The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics)

by John Bude

  “Probably.”

  “And Mrs. Cowper saw him alive at about fifteen minutes to nine. So we can fix within reasonable limits, sir, the period of time within which the murder must have been committed. Between eight-forty-five and say, nine-five.”

  Further discussion on this point was interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Bigswell and a uniformed chauffeur. He had started from Greystoke a few minutes after receiving Grouch's intimation of the tragedy, but a faulty carburettor had hung him up en route. Unfortunately the engine had petered out on a lonely road and he had been unable to board a private car. He offered this explanation not so much as an apology for his tardy arrival, but to vindicate the excellence of police routine in the eyes of the Doctor and the Vicar. Pendrill judged him to be a man of keen intelligence, quicker witted, though more reserved, than the Constable. A man, moreover, who inspired confidence. He brought to the proceedings a cut-and-dried manner which was both efficient and business-like. Grouch drew him aside in the hall and gave a résumé of his enquiries, outlined the main points of the case, showed him the body, the bullet holes in the window and reported the results of the Doctor's examination. When the Constable had posted his superior up to date, the two men joined Pendrill and the Vicar, who were chatting in the dining-room.

  Mrs. Cowper reported that Miss Tregarthan was in her room and wanted to know if the Inspector wished to see her again that night. The Inspector shook his head.

  “As far as I can see it will be quite unnecessary for me to trouble her any further. I quite understand how she must be feeling. No. Tell her to get as much rest as she can. She's a rather trying time in front of her, I'm afraid.” Adding as Mrs. Cowper was on the point of leaving, “You and your husband had better do the same, Mrs. Cowper.”

  When the housekeeper had retired, Inspector Bigswell addressed himself to Pendrill and the Vicar.

  “I've no reason to keep you any longer, gentlemen.”

  “We can be of no assistance, I suppose, Inspector?”

  “Well, I won't say that, Doctor. If you and the Reverend care to stay, I daresay you can give me a little local information as we get on with our investigations. The lie of the land, as it were.”

  “In that case ...” said Pendrill with an enquiring look at the Reverend Dodd.

  The Vicar nodded.

  “Anything we can do, Inspector.”

  “Good,” concluded Bigswell. “Suppose we start by making a further examination of the sitting-room.”

  The four men returned once more to the scene of the crime, and after the Inspector had made a cursory examination of the body, he had it laid on the big Chesterfield and covered with a rug which Grouch had found in the hall.

  The Inspector's next move was to cut out the two bullets from the wall where they had lodged, the one in the oak beam under the ceiling, the other behind the oil-painting. The third bullet, the one which had crashed through Tregarthan's skull obviously at short range, was found near the fender, where it had apparently ricocheted off the sideboard. The Inspector placed the three bullets in the palm of his hand and examined them with interest.

  “Well,” he said at length, looking up at his little audience. “What d'you make of it? Revolver bullets, eh? Army Service pattern I should say. The sort of revolver carried by officers of the B.E.F. in the war. That won't get us far. It may narrow things down a bit, but not much, I'm afraid.”

  He swung round and pointed at the french windows, the curtains of which were still undrawn.

  “That door—where does it go?”

  “Into a little walled garden,” explained Pendrill, who knew the place well. “Just a small rectangle of lawn surrounded on three sides by a flower border.”

  “Suppose we look,” suggested Bigswell.

  “I have a torch—a pocket lamp,” put in the Vicar helpfully.

  The Inspector smiled.

  “So have I, sir, and the Constable ought to have ... of the regulation pattern. Eh, Grouch?”

  Grouch grinned appreciatively, rather flattered in sharing this little joke with his superior, and unhooked his lamp off his belt.

  The four of them went out into the garden.

  The wind had died down and the air, though fresh and salty, was no longer damp-laden. It was obvious that the rain had spent itself with the storm, for the sky had cleared and a crescent moon shed a ghostly glitter over the dark swell of the Atlantic. Under the brief cliff the waves were chopping and slapping, but beyond that the night was profoundly still.

