Crossword Mystery (27 page)

“I'm sure there has,” Bobby agreed.

“If you ask me,” the inspector continued, “it's that telegram put us off – seemed like the key to the whole affair, and then a complete wash-out when we proved it couldn't possibly refer to anyone recently released from gaol here. Just a code message, if you ask me, meaning something quite different. Very likely came from your man himself; Shorton, I mean, and, if you ask me, Shorton is our man. I thought so from the first, and now, if you ask me, your report makes it certain.”

“That would mean,” observed Bobby meditatively, “that it is Shorton himself who drew up the scheme Dreg received, and that it was he himself, again, who instructed Dreg to submit it to himself.”

“Exactly. Covering his traces very cleverly, if you ask me,” answered the inspector. “Who else is there? Who else knows enough about it, or has studied the idea enough to draw up an elaborate scheme like that? It's a sound rule, isn't it? If there's no one else – why, then it must be the man you've got in mind. Another sound rule is to notice who gets the benefit. Look at the facts. Just at the bare facts – undisputed facts – I mean. Shorton has a big business deal on – real big business – with a pile of money at stake. Archibald Winterton holds the whole thing up; perhaps for private reasons, perhaps because he wants a bigger finger in the pie. Anyhow, he holds it up. Next thing is, he dies – mysteriously drowned. All we can say for certain is that, if it was murder, the murderer must have been an expert swimmer too, and that he must have been a friend. Only his being a friend could account for the silence of the dog. Archibald quietened it when he saw it was a friend coming. If you ask me, what happened was that the friend said he had come along special for a big business talk, but how about a dip first? That suited Archibald all right, and in they went; and, when they were a good way out, the friend catches Archibald a whack on the head, stuns him, sees him drown, and the current taking the body out to sea, so that he knows it's a sure thing, before the body's recovered, there'll be nothing left to show of the blow on the head. The friend himself swims quietly back to shore. The dog recognises him again, and takes no notice. The friend dresses and gets away without anyone seeing him, and there you are.”

“It certainly seems it might have happened like that,” Bobby agreed.

“And then,” continued the inspector, “he finds he has his work to do all over again when George Winterton turns awkward just the way his brother did. But, when you've gone as far as what Shorton had, you don't want to turn back without getting what you've risked your neck for, and it's a fact, isn't it, you yourself heard Shorton using threats to George Winterton.”

“Yes, that's true enough,” Bobby agreed again.

“Well, then,” Wake continued, “the next thing is to get rid of George, or else what was done to Archibald would all be wasted. Only there's the dog in the way; so its head is smashed in, and the body dropped in the sea. Next thing is to get Mr. Winterton alone somewhere; and, if you ask me, I shouldn't wonder if that wasn't what the telegram was for – a code message, meaning; ‘Meet me outside your house late to-night.' ”

“Funny sort of code,” Bobby objected. “Funny appointment to make, too. Why should Mr. Winterton keep it?”

“Promised big things; curiosity excited,” the inspector answered promptly. “As for it's being a funny sort of code, all codes are funny till you know what they mean, and a code that seems to have a plain meaning on the face of it, but really means something quite different, is always the safest sort. Well, he keeps the appointment, and he's done in. Shorton gets away again without being seen, and there you are; and, if you ask me, that's why there seems to be a sort of anxiety to keep the Coopers here. Perhaps they know nothing, and most likely they don't, or suspect anything either, but, anyhow, what they do know is they've got a chance of a good job if they go on not knowing or suspecting anything. It's only a straw, of course, but, when you find a straw being blown along the road you're following, it's often a sign it's the right road you're on. And don't forget another straw is that Shorton happens to be a first-class swimmer.”

“It's a possible theory, of course,” Bobby said slowly. “But isn't there rather a lot left out? There's all that business with the motor-launch the whole thing began with, and there's the interview with the Shipman girl, and other things – the summer-house floor, for instance, someone swilled, and that, now, someone has been digging up.”

