The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (20 page)

Then Mrs. Mullion came to the point in her story where she first saw the figure of Ruth Tregarthan on the cliff-path. She described how she had stayed in the shadow of the furze bushes and watched Miss Tregarthan's subsequent actions.

“You are certain that it was Miss Tregarthan whom you saw, Mrs. Mullion?” demanded the Coroner. “It was a darkish night, remember.”

“Oh, it was her right enough, sir. The moon was out by then as I said before and the light from the house was shining on Miss Tregarthan's face.”

Here the Inspector, amid the buzz of excitement which Mrs. Mullion's evidence had produced, quietly got to his feet and asked if he might put a question to the witness. The Coroner acceded to the request.

“You speak of a light coming from the house, Mrs. Mullion—what exactly do you mean by that?”

“From the sitting-room, sir. The curtains had been drawn back, as you may know, and the lights was full on.”

“And this light came only from the sitting-room?”

Mrs. Mullion pondered this question for a moment. Now that her flow of evidence had been interrupted she was losing her confidence and growing self-conscious. She fiddled with her hair, reset her hat, and said at length:

“Now you come to ask me—there
was
another light. It was coming from a smaller window at the end of the house.”

“I see,” said the Inspector. “Thank you. That's all, Mrs. Mullion.”

He turned to the Coroner, gave a half-salute and sat down.

“Now, Mrs. Mullion,” resumed the Coroner. “You say that when you saw Miss Tregarthan you shrank back into the bushes. Surely that was not a natural thing to do? I take it that you know Miss Tregarthan?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“And yet you didn't walk on and have a word with her?”

“No, sir. I didn't. Not when I saw what she had in her hand, I didn't. I was taken aback.”

“Something in her hand?” queried the Coroner in a silken voice. “What was that, Mrs. Mullion?”

“A revolver!”

The effect of this statement, as the Inspector had anticipated, caused a sensation. An immediate murmur of excited voices rose and mounted to a veritable cross-fire of questions and exclamations. In the midst of this babel Ruth Tregarthan sprang up, pale and distraught, and faced Mrs. Mullion, who stood at the far end of the table. Doctor Pendrill placed next to the girl tugged at her sleeve. He whispered a few words into her ear and reluctantly, after a despairing look at the Coroner, Ruth sat down. The sharp hammering of the Coroner's gavel resounded above the general din. Abruptly a silence fell.

“Please! Please! Ladies and gentleman,” said the Coroner in a disapproving voice. “You will kindly remember where you are and for what purpose this court is sitting.” He turned to Mrs. Mullion, who, alarmed by the sensation which her evidence had evoked, was shrinking back from the united stare directed upon her. “Now, Mrs. Mullion, I want you to be absolutely certain on this point. You're on oath, remember. You still uphold that the object which you saw in Miss Tregarthan's hand was a revolver?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mrs. Mullion in faltering tones. “I'm sure of it!”

“Very well. Go on, Mrs. Mullion. Will you tell the jury what happened subsequently.”

Mrs. Mullion described in a few, breathless words how Ruth Tregarthan had stared at the revolver, turned it over in her hand, and after a frightened look round, run to the side door and disappeared in the house.

This concluded Mrs. Mullion's evidence.

At once Ruth Tregarthan sprang up. The Coroner jerked his glasses a little down his nose and looked quizzically over the top of them.

“Do I take it, Miss Tregarthan,” he said with a lugubrious air of perplexity, “that you wish to make a statement?”

“I do,” replied Ruth with emphasis. “If it's in order. I should like to dispute the evidence of the last witness.”

The Coroner considered the point for a moment, obtained the jury's feeling on the matter, and gave his consent.

Ruth swung round to where Mrs. Mullion, a pathetically shrinking bundle, was trying to hide herself behind the meagre frame of her husband. Both Inspector Bigswell and the Vicar were amazed by the change which had come over the girl. All her former timidity had vanished and it was with flushed cheeks and unnaturally bright eyes that she faced the unfortunate midwife.

“Now, Miss Tregarthan,” said the Coroner, “what is it you want to say?”

“It's about the revolver. Mrs. Mullion is mistaken. That's all. I didn't have a revolver in my hand. What Mrs. Mullion saw may have looked like a revolver from the distance—but it wasn't. It was an ordinary electric pocket-torch.”

