Saltmarsh Murders

retired, I turned to her and said that I supposed it was all over, bar actually conducting old Bob in triumph back to Saltmarsh. She shook her head.

“I should not care to predict the result,” she said. “There are five women on the jury, and women are notoriously hard on sexual crimes. For Bob’s sake I wish the jury had been all men. He would certainly have been acquitted. Women are still an unknown quantity on a jury. Of course, the seven men may bully them into giving in. It is surprising the way in which women will allow themselves to be bullied out of their rights by the opposite sex.”

I could not help thinking that if the opposite sex had any notions of bullying Mrs. Bradley they were in for a thin time, but I did not say so. We waited for nearly two hours and then the jury returned.

Guilty of both murders.

So the black cap was needed after all, and I was able to see how the judge looked in it. A little older, and a little more sad, I thought. I was absolutely stunned, of course. It had never occurred to me for one single instant that we should not be taking Bob back with us to Saltmarsh. The poor fellow cried when the judge put on the black cap. He was led away, still weeping, and rubbing away the tears with the sleeve of his jacket. It was horrible.

Mrs. Bradley slid her skinny arm in mine when we got outside.

“Never mind, Noel,” she said quietly. “We shall appeal, of course, and if the poor boy doesn’t throw up the sponge and begin confessing or any rubbish of that sort, we shall get him off. The verdict was directly contrary to the summing-up, you noticed. I’m not coming back to Saltmarsh for about ten days. At the end of that time I will return armed to the teeth. Perhaps the verdict is the best thing that could have happened, as things stand. Poor Bob! That dreadful manner of his was all against him. He stood there looking such a thug!”

“How inconsistent your sex is,” I exclaimed. “You believe him innocent now the court declares him guilty!”

“Oh, no,” rejoined Mrs. Bradley. “I have always believed him innocent. Did you spot the witness who was lying?”

“No,” I said.

“I did,” she said, with a kind of fat satisfaction in her dulcet voice. “Good-bye, dear child. Don’t pine. In ten days, or maybe less, I shall be in Saltmarsh with Jove’s thunderbolts. Look after Daphne, whatever happens. Good- bye.”

Daphne cried for nearly an hour when I returned to Saltmarsh with the sad news of Bob’s conviction. Even Mrs. Coutts seemed rather dashed. The Lowrys were mobbed at the station by villagers anxious to hear the news. Burt came down to the vicarage and we told him. He was thoughtful, and didn’t use any strong language. He said at last:

“Do you think he could have done for Cora as well?”

“Impossible!” we all said. After all, we ourselves had provided Bob’s alibi for the Tuesday.

“Oh,” said Burt, “that’s all right, then. If I knew for certain who had killed Cora I would—” The rest of the sentence was quite unprintable, but even Mrs. Coutts made no adverse comment except for a grim tightening of her lips, and a clenching of her nervous hands.

The Gattys were the next to hear the news from us.

“Poor fellow! Poor young fellow,” was the burden of their song.

We got all the visitors out of the house at last, and Daphne said:

“I couldn’t say so in front of all those people, because I suppose it would be contempt of court or something, but I still think those Lowrys did it! I hate that fat, bald-headed old man!”

“That’s no reason for thinking he murdered Meg Tosstick,” I retorted. “Besides, neither of the Lowrys went near the pub at the time of Meg Tosstick’s murder, and neither of ’em left the pub on the morning, afternoon, or evening of Cora McCanley’s death. You can’t fix it on them, dearest, however much you dislike them.”

“Well, who did do it, then?” she persisted. We went over the whole thing again; hammered out all the suspects and their alibis, just as we had done so many times before.

“Uncle is easily the likeliest,” said Daphne dolefully. I chewed it over until far into the night. I mean, dash it all, he so absolutely was, you know! And what about Cora McCanley? If he had seduced one girl, why not another? Ah, but he had an alibi for the Tuesday. I knew that. We had been together all that day, and during the night we had patrolled the shore, of course. If only somebody could find out all Cora’s movements on the afternoon and evening of her death, I felt we might get somewhere. But at Wyemouth Harbour railway station she had simply disappeared. We could trace her to the booking office but not a step beyond. I knew that Mrs. Bradley felt sure she had returned to the Bungalow, but there was no proof of it.

I went to the Bungalow next day and talked to Burt about it. A risky thing to do, of course, but it occurred to me that if we could only discover the murderer of Cora, it would give us just that much firmer ground of appeal for Bob. One of these psychology stunts, I mean, of course. Burt was surprisingly mild and very sympathetic.

“Of course I don’t want the bleeding fellow to be hanged if he’s innocent,” he said. “But I tell you what it is, Wells. When I find Cora’s murderer, I’m going to get my hands round his throat first, and then I’m going to knock the neck off my last bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and then I’m doing a dive into the stone quarries before I’m arrested.”

The remark was a bit of a revelation to me, of course, in more ways than one. To begin with, Burt was now giving us every indication that his feeling for Cora McCanley had been very much stronger than we had ever imagined. Secondly, I had always laboured under the—I think rather excusable—delusion that the term “the Widow,” used in describing champagne, was some kind of a—complimentary, of course—reference to Queen Victoria.

But my conversation with Burt got me no further. I was not at all keen on mentioning Sir William’s name in connection with Cora, and, in any case, if Cora had indeed been murdered on the Tuesday, Sir William could not possibly have been concerned in her death.

As I walked home, however, another horrible thought struck me. If Cora had been murdered later than the Tuesday, the squire had no more of an alibi than, say, Lowry, for instance, or myself, or old Coutts… !