Saltmarsh Murders mb-4 Page 4

  It was just about then that I rolled up, of course. They admitted me.

  “What’s the trouble?” I said, gazing at Burt’s revolver.

  “Come and have a drink,” said Burt, “and I’ll tell you. All right, Cora, I’m not going outside the house.”

  I accepted a small whisky.

  “The trouble is that some unauthorised person climbed on my roof this evening and loosened a couple of tiles, damn him!” said Burt. “Incidentally, he scared my wife. She thought young Coutts ought not to walk home unaccompanied. I was out when the thing happened.”

  “Loosened a couple of tiles?” I said. “Are you sure? I mean, rather pointless.” Then I told them about the cat I thought I had heard on their roof as I approached the place.

  “Come and look for yourself, when you’ve finished your drink. Of course, I was only using my electric torch, but it’s very powerful,” said Burt, “and the roof of this bungalow is low. Nobody to be seen now, of course. Want to come and see the damage?”

  “Take your word for it,” I said, “especially as you promised you would not leave the house. Oh, by the way! It wasn’t young Taylor, I suppose?” I added. “Bad hat of the village just at the moment. I’ve had to relieve him of the job of helping us to manage the cocoanut shy at the fête on August Monday.”

  “I’ll take that on, then,” said Burt, impelled by the hypnotic pause which followed my last remark. I am rather an artist in hypnotic pauses. You have to be, in our job, of course.

  “Good man,” I said. “Report at nine-thirty on Saturday night at the Mornington Arms for details, will you? Sorry it’s a pub, but Lowry gets the cocoanuts cheap for us.”

  “Right you are,” said Burt. “I’ll come and give you a light as far as the gate.”

  “Don’t bother, thanks,” I said, for really the whole thing seemed rather hot air, of course! “Come on, Bill.”

  We made our adieux and had just come into the broad path of light which streamed from the study through the thin curtains out on to the gravel, when something whizzed past William’s head and crashed to pieces on the path. It was rather startling, and I was sufficiently taken off my guard to seize William’s arm and leap into the shadows, dragging the boy with me. At the same instant, the front door was flung open and a pistol cracked twice.

  “Missed him. He’s off,” said Burt’s cool voice. “Hurt, either of you?”

  “No,” I said. “Who’s the maniac, I wonder?”

  “Stay the night,” suggested Burt, not, of course, answering my question.

  “No. Lend me your torch,” I said. I was rattled. I admit it.

  “Take the gun,” said Burt, putting it into my hand. We were somehow, inside the Bungalow again, although, for the life of me, I can’t remember re-entering. That shows what your nerves do for you. I just simply cannot remember re-entering that bungalow. Queer!

  “No, thanks,” I said, deeming it inconsistent with my profession to carry fire-arms in time of peace. Besides, although the occurrences had startled me, I was still inclined to think that we were being terrorised by some of the young devils in the choir, who had had it in for me since I swiped three of them for scribbling vulgar phrases in the margins of the hymn books.

  We started out again, William filling in the blanks of the story as we went, and arrived at the vicarage without adventure. Mrs. Coutts received us in the dining-room, and demanded from William an explanation of his lateness. It was then about twelve o’clock. William, with an economy of the truth which I could not but admire, stated that Mr. Gatty had been found in the church crypt, and he told the story with such convincing detail that his aunt accepted without demur the implied assertion that the releasing of Mr. Gatty had been the last item on William’s programme for the day. William referred to it casually and modestly as his good deed for the day, too, and having received a piece of bread and butter and a mug of cocoa, he went to bed, virtue bally well triumphant.

  “Mr. Coutts out?” I said. “Still out, I mean?” Making conversation with the woman, of course. Couldn’t stick her at any price!

  “Mr. Coutts is still out,” replied Mrs. Coutts. She closed her thin lips so tightly that I realised she had no more information to give me. I learned later that the vicar was talking with the Lowrys about Meg Tosstick at the Mornington Arms. He was not allowed to see her. I remained up, chatting with Mrs. Coutts, until the vicar returned home, and then, perceiving that there was going to be a domestic typhoon on the subject of Meg Tosstick and her mysterious baby, neither of whom must be seen by any living soul, apparently, I retired to bed. For some time I chewed over the identity of the person or persons who had chucked tiles at us from Burt’s roof, and decided to thrash out the matter with the choirboys at the next choir practice. I am choir-master, as the organist is a free-thinker, and Mrs. Coutts doesn’t think the lads ought to come under his baleful influence. (She won’t have him play for the Women’s Meeting, either!) As the lads themselves couldn’t very well be more baleful than they are, the argument didn’t cut much ice with me. But I bore up, because Daphne used to attend all the choir practices and help with the treble parts, and we had to wait to see everybody off the premises, of course.