“A pocket-lamp!” exclaimed the Coroner. “But surely it would be difficult to mistake a pocket-lamp for a revolver? Mrs. Mullion declares that you looked at it and turned it over in your hand. Do you deny having done that, Miss Tregarthan?”

“No.”

“But if it was an ordinary pocket-lamp doesn't that strike you as rather an unusual thing to do? Your actions suggest that you were examining an object with which you were not familiar.”

“I can easily explain that,” said Ruth in a calm voice. “Just before I reached the wall of the garden, the torch flickered and went out. This rather surprised me since I had put in a new battery only the day before. When I came into the rays of light streaming from the window, I naturally stopped, looked at the torch, shook it and turned it over in my hand.”

“I see. Well, Miss Tregarthan, I'm in no position to deny the truth of your statement. You're on oath. I have heard the evidence of Mrs. Mullion. She, too, is on oath. I can only, therefore, assume that owing to the indifferent light Mrs. Mullion was mistaken in what she saw. It's a case of your statement against hers. You realise that?” Ruth nodded. The Coroner turned to the jury. “I think, gentlemen, you will agree with me that we shall get no further by pursuing this particular matter. Out of fairness to Miss Tregarthan, however, I must ask you to dismiss the evidence of the previous witness. She, no doubt, was quite sincere in her belief that the object in Miss Tregarthan's hand was a revolver. But even the most cautious of us are liable, at times, to make mistakes, and, owing to a combination of various circumstances, Mrs. Mullion, in this case, was in fact ... er ... mistaken.”

At the conclusion of this speech Ruth sat down and the Coroner, after glancing at the notes before him, addressed the jury.

“Now, gentlemen, you have heard the evidence of Miss Tregarthan and Mr. and Mrs. Cowper. You have further heard Doctor Pendrill's report as to how, in his opinion, the deceased met his death. You are concerned with three main points. Firstly—was the fatal shot discharged by accident? If you believe this to be the case, on the evidence given, you will bring in a verdict of accidental death. Secondly—was the shot fired by the deceased himself with the intention of putting an end to his own life—in which case you will bring in a verdict of suicide. Thirdly—was the fatal shot fired by a second person with the deliberate intention of killing the deceased, in which case, of course, you must bring in a verdict of murder. With regard to the first two suppositions—I need only remind you that three shots entered the room and that it has been proved, on the evidence of no less than three witnesses that the deceased himself must have drawn back the curtains of the sitting-room; which leads us to infer that the deceased was
deliberately
lured to the window by some person outside the house. Are you justified, therefore, in assuming that the shots were discharged by accident? Did the deceased commit suicide? Here I need only remind you that three shots entered the room from outside the house. This, I think you will agree, rules out the possibility of suicide. We are left, therefore, with the third assumption—that some person or persons wishing, for reasons not yet evident, to put an end to the deceased, deliberately, with malice aforethought, planned to kill him and on Monday last, the 23rd of March, succeeded in so doing. If you believe this to be the case you have no alternative but to bring in a verdict of wilful murder and—in lieu of further evidence as to the identity of the murderer—a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. I therefore call upon you now, gentlemen, to consider your verdict.”

After a brief discussion, without a retirement, the foreman of the jury rose and brought in the expected verdict. The Coroner got up, declared the proceedings at an end and, in a respectful silence, walked out of the room. The crowd, chattering excitedly, filed after him. The ormulu clock struck three.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NOTE

L
ATER
, on Thursday evening, after an excellent dinner, Doctor Pendrill and the Vicar sat talking in the latter's study. It was the first real opportunity they had had to discuss in detail the mystery which surrounded Julius Tregarthan's death. Although the Doctor was sanguine as to the police's chance of making an early arrest, the Vicar was far less optimistic. If Inspector Bigswell was still following up his previous lines of investigation, with his suspicions centring on Ronald and Ruth, he felt that the police were barking up the wrong tree. Of Cowper's unspectacular entry into the arena he, of course, knew nothing. He knew the money had been stolen, but as the Inspector had not granted him another interview since Tuesday evening he had no idea that Bigswell had more or less driven home the theft of the notes to the gardener. He assumed, therefore, that Ronald Hardy was still the central figure in the Inspector's reconstructed picture of the crime. Pendrill, too, was under a similar impression.

