Crossword Mystery (12 page)

Bobby applied himself with thoughtful diligence to his new helping of ham and eggs. Was it only a coincidence, he wondered, that the dog, with its reputation for announcing so loudly the presence of any stranger, had vanished just before that interview on the lawn of which he had been a witness – and not a solitary witness, either, to judge from that closing front door he had caught a glimpse of? But, then, that would go to suggest he was wrong in identifying the second participant in it with Miss Raby, since apparently the dog never barked at anyone it knew, only at strangers. A little dispiritedly Bobby told himself the thing was getting too complicated for a comparative novice like himself. He wished Mitchell were at hand, so that he might consult him. The Superintendent, with his greater experience, might be able to detect some co-ordinating link of which up to the present Bobby could make out no faintest trace.

Colin, having finished his breakfast, got up with the remark that there were a lot of figures he wanted to go through that morning. A good racing man had to be a good mathematician, he announced, though ignorant that there he was establishing a connection between the good racing man and the latest fashionable conception of Divinity. As he was leaving the room he added over his shoulder:

“No chance of you changing your mind about buying Butter and Eggs I suppose, uncle?”

“No, not a scrap,” snapped Mr. Winterton, and Colin scowled and shrugged his shoulders and retired without another word.

Mr. Winterton, muttering something ill-temperedly to himself, followed, and Bobby, left alone with Miss Raby, said to her in a somewhat surprised tone:

“Butter and Eggs? I had no idea Mr. Winterton did business like that.”

Miss Raby laughed a little.

“Oh, that's only a racehorse Mr. Ross wants Mr. Winterton to go shares with him in buying,” she explained. “He's always wanting to buy racehorses, and Mr. Winterton never will.”

“I suppose he would like a stable of his own,” Bobby remarked. “Has he got any horses?”

“Just one or two,” Miss Raby answered; “at least, I think so. He was telling us the other day that if he had enough capital he would soon get together the best stable in the world. He knows an awful lot about racing and horses and things.”

Bobby asked one or two more questions, but Miss Raby, apparently afraid she was being guilty of gossiping about her employer's relatives, would say no more, discovering that it was time to begin work and that Mr. Winterton was probably now waiting for her, ready to dictate another chapter calling on mankind to cling to gold as the one sure rock and refuge in a tumultuous sea of varying exchanges.

So she vanished, and Bobby lit a cigarette and walked to the window. The rain had almost stopped now, and he decided to go out and make the inquiries for his wrist-watch he was anxious to begin in the village. He went into the hall, and saw coming down the stairs Mr. Winterton, who stopped to tell him he must amuse himself as best he could.

“Come into the study,” he said, “and I'll give you a guide-book that'll tell you about one or two interesting places near here. There's a good map, too, if you're fond of walking, and of course you can get a boat in the village if you like. Are you fond of fishing?”

Bobby said there was nothing he liked better, though he did not know much about the deep-sea variety. Once he had spent three gorgeous days upon a salmon river and had caught two big fish, as well as a superb cold and a ducking when he went head first into a deep pool he only knew was there when he found himself five feet under water. Mr. Winterton chuckled at this reminiscence, capped it with another, and then led the way into the study, where they found Miss Raby sitting at her typewriter, and looking severe because the chapter she had been expecting to type was not ready.

“The fact is,” confessed Mr. Winterton, “I spent all the time you were up in London busy working at that crossword puzzle I was trying to make up. The wretched thing won't come right.”

“Perhaps I could help,” Miss Raby suggested. “I got an order for twelve more last night from the
Daily Announcer
,” she added with a touch of pride.

“I've never tried to make one up,” Bobby observed. “I suppose it's jolly difficult?”

“I expect it's more practise than anything else,” Miss Raby answered.

Mr. Winterton was taking some half-sheets of paper covered with words and letters in squared spaces from a drawer he had unlocked. He hesitated for a moment and looked at Bobby, as if debating what to do, and then handed him what seemed a nearly completed crossword.

