Crossword Mystery (26 page)

Mrs. Cooper smiled gently and tolerantly.

“Cooper says there's a big race-meeting to-day,” she observed dispassionately.

“He didn't say anything about it?” Bobby asked.

“Oh, no,” she answered, “nothing – he hasn't mentioned racing or horses or anything of the sort since that dreadful night. But things wear off, don't they ? Racing was the one thing Mr. Colin seemed to care about, and I thought perhaps it might have come over him again – in a sudden way, perhaps, all the stronger for its having been held back. I don't know, of course; it's only an idea. The young lady's nervous,” she added, looking at Mary Raby, still with her tolerant, half-amused smile, “but that's only because of what's happened before.

“It's all getting too much,” Miss Raby said, and turned abruptly and went back into the study, where she was supposed to be busy with the letters that were still arriving for Mr. Winterton and with clearing up work in connection with his projected book.

“I'll make her a good strong cup of tea,” Mrs. Cooper observed, “and take it her. She's eating hardly anything – nerves, it is, and you can't wonder, either.”

She disappeared towards the kitchen, and almost immediately Miss Raby came out of the study again. She seemed calmer now, as if the momentary withdrawal in the quiet of the study had restored her composure. She said:

“Oh, you remember that crossword puzzle Mr. Winterton was trying to compose and you said you wanted to look at.”

“Have you found it?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, not found it exactly,” she answered. “I knew I hadn't got it myself because I looked everywhere, just as I knew there wouldn't be a copy here, because Mr. Winterton was always so careful to tear up all the attempts he made. I thought then it was because he was afraid of being laughed at. But what's happened is that I must have got the copy I made mixed up with those I did for the
Announcer
, because they've sent back some they don't want and that's with them. The
Announcer
man is quite cross about it, and says he doesn't know why I wanted to send them such a feeble effort. He says one or two of the others aren't bad, but that particular one is like a child's work. I suppose I had better write and tell him it was included by mistake.”

“I don't quite understand,” Bobby said though with some excitement, for it was still in his mind that in some way he had not very clearly defined to himself this crossword puzzle Mr. Winterton had spent the last days of his life in working at might hold the solution of all these happenings and tragic mysteries. “You mean the copy you made of Winterton's crossword, and thought you must have destroyed, you had really sent to the
Announcer
, and now it has come back from them?”

“Yes,” she said, and went back into the study, returning in a few moments with a large sheet of paper ruled in squares, some of them blacked out in the ordinary orthodox crossword-puzzle fashion. “It's all there,” she said, “clues and all, but it doesn't seem quite finished.”

“Have you worked it out?” he asked.

“No, I haven't tried,” she answered. “It doesn't look very difficult though.” She indicated a pencilled note scribbled across one corner, and signed with some indecipherable initials. The note ran: “Very poor, childish, much below standard.” She said: “That's what the
Announcer
man thought of it. I must tell them it was sent in by mistake. I must have picked it up with the others.”

“Some of the clues seem rather far-fetched,” Bobby remarked.

“Oh, they are,” she agreed.

“Have you told anyone anything about it?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head.

“Then please don't,” he said, putting the paper carefully away as he spoke. “I ask that for your own sake first, perhaps even for your own safety. And, if I did belong to the police, I should ask it with all the authority the police possess – whatever that may be.”

“Very well,” she said soberly.

“I know I can trust you,” he said, and had no time for more as once more Mrs. Cooper came back into the hall. To her he said: “Miss Raby is really anxious about Mr. Ross. I don't suppose there's any need. Where is Mr. Miles Winterton?”

“He said he was going down to the village to ask if they knew anything of Mr. Ross there,” Mrs. Cooper answered. “He ought to be back by now.”

“Oh, nothing can have happened to him,” Miss Raby exclaimed.

“Of course not,” Bobby told her sharply. “You must pull yourself together. Giving way to ideas won't do any good.”