“Most likely the motor-launch has nothing to do with the case. Why should it? That was quite a time before Archibald's death. As for the Shipman young woman, well, she's a good-looking baggage, and most likely there had been some sort of flirtation going on. And the thing's complicated enough without our worrying about the gardener at Fairview trying to clean up a summerhouse – which I expect is what happened – or doing a bit of repairs inside.”

“Mr. Winterton sent money to Jennings, which looks as if he were interested,” Bobby pointed out. “And digging up a floor is hardly doing a bit of repairing, is it?”

“There's no proof the notes came from Mr. Winterton at all,” Wake pointed out, in his turn. “We know they were issued to him, but they may have passed from him to someone else, who sent them to Jennings. As for the summer-house floor, what can that have to do with Mr. Winterton's murder, when it happened days after it? You don't suppose his body's been dug up on the quiet, and buried there again, do you?”

“No. But I would like to know what's been happening there,” Bobby persisted doggedly. “Then there's this crossword I've got here, that Mr. Winterton was working at, and that Colin Ross seemed so interested in.”

“What on earth,” demanded the inspector, looking quite bewildered, “can that have to do with the case? Holy Moses, half the people you meet have got a craze for the things – why, at home, they're always fiddling about with them, and expecting thousand-pound prizes that never come!”

Bobby had to admit that undoubtedly crosswords were a passion with many people, and then another inspector came in, and Wake, pleased with his statement of his theory of the guilt of Mr. Shorton, and confident no flaw could be found in it, repeated it all over again in even greater detail.

But the newcomer seemed quite unconvinced.

“They don't murder you in the City,” he said with decision. “Only skin you alive, and when they've got all you have, why should they murder you as well? What they do is turn you loose to grow some more wool for them to clip. Most City men ought to be murdered themselves, if there were any real justice in the world, but they don't commit murders. No need. You can take it from me, Miles Winterton is the man we want. It's a good sound old rule: look out for who benefits. Pick up the motive, and there's the murderer as well. Look at the facts. I mean the real facts there's no getting away from. This Miles young man is known to have had a row with his uncle – got caught flirting with the pretty secretary, and was kicked out. They want to marry but can't; the young man being out of a job, and uncle having turned nasty. But, once uncle's out of the way, there's no one to object to their marrying, and even if they don't come in for a share of his money, as very likely they thought they would, Mrs. Archibald Winterton is on their side, and would be pretty sure to help them. You can take it from me, that's the way it was. The first thing was to get rid of the dog.

“Next, Miss Raby makes up some excuse for getting uncle out of the house late at night – very likely lets him suspect she and Miles are to meet and he'll catch them if he goes to look. Anyhow, they get him outside on some pretext like that, and finish him off. You can take it from me, it's good enough for an arrest, and I know the Guv'nor thinks so, too.”

The “Guv'nor” was Major Markham, but both Bobby and the other inspector looked doubtful, and Bobby said:

“If it was like that, what about Archibald's death?”

“Oh, that was just an accident – nothing in that,” retorted the other. “Take it from me, never look for murder till you're obliged.”

“What about – well, about all the other things that have happened,” Bobby still objected. “The Laura Shipman girl, for instance. Where does she come in?”

“She doesn't,” answered the other promptly. “Her story's true. The woman you saw talking to George Winterton that night wasn't her at all. Ten to one it was Miss Raby – you can take it from me, the whole thing you watched was just a dress-rehearsal of the murder, and Laura Shipman's tale is true. It was the Raby girl picked up your watch, and went off with it, but afterwards she got nervy, or smelt a rat, and got rid of it where Laura Shipman found it. A very smart idea of yours,” he added consolingly to Bobby, who was looking a trifle crestfallen at the thought that this idea, which had never occurred to him before but which seemed all the same possible enough, might be the truth of the matter, “and I don't say it wasn't; very smart indeed; but you can take it from me, the smarter an idea is, the less likely it is to be practical. A detective officer doesn't want to be too clever, it doesn't – do.”