  Chapter III

  sir william’s large maggot and daphne’s small one

  « ^ »

  Margaret Kingston-Fox passed her father the cucumber sandwiches. We were at tea at the Manor House. The other guests were Bransome Burns, financier, and Mrs. Bradley.

  “And that’s your seventh, you pig,” Margaret said, as Sir William took a sandwich from the plate.

  “I’m superstitious about the perfect number,” Sir William answered. He lay back in a long armchair and popped the sandwich into his mouth.

  “Of course, if that’s the way you eat them!” his daughter continued. “Mrs. Bradley, do have another. Come along, Mr. Burns. Mr. Wells, you’re daydreaming!”

  “Bread and butter for me,” said the financier. Like most kings of commerce, he was a slave to his digestion. “Isn’t this the day your poacher comes out?” he continued, addressing his host.

  “No. Johnstone’s got another month. The silly fool bunged a brick at Heath, my head keeper, and laid him out. I hope he never does anything of the kind to me,” replied Sir William, selecting a piece of cake.

  “Unpleasant to stop a large stone,” agreed Burns. I thought of the tiles which had been thrown at William and me on the previous night, but said nothing.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Sir William.

  “Father can’t control his temper when people knock him about,” said Margaret. She laughed, but not happily, and was accompanied in her rather forced mirth by Mrs. Bradley’s eldritch screech of laughter. That woman is clever, I suppose, but one gets no repose in her company. I like old women to be soothing.

  “It really is no joke,” said Sir William, smiling. “One of these days I shall find myself in the dock! I know it.”

  He had a brown face, finely wrinkled about the corners of the grey eyes, dark-red close-cropped hair, and very red ears. His nose was short, well-shaped but pugnacious, and his full lips were pleasantly sensuous. His close-clipped dark-red moustache added to the pleasing masculinity of an open and attractive countenance, so to speak, and his teeth were strong and good. He was dressed in reddish-brown tweeds, and his fox-terrier, Jim, lay on the floor at his feet. In all, he was the novelists’ ideal of a country landowner, and was amusingly conscious of the fact.

  Tea was being taken in the drawing-room instead of on the terrace, for outside the long windows the rain tore down, and every tree in the park dripped heavily and continuously. An electric fire was alight in the drawing-room to combat the raw dampness of the August weather. It was a record-breaking August—the worst for one hundred years, according to the newspapers.

  “Well, well,” said Burns—I couldn’t stand the man, of course— after he had refused cake and a second cup of tea, “the poaching fellow—what’s-his-name?—will probably escape pn
eumonia by being in prison this weather.”

  “He won’t escape my shot-gun if I catch him on my land and assaulting my keepers,” said Sir William. He took a cake and bit into it so incautiously that a sinuous portion of cream from the interior of the innocent-looking pastry shot on to the leg of his trousers. Sir William gave a yelp of annoyance, and swore, and wiped the mess off his trousers. He lost his temper very easily, as his daughter had indicated to us. Irritating, of course, cream on the trousers.

  “Really, father,” said Margaret, grinning, “I do think it’s time you learned to manage your food better than that.”

  I noted that she looked less like Juno when she grinned. One can’t imagine Juno grinning. I don’t know why.

  Mrs. Bradley changed the subject. Resting her clawlike hands on the arms of her chair, she smiled by stretching her lips sideways until her yellow countenance resembled that of a chameleon, blinked her bright, beady, little black eyes several times in quick succession, and observed in the voice which always startled strangers by its richness and beauty—it startled me, of course, the first time I heard it:

  “What do you consider the most amazing sight on earth, Mr. Wells?”

  There was a silence, while she darted her quick glances from one to another and then back to me. I could feel myself sweating, and I began to realise what birds feel like when snakes watch them. There was something saurian about Mrs. Bradley—about her eyes, about her lips, about the brain behind those eyes and the tongue behind those lips. She passed the tip of a small red tongue over the lips and then pursed them into a little beak, and I remember being rather surprised to note that the tongue was not forked like a serpent’s tongue. “So this,” I thought to myself, “is a psycho-analyst.” Mrs. Bradley apparently read my thoughts.