“It's all been a big strain,” Mrs. Cooper interposed mildly. “You can't wonder; I feel it myself.”

Indeed, for a moment the mask of her composure seemed to drop, and for that instant, just that one passing instant, both the others seemed to have one glimpse of a soul tormented, driven indeed by terrors that were only held in control by the utmost effort of the will. Then, in another instant, she was her usual calm, strong self again, and, as if to excuse herself, she repeated:

“It's all been a big strain. No one knows who hasn't been through it. And Miss Raby's young. I'm older – and then I've Cooper, too. I'm not alone. You mustn't wonder, sir, if Miss Raby shows she feels it.”

She moved away then towards her own part of the house, as if she felt she had said too much. The other two looked after her, and Miss Raby said gratefully:

“She's been rather nice – since it happened, I mean. But I thought she didn't feel it much: she never showed she did, not till now.”

“It's hard to tell what other people are feeling – or thinking,” Bobby remarked. “Remember, please, not to say a word to anyone about that crossword having turned up.”

He was going to say more when once again Mrs. Cooper returned, this time with a cup of tea she had said before she was going to make.

“You drink this, miss,” she said; “it'll do you all the good in the world; you'll feel all the better for it.”

“Well, I'll be off now,” Bobby said to her. “And don't worry about me if I'm a bit late. There's someone I want to see, but I shall be back to-night, so, if anyone asks, you can tell them I'm not running away.”

“I don't suppose any of us are thinking of running away,” Mrs. Cooper answered with her slow smile. “I'm sure Mr. Ross isn't! It's only he couldn't keep away from the racing any longer. And Mr. Miles won't be long now, and as for me and Cooper, if a letter we had to-night means anything, we may be staying on here permanently.”

“Oh, how's that?” Bobby asked.

“Well, sir,” Mrs. Cooper explained, “it seems there's some idea of turning this place into a kind of country seaside club, as I understand it. There was talk of that before, and the letter is from a lawyer gentleman in London, a Mr. Dreg, asking if we would like to stay on in charge, and, if so, to send him our references, and wages required. Cooper thinks it might suit us very well, and so do I, and it would be a relief not to have to look for a new place that might turn out very different from what you thought. Sometimes ladies are very different when they're engaging you from what they are when you are working for them.”

“I can quite believe it,” agreed Bobby. “Oh, by the way, I've borrowed a copy of Shakespeare from the bookcase in the study near the door. If anyone notices it's missing, you might say I've got it. I suppose that'll be all right, won't it?”

“I suppose so, sir,” Mrs. Cooper answered. “Anyhow, I don't know who there is to object, the way things are. Has your tooth been troubling you again?”

“Since you gave me that stuff of yours,” Bobby declared enthusiastically, “I've forgotten I had a tooth in my head except at meal times. And,” he added, forestalling the question he saw was coming, “I'm not going to the dentist now, not unless it starts again, and I don't believe it will, either.” He had the copy of Shakespeare he had spoken of in his hands, and as he spoke he turned over the pages idly. “I remember,” he observed thoughtfully, “a year or two ago something I was mixed up in made me awfully interested in one of Shakespeare's plays –
Hamlet
, it was. Now there's another I'm working up an interest in.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Cooper placidly. “What is that, sir?”

But Bobby did not answer. Instead, looking at his watch, he exclaimed at the hour, protested he would be late for his appointment, and hurried off. With rather a puzzled air, Mrs. Cooper watched him go, and then turned back into the study, where Miss Raby was busy once more with her typewriter.

“I don't wonder at you being nervy like, miss,” she remarked. “I am, too, though I try not to show it, and, if you ask me, so is Cooper, though he would sooner die than admit it. A man won't if he can help.”

“I thought he was looking awfully ill and white,” the girl remarked.

“He doesn't seem as if he can digest his food,” Mrs. Cooper said. “It's his nerves, though he won't admit it. I tell him we want something to take it off our minds.” She was running her finger along a line of books on a shelf near. “Something quiet, not too exciting, rather dull and slow,” she explained. Her searching finger paused. “Shakespeare,” she said, “that ought to be just it, and I expect that's why Mr. Owen's taken the other copy.”

