The White Cottage Mystery

by Margery Allingham

‘I tried to sneak in the back way, but she spotted me from the window, Dad,’ he said, not without a certain satisfaction. ‘I couldn’t get away from her.’

  ‘I don’t know where you’d be if it wasn’t for me,’ she said. ‘You can’t tie up a slash like that and hope for the best – you must have it sewn up at once or it shows for ever. I wouldn’t listen to him,’ she added, turning to the detective. ‘I just sent for the doctor.’

  W.T. smiled, but the expression in his eyes was uneasy. The crumpled letter in his pocket worried him.

  ‘Miss Bayliss,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes?’ There was nothing more than polite inquiry in the girl’s tone, and the detective looked at her narrowly. She was smiling at him, her blue eyes wide with interest.

  Jerry was not so carefree, however. He sat forward and spoke hastily.

  ‘I say, Dad, you’re not going into that letter, are you? Can’t you see how perfectly absurd it all is? I mean – ’

  ‘My boy, I must go into everything,’ said W.T. mildly. ‘If there is nothing in it, it won’t be unusual,’ he added dryly.

  ‘But I say, you can’t!’ the boy expostulated weakly.’ You can’t – I mean, that letter …’

  ‘Jerry, if you talk so much you’ll break those stitches.’ Norah smiled at him as she spoke, and then turned again to the detective.

  ‘What is this about a letter?’ she said. ‘Anything I can tell you?’ Her tone was so frank and her smile so natural that W.T. felt his suspicions fading.

  He drew the letter out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  She took it, surprised at first to see her own handwriting; but as her eyes travelled down the page the colour rose in her face, and her hand trembled.

  ‘Did you write that?’ There was a directness in the question that could not be ignored.

  The girl’s nerve seemed suddenly to go to pieces. She stood there scarlet-faced and stammering.

  ‘No – yes – I don’t know.’

  ‘Dad, this is absurd!’ cut in Jerry violently; but the old man silenced him and, rising to his feet, placed a chair for the girl.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said gently, ‘and then answer my questions. It is very important.’

  The girl took the chair thankfully and sank into it, and the detective sat down opposite her, while Jerry leant forward peering through his bandages, half angry, half apprehensive.

  ‘Did you write that?’ the detective repeated, indicating the letter.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and there was a hint of defiance in her tone.

  W.T. frowned.

  ‘Why did you write it?’

  ‘Why are you questioning me like this? Surely you can’t think that I…?’ The girl’s voice had grown unsteady in her nervousness, and now she broke down completely and sat staring at him, her breath drawing painfully and the colour coming and going in her face.

  ‘My dear child, I must question you.’ W.T. spoke sharply. ‘Do you know that your sister has paid Gale – that is, Lacy – three hundred pounds because of that letter?’

  ‘Grace paid three hundred pounds?’ The girl repeated his words in amazement. ‘Three hundred pounds because of my letter? Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said W.T. slowly, ‘he suggested, and she believed, that Eric Crowther’s mysterious death and that letter might have some connection.’

  ‘Mr Challoner, you must be mad.’

  W.T. was disarmed. When he had hinted at his meaning she had appeared to be terrified, but now that he actually voiced it she immediately became calm, almost relieved. He returned to the letter, the only concrete fact he had to work upon.

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to explain this, nevertheless,’ he said, tapping it gently with his forefinger. ‘You see,’ he added, as the old child-like defiance crept into her eyes, ‘in a mystery no clue must be disregarded.’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘I see,’ she said, and stiffened as if for an ordeal. W.T. adopted his most fatherly manner.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this letter seems to suggest that Crowther was making himself a nuisance to you – irritating you with his attentions. Was that so?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said finally, and shot a half-doubtful, half-imploring glance at Jerry.

  W.T. began to divine some of the reason for her reticence, and glanced at his son.

  ‘Jerry,’ he said, ‘go and lie down in my room. I want to talk to Miss Bayliss alone.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ said Jerry.

  The girl looked at the detective pleadingly. ‘Please let him stay,’ she said.

  W.T. shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I warn you I want to hear all there is to say about this letter and the circumstances which led to its being written.’

  Norah bowed her head in acquiescence, and he continued:

  ‘In my first interview with your sister on the day of the tragedy she told me that she was being worried by Crowther. Was that true too?’

  Norah hesitated.

  ‘Ye-es,’ she said at last, somewhat doubtfully.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said W.T. ‘Was she – or was she not?’

  Still the girl hesitated.

  ‘She – she was, but not quite in the same way,’ she said at last.

  W.T. nodded understandingly.

  ‘You mean that Crowther knew something – something that your sister was very anxious to keep a secret – and held it over her head?’ he said.

  The girl gasped.

  ‘You – you know that?’ she murmured.

  W.T. saw that he had made a mistake, and turned back on his tracks.

  ‘You didn’t mean that?’ he said swiftly. ‘There was something else – some other way in which he annoyed her? What was it?’

  Norah looked at him awkwardly.

