Crossword Mystery (29 page)

When, on his return journey, Bobby drew near Suffby Cove, instead of going straight on through the village to Fairview, he waited by the roadside for the appearance of the police car the superintendent had promised should follow him. It would be better, he thought, to carry out the intended search as quietly as possible, and, when the car appeared, he proposed to its occupants, a sergeant and two constables, that they should avoid the excitement their passing through the village would probably cause by making a somewhat long detour that would bring them out on the main road again a little distance south of their objective.

This was agreed to, and at the point where the foot-path Bobby had used once before left the road, they parked their car and the motor-cycle in a convenient field and followed the path to the Fairview garden gate, through which they passed to reach the summer-house. The little building was well hidden from the house by surrounding trees and shrubs, and, indeed, was subject to observation only on one side, where a long vista opened on the distant sea. On that side they set up the protection of a tarpaulin sheet they had brought with them to act as a screen, and then, hoping they had secured themselves from interruption, they set to work.

That the stone flooring had recently been lifted and replaced, that the earth underneath had been disturbed to some depth, was sufficiently plain. But for what purpose did not appear, for though, taking it in turns – since only two men could work conveniently at a time in that limited space – they dug over every inch, going always deep enough to reach plainly untouched subsoil, they found nothing.

“Nothing here,” said the sergeant finally. “Except a mare's nest,” he added with a side-look at Bobby.

And Bobby had nothing to say, for it seemed clear that once more the investigation had come full stop against a blank wall.

One of the two constables was inclined to grumble at so much hard and useless work, but the other, an older man, said:

“Someone's been before us, that's what; someone's been first and got it, whatever it was. Got it and took it or moved it somewhere else.”

“Well, what was it, anyway?” retorted the other, without either expecting or receiving a reply.

Bobby remarked thoughtfully:

“I think it explains what had really happened when I thought the floor had been swilled down, and couldn't imagine why anyone should want to wash-out a tumble-down old place like this. Most likely the idea was to throw water down to see where it soaked in quickest, as a guide to where to begin digging. And that means two entirely different sets of people are concerned – those who hid in the first place, and those who came to seek later.”

“Yes, but what was it?” the sergeant repeated, though also without either expecting or receiving a reply.

They all grew busy again, replacing the earth they had dug up, putting back in position the stone flags of the flooring, removing as far as possible all traces of their night's work. Then they all went back to where they had left car and motor-cycle. The sergeant and his two men departed, and Bobby, disappointed and troubled, too disturbed in mind to think of bed or sleep, even though every muscle ached and his back gave him the impression of having cracked right across, took his motor-cycle and wheeled it back along the foot-path and then on to the extremity of West Point that formed on this southern side the other of the two projecting points guarding the entrance to the Cove.

There he sat down on a bank covered with short sweet-smelling grass. It was so late now that it had grown early again, and already the sky was light in the east with the glow of the coming dawn. Bobby had cigarettes with him, and as he smoked one after another, and watched the light of the new day spread over sea and land, he tried yet again to solve the problem this tangled case presented. But it seemed hopeless. He could not even keep his mind steady. Round and round his thoughts went, forming ever new patterns, but never one that seemed to correspond with that reality had woven.

There were all those theories he had listened to the previous evening, for instance. All of them seemed to have at first and in their own degree that whole and complete relation with the fact he sought for, and yet thereafter to vary from it entirely. It was like a crossword puzzle, of which you got one small corner right but all the rest baffled you entirely, most likely because one of the words you had got hold of and thought right was really completely wrong.

“Something was certainly hidden under the floor in the summer-house,” he told himself, “but who hid it? Who's got it? What was it?”

But, though he said this out loud, he, like the sergeant and the constable before him, neither expected nor received any answer.

His mind went back to the very beginning of it all – the mysterious launch that had appeared and vanished on the morning of the attack on Constable Jennings. Was what had been once hidden under the summer-house floor something landed from that launch? It seemed likely. But, then, that meant smuggling, and what smugglers leave their contraband goods so long hidden so near the place of landing? One does not smuggle goods simply to bury them and leave them. Besides, there was the difficulty of supposing that two well-off, retired business men would engage in large-scale smuggling operations, and the further difficulty of the complete lack of any evidence that any smuggling of any sort had been going on.

Smuggling, in the ordinary sense of the word, Bobby felt must be ruled out.

Could it be, he wondered, that someone landed from the launch had been suffering from some illness or injury, had died on reaching shore, and, to avoid publicity, the body had been buried in the summer-house and then removed elsewhere?

A fantastic, almost ridiculously improbable conjecture, Bobby decided, and yet, in his tired state, let his mind play with the notion. One difficulty seemed to be that apparently two sets of people were concerned – those who had hidden in the first place, those who had come later and sought and, one supposed, found as well.

His thoughts went back to the “released from prison” telegram, and dwelt upon it almost with pleasure, for at any rate it was a fact, a solid fact, in this shifting sea of chaos and conjecture. He thought it almost certain Mitchell would be following up the important clue stumbled upon in the register of the Brilliant Hotel when Bobby found that the name entered there was quite possibly “Muller.” Because, of course, a Muller, coming from Dover, suggested the Continent in parts whereof at present gaols seem somewhat unusually full. That Mitchell's mind and his own had been working on the same lines he was quite convinced, even though they had said so little to each other. But, then, that was almost always Mitchell's way; he liked to know which way your mind was working. If he thought in the right direction, he would give you encouragement; if he thought you were on the wrong track, he would point out the obstacles in your path and expect you to say how you intended to surmount them. But what he always wished for more than anything was the impact of a fresh mind upon facts considered entirely independently. For that reason he favoured but little the kind of general conferences most of his colleagues put so much trust in, for he said that several different minds, considering the same facts all together at the same time and place, were as likely to influence each other in the wrong direction as in the right – especially when half those present were subconsciously almost as keen on pleasing and flattering their seniors by supporting them as on putting forward fresh and independent points of view. Whereas, Mitchell held, if two people, working separately and independently on the same set of facts, saw them pointing in the same direction, it was very likely indeed that that direction was the right one.