When, however, Bobby reached, a little late, the county police headquarters, it was to be told that Major Markham had been called away on an urgent summons, and might not be back for some time. So Bobby, after visiting the canteen to get something to eat, found a corner to wait in, and there busied himself with the crossword puzzle returned to Miss Raby from the
Announcer
office.

It was headed, as Bobby remembered it had been, when he had seen what was probably the earlier version Mr. Winterton had shown him: “A Crossword Mystery: by George Winterton. Key word: ‘Gold' and Bobby noticed, too, that a number of the clues still had a small cross placed against them, with the reference underneath: “Clues marked with a cross require further consideration, as being either too obvious or not obvious enough”; and Bobby made the same reflection that he remembered had entered his mind before, that the happy medium was probably as difficult to construct in crossword clues as in everything else.

Then he set to work on the puzzle. He did not find it very difficult, and was not much surprised that the
Announcer
crossword editor had dismissed it in so summary a manner. One or two of the clues bothered him; several seemed rather far-fetched; occasionally, one or another made him smile. But, in proportion as he got nearer and nearer to finishing the thing, so he grew more and more disappointed. What he had expected from it he hardly knew, but certainly, in a vague kind of way, he had expected that it would throw light upon recent happenings.

That however, so far as he could see at present, it did not seem to do, and he was still working at it, still trying to hit on the meaning of some of the clues, still hoping against hope to find in it somewhere some hidden significance, still racking his brain in especial over an effort to attach any sense to one clue that ran: “Mr. J. Ball wanted very much to know who was the gentleman when Adam did this: use present tense and modern form,” when one of the local men, a sergeant, strolled up, and asked what was making him look so pale and worried.

“It's this crossword puzzle. I can't make head or tail of one of the clues,” Bobby answered, showing it.

The sergeant read it over slowly and thoughtfully. As it happened – and that, indeed, was the reason why he had spoken to Bobby when he saw what was occupying him – the sergeant made crossword puzzles something of a hobby, and, indeed, prided himself not a little on his ability to solve them. Not only had he once won a prize offered by a London paper for the first correct solution received of a somewhat complicated example, but on the analogy of the legend of the Hindu student who, when applying for employment, recommended himself as “Failed B.A.,” he was even entitled to write, “Failed, Torquemada,” after his name, for, indeed, it is not everyone who dare essay that dreadful maze. So now it was with the air of an expert that he turned his attention to puzzle and clue.

“Who is Mr. J. Ball?” he demanded.

Bobby hadn't the least idea.

“Most likely someone in Dickens,” the sergeant opined. “They generally are.”

Bobby thought it very likely, but could not see where the connection with Adam could come in.

“There's a book called
Adam Bede
, isn't there?” asked the sergeant, “only, not Dickens.”

Bobby agreed that there was such a book, and further agreed that it was not by Dickens.

“Three letters,” mused the sergeant. “It's generally either ‘emu' or ‘ape,' when it's three letters, but they don't seem, either of them, to fit in here.”

“No they don't, do they?” observed Bobby.

Then they were interrupted by a message to the effect that though Major Markham had not yet returned, and might be some time yet, as what he was engaged on seemed likely to turn out of great importance, he had rung up to give some instructions, and had also directed that Bobby was to hand in his report to Inspector Wake, the senior officer present.

So Bobby gave a full report to the officer in question, who proved an elderly man, on the verge of retirement, but still very keen, and very interested both in the report itself and in the answers Bobby gave to the questions put to him on it.

“I've been a bit out of this affair,” he confided to Bobby. “Not so young as I was, and I had to put in for sick leave – only reported back yesterday. But I've put in a lot of time reading up the reports and statements taken – Lord knows, there's enough of 'em; there's been some work put in on this case.”