  “Quite so, my dear,” she said. “And, moreover, one who is old-fashioned enough to consider Sigmund Freud the high priest of the mysteries of the sect. Kindly refrain from making the obvious and heartrending pun, for there should be no jesting upon sacred subjects except by Dean Inge.”

  She concluded the remark with a startling scream of mirth, and, to my acute embarrassment, she pinched my cheek playfully. Margaret laughed. Margaret had very fine brown hair with golden lights in it, was a good tennis player and a remarkably poor performer upon the ukulele. I speak of her as I found her, of course. Mr. Bransome Burns was a suitor for her hand. He was finding the going extremely sticky, and had twice skidded into the ditch; once when he lost every point after deuce in a game of tennis with Margaret as his partner and another time when he had struck the fox-terrier for leaping up at him. He was afraid of dogs, and, inevitably, I suppose, was violently disposed towards them. His digestion was poor, as I say. Margaret, who was young, did not realise the significance of this. Her father was in favour of the match, I believe, for Burns had money and was not particularly shady, as financiers go. He was not even reckless, and he played a good game of bridge, but not quite as good as Sir William’s. It was, of course, a good deal better than mine. Burns’ game, I mean. Mrs. Bradley, who had been a schoolfellow and close friend of Lady Kingston-Fox, informed me that she was watching the progress of the affair with mild interest, but was quite determined to prevent the match taking place. Her theory, startlingly borne out by personal observation, was that married happiness was extremely rare in any case, and was almost impossible of achievement when one of the protagonists was forty-seven and had a weak digestion, and the other was twenty and played the ukulele very indifferently. She liked Margaret and treasured Bransome Burns as the possessor of the most completely fossilised intelligence she had ever encountered.

  Burns, I believe, considered her a queer old party and wondered whether she would bite at an investment if it were put to her in sufficiently attractive terms. He could not believe that she had ever been married.

  “You don’t tell me any man not under the influence of dope ever married her, ”he said to me one day when I was there alone with him.

  I understood, I replied, that Mrs. Bradley had been married and widowed twice.

  “Gosh!” said Mr. Burns, impressed. “Got that amount of money has she?”

  It was a pity, perhaps, that I could not bring myself to repeat this observation to Mrs. Bradley, for I am convinced, from what I know of her, that she would have appreciated it to the full. I often caught the financier’s decidedly fish-like eye fixed ruminatingly upon her. He was trying, I fancy, to estimate exactly how much she was worth, and the problem was difficult. Her clothes, although odd, and, in some cases, positively hideous, were manifestly good. On the other hand, she had a gift for repartee and a fund of bonhomie which he could not associate with a woman who possessed a large fortune, unless, of course, as he said, she was a music hall star or a duchess who had floated the ancestral hall as a limited liability company. She was a far better bridge player than either Burns or Sir William, and was an adept at pool and snooker. She was also the most brilliant darts player and knife thrower that I have ever seen. She was also a dead shot with an airgun, and annoyed Burns considerably by winning five pounds from him one miserably wet afternoon by knocking the necks off ten empty wine bottles with ten successive shots. I know she did that, because I saw her do it.

  He could not place her. Neither could I… With all her extraordinary pot-house accomplishments, she had an old-fashioned precision of speech and an unfamiliarity with Americanisms or modern slang which puzzled both of us. She was obviously what we both understood by the term “a lady,” and yet, on her own showing, she knew the worst aspects of the worst cities in Europe and the United States, and was acquainted with every form of human degradation and vice. Nothing shocked her, but I’ve seen her make Burt’s hair stand on end. Her only light reading was modern poetry, and her limit of personal indulgence seemed to be one glass of sherry taken immediately before dinner. Altogether an extraordinary woman. But not a freak. No, I must dissociate myself from those who consider her a freak.

  “The most amazing sight on earth?” I said, screwing up my eyes as I considered her question. “Oh, I don’t know.” I laughed. “A bargain sale, I should think.”

  “I once saw two sharks fighting,” said Sir William, coming courteously to my rescue. The telling of the story restored his good-humour. Mrs. Bradley lay back in her chair and listened. Watching her, I was reminded of a deadly serpent basking in the sun or of an alligator smiling gently while birds removed animal irritants from its armoured frame. Margaret waited until her father had concluded his tale, and then she said.

  “Cochet playing tennis is the most wonderful sight on earth. I saw him at Wimbledon last year.”

  She sighed.