Only the difficulty was always the old one. Intuitions and beliefs may be very convincing, but are no good at all to show a jury. Only solid evidence counts, and of that, in spite of the deep yet vague belief in Bobby's mind, he had almost none. Perhaps Mitchell, following the clue of the hotel register, might find some, but it was only a chance, and a poor one at that.

It was very quiet and peaceful there as the sun climbed ever higher in the sky and spread his light and warmth over the earth beneath. Against the glowing eastern sky the other headland across the opening to the Cove showed clearly, with every detail on it in sharp outline. Bobby could even distinguish the path leading down from the now deserted house Archibald Winterton had occupied to the beach beneath. He must have followed it when going for the swim from which he was fated not to return alive, and Bobby found himself wondering whether that mystery would ever be cleared up; whether, indeed, there was any mystery there at all.

In his rather depressed mood he was inclined to tell himself there was small chance of any really satisfactory answer being found to these questions.

A blank wall everywhere. That was what it seemed like. Even that crossword puzzle from which – he no longer knew why – he had been inclined to hope so much, appeared totally devoid of all interest. Certainly it contained some curious features, but none to which any real significance seemed to attach. While waiting at the county police headquarters he had nearly completed it, and now he took it out again to have another look at it. His eyes the heading to which before he had not paid much attention: “Key word: Gold.” So far as Bobby could see, there was no reference to gold, either in the words to be discovered, or in the rather far-fetched clues to them. Besides, crossword puzzles have no need for key words. It is ciphers key words belong to, not crossword puzzles; and this was no cipher, but only a beginner's first attempt at constructing a crossword puzzle – that, and nothing more.

Bobby was as nearly as possible throwing the thing away without bothering about it any more.

Only somehow that expression “Key word: Gold” stuck curiously in his mind, haunting it, so to say, with vague and shadowy suggestions. He found himself wondering whether that first idea of his had been correct, and whether this that looked like a crossword was in fact a cipher.

Only he could not for the life see how that could be, or how the word “gold” could be the key to it, when apparently neither that word itself nor the letters composing it had even the most remote connection with anything else in the puzzle?

Looking at it yet again, he noticed that the first word was “Dig.” That, Bobby reflected, was what they had spent a good share of the night in doing to no purpose, and if the crossword had no other meaning or message than that, it wasn't going to be very interesting. But still there did seem to be a vague connection there between the puzzle and actual fact.

But then again there was nothing in the crossword about a “summer-house.” The word “house” appeared, it was true, and with a sufficiently obvious clue. Oddly enough, it was one of the clues that had a star affixed, with the reference to the note beneath suggesting that clues so marked were either too obvious or not obvious enough and needed “attention,” this last word “attention” being twice repeated, as if for emphasis.

Certainly nothing could be much more obvious for “house” than the clue, “A snail carries his on his back,” but several others equally obvious were unmarked. Indeed, the whole puzzle seemed quite elementary. Bobby had found little difficulty in completing it. He wondered if the position of the crosses with which some of the clues seemed so unnecessarily marked bore any hidden meaning – any relation, for instance, to what was described as the key word, “gold.” But he could trace none, though he did notice that the clues so marked seemed often to be grouped together in twos or threes, as if they were obscurely connected in some way.

A little odd, too, he thought, that this word or warning, “attention,” twice repeated in the appended note, was the expression, as Bobby well remembered, Winterton had used in speaking of the puzzle to Bobby. More than once he had repeated that it might in certain undefined circumstances, repay “attention.”

Had he meant anything, Bobby wondered, or had it merely been the expression of an author's proud belief that his own special creation was something quite out of the way?

Once again Bobby read over the words with which he had filled in the blank spaces; once again he pored over some clue in turn, trying in vain to make the words yield some meaning, trying to discover some significance hidden in the phrasing of the clues.

He could see nothing. He could not even imagine how to begin. There was nothing to take hold of, no imaginable starting-point; it was like grasping at the vacant air in the hope of finding there a secure handle to hold by.

As for the clues that were starred, with the suggestion that they required “attention,” for the life of him he could not see that they were either easier or more difficult than the others, or what attention they could require. “A snail carries his on his back” could only mean “house,” and had a star. But that other one about “Sam” and a “pan” and a “boat” was equally obvious, and yet had no star. Then the one for “dig” was rather difficult perhaps. It ran: “Mr. J. Ball wanted very much to know who was the gentleman when Adam did this: use modern form and present tense.” Not everyone would recognise “John Ball,” the mediaeval rebel, under the description “Mr. J. Ball,” or remember his catchword – slogan it would be called to-day – “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” That was starred, too. The clues to the words “beware” and “ides” were both elementary, and yet one was starred and one was not. In fact, Bobby could see no order or reason in the way in which the stars were assigned to some clues and not to others.

Only – with a sudden leaping excitement he asked himself if possibly it was not the clues themselves, but the words to which they referred, that needed attention, that bore perhaps some meaning, and would, as Mr. Winterton had said, repay attention.