  Bigswell was so far puzzled by the case. There was little enough to go on. Mrs. Cowper's story about the strange man on the drive might prove to be a successful line of investigation, but the description of this man was extremely scrappy. Gaiters. That was something. Shortish. That was something further. But if the gaitered individual had committed the murder there was nothing to prevent him from discarding his leg-wear as being too distinctive. And shortish men were not uncommon! At the moment he was more concerned with finding the spot where the murderer had stood when he had fired the fatal shot. There might be—indeed there must be—footprints, for the ground, softened by rain, would be amenable to impressions, and since the rain had stopped shortly after the supposed time of Tregarthan's death, these valuable imprints should not be blurred.

  “Now,” he said briskly, flicking on a powerful electric torch. “Suppose we work methodically over these flower-beds. If the murderer did enter the garden over the wall he couldn't have avoided the beds. You notice their width. It would have taken an extremely agile fellow to have cleared them in one leap.”

  “And even if he had,” put in the Vicar with a serious air of consideration, “he would have landed so heavily on the border of the grass that the marks would be obvious.”

  “Precisely,” exclaimed Bigswell.

  He darted a keen glance at the rotund little figure and made a mental note that the Reverend Dodd was a cleric with the right sort of intelligence. His mind ran along the right rails. It had the proper analytical twist.

  “Well, let's make sure,” he said.

  The three rings of light travelled carefully over the empty flower borders, empty, that was, save for a few thin clumps of early daffodils. But the result was negative. On the lawn, too, the searchers drew a blank. It was perfectly obvious that nobody had set foot inside the wall that night.

  “Which means that we must try our luck on the other side of the wall,” said Bigswell. “Careful,” he added, as Grouch plodded across the border and flung himself astride the curved cement coping. “No trampling about, Grouch.”

  The three sides of the wall were bounded by three distinct paths. At the bottom of the garden ran the cliff-path. On the Boscawen side was a rough track which led round the side of Greylings and entered the front drive through a clump of laurel bushes. Against the cliff end of this wall were piled a few hurdles, obviously bearing some connection with the sheep which grazed on the common. On the side furthest from the cove, the south side, a more defined track ran from the cliff-path to a side door in the south face of the house.

  The north track, a mere ribbon of muddied grass, proved unprofitable. Save for a few half-obliterated hoof-marks left by the sheep there were no other prints of any kind.

  Avoiding the cliff-path for the time being, by the simple expedient of recrossing the garden, the party made an exhaustive examination of the side-door path. There the Inspector found exactly what he was looking for—two sets of tracks clearly defined in the soft, soggy soil. One set ran toward the side-door, the other away from it. The footprints were those of a feminine foot in a high-heeled shoe.

  “This, at any rate, fits in with Miss Tregarthan's story,” observed the Inspector as the concentrated light from the three torches flooded on to a patch of the path. “She went out for a walk by the side-door and returned the same way. There's nothing unusual here. I didn't expect there would be. If you wanted to shoot a man standing in the window, Grouch, where would you take up your position?”


  “On the cliff-path, sir.”

  “Exactly. The angle from either of these side-paths would be too acute, too chancy, as I see it. The cliff-path runs directly parallel with the house.”

  The little group, led by the Inspector, moved off on to the cliff-path. At once they were drawn up short as the Inspector stopped dead and uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure.

  “Ah!” he said, squatting close to the ground. “This looks more like it. There's a new set of tracks here, Grouch. See, gentlemen. These, of course, are Miss Tregarthan's—notice the small, round heel. But these—” and he pointed to a somewhat broader foot “—belong to somebody else.” He peered closer. “Hullo! Hullo! What's this? A heel missing?”

  “A heel!” exclaimed Pendrill. “Which way do the tracks run?”

  “Toward the village.”

  All faces were turned toward the Doctor who, with the air of a man on the scent of something, was prying closely at the footprints. Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed without restraint.

  “It's all right, Inspector. I don't think you need trouble with those.”

  “Not trouble with them, sir?”

  The Inspector seemed aghast at the Doctor's levity.

  “No. It's Mrs. Mullion or I'm a Dutchman!”

  “Mrs. Mullion?”