“Take any interest in crosswords?” he asked. “Have a look at that one.”

Bobby took the paper with a show of interest he did not altogether feel. He noticed that there were a great many blank spaces, that the blanks did not seem to be arranged in any pattern, that the words were apparently all very short. He looked idly down the list of clues and read a few of them. Some of them seemed more than obvious, he thought; almost childish, indeed. He noticed that several were marked with an asterisk, and that the asterisk apparently referred to a note to the effect that clues marked with it required revision and attention.

“Looks jolly interesting,” he said, with all the enthusiasm he could muster for something that in reality did not interest him in the least.

“Perhaps you'll find it so some day,” Mr. Winterton said enigmatically.

He took the paper back from Bobby and put it away carefully with the other papers he had taken from the drawer, in a pocket-book he placed with equal care in the breast pocket of the coat he was wearing. Miss Raby, watching him, repeated her offer of help, with some remark to the effect that often just changing a letter or two made all the difference, but he shook his head.

“No, no, I'll work it out myself,” he said with emphasis.

“Is it a new kind of crossword, sir?” Bobby asked. “I noticed it was headed: ‘Key word, Gold.' Crosswords haven't a key word generally, have they?”

This one has,” Mr. Winterton answered. “I suppose in a way it is a new kind. The clues I've marked are what need attention though. If ever you try to work it out, don't forget that – and don't give up too soon.”

“No, sir,” promised Bobby, though a little bewildered by the earnestness with which had been delivered what seemed a very trivial injunction.

He lingered a little in the room, hoping something more would be said. But Winterton and his secretary plunged into a discussion of a recent pamphlet on the importation of gold, part of the argument of which was to be criticised in a new chapter of “Justification of the Gold Standard,” and presently Bobby took his guidebook and departed for the village – if that is indeed not too big a name for the tiny collection of houses clustered about the mouth of the creek where it emptied itself into Suffby Cove.

Most of the men were away at their various occupations, fishing or working on neighbouring farms, but a few were busy with their boats or nets, or with nothing at all, on the beach. Bobby soon got talking to them, and told his tale of his lost wrist-watch for whose recovery he promised a couple of pounds reward. Nor was it without a pang of conscience that he observed a steady trickle of youngsters – and some oldsters, too – drifting off along the shore in obvious search for that watch Bobby had every reason to believe was all the time safe in the possession of – of whom?

Dawdling about the beach, chatting first to one and then to another, dropping judicious hints here and there about future boating and fishing excursions, gravely discussing the prospects of the inevitable three-thirty at to-morrow's meeting, distributing many cigarettes and a consolatory penny to a babe that had tumbled down and damaged its nose, Bobby soon found himself on friendly gossiping terms with half the inhabitants of the little village and the possessor of a large and varied fund of information of less and greater interest. His inquiries seemed particularly addressed towards assuring himself that the bathing was safe. He was informed emphatically that it couldn't be safer if only you were careful not to swim too far out beyond the Cove at the turn of the tide, as apparently poor Mr. Archibald had done and paid the penalty for his rashness. But that was the only accident that had ever happened to a bather in living memory, and it could only have happened through over-confidence. Fortunately no one else, either at Fairview or in the village, was a strong enough swimmer to be likely to suffer from that failing. Mr. George Winterton never entered the water. Mr. Miles was a good swimmer, certainly, but he was careful, and Mr. Colin, though fond of the sport, had never been known to venture outside the Cove. Miss Raby was an enthusiastic but indifferent performer, and had nearly drowned Mrs. Cooper – or been drowned by her; no one seemed quite clear which – in an effort, never since repeated, to teach her swimming. Mrs. Cooper, it seemed clear from the story told by one or two of the villagers with a good deal of amusement, did not display in the water that calmness, poise, and authority which she seemed to exercise by right on land.