“He's worried,” explained Wake, with a nod towards Bobby. “He wants to work everything into the case, including why there was fried potatoes for lunch yesterday and only boiled the day before. Now there's a crossword puzzle he's got on his mind.”

“Worrying things, crossword puzzles,” his colleague agreed; “but what have they got to do with the case?”

“Search me,” answered Wake, with classic simplicity.

“Shall I tell you what put me on to it?” the other asked Bobby. “I'll tell you. You young fellows don't always appreciate the importance of the merest trifles, and it was quite a trifle that lighted up this whole affair for me – and one I got from you yourself, though I don't think you saw anything in it. I was reading up the case, just to refresh my mind on some points, when I came on one of your reports that said the Raby girl let on she had come back from London one day by the evening train. But the station – master told you she had really arrived by the afternoon train. Now, you can take it from me, when you notice a discrepancy in the evidence, you want to go for it.”

“I think that, too,” agreed Bobby. “It's often important.”

The other looked severe. In his view, Bobby was there to receive instruction, not to express agreement.

“Lots of men don't know one when they see it,” he said, plainly implying that in his opinion Bobby was in that class. “But a discrepancy, if and when you see it, is always the starting-point you want. Now, there's proof Miles Winterton was in the neighbourhood and keeping quiet about it. Most likely they met that afternoon and laid their plans. In point of fact there's a bit of evidence two people answering their description were seen walking together by the cliff. And, on the night of the murder itself, we know – he admits it – that Miles slept in a car not so far away. He could easily have got to Suffby in it, left it at a little distance, proceeded on foot, most likely by a field-path you won't know about, that runs from the main road to the village, past the Fairview garden, without anyone seeing or hearing him. Equally easy to get back the same way.”

Another officer had come into the room, and had listened to all this with great attention.

“Wasn't there a third nephew?” he asked. “A James Matthews, or some name like that? No one ever seems to have thought of him.”

“He doesn't appear in the case at all,” Wake remarked.

“Just as well to make sure of that,” observed the new-comer. “The more you're in a thing like this, the more you would want to look as if you weren't. It seems he's a painter, and lives in Paris, and though, of course, that isn't anything against him, in my humble opinion, he ought to be looked up.”

“We don't know he was ever near the place,” Wake objected.

“Do we know he wasn't?” retorted the other. “In my humble opinion, it's the most unlikely person you want to think the most about. It's not a bad rule: look round, fix on the most unlikely, and make sure about him, one way or the other, first of all.” He added thoughtfully: “In my humble opinion, it was that telegram put the whole investigation wrong. Seemed like a snip, and turned into a wash-out instead.”

The others all evidently agreed with this observation, and, encouraged by the general approval, the speaker repeated:

“Pick on the most unlikely first, and then the next least likely, and work through 'em like that till there's only one left, and then you have your man. At least, that's my humble opinion.”

“If you ask me–” began Wake.

“You can take it from me–” began his second colleague; and just then the door opened, and there came in, breezily, Superintendent Andrews, Major Markham's principal lieutenant.

“Hello, boys,” he said cheerfully. “You can all look forward to a rest cure now. I'm telling you for sure – the Suffby Cove mystery's as good as cleared up, and now it's only a question of arresting the murderer as soon as we can lay hands on him.”

“Who is it? What's happened? Is it Colin Ross – Mr. Shorton – Miles Winterton – the third nephew, Matthews?” they all asked in chorus, and Andrews smiled on them genially:

“I'm telling you for sure,” he said again. “It's Colin Ross all right. The Laura Shipman girl's come through at last, and we're proceeding to arrest right away.”

It was an announcement that reduced instantly to silence the astonished exponents of the different theories that had just been advanced. Not that they were convinced, not that they believed or accepted for one moment this rival proposition, for no man worthy of the name, or unworthy of it either for that matter, ever gives up his own belief so easily as that. But it was a superintendent who spoke, and, therefore, they, as befitted men under discipline, remained silent, and kept to themselves all the overwhelming objections and difficulties that at once occurred to them.