  “The local midwife. She had to attend a case to-night in a cottage over at Towan Cove. I drove her there myself in the car. It was an urgent case—twins as a matter of fact. And getting out of the car, and I suppose not being used to that sort of conveyance, she wrenched her heel on the running-board. I'll swear that's her foot right enough.”

  “It's certainly small for a man's,” acknowledged the Inspector. “She would have returned this way to-night?”

  “Yes. Towan Cove is about half a mile along the cliff—about a mile and a half from the village. A good bit further by the road. The cliff-path offers a short cut between the two coves. I would have run the good woman back, only she wanted to stay on for a bit to make sure everything was as it should be with Mrs. Withers. That was my patient's name. I couldn't stay longer myself as I had a dinner appointment with the Vicar here.”

  “What time did you leave the cottage?”

  “About seven-fifteen, I imagine.”

  “And Mrs. Mullion?”

  “Well, I can't say exactly. She may have stayed an hour, perhaps an hour and a half. I shouldn't think longer. Everything was going along quite satisfactorily.”

  “Suppose she stayed an hour,” went on the Inspector quickly. “That means she would have left the cottage about eight-fifteen. Allowing her fifteen minutes to walk the half-mile along the cliff—we mustn't forget her damaged heel—that means she would have passed this spot about eight-thirty. You see where I am getting to, sir?”

  “That she may have been somewhere in this locality when the murder was committed.”

  “Exactly. If she left at a later hour it is almost certain she must have passed within a few minutes of the fatal shot being fired. I think it might be advisable for us to get hold of Mrs. Mullion tomorrow, Grouch, and put a few questions to her.”

  “But you don't mean ...” put in the Vicar, aghast.

  “That she shot Tregarthan? Hardly. But she may be able to give us information which will help us to find out who did.”

  “There's a third alternative, sir,” said Grouch respectfully. “Perhaps it's already occurred to you. Mrs. Mullion might have passed the house after the murder was committed.”

  “Yes—I thought of that. It's possible. Still, there's no harm in putting her through a little third degree, as the newspapers have it.”

  “Which gets us, you realise, Inspector, no further with the footprints.”

  The Inspector, who was by then on his hands and knees, peering again at the footprints, seemed at a complete loss.

  “You're right there, sir. It sets us back half a mile. Take a close look at the path, gentlemen—you too, Grouch. How many recent sets of prints do you see?”

  After a moment Grouch said:

  “Three, sir. Two of Miss Tregarthan's. One belonging to Bessie Mullion.”

  “And over here?” asked the Inspector, moving a yard or so along the path.

  “Still three.”

  “And here and here and here?” demanded Bigswell, advancing in jerks along the track under the wall.

  The result was the same. Three tracks! For a stretch of twenty yards, which the Inspector considered a feasible angle from which Tregarthan could have been shot, an exhaustive inspection brought no further footprints to light. The little group extended its activities to the hoof-pocked and half-muddied turf which bordered the cliff-path beyond the wall. They found nothing! Three tracks and three tracks only were visible and those on the path itself. Two belonging to Ruth Tregarthan. One to Mrs. Mullion.

  “Well, I'll be b—busted!” exclaimed the Inspector, realising the Vicar's presence in the nick of time. “What are we to make of that? Miss Tregarthan? Mrs. Mullion? Surely a woman——?”

  “It's impossible, Inspector,” remonstrated Pendrill. “Why, good heavens, I've known Ruth since she was a kid! She couldn't have done a thing like this. Her uncle? It's ridiculous! You might as well accuse my old friend the Vicar here, as accuse that girl!”

  “And Mrs. Mullion?”

  “A steady, respectable, unimaginative country-woman. Good at her job. A motherly old soul, if I know the meaning of the phrase. As to her handling a revolver—my imagination boggles at the thought. She'd miss the house at fifteen feet, let alone a man standing in that window. What do you say, Dodd?”

  “Eh?” The Reverend Dodd during the Doctor's argument had moved off a little way, making a further inspection of the footprints on his own account.

  “Ruth! Mrs. Mullion! Ridiculous, eh?” reiterated Pendrill.

  “Oh, dear me—yes, of course. Unthinkable, Inspector. You must be on the wrong track there.”

