Saltmarsh Murders

“Fortunately Mrs. Bradley could do without your assistance, Aunt, you see,” said Daphne, who simply cannot resist having a jab at the woman if it is humanly possible.

There ensued a good slab of domestic back-chat, of course. When we were all quiet again, and while Daphne was still putting out her tongue at me, because, for once, I was on Mrs. Coutts’ side and Daphne knew it, Mrs. Bradley resumed her remarks.

“Matters came to their first head, I imagine, when Mr. and Mrs. Coutts here sent away the pregnant girl; and to their second head, if I may express myself clumsily,” she said, “with the trouble at the inn on the Sunday immediately preceding the August Bank Holiday. Bob Candy, you remember, had to be forcibly prevented from breaking into Meg Tosstick’s bedroom because he was determined to find out whether she was being ill-treated by the Lowrys.”

“They locked him in the woodshed until he cooled off, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Oh, the night he came round to say that he wouldn’t play in the cricket match against Much Hartley?” said old Coutts. “I remember. Yes, yes, quite.” His manner was a nice mixture of gentlemanly detachment and professional sympathy.

“Yes. Having worked him up to the required state of baffled fury,” continued Mrs. Bradley, “one or other of the Lowrys—the woman, I expect—told him the lie about the negro parentage of Meg’s baby— the lie that so much upset poor Yorke in the village hall just now.”

“Yes, he was upset, wasn’t he?” said Sir William.

“His moral sense outraged, do you think?” asked Gatty.

“His sense of justice, I expect,” said Coutts. “After all, it was a lie. He was not the baby’s father.” He coughed.

“Simpler than all those explanations is the real one,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Yorke is a sensitive, nervous man, and has a horror of being lynched. All negroes who have lived in countries where the colour line is drawn, have what the language of my profession might call a ‘mob-law’ complex, you know. But about Candy: almost immediately the Lowrys had told Bob that lie about the parentage of the child, giving him sufficient time to brood over what he had heard and work himself up into the requisite state of nervous ferocity, but not giving him a sufficient interval in which to cool off and think better of it, Lowry, devilishly pretending to be sorry for the poor youth, offered him a whole day’s holiday. Now I contend that the Lowrys knew quite well that Bob would make some attempt to get into communication with Meg and see the baby some time during that day’s holiday while everyone else at the inn was absent at the August Bank Holiday fete. That part of the business, and the consequent suspicion which rested on Bob, was dastardly.

“Of course, Bob never saw the baby. The prosecuting counsel at the poor youth’s trial actually said that he would not be a bit surprised if it was in attempting to coerce Meg into showing him the baby so that he could know the worst, that Bob went too far and strangled the girl. ‘He thought,’ said Counsel ‘that she was determined to keep from him all evidence of her shame.’

“The matter of the time-limit at Bob’s disposal, that quarter of an hour in which it was thought that he must have committed the crime, was attacked so thoroughly by the defence at Bob’s trial that it need not be thrashed out now. Even the girl Mabel, who is almost insanely pro-Bob, allowed to Wells and myself that he would have had time to get those bottles up and also commit the murder. The theory of the prosecution, that Bob had previously got the bottles ready in order to leave himself time to commit the murder—(or, as he probably planned, poor boy! —time to slip up and ‘have it out with Meg’)—also deserved consideration. If they believed that the murder was prearranged, they were right to assume that Bob would want to allow himself plenty of time.

“You remember what I said in the village hall just now about the improbability of a mean man becoming generous?” she went on. We assented, of course. “Well, I heard about Lowry’s meanness from two distinct and unconnected sources. I heard, quite independently, that Lowry was mean to the village children when they brought him empty bottles, and that he obtained a commission on getting the cocoanuts for the shy at the village fete. Mrs. Gatty and Noel Wells respectively, were my informants.” She grinned at us impartially.

“Another example of casually acquired but important information, of course,” I said.

“Very important indeed,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Yes, well, I could not reconcile with that information the very definite fact that Lowry had given shelter to a girl who had lost her situation and her character, and had even been turned out of doors by her own father.” She paused and smiled. “I did hear that Saltmarsh was the fortunate possessor of a very charitable vicar,” she said, wickedly, “but all attempts to substantiate the rumour that he was paying for Meg Tosstick’s keep at the Mornington Arms absolutely failed.”

“So I should hope!” exclaimed Mrs. Coutts, sharply. Mrs. Bradley laughed, and Mrs. Gatty said spitefully:

“The rumour was almost strong enough to break all the glass in the vicarage windows, anyhow, my dear Mrs. Camel!”

Mrs. Coutts’ thin lips closed tightly together. She looked down her nose in a way that we inmates of the vicarage had learned to behold with dread. Needless to say, it cut no ice at all with either Mrs. Gatty or Mrs. Bradley, and the latter continued:

“Do you remember, Noel, asking me once whether Lowry could have committed murder by proxy?”

“What?” said several of us together.

“Oh, come,” said Mrs. Bradley with her terrifying cackle.

“But Lowry!” we all said. There was a fairly lengthy silence while we digested it. Of course, it was pretty obvious as soon as she said it. There’s a game one plays at parties which makes me feel much the same. You all sit round with pencils and paper and an expression of anguished concentration while some silly blighter plays well-known airs on the piano. You have to write down the titles of as many of the airs as you can, and there is a frightful prize for the best result and the worst player, who is invariably me, has to pay some ghastly forfeit. Well, when they read out the titles, you know, I find I really knew them all the time, but just couldn’t seem to put a name to them.

Well, I felt just the same about this murderer business. All along I had felt that Lowry’s name was on the very tip of my tongue, and as soon as Mrs. Bradley actually pronounced it I sort of realised, as it were, that I had known it all along. Daphne was openly, blatantly and really rather vulgarly triumphant.

“I knew it! I knew it!” she shrieked. “Didn’t I say he was a horrid fat pig!”

We shut her up, of course. It wasn’t decent to talk like that. After all, the man would be hanged soon enough, and I have never agreed with those who would speak ill of the dead.