The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics) (5 page)

“Not that I noticed, Mr. Grouch, seeing it was dark and——”

“Or anybody hanging about round the house earlier in the evening?”

“No, I——” Mrs. Cowper broke off suddenly and gaped as if with astonishment at the excellence of her own memory. Pendrill and the Vicar sat up and exchanged a quick glance. The Constable took an eager step forward.

“Yes?”

“Now I come to think of it, you putting your question like that, I did see a man. He popped out of the bushes, sudden, like a rabbit and started arguing with Mr. Tregarthan. On the drive it was. I saw it all from the kitchen window when I was making ready to dish up the dinner.”

“At what time was that?”

“Just after eight it would be. I mentioned it to Cowper at the time. It being queer seeing a man spring out like that.”

“He appeared to have words with Mr. Tregarthan?”