  “Well, it beats me,” concluded Inspector Bigswell as he cut off his torch. “I don't think we can do much more out here. It looks to me as if we're up against a first-class mystery.” He pulled his cape a little tighter round his neck. “Brr! It's getting chilly, gentlemen. A Cornish cliff at the end of March is hardly a comfortable place for a conference. How about returning to the house?”

  “If you care to come up to the Vicarage,” said the Reverend Dodd. “Perhaps a little refreshment ...”

  He tailed off vaguely. The Inspector accepted the invitation, and leaving Grouch and the chauffeur to keep watch on the house, the three men piled into the Doctor's saloon and drove off up the drive.

  The Vicar, sitting alone on the back seat, was silent. He was disturbed and puzzled by the results of the evening's investigations. Those three tracks! Very curious. Ruth. Mrs. Mullion. Yet more curious were the two inferences he had drawn from a further inspection of Ruth Tregarthan's footprints. That little round heel—obviously a high-heeled shoe. The storm and the torrential rain. Would a sensible, country-bred girl like Ruth leave her house in the midst of a storm in flimsy, high-heeled shoes? She had always worn brogues, good, stout, walking shoes, when the Vicar had seen her out and about in the locality. She normally wore brogues. Then why, when it was raining, did she suddenly elect to tramp along the cliff edge in what appeared to be house-shoes?—or at the most, town-shoes?

  And secondly—yes, indeed it was rather like setting out the points in a sermon—why was the track returning to the side-door different from the track leading from it? There was less heel in the first, more toe. Which meant? She was running. Why? To get in out of the rain? Hardly that, since she had apparently set off quite cheerfully in the middle of the storm. Besides, Ruth was used to the wet. She had not lived the major part of her life in Boscawen without learning to ignore the vagaries of the elements. She was a typical country girl. Yet she had run. The nature of the footprints had changed about mid-way along the garden wall. Yet Ruth had told Grouch that she did not know anything was amiss until she reache
d the sitting-room and found her uncle dead.

  And further—that question about the wet mackintosh. Again it was unlike Ruth to avoid the exercise of common sense. That question seemed to have disturbed her. She had hesitated, appeared uneasy, stammered. What did it mean exactly? Was Ruth trying to hide something from the police?

  Did she, despite her denial, know that her uncle had been shot before she entered the sitting-room? Say, for example, when she was on the cliff-path at the bottom of the garden?

  The Vicar suddenly felt a great depression weighing on him. He stared uneasily at the spectral landscape which stretched out on either side of the drive. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses his eyes, devoid of their customary twinkle, were narrowed to two thin slits of perplexity and trepidation.

  CHAPTER IV

  STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF RUTH TREGARTHAN

  INSPECTOR BIGSWELL, despite the cosiness of the Vicar's study and the excellence of the refreshment provided, did not remain long at the Vicarage. Satisfied that he had obtained a good wad of local knowledge from Pendrill and the Reverend Dodd, he returned at once to Greylings. The Doctor, who after the excitements of the evening felt pretty exhausted, offered to drop the Inspector before returning along the road to Rock House. But Bigswell, who wanted a few moments to himself and found walking a stimulating brain tonic, politely refused the offer. So the two of them said “Good night” at the Vicarage gate and went their separate ways.

  As Bigswell saw it, little more could be done that night. There might be a weapon hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the house or at any rate a further clue or clues, but it was useless to make an exhaustive search until daylight. The murderer, whoever he was, must have had a fair amount of time in which to make himself scarce after the fatal shot had been fired. In all probability he had an exact knowledge of the surrounding country, and although the police in the district had been warned before the Inspector left Greystoke to keep an extra vigilance on all roads and to take note of any suspicious character, Bigswell did not hope for much in this direction. It was a lonely bit of coast, criss-crossed with tracks, well wooded a little way inland and sparsely inhabited. Besides, so far, he had no description to broadcast of the man or woman they were looking for. The Man with the Gaiters might have something to do with the crime, and enquiries would have to be made; on the other hand it might have been mere coincidence. Unfortunate, of course, if it brought the man under suspicion, but there was always the chance that he could explain his presence on the drive.