest inkling of what she meant, I grunted and tried my best to look intelligent.
“If the vicar were the father, that would let Bob out,” I said, after a moment’s pause.
“Why so?” enquired Mrs. Bradley.
“Well—” I recalled the show put up by old Coutts against Burt and the negro before they got him chained up in the pound—his knuckles couldn’t have looked worse if he’d knocked out a tree—and the way he had shot those roughnecks out of the church on the Sunday. Squeezing a girl’s neck would be a mere nothing to a man like that. I propounded this theory to Mrs. Bradley. She merely grinned.
“Well, you must admit that if he’s the father, he had a good enough motive for shutting the girl’s mouth,” I said doggedly.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but why wait until the baby had been in the world over a fortnight? It’s of no use, Noel, my dear boy. If you are going to pin that murder on to the baby’s father, you’ve got to explain why he waited so long.”
“Well, the vicar paid for Meg’s keep at the inn, I understood,” said I.
“You understood? Don’t you know?”
“No. I was given to understand that he did,” I replied. After all, I reflected, Daphne had not actually denied this.
“Not good enough,” said Mrs. Bradley, firmly. “Ask yourself whether it is.”
“I could ask the Lowrys, I suppose, to make quite sure,” I said, “or Coutts himself, of course.”
“I imagine that Mrs. Coutts did that at the time the child was born,” said Mrs. Bradley, drily. “I think, too, that all three persons concerned returned an evasive answer.”
“On which she based her suspicions?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I expect she had had her suspicions from the first,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “If she had not, why did she dismiss the girl from her service? A woman of Mrs. Coutts’ mentality could have had an exceedingly interesting time torturing the girl with the dreadful instruments of charity and forgiveness. Cruel people don’t let their victims escape them unless there is a good reason for it.”
Well, the old lady scored there, of course. Lifting the fallen (with inquisitorial accompaniment) was Mrs. Coutts’ great stunt.
“Well, what do we do?” I asked. “Hang it all, it was you who suggested that Meg’s seducer was also her murderer.”
Mrs. Bradley grinned fiendishly, and, picking up one of those little pieces of paper which the packers place between layers of cigarettes, she printed on it:
“If you persist in this foolish policy, your husband will be hanged.”
She placed the slip in an envelope, printed Mrs. Coutts’ name and address on the outside, and stamped the envelope.
“I’m going to be anonymous, too,” she said. “Come along. We’ll go and post it. And now about these alibis.”
“What alibis?” I asked, accompanying her to the front door and down the drive. “Oh, you mean Coutts and the murder!” I laughed. “He wasn’t the murderer, of course,” I said, “but still he was O.K. until the row with Sir William about the Sports finals. After that, there was the attack by Burt, but we haven’t any very clear idea of the time the attack took place. So that leaves him unaccounted for from the time he left the fete until the time he was attacked by Burt and Yorke.”
I glanced at her. She nodded. Her black eyes were gazing straight ahead, down the gravel drive. There was a gentle, appreciative smile on her lips. At least, I hope it was appreciative.
“According to Coutts’ own story,” I continued, “he went for a walk over the stone quarries towards the sea. He thinks he left the house at about nine o’clock, or perhaps later— By Jove!” I said. Mrs. Bradley’s eyes opened. She grinned again.
“Exactly,” she said. “Suppose he did not go for his walk towards the Cove until after the murder! Suppose he
I shook my head, although I myself had voiced the theory, but a little while earlier, in the Manor Library.
“He wouldn’t kill anyone,” I said. Suddenly, in spite of my own previous arguments, I felt convinced of this.
“Facts are facts,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and the fact that emerges clearly from our consideration of the vicar’s movements on the night of the murder is that he had the time and the opportunity to murder Meg Tosstick before he was set upon by Burt and the negro. Added to that, if his wife is right, and the villagers are right, and he is the father of Meg Tosstick’s child, he had a bigger motive than Candy for wanting the girl out of the way. But we have discussed that before. His question all the time would be: ‘How long will the girl keep my secret?’ Nasty, unpleasant situation for the shepherd of Saltmarsh souls!”
