The bathrooms at the “Swinging Sign” were three in number. It was in the smallest one that the girl was found drowned. Helm was not apprehended. Mrs. Cozens, the dead girl’s mother, proved to be such an extremely unreliable witness that the police felt justified in ignoring her unsupported testimony that she had seen Cutler that day, and the police inquiry had to proceed along lines other than those which assumed that he was guilty.
The explanation given by the villagers was simple. The inn was known to be haunted. In some dark manner the powers of evil had enticed the girl thither, and there, by the agency of the same powers, she had met her death.
The police, foiled in one direction, soon formulated another theory—namely, that young John Spratt knew something of the matter. It was suggestive, they considered, that Susie’s death had taken place in the home of her fiancé. John was questioned, and had to make some damaging admissions. Susie had been invited to the inn and might have gone to the squire’s house very much against her will. It was obvious that she had never had any intention of remaining there longer than the minimum time for preparing the dinner, and it was suggested that she had arrived at the inn without being recognized on the way, owing to the density of the fog, had quarrelled with John—although the boy and both his parents strenuously denied this—and the murder had been the result. When it was further shown that Susie was in the habit of taking a bath at the “Swinging Sign” on Sundays, owing to the fact that her mother’s cottage contained no bathroom, further speculation appeared vain. John was arrested and charged with having murdered his sweetheart.
Mrs. Bradley was seated in the pleasant morning-room of the Stone House, Wandles Parva, a bright fire burning, breakfast at the toast-and-marmalade stage, and her young friend, Aubrey Harringay, home for the Christmas holidays, sprawling companionably all over the hearthrug, reading a detective story. She read the account of the murder and the result of the police investigations up to the moment of going to press, and observed, in her rich, full tones:
“Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear! Something more than fiction, something less than fact, makes the poor psychologist wonder how to act!”
She concluded this surprising couplet with an even more surprising hoot of laughter. Aubrey looked up.
“Dry up, love,” he said. “You ruin my powers of concentration.”
“Put the book aside when you’ve finished the next chapter, child. I want to tell you a nasty, harrowing story,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Honest to God?”
“I am not accustomed to refer my integrity to the Almighty,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly.
“Sorry. Merely a figure of speech.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and placed it between the pages of his book. “Come on.”
“A woman is found drowned at a school,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and there seems a possibility that a certain man of her acquaintance was in the neighbourhood. This man was once tried for drowning his wife, but was acquitted. Later, a woman escapes from his clutches by the intervention of two perfect strangers, who ought to have made it their business to interfere. There is no actual proof that he intended the woman any harm, but the facts were sufficiently peculiar to be significant. They were as follows: The woman had accepted an invitation to the house, and while she was there, he prepared a bath, ostensibly for himself, for he even went to the length of undressing and donning a dressing-gown and slippers, and, thus clad, he opened the door to the interfering couple aforesaid. The woman, presumably, was in the bedroom. The bath was in the middle of the living-room floor. These seemingly extraordinary preparations are to be explained by the fact that the dwelling-place was a converted railway carriage, and therefore not subject to the ordinary customs which govern life in a civilized English home.
“Later, viz., to wit, last Sunday as ever was, a young woman is found drowned in an inn not more three miles from the railway carriage, and the dead girl’s mother, who appears to be a liar, by the way, swears that this same man called at the house for the girl on the afternoon of the day of her death. What do you make of that?”
“Q.E.D., of course,” said the boy. “Is it true?”
“So far as it goes, yes,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “At any rate, I think it wants looking at. I have a shrewd suspicion—at least, I hope it’s shrewd!—that the young woman of the bungalow and the dead young woman are the same young woman.”
“Good,” said Aubrey. “May I come with you?”
“No, child. But I will write and ask your opinion on any knotty points which require elucidation.”
“Oh, no, I say! Why can’t I come?”
“First,” said Mrs. Bradley, “your mother wouldn’t hear of it. Secondly, you would be in my way.”
