Crossword Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “And the first step was to get rid of the elder brother,” commented Major Markham. “But how was it done? There was no sign of any struggle – nothing. I remember you were talking about a cat as we came along, but I didn’t know what you were referring to.”

  “One of the first things I noticed,” Mitchell explained, “was that Mrs. Cooper was very keen in proving an alibi for George Winterton. There was no real suspicion against him; it wasn’t at all likely he had had any hand in murdering his brother. But Mrs. Cooper seemed oddly anxious to prove an alibi for him. That might have been pure devotion towards her employer. It might have been simply that she wanted to bring her name into the case. People are like that sometimes. It might have been that, in proving an alibi for her employer, she incidentally proved one for herself and her husband as well. Anyhow it was quite clever. Normally a guilty person tries to throw suspicion on others. Mrs. Cooper is a better psychologist than that. She knew that when you insist on other people’s innocence, at the same time you suggest your own. Besides, with her intelligence, she probably realised there was no real case against her master. But to prove the alibi, she told a story of a black cat on his window-sill, and how, in chasing it away for fear it might disturb him, she and her husband had seen George Winterton, through the open window of his room, sound asleep in bed. That was all very well, but young Bobby Owen happened to overhear a chance remark to the effect that, at the exact moment when the Coopers declared the only black cat in the village was on their master’s window-sill, one of the fishermen of the village was chasing it away from his boat, because he thought it brought bad luck. That meant there was a discrepancy somewhere – a mistake or a lie somewhere. It wasn’t much to go on; it might have been a quite unintentional, unimportant confusion of dates. If it was a lie, it might merely have been that of a loyal servant protecting her master against an accusation she knew to be false. But it did suggest Mrs. Cooper was worth watching, and last night another little bit of useful information came in.”

  “What was that?” Markham asked quickly.

  “We had been getting a line on her past life, you know,” Mitchell answered, “and now we’ve found that she acted as swimming instructress at one time at a small seaside resort on the south coast. You’ll get a note of the details by the first post this morning, I expect. But here, at Suffby Cove, she had always let it be understood she couldn’t swim. She had even staged some little performance to give people here that impression. One point that had seemed difficult was to understand how the Coopers, either one or both of them, supposing they had a hand in the murder of Archibald, had managed to escape observation. It was certain they were back at Fairview quite early. But if they had come back by land, they must have been seen, and there was no record of a boat, which also, for that matter, would most likely have been seen. But an expert swimmer could easily swim across the opening of the Cove, from one headland to the other, would almost certainly have escaped notice at that hour in the morning, and could easily have towed a non-swimming companion across as well, especially one furnished with some sort of air-bladder or another for additional support. As we know now, Mrs. Cooper was a good swimmer, that is most likely how she or they returned to their own side of the Cove. They carried out the murder without much difficulty. One or other of them – I imagine Mrs. Cooper; I think she carried it out alone – hid during the night near the beach from which the elder Winterton used to start for his swims. After he had swum out some distance, Mrs. Cooper appeared from her hiding place, and the Airedale, knowing her quite well, gave no alarm. Mr. Winterton was in the habit of taking a thermos flask of hot coffee with him, to drink after coming out of the water. Owen noticed as soon as he arrived at Fairview that thermos flasks were always put ready with hot drinks for any before-breakfast bather. It struck him that it would not be difficult to tamper with Archibald Winterton’s flask, or even to substitute for it another that had been already drugged. So he complained of toothache, and Mrs. Cooper, who always wanted to manage everything for everyone, and to tell everyone what to do, gave him the name of a dentist to consult, and meanwhile provided him with laudanum to relieve his – er – pain. Laudanum is not easy to get hold of under the new regulations, but she seemed to have a good supply of it; and it was at least possible that when Archibald Winterton came out of the water he took a drink of coffee that had been dosed with laudanum, and then, in his resulting dazed, half-conscious condition, was taken back into the water, so that the tide should carry him out till he was caught in the current that sets in along this coast with the movement of the tide, and was swept out to sea. Defending counsel might make out that was all pure conjecture, but to my mind it gives a clear, coherent picture, and I feel pretty sure that’s what happened, and that it was the first blow in Mrs. Cooper’s campaign to obtain possession of the gold. She meant it to open for her the wider life she believed her powers had a right to, just as poor young Ross wanted it to start his ideal racing stable – she had her ideal too; sometimes ideals can lead you wrong as well as right, I think, unless you remember still to be careful about your means. Well, after that there remained the other brother to dispose of. The first step was to get rid of the Airedale. A much inferior intelligence to that of Mrs. Cooper would have seen that, if another death occurred without the dog giving an alarm, suspicion would at once be directed to the people the dog knew. So it was killed. Mrs. Cooper probably knew the gold had been originally hidden in the summer-house, but did not know that subsequently it had been moved. By testing the floor with water, they made sure digging had taken place there, and the exact spot. Then came the ‘released from prison’ telegram to warn her they had no time to lose. I imagine they kept a close watch on their employer’s correspondence, and knew exactly how things were going. Most likely Mrs. Cooper saw at once that the telegram would be very apt to throw any investigation all wrong – as it did, too. How she managed to induce Winterton to dodge the watch Owen was keeping, and to get him out on the lawn that night, I don’t suppose we shall ever know for certain, unless she tells us, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to fake a ’phone call, or some other message, purporting to come from Nabersberg, and making an appointment outside the house in the dark, on some pretext of being watched or followed and being afraid to come in the day-time. Then, of course, Colin Ross helped them a lot by drawing suspicion on himself. It’s pretty certain he knew something about the purchase of the gold, and I fancy his uncle was a little scared of him, and afraid he might ferret out the secret, and perhaps betray it. Somehow he had guessed that the secret of its hiding-place was hidden in the crossword puzzle. When Ross saw his uncle lying dead on the lawn that morning, the temptation was too much for him. Instead of giving the alarm, he saw his chance to get hold of the crossword, and secure for himself the clue to the whereabouts of the gold. He slipped downstairs, and took possession of the dead man’s pocket-book; in doing so, leaving finger-prints on the book itself, and on the handle of the door he had come out by, and so providing evidence that might very well have hanged him.”

