Saltmarsh Murders

“But what could she do at the Pier-head Station?” demanded the Chief Constable. “She could do nothing but swim, unless she chartered a boat.”

“Surely she could have returned to the Bungalow by way of the seashore, if she wished?” said Mrs. Bradley.

“She could. Your argument, then, is that she returned almost immediately to Saltmarsh?”

“That is what I think. You see, you have to take the girl’s temperament into account. Hoodwinking her partner would be the chief appeal to her. She was bored, you see. To have a lover under Burt’s very nose would tickle her sense of the humorous more than actually going off with someone.”

“I see. Then you think she walked along the sands from Wyemouth Harbour Pier-head Station—or, of course, she could have walked along the cliffs if the tide were full—we can check the state of the tide, of course—and risked running full tilt into Burt?”

“I think she felt pretty secure,” said Mrs. Bradley, “so far as Burt was concerned. Have you heard of the smugglers’ passage from the Mornington Arms to Saltmarsh Cove?”

“I’ve heard of it, yes. Why?”

“I happen to know,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that Burt, who is rather an extraordinary young man, spent a good deal of his spare time in digging a transverse to that old tunnel from his bungalow.”

She gave me time to get this down, and then asked me for a sheet of paper and a pencil. She sketched quickly and badly, but comprehensibly, a plan of the chief houses in Saltmarsh and dotted in the old tunnel and Burt’s new bit.

“Like that, wasn’t it, Noel?” she asked, handing it to me. I assented and the Chief Constable studied it.

“You see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I think Cora walked as far as the Cove—(knowing that the chances were at least a thousand to one against her meeting anybody she knew)—dived into the Cove, followed the passage—(whose entrance at the Cove end is so cleverly concealed that I spent two hours there with a powerful electric torch before I located it)—reached the transverse to the Bungalow, went along the transverse, and was actually under or in the Bungalow when she was murdered.”

“But—but they always slept together!” I yelped, as soon as I had dashed the theory on to paper. Both the polite conversationalists stared at me as though I had gone mad.

“They what?” said the Chief Constable, concentrating upon the somewhat salient point I had indicated to them.

“Always slept together. They’ve both told me so at different times. You know, shared a bed,” I said.

“This is important, isn’t it?” asked the Chief Constable.

“Well, it is important in view of the fact that Burt and Cora had a serious quarrel on the morning of the day she was murdered,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But it is not particularly important in this instance, because Burt was one of the night watchers at the Cove, wasn’t he, Noel?”

“Oh, yes, of course. I had forgotten that,” I said, feeling a fool.

The Chief Constable produced papers and a notebook. He donned horn-rimmed glasses and, looking rather like Mr. Pickwick, perused the literature he had dug out of his dispatch case. “Burt seems to confess to the quarrel,” he said at last. “Yes,” he went on, “he certainly seems to confess to the quarrel. It was very bitter, apparently, and was with reference to the stinginess of Burt in withholding the greater portion of his income from McCanley. He gives as his reason for behaving thus that she was extravagant.”

Mrs. Bradley nodded.

“Cora was angry about having so little money,” she ventured. I could see, of course, that she did not intend to give Burt away about the smuggled books, if she could help it; and, after all, if the man had seen the error of his ways, it was surely right to guard him from punishment.

“Very angry, it seems,” said the Chief Constable. “She made Burt very angry, too. In the end he chased her with the intention, as he very frankly admits, of wreaking vengeance upon her person, whereat Cora rushed to the edge of the stone quarries and threatened to throw herself over if he did not instantly and finally give up the intention of beating her.”

“Quite a melodramatic scene, in fact,” said Mrs. Bradley. I could not help feeling rather relieved that William Coutts had missed this bit.

“Exactly,” said the Chief Constable. “So melodramatic that I don’t suppose for one instant that anything of the sort happened at all. I’ll get the inspector along to question Burt about this underground passage business. I had never thought of Cora McCanley having been murdered in the Bungalow itself. Of course, during what one may call the suspicious hours of that Tuesday, Burt seems to have a pretty complete alibi.”

“Well, as the doctor who examined Cora’s exhumed body refuses to commit himself as to the time that death took place, we don’t know whether Burt’s alibi was complete, do we?” asked Mrs. Bradley, quietly.

“If you will be kind enough to excuse me,” said the Chief Constable, slowly digesting this point—“I will just step into the hall and telephone the Wyemouth Harbour inspector and his people. They will be glad to get on to Burt again. They have been very suspicious of him all along, I know.”

“One moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. She hesitated, and then continued, “Of course, I cannot control your actions, but may I suggest that Burt is not your man?”

“No?” said the Chief Constable, surprised. “But everything points to it, and if his alibi is not as good as it seems we have no check on him before seven-thirty p.m., you see.”

“Not quite everything points to it,” said Mrs. Bradley. “To begin with, what do you think Cora McCanley’s object was in affecting to go to London to join that touring company?”

“To free herself from Burt in order to meet her lover,” said the Chief Constable. “I thought the whole argument rested on that assumption.”

“Yes, it does,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Think it out, dear Sir Malcolm. Think it out, before you telephone the