“Oh, well, if you say so,” said Aubrey resignedly. He turned to his book again and was immediately absorbed in it. Mrs. Bradley grinned like an affectionately maternal alligator at the back of his fair head, and began to make notes, with several references to the newspaper, at the back of a little black book.
Her first action, when she arrived in Bognor, was to seek out the cottage where the dead girl’s mother lived, and interview her. The old woman stuck to her story. Helm had come to the Manor House and he had inquired for Susie. Susie, however, had gone by that time, but her mother was still convinced that the real murderer was Helm (or Cutler, as she called him). On all the evidence, the woman’s story appeared unlikely. Helm would have been mad to show his hand so openly if he had really intended to murder the girl. Besides, it was idle to imagine that he could have known Susie was to be at the Manor House that afternoon, since she herself had not known it until it was time to start out in the car with Roy.
On the other hand, it might well be that Helm had murdered the girl at the inn, since it would not have been difficult for him to ascertain that she was in the habit of visiting there every Sunday afternoon. In that case, Mrs. Cozens’s story might prove to have been a flight of fancy, and might not, but it would not alter the facts. The fog was certainly an important item. It had been so dense, apparently, that it was possible that under cover of it Helm could have introduced himself into the inn unperceived.
If he had taken the trouble to discover the lie of the land, he would know the whereabouts of the various members of the household; this would be especially easy on a Sunday afternoon, when no business was being transacted, for there was no reason to break the peaceful habits of the Sabbath, and thus he could have minimized any risks of running into Malachi, Dora or John. It remained to be seen whether there would have been any way for him to gain admission to the interior of the house without having to announce himself by knocking on the door or ringing the bell, and this Mrs. Bradley decided to investigate next.
Dora and Malachi Spratt were both at home. Mrs. Bradley decided to tackle Dora first. The woman was half-crazed with the shock of John’s arrest, and at first Mrs Bradley could get little out of her. As soon as Dora understood, however, that the visitor was convinced of John’s innocence, was the mother of a famous lawyer, and was looking for facts to help to clear John’s name, she rallied, took herself in hand, and answered Mrs Bradley’s questions with the greatest economy and carefulness.
“She used to come in and out as she liked,” was the gist of her testimony, “and I suppose anyone else could have done the same. The door was shut—that door on to the yard is the one we always use for our private in-comings and out-goings—but it’s only a case of turning the handle. Malachi never locks it until bedtime. Indeed, it must have been somebody that came into the house who killed her. John didn’t drown her, and Malachi and I were together all afternoon and evening, and neither of us had a hand in it, that I do know. My boy is innocent. She was a bad girl, I am sure, and I guess she had bad friends. She was from London, and had been in some trouble there. She left a lady at Bognor through being too busy about other people’s affairs. It’s like enough she met this man somewhere or other, and that he murdered her for some reason we shall never know.”
Mrs Bradley began to see daylight. She had thought at the time that Helm had been preparing that rockery for herself, but it was equally likely that he had decided to make away with the girl at his bungalow, and had been foiled. In this case, the rockery would have been designed as a grave for the girl, and not for Mrs Bradley. It might well be true that the girl in the knitted suit and waterproof whom Mrs Bradley had seen leaving Helm’s bungalow, was the girl who had been murdered at the “Swinging Sign.” If she had had any proof whatever that Helm had intended to murder the girl that day when he was interrupted by herself and Noel Wells, she would have gone with her suspicions to the police. But it was Helm himself, apparently, who had been prepared to take a bath that day. The girl had been fully dressed.
She tracked bits of village gossip to their source and learned that John Spratt and Ham Roy had been rivals for Susie’s favour. In an interview with the Chief Constable, whom she knew fairly well, she stressed the lack of motive. It would have been more reasonable to apprehend Roy rather than Spratt, she suggested. Roy, however, was fairly well covered by the fact that he had twice covered the distance between Susie’s home and the Manor House in his employer’s car, and that, while he would have had time to get out of the car at the “Swinging Sign” and murder Susie, the household could scarcely fail to have heard a car draw up at the door; and this Dora, Malachi and John all denied having heard. No car, they were certain, had drawn up within twenty yards of the inn on the Sunday afternoon of the murder.