  ‘He worried her because of me,’ she said. ‘He wanted her to use her influence with me.’

  W.T. cleared his throat.

  ‘I see,’ he said shortly. ‘And – er – pardon me, Miss Bayliss, but did Crowther offer you – marriage?’

  ‘Not at first.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you refused?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Now, after you had refused him, did he still bother you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And you wrote him that letter?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Yes. He sent me an embroidered Spanish shawl with a – a horrible letter. I burnt the letter and sent back the shawl with that note – I was furious when I wrote it.’

  ‘That was four days before the murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ The detective spoke swiftly.

  Norah looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Because I remember,’ she said simply.

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to explain.’ W.T. spoke warningly.

  The girl was silent for a moment.

  ‘Mr Challoner,’ she said at last, ‘you spoke just now of a secret my sister was anxious to keep.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well …’ The girl hesitated and the old detective suddenly saw her predicament.

  ‘I know,’ he said gently, ‘I know all about it – you can speak to me with perfect confidence.’

  ‘About – about Joan?’

  ‘About Joan,’ said W.T.

  Norah sighed.

  ‘That makes all the difference in the world,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see – I can talk to you now.’

  W.T. thrust his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Oh, you women, you women,’ he said wearily. ‘When will you realize what is important and what is not?’

  Norah’s blue eyes were reproachful.

  ‘You couldn’t expect me to give away a secret like that, could you?’ she said.

  ‘My dear child’ – the old detective was as exasperated as he
ever permitted himself to become – ‘an elephant is large compared with a mouse, but it is ridiculously small compared with Mount Etna. That secret may have been immense six months ago, but now we are faced with a larger and much more terrible secret. Don’t you realize what a murder means?’

  Norah shrugged her shoulders, and W.T. knew that she had followed his argument but was still not convinced.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I see. But it’s much easier to talk now.’

  W.T. sighed.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let us start from the letter. You wrote that letter because you were angry with Crowther. He had been forcing unwelcome attentions upon you and upon your sister, using his knowledge of her secret to influence her in his favour as far as you were concerned.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Norah. ‘But I didn’t know he used the secret to influence her – I didn’t know – about Joan then, you see.’

  ‘You didn’t know about the child?’ W.T. was surprised. ‘When did you learn about it?’

  ‘On the day before the murder.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Crowther.’

  ‘Crowther told you?’ The old detective raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Suppose you tell me about it,’ he suggested.

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Very well. It was like this. After I wrote that letter he came over to see me, and I refused to see him; but he saw Grace, and afterwards I could see that she was very worried. I used to wonder why she put up with him. She used to say he was just trying to make love to her, and I believed it.’

  ‘And all the time it was this affair of the child?’ commented W.T.

  ‘Yes … I didn’t know that then, though. All the next day I didn’t see him, but on the third day – the day before he died, Crowther waylaid me in the garden and forced me to listen to him.’ She paused, and looked at Jerry; but there was nothing but sympathy in the boy’s face, and she continued:

  ‘He began as usual trying to make love to me; and then suddenly, as I wouldn’t listen, he caught my wrist and said he’d make me give in to him. Then he told me about – Grace and Joan – and said that if I didn’t marry him he’d tell Roger, and – and everyone …’ Her young voice died away into silence.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I laughed,’ she said. ‘Naturally. I didn’t believe him.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed the old detective. ‘Did he convince you?’

  ‘Not – not quite. He was very plausible, though, and I began to be afraid. He told me to go into the office of our local newspaper and look up the files for December 1914. He said I’d find a notice of Jack Grey’s death, with the date on which he left England in it, and that there’d be a photograph of him too, and I could see how like Joan was to him.’

  ‘And the next day you went?’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly; ‘and it was true.’

  ‘I met you coming back?’ said Jerry.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled at him. ‘I didn’t want you to bring my basket down to the porch in case he saw you – you see, I knew he was coming over.’

  ‘Oh – how was that?’ W.T. asked the question quickly.

  The girl looked at him in surprise.

  ‘He had written to Grace asking her to go over there,’ she said. ‘He did from time to time – just to be offensive, I suppose, and to try to make Roger jealous. She had told me she should take no notice of it, so I guessed he’d come over … he would be anxious to see me, too.’

  W.T. looked at her.

  Was it possible, he reflected, that she did not see where these admissions were taking her?

  ‘Norah,’ he said suddenly, ‘what did you do when you got in: what was your first thought?’

  The girl smiled.

  ‘The blister on my heel,’ she said. ‘That’s why I was so thankful to Jerry for bringing me home from the bus. I hobbled straight upstairs to take off my shoe and stocking –’

  ‘Were you alone in your room when you heard the shot?’… W.T. put the question slowly. ‘You said you were, you know, at the inquest.’

  Norah nodded.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘That was perjury or contempt of court or something awful like that, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Why – Norah, what are you saying?’ Jerry’s voice was husky with emotion. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In the spare room,’ said the girl, ‘talking to Estah.’