  “His finger-prints were on the handle of the knife used,” Major Markham pointed out.

  “Why was that knife used at all?” Mitchell asked. “It was used on an obviously dead man, remember. No one could have lived with his head battered in like that. My own theory is that Mrs. Cooper in giving Ross, as he said she had done, a day or two before, one of the kitchen knives to handle, did so to get his fingerprints on it. Then it was thrust into the dead body of the victim to implicate Ross – great care, of course, being taken in handling it to leave no other finger-prints.”

  “Yes, I know,” Markham said. “If you hadn’t put that possibility to me, I should have arrested Ross immediately.”

  “It might have saved his life if we had done so,” Mitchell observed musingly. “One can’t tell. I think he would have kept quiet about the hidden gold though. Anyhow, it’s too late to think of that now. But until Owen got hold of the copy of the crossword Miss Raby made, only Ros
s had any clue to the whereabouts of the gold, and the first thing that went wrong with Mrs. Cooper’s plans was when they dug up the summer-house floor and found the gold had gone. That must have been a nasty jar. I take it that then they began to suspect Ross had some idea where it was. They watched him and followed him. They found him in the garage, overcome by the gas, and I suppose we can guess the rest. Had Owen not worked out the crossword in the same way that Ross did, I suppose most likely they would have brought it all to what they would have called a satisfactory conclusion, and Mrs. Cooper, with the power of the gold behind her, would gradually have emerged from housekeeper at the contemplated Fairview club to be a director of the whole concern on the lines drawn up and submitted to Shorton he was so much impressed by. For it is that she has been aiming at all the time, nor merely a parcel of sovereigns, but to give herself place and opportunity.”

  “Are you sure this plan or scheme of the development here, you told us about, was all her work?”

  “There is no one else,” Mitchell answered. “It all came out of her mind. It is her mind we have been struggling against all through.” He added, a little heavily, a little slowly: “Now it is her mind that it is our duty to settle accounts with.”

  One of the county constables came up and saluted.

  “All ready now, sir,” he reported.

  “Then we’ll get along,” Major Markham said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Conclusion

  Bobby’s dash on his motor-cycle through the village at an hour so early had naturally not been unnoticed by the inhabitants, nor had the appearance of the two motor-cars a little later on gone unremarked. Three-fourths, indeed, of the villagers were watching as the police party came back on their way towards Fairview, and when they were quite near the village, just by the bridge that crossed the creek, Bobby leaned forward to speak to Mitchell.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but there’s a man running across the fields over there, towards the house, and he looks to me like Cooper.”

  “Got word something was happening, came out to see, and now he’s running back to warn his wife,” Mitchell commented. “Too late for that to help them any.”

  Major Markham halted the cars.

  “Better stop him getting there, if we can,” he remarked. “He may make trouble, one way or another.”

  He directed Inspector Wake and one of the constables to try to cut off Cooper before he reached the house. Bobby asked, and received, permission to accompany them. Major Markham said: “He seems to be making straight across country for the house. You ought to be able to cut him off easily enough.”

  Bobby and his two companions had, in fact, a shorter distance to traverse than had Cooper to the point where their paths must cross if he kept straight on towards Fairview. They ran therefore, indeed, but not at their best speed, for they all three thought they had time in hand, till abruptly they became aware that Cooper was outpacing them.