CHAPTER XIV
HERO
I
THE Reverend Noel Wells was accustomed to think of himself as, if not exactly a coward, at least lacking in that species of virility and insensitiveness which compels human beings to run foolish, unnecessary risks merely for the sake of fame or fortune. He was, however, the troubled possessor of an extremely delicate conscience which compelled him to feats of chivalry against his will and often against his better judgment. His conscience troubled him sorely over the question of Mrs. Bradley and the strange man, Helm.
The most curious thing about Helm was the fact that immediately people learned that he was in reality the renowned Cutler, acquitted of drowning his wife, one and all immediately and irrevocably decided that he was indeed a murderer, and that he had only escaped hanging by some subtle twist of the laws of evidence. Against every instinct for fair play and in direct contravention of everything he had practised for years with respect to refraining from kicking a man when he is down, Noel Wells was similarly affected by the fellow. He felt as certain that Cutler had murdered his wife for the sake of collecting the insurance money as though he had seen him in the act. The man’s behaviour with regard to Mrs. Bradley had done nothing to alter his opinion, and the young curate felt that his friend was running ridiculously heavy risks in visiting the man and in arousing his cupidity as she had done.
Wells realized that her reason for tempting Helm to make a murderous attack upon her was, in itself, sound enough. She had explained to the curate her difficulties with regard to the death of Calma Ferris, and he knew that she was determined to demonstrate to the Headmaster that nobody connected with the school had been responsible for the crime. Although she had not actually said so, Wells, who was not altogether the fool people sometimes took him for, knew well enough that she had guessed the identity of Calma Ferris’s assailant, that it was not Helm who was responsible for the murder, and that Mrs. Bradley was determined to keep secret the name of the guilty person.
Noel Wells’s obstinate, masculine mind refused to accept the reasonable suggestion that Mrs. Bradley was well able to take care of herself, and his sense of chivalry urged him to put himself in her place, provoke a murderous assault from Helm, send a full description of the attack—if he was in a condition to write it!—to Mrs. Bradley, and so prevent her from risking her own life. That he would be risking his own did, of course, occur to him, but he brushed the thought aside.
He went to the garage and took young Tom into his confidence. Young Tom told his father. His father told Police Constable Alfred Reardon, who was engaged to young Tom’s sister, and the plot was laid.
One grey but rainless afternoon, about ten days after Christmas, when Mrs. Bradley, comfortably at home in the Stone House, Wandles Parva, was reading an exceedingly affectionate letter from Helm—the third that had been sent on to her from Miss Lincallow’s boarding-house to the school, and from the school to her home—three young men set out from Bognor Regis to walk the three miles out to Helm’s railway-carriage bungalow. The grey waves, sullen after a gale which had raged for two days and a night, thundered heavily on the grey sand and seethed on to the grey pebbles. The low sky was grey. The road was deserted.
About half a mile from the bungalow the curate, his neat clerical dress exchanged (as usual on his visits to Helm in the character of Mrs. Bradley’s epileptic son) for grey flannel trousers, a dark crimson pullover, a tweed jacket and a dark grey overcoat, walked on the damp sand at the margin of the water, climbing the breakwaters as he came to them and occasionally stopping to skim stones on the waves. The young policeman, off duty, walked, with the decided footsteps of the Force, along the pavement which bordered the sea-road, and young Tom, who had brought an ancient motor-cycle with him, bestrode it and rode solemnly and noisily up and down the road until his engine stopped, just about fifty yards from Helm’s bungalow, and the motor-cyclist, seating himself on his own trench coat on the pavement, began to take off pieces of the antediluvian contraption and strew them about the gutter.