  ‘Talking to Estah? … Why didn’t you say so before when asked at the inquest?’ W.T. spoke sharply.

  Norah looked at him helplessly.

  ‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘I wanted to make sure about Joan – I knew Estah would know, so I went to her at once. She had begun to tell me when we heard the shot. As soon as we realized there was going to be an inquiry we agreed to forget the conversation in case we were asked about it. I was to have remained in my room.’

  W.T. bowed his head over his hands and ruffled his hair until it stood up all over his head like a snow-covered furze-bush.

  ‘You were with Estah,’ he repeated slowly to himself, as if he were dinning the words into his brain. ‘You were with Estah … Then who in the name of all that’s wonderful…?’ He paused and looked up sharply.

  ‘I shall have to verify that, of course,’ he said.

  Norah nodded.

  ‘If you can get Estah to talk she’ll tell you the same story,’ she said, and added, turning, ‘How’s your face, Jerry?’

  W.T. looked at her slender back in despair. She seemed to have forgotten all about the murder.

  16 Daylight

  In reply to your inquiry, an interview with Estah Phillips resulted in a corroboration of Miss Bayliss’s account. Great care was taken to ensure that there was no connivance between the two women, and there can be no doubt that they were together when the shot was fired.

  O. H. Deadwood.

  W.T. put down the letter which he had been reading aloud, and looked across the hotel bedroom at Jerry.

  ‘And that is that,’ he said dryly.

  ‘Well, naturally, what did you expect?’ Jerry spoke contemptuously.

  ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery if it’s the last thing I do. Hang it all, Jerry, it happened – someone must have done it.’

  Jerry shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Taking the fellow’s temperament and habits into consideration, I should call it an act of God and leave it at that,’ he said.

  W.T. shook his head.

  ‘I won’t be beaten,’ he said.•Everything that happens in this world has a natural, simple, logical explanation. I’m not a believer in magic, Jerry. In this case there doesn’t seem to be any proof except that everyone is innocent … Everyone wanted to kill Crowther – everyone admitted they entertained the idea – everyone had an opportunity, and yet nobody did it. It’s an incredible situation.’

  Jerry looked at his father sharply.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘you are convinced now that neither Mrs Christensen nor Norah know anything about it, aren’t you?’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I’m sure – as sure as anyone can be in this world.’

  ‘Thank heaven for that,’ said the boy. ‘I’m glad you’ve got that letter. It’ll make things so much more comfortable for the girls. I’ll go down and tell Norah right away if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Very well,’ W.T. spoke resignedly.

  As the door closed behind the boy the man rose to his feet and walked slowly up and down the room.

  ‘There must be some explanation,’ he said aloud. ‘Something simple – something so obvious that I’ve overlooked it – something – someone …’ His mind went back to the beginning of the case, following it step by step through its tangle of secrets. Everything was there as he had said-motives, opportunities, inclination, and yet no proof against anyone, or even sufficient grounds for a strong suspicion. />
  He sat down wearily in his armchair by the window. His theories were in ruins about him, his weeks of work had taught him much, but led him no nearer to the vital points. The secret was as much a secret as it was on the day of the murder. He remained motionless for some time, thinking; then stretching out his hand, took an old battered book from the table at his side. It was Gross’s Criminal Psychology, a book that he was in the habit of carrying about with him wherever he went.

  He opened it at random, turning over the pages idly, his mind still half on the case that was worrying him. Suddenly his eye caught a phrase, and he stared at it. Then he laughed to himself as if at an absurdity, and went on reading. After a moment or so, however, his eye wandered back to the sentence that had arrested him, and again he stared at it, incredulity fighting with doubt in his mind.

  At last he put the book face downward on the table and drew towards him his brownish-red notebook that looked so much like a Boy Scout’s diary.

  ‘Impossible,’ he murmured. ‘And yet …’

  He took out a pencil and wrote a list of names down the page – the name of everybody in the house at the time of the murder, and one who was not.

  For some time he sat staring at it, his forehead screwed up and his eyes narrowed. Then he sprang to his feet.

  ‘My God!’ he said. ‘My God! Of course!’

  Hastily he crammed things into a suitcase, and seating himself at the table scrawled a few words to Jerry.

  On the track at last [he wrote]. Going to London. Wait till you hear from me. All the best.

  Dad.

  He folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope, leaving it with the concierge as he passed through the hall.

  ‘No, no letters.’ Jerry glanced down the rack and spoke with some disappointment. Norah looked up at him sympathetically. They had been dining together and had walked back to the hotel to see if the evening’s post had brought any news from W.T. It was three days now since he had gone.

  They wandered into the deserted and stuffy gilt-and-stucco drawing-room, and went out on to the balcony, where they stood for some time in silence.

  The Riviera at night has a peculiar beauty of its own that is not quite equalled anywhere else.

  The lights of the town winked and danced in the clear air with a gaiety of their own, and beyond, glittering in the moonlight, lay the Mediterranean, that blue jewel that seems to retain a little of its colour even in the darkness.