All the same, Bobby could not help being struck forcibly, and even with a certain amount of amusement, by the extraordinary way in which Mrs. Cooper had managed to impress herself upon the community. It was as if her austere and dignified presence assisted at every enterprise, directed every activity. A chat about the best bait for conger eels developed into a burst of gratitude to Mrs. Cooper for having succeeded in securing a scholarship for the speaker's boy at a neighbouring school. A remark on the sandbank that made the navigation of the Cove a little difficult, and even threatened to silt it up altogether, turned into an angry protest at the way in which she had, apparently by sheer force of personality, settled some obscure quarrel about pigsties in back gardens. One man, inclined to be a rowdy nuisance to his neighbours, had been, it seemed just simply cleared out, obeying Mrs. Cooper's warning that, unless he went, worse things would befall him. On the whole, public opinion in the little community seemed in a state of balance, ready to crystallise into regarding her as an intolerable nuisance and busybody whose interference with everyone and everything must be put an end to, or, on the other hand, into accepting her as a kind of local dictator who could be trusted to bring about many benefits at the price of an implicit obedience. It was a revelation to Bobby of the way in which a personality, by sheer force of will and character, could impress itself upon others, for of course Mrs. Cooper had no advantages of money or social position to help her. One of those he talked to, an oldish man of evidently contemplative mind, remarked on this fact.

“Only the dear Lord knows where we would be,” he remarked, “if she were the real missus up there at the house; we wouldn't none of us dare wash our faces except the way she liked. Good thing for Mr. Winterton she's got a man already, else next thing that's what she would be – the missus. And the way it is, he's the master, but he has to do just what she tells him.”

However, it was information bearing more directly on the twin problems facing Bobby – whether Archibald's death had been a murder, whether the same fate threatened George – that the young detective was in search of. One thing he soon discovered was that George Winterton was, on the whole, respected but not much liked, while his dead brother, Archibald, had been very well liked but not greatly respected. George Winterton had acquired the reputation of being “mean,” the sin that among the commonalty of England is without forgiveness. He bargained about payments; if he tipped it was on a small scale, which is worse than no tip at all; he let it be seen that he considered sixpences and shillings as important; and it was, of course, firmly believed that he made a very good thing out of the electric light with which the village was now supplied – thanks to the initiative of Mrs. Cooper. As a matter of fact, there was extra expense, with little compensating gain, but the village wasn't going to believe that; not it. But, then, he never interfered, or worried anyone, gave himself no airs, and could be friendly and pleasant without being too familiar, and was known to be writing a book, a strange, rather awe-inspiring pursuit that no doubt accounted for little eccentricities he showed. One day, for instance, he had grown quite excited on hearing that an old woman in the village had dug up five golden sovereigns she had kept buried in her garden for years and had exchanged them, very satisfactorily, for pound notes.

He had actually gone to the trouble of hunting up the old lady in question – a Mrs. Shipman – to tell her she had been a fool to part with good solid gold for bits of paper, and to say that if anyone else in the village had any gold put away, they had better keep it against a day, surely not far distant, when gold would be seen to be just gold, and paper just paper. Only let them, he had said – and the advice had been fully in accord with their own way of thinking – let them keep it well hidden, or else they might find a Government official suddenly swooping down to confiscate it.

“He said as over in America,” observed the aged man who told Bobby all this, “they've started doing that already – making it against the law to keep your own gold your own self.” He added the profound and unanswerable reflection: “But what I says is, America ain't us and we ain't them.”

Towards the dead Archibald the general feeling seemed to have been the reverse; he had been well enough liked but not at all respected. He had been free with his money; free, too, with his talk; and a little too forgetful of the reserve and dignity villagers are generally inclined to consider should accompany any intercourse between themselves and their social superiors. For instance, he had not been above telling or listening to a bawdy story, and, though the story might be appreciated, and have no great harm in it for that matter, the thing was not approved in a gentleman of Mr. Archibald Winterton's wealth and standing. More serious was the fact that his friendly interest in his humble neighbours had been more specially marked when they happened to be of the sex once called the weaker, and were also young and pretty.