“It's curious,” said the Doctor, “that Hardy should draw attention to himself by disappearing. You'd think that any intelligent man would see the fallacy in an action of that sort. To my mind, Dodd, it's the strongest indication of his innocence. If he
had
murdered Tregarthan with malice aforethought, as the Inspector seems to suggest, then he would have carried on in a perfectly normal way. I'm sure of it. Hardy's got a first-class mind. He'd be incapable of such a piece of crass stupidity.”

The Vicar in a mellifluous voice, born of perfect gastronomic harmony, agreed.

“Quite. Quite. I've never doubted his innocence for one moment. Whatever the cause of Ronald's sudden disappearance, I'm sure it's nothing to do with the murder of poor Tregarthan. Doubly sure, as a matter of fact, since the inquest this afternoon.”

“On account of the failure of Mrs. Mullion's evidence? A ridiculous show, Dodd!”

“No, nothing to do with that. It was something I learnt
after
the inquest.”

The Vicar, it appeared, had walked home from the “Ship” along the Vicarage road. There Tom Prattle had hailed him and asked him the time. They fell into conversation. Tom, bursting with pride at his discovery, had soon narrated the complete history of the rust-stained revolver; assuring the Vicar that, although the police chaps thought he wasn't listening, he had overheard one of them say that it belonged to Mr. Hardy. He spoke of the initials scratched on the butt. For himself, of course, he knew it wasn't Mr. Hardy's revolver. It was a German revolver hidden “in the trench” by a “ruddy German spy.”

The Vicar guessed that for all Tom's idiosyncrasies he was telling the truth. A man of his mental calibre would be incapable of enlivening a barefaced lie with so many matter-of-fact details. Certainly he garnished his story with a strong Teutonic flavour, but the essence of the story was obviously based on facts.

“What I want to know,” concluded the Vicar, “is why Ronald, who had ample time and opportunity to get rid of his revolver later on, threw it into a ditch a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime. You see, Pendrill—it's absurd! The more I look into the Inspector's theory the more flaws I see in it. What had Ronald to gain by murdering Ruth's uncle? Why didn't we find his footprints on the cliff-path? How was it that a man standing about twenty feet from the window put three shots into the room at such widely scattered points? Does that argue a man with war service? A man who knew how to use a revolver? Ronald, for example?”

“I know,” said Pendrill, scratching his chin with the stem of his pipe, “that last point has puzzled me from the start. It might suggest a woman in the case. But somehow I don't think it does.”

“Ruth? Mrs. Mullion?” enquired the Vicar “We can dismiss them completely. We
know
they didn't have a hand in the crime. Our intuitions tell us that. Then who, in the name of Heaven, Pendrill,
did
murder Tregarthan? I wondered last night, when I was turning things over in bed, if there had been a struggle on the cliff-path. That would account for the widely scattered shots. But did we see any sign of a struggle on the path? We didn't. In my opinion, the fact that the three shots entered the window at such diverse points is of far greater importance than we first supposed. I couldn't stop thinking about this curious factor in the case. Why, Pendrill, at twenty feet even I could put three successive shots through the door of a french window without hitting the side windows. I could almost do it with my eyes shut. Perhaps it would not be stretching the truth too far to say that a child could do it. But the fact remains, the three shots were scattered, and I believe than when we have found an explanation for this peculiarity we shall be a long way toward solving the problem of Tregarthan's death.”

Pendrill's interest quickened.

“You've got a theory—is that it, Dodd?”

The Vicar hesitated before answering this question; then he said slowly:

“Let's say I have the glimmering of an idea which if followed up may put us on the road toward elucidating the identity of the criminal.” Whereupon, diving into his waistcoat pocket, he produced a little square of paper. This he handed to the Doctor. “Read it,” he suggested.

The Doctor did so.

I'm not wanting your money. I shall hold my tongue not for your sake but for his. I've no wish to hear further about this. M.L.

“Well,” asked the Vicar. “What do you make of it?”

“Nothing,” said Pendrill, handing back the paper. “What the devil is it?”