Saltmarsh Murders

week?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t even the faintest idea where she is. I don’t even know the name of the people who are running the show, and, except that she is supposed to be touring the North-Eastern counties with the soul-destroying, hick and hayseed, damnation stuff, I couldn’t put a finger on Cora for the next few weeks for any money you offered me.”

I went away, a sadder, and, of course, a wiser man. Horrible suspicions nestled like adders in my mind.

“And when she does come back,” said Burt, as he saw me off the premises, “she’ll get what’s coming to her. That’s how.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. He explained. Cora was “going gay” as I believe the saying is. A man, and so on. His remarks were expressive, but not edifying. A bit of a brute, I should say. And yet, of course, if he really thought she was coming back, he couldn’t possibly have murdered her. And yet, again, if he wished to disprove any wild rumours of her death—I went straight to Mrs. Bradley and confided to her my doubts and fears. For or against Burt, so to speak. She shook her head.

She said, “Please don’t say anything to him about my suspicions of Cora McCanley’s death. I don’t want the poor boy going round with a hatchet.”

“Poor boy!” I snorted. At least it was intended for a snort. They are not easy words to snort, of course. “Do you know he used to beat her?”

“Well, I don’t suppose she minded that,” said Mrs. Bradley, noting it down. As Daphne had said practically the same thing, I couldn’t very well call the old woman a fool. Besides, she did not give me the opportunity to do so, for she continued, almost without a pause, but with her frightful grin:

“Sadist plus masochist equals happy marriage.” I blinked, and very slowly translated the idiom into reasonable English.

“Oh, cave-man stuff?” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mrs. Bradley. She cackled. I am prepared to wager that, if there was any cave-man stuff in either of her marriages, it was on the distaff side, so to speak.

“Let it pass,” I said, quoting from my favourite author. “But about poor Cora McCanley. We ought to inform the police.”

“I have done so,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “I informed them while you were up at the Bungalow this afternoon.”

“What did they say?”

“They said,” replied Mrs. Bradley, “that they would make enquiries. They thought—” she emphasised the word very slightly, “that I was suffering from murder-phobia.”

“From what?” I asked, trying vainly this time to cope with the patois.

“That isn’t a scientific term,” explained Mrs. Bradley. “I mean that the police are accustomed to receive scaremongers’ tales in any district where a murder has been committed. They will go up to the Bungalow, interview Burt, get this story, check it as far as Wyemouth Harbour main line railway station, and, if it checks with Cora’s movements on the day she was murdered, they will let it go at that unless I can give them some further proof that my assertions are the truth.”

“And can’t you?”

“Plenty, speaking psychologically. None, speaking in the language of the police.”

For some time after this conversation, we were both busy over Bob, and on account of the concert, and we did not meet again until the evening of the entertainment. Mrs. Bradley had been up to London twice, I knew, to talk matters over with her son, Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, the defending counsel, and I had visited Bob Candy, of course, two or three times, and tried to cheer him up, for, as the time of the trial grew nearer, he seemed to be sinking into a morbid condition of the utmost melancholy and depression, and talked of pleading guilty and so getting the trial over more quickly.

“Oh, you can’t do that, Bob!” I exclaimed. “Think how unfair it would be to all the people who believe in you!”

He promised that he would drop the idea, but I wondered whether Mrs. Bradley were right, of course, and the poor fellow, in a mood of desperation, had done the deed of which he was accused. She had not said she believed Bob was guilty, but her manner indicated it. Commonsense asserted itself, however, in my own case. Why had Bob waited until eleven days after the birth of the baby, when he must have known for nearly six months that Meg was to be the mother of a child? My three years in London slums had taught me that in cases of this kind the jealous lover invariably tries to take his revenge before the birth of the child, and, as I saw the thing, Bob was in the position of jealous lover. And what had become of the baby? Killed, I supposed, and not by Bob. Ah, but then, I did not believe that Bob had killed Meg either.

At the concert, which was held in the village hall, of course, I was seated in the front row at the far left-hand side, and Mrs. Bradley sat next to me. On her right was little Gatty. Mrs. Gatty’s name was on the programme in a one-act sketch. I was surprised. We had never dreamed of asking Mrs. Gatty to take part in the concerts before. I pointed out the name to Mrs. Bradley.

“This is your doing,” I said accusingly. She nodded and grinned.

“The completion of my cure. I think you will find that Mrs. Gatty’s maggot has been destroyed for good and all,” she said.

“No!” I exclaimed. It was so, of course. But I anticipate the sequence of events.

“You were asking me about Cora McCanley,” said Mrs. Bradley, suddenly. “The police have done little more than I said they would, especially as Burt received a letter from her three days ago.”

“Genuine?” I asked. She nodded.

“Cora had written it, certainly,” she said. “It was dated for the day previous to that on which Burt received it, and was postmarked at Leeds.”

“Leeds is a big city,” I remarked, idiotically.