The curate gained the bungalow and knocked at the door. For a moment he fancied that nobody was at home, but slippered feet padded to the door and opened it. Wells experienced an uncomfortable qualm. He was certain in his own mind that this smiling, florid man had committed murder for the basest of all possible motives, that of pecuniary gain, and here was he himself, a man recently married, happy, content, secure in every worldly sense, putting his head into the jaws of death for the chivalrous but idiotic reason that, if he did not risk his life, an old woman with the outward appearance of a macaw, the mind of a psycho-analyst and the morals, so far as he knew, of a tiger-shark, would risk hers.
“Ah, it’s you,” said Mr. Helm. “Come in, my dear boy. Come in. And how is She?”
The little narrow place was very dark inside. All the blinds were drawn. Wells’s nebulous fears for his own bodily safety changed, for an instant, to panic terror. Every instinct shrieked to him to fly. Twenty years of subduing instinct to reason stood him in good stead, however, and, with a gulp which was histrionically inspired, he said in a quavering voice:
“Well, of course, you know, that’s what I’ve come to talk about.”
II
The first morning of the Easter Term was not the best time to choose for a visit to the Headmaster, as Mrs. Bradley fully realized, but on the previous evening she had received so extraordinary a letter from Noel Wells that no time, she felt, must be lost in relieving Mr. Cliffordson’s mind on the subject of Miss Ferris’s murder.
“DEAR MRS. BRADLEY,” the letter began—she re-read it in the train—”by the time you get this I trust I shall be with Daphne again. I beg your forgiveness, of course, if I have overstepped the mark, but you knew, I think, how alarmed I have been over your visits to that murderous devil in the railway-carriage hut, so I thought I would take the bull by the horns, and provoke him to make an assault on me.
“To this end I visited him, and, in the course of conversation, I allowed him to infer that the interest in the ten thousand pounds’ life insurance you told him of would come to him if anything happened to me after your death. He must be a fool, because he bit it, and, when I was certain he’d taken the bait, I commented on the benefits derived from bathing in sea-water, and left him. I behaved throughout the interview as much like a mentally-defective person as possible—not a very difficult task, according to my wife, of course!—and then I left him severely alone until I received a letter from him asking after you. I wrote
that you had met with an accident and were not expected to live. Later in the day I went to see him, and informed him that you had not the slightest chance of recovery. He managed to lead the conversation on to the subject of the insurance money, and I reassured him as to the clause in your ‘will’. The next time I saw him I affected grief and told him that you were dead.
“In next to no time I was being invited to indulge in the luxury of a sea-water bath. You can imagine with what pleasure I watched the evil fellow carrying about a hundred pailfuls of water up to the house. It was a bitterly cold, dark evening. In between his journeys I conversed with him about you and your virtues, and while he was on the job of carrying the water, I conversed with young Tom from the garage, and the policeman who is going to marry Tom’s sister.
“It all worked out very nicely. I had the bath, and Helm had got a very pretty and scientific grip on my feet, and my head was right under, when the other two, I suppose, burst in on us. I may say that on my previous visits I had been similarly escorted, so, you see, I took no risks worth mentioning. All the same, when they had overpowered him, I had to be spread out on the floor and artificially respirated; but it was not long before I felt, if not quite myself, near enough so to be glad that the whole thing had gone off so satisfactorily. Incidentally, I have received inside information that the police now have little doubt that in some way Cutler is responsible for the death of that poor girl in Lamkin, the village not far from here, but, unfortunately, nothing can be proved. They won’t charge Cutler with the crime because there is no evidence at present that he did murder the unfortunate girl Susie Cozens, but he will be charged with attempting to finish off.
“Your affectionate friend,
“NOEL WELLS.”
“P.S.—They are still at work on the Lamkin case, of course. The difficulty seems to be that they cannot trace any connection between Cutler and the girl. However, young Tom’s future brother-in-law informs me that no pains are to be spared, even if Scotland Yard has to be called in, so I shall watch my morning newspaper for developments.”
Death at the Opera Page 20