  For he was running, that pasty-faced, flat-footed butler, like a man possessed; racing over the roughest ground as over a smooth cinder track; taking the hedges in his stride like a practised hurdler; covering the distance with huge leaps and bounds; his coat-tails flapping grotesquely behind him; his rather long hair streaming out in the wind, for he had long since lost his hat.

  “Gosh, look at that,” Wake exclaimed.

  Cooper had cut straight across a field, not towards the gate, which would have brought him out nearer the course his pursuers were taking, but straight for a corner where the hedge was high, and strong, and laced with wire – it had been specially strengthened for the field it bounded as that held a bull, valuable and pure bred, but also of uncertain temper. The field he was in was wide and broad, but Cooper seemed to cross it in a stride or two, like Speed itself made incarnate in the form of a flat-footed, middle-aged butler, with such amazing ease and lightness did he flash by, straight for that high fence behind which the great bull grazed. One might have thought he did not see the hedge. The thing was a good six-foot high, close-growing, wire supported, and whether he jumped it clear, as Wake afterwards maintained, or whether somehow he crashed his way through it, as the others thought, at any rate in a moment he was over, and still upon his feet, and still running swift and straight. That was all they could be sure of, that, and that the great bull, indignant at this sudden irruption into its domain, had snorted its anger, and put its huge head down to charge.

  Cooper paid the creature no attention. Still, with those great leaps and bounds of his, he ran straight on. The bull might not have been there, he ran at it, straight at it, and passed it like the wind; he reached the fence upon the field’s further side, and was over it and away, while, behind, the bull bellowed disapproval, and tore up and down its domain in search of something whereon to vent its wrath and indignation.

  At the gate, Wake paused and looked thoughtful. So did Bobby. So did their companion. The bull saw them, and, pawing at the ground, snorted a challenge to them to come on.

  “I think,” decided Wake, “we’ll go round.”

  It was certainly a wise decision. The bull, now thoroughly aroused, was making quite clear it would allow no further passage through its territory without offering very active protest. To have challenged that determination would plainly have occupied more time than would be lost in going round, and Wake added consolingly :

  “Anyway, he’s making straight for the house. The cars will get there first, and our people will be waiting for him. Whoever would have thought the blighter could run like that?” He added reproachfully to Bobby: “You never told us he was that kind of champion athlete.”

  “He isn’t,” Bobby said. “He’s fat and forty, and can’t go upstairs without wheezing.” He added, rather gravely: “We have seen a miracle.”

  Wake stared and shrugged his shoulders, but made no comment, and they went on together, leaving the big bull pawing at the ground in undisputed possession of its territory. Beyond the next field they came in sight of Fairview. At the entrance to the drive leading up to the house, the cars had stopped. Their inmates had seen what had happened, had seen Cooper, still running, as straight and swift as before, straight for the gate to the drive where they were waiting. They alighted, and stood in a little group watching him as he raced towards them, taking no more heed that they were there than he had done before of the presence and resentment of the great bull. Seeing how fiercely he still ran, the constable driving one of the cars backed it across the road to make him stop. Still he took no heed, but made one leap to the bonnet of the car, and touched it lightly with his right foot, and took fresh impetus for another leap that landed him right into the midst of the little group waiting for him. Mitchell tried to tackle him, but failed, for he went by like a darting bird. Markham jumped in his way, and got a blow, or rather push, on the chest that sent him reeling to fall flat on his back in the ditch by the way side, where the next moment Andrews joined him, flung aside as one might fling aside a straw that had drifted across one’s path.

  “Well, I’m blessed,” Mitchell said, and began to run.

  “He’s mad, mad,” Markham panted, as he and Andrews scrambled to their feet and followed.

  The driver of the second car followed, too, and all four of them fled up the drive, with Cooper leading and gaining at every stride, so fast he ran – faster even than before.

  So he gained the house the first, and they saw him vanish within and crash-to the door behind him.

  “Round to the back,” Mitchell shouted.

  He led the way, running at his best speed, and the others followed. The back door was open. They went in, and Major Markham called out:

  “Take care, he may be armed.”

  “They heard his voice in the kitchen.

  “Quick, quick, while there’s time. I can hold them back. I can hold the lot of them back while you get away.”

  They heard Mrs. Cooper answer.

  “Too late for that.”

  They were in a narrow, stone-
flagged passage. In front of them were three or four steps leading to the dining-room, and on their right was a door. Someone pushed it open, and they entered. They were in the kitchen, a big, long, low, dark room, very badly lighted by two small windows. In the middle of the floor, on the nearer side of the table that ran across the room, stood Cooper. He was holding in one hand a short iron bar. He looked fierce and wild and formidable; he had the air of being about to hurl himself upon them, as in days gone by baresark warriors charged upon their enemies, careless of death, if only first they themselves could slay. His eyes were pin-points of fire, and on his lips a little white foam showed. But Mrs. Cooper looked at the new-comers, and then at him, and shook her head slightly.