  “Last summer wasn’t brilliant, was it?” she said. She stood up and went over to the window. “But this year beats everything. Did you ever know such weather? It’s the sort of weather to make morbid people commit suicide. I’m glad I have a naturally optimistic temperament.”

  She turned round.

  “Ring the bell, please, Mr. Burns,” she said. Burns complied. Then, re-seating himself, he said:

  “The most wonderful sight on earth is a woman trying to extort money from her husband. She is capable of as many tricks and artifices as an ape, and as many changes of colour as a chameleon.”

  We all protested; Sir William violently, myself weakly, of course, Margaret indignantly and Mrs. Bradley humorously. Burns grinned his fat financier’s grin.

  “Well, be honest now,” he said. There was always, even in his most innocent remarks, an undercurrent of suggestion that his hearers were not honest which got my goat rather, “Have any of you ever heard a woman trying to get money out of her husband? Straight, now!”

  Margaret, whose good-humour, like that of most young women of her age, was as quickly restored as it had been disturbed, laughed, and said:

  “By accident, yes.”

  “Oh?” said her father, his eyes twinkling.

  “Yes, the Burts,” replied Margaret. “I was not meant to overhear
, of course, but Mr. Burt has a voice like a megaphone and Mrs. Burt— Cora McCanley, you know—screeches like the low-class young woman she really is, especially when she gets angry. I had gone up to the Bungalow to collect Burt’s subscription for the village lending library—you remember we started it last winter, Mr. Wells?—and they were arguing, dreadfully loudly, about Burt’s meanness and Cora’s extravagance. She declared he never gave her any money beyond the bare housekeeping allowance, and he declared that she didn’t want fine clothes to wear in a place like Saltmarsh. It was horribly unpleasant. Oh, well, never mind them! Let’s get the tea cleared away, and then, Mr. Burns, you are to find some way of amusing us until it is time to dress for dinner.”

  Burns smiled, and racked his brains in a truly gallant attempt to think of some form of entertainment. By the time the tea-things had disappeared he was ready.

  “You stand over here,” he began, and trod heavily upon the dog. The dog sprang up with an anguished yelp. Burns shouted to Margaret:

  “Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that. I was just going to say—” The dog began barking and Margaret stooped to caress and soothe him. The dog, a well-behaved, good-tempered chap, strove to show that there was no ill-feeling by leaping up, first at Margaret, and then, very suddenly, at Burns. Burns, obsessed, as I say, by a nervous dread of dogs which he had contracted, I suppose, as a very small child and had never been able to conquer nor even thoroughly control, shouted and struck at the excited animal.

  “Down, boy, down!” said Margaret, laughing. I made an ineffectual grab at the dog’s collar and tripped and fell flat, thus adding to the confusion.

  “Down, sir!” said Sir William, rising to control the dog. “Hurt yourself, Wells?”

  I shook my head and apologised for being clumsy. I had to shout, for the noise was indescribable.

  “Quiet! Quiet!” bellowed Burns, dashing his hand wildly down at the animal’s eyes, and kicking him with a heavily-shod foot. The dog gave way with a yelp, and then flew at the foot, fastened his teeth in Burn’s sock and began to worry his prey frenziedly. Burns also was frenzied and tried to beat off the dog. Nearly mad with terror, he seized a cut glass vase from the mantelpiece and smashed at the dog’s head with it. Margaret cried out; her father swore horribly; I believe I yelled, too. The dog, sensible of anger, let go and leapt out of harm’s way, and the glass vase crashed to the ground. Before anyone could prevent him, Sir William had gripped Burns by the neck and had begun very efficiently to throttle him to death. Burns’ eyes bulged. He gurgled. Margaret shouted. Mrs. Bradley leapt from her chair, and, with great presence of mind, seized a vase containing flowers and flung its contents, which, of course, included a fair amount of cold water, abruptly and forcibly into Sir William’s face. Sir William loosed his hold. Margaret, shaking at the knees, gripped the dog by the collar and put him outside the door. Mrs. Bradley sat down again and wiped her thin yellow fingers delicately upon a silk handkerchief. The two men glared at one another. Then Sir William, muttering, turned aside and began to wipe his hair, his face and his suit. Altogether it was an embarrassing occasion, and I was glad to take my leave. Margaret seemed anxious to have me stay for dinner, but I had several things to talk over with Daphne about the fête, and, besides, I was not particularly keen on remaining. Mrs. Bradley walked with me to the gate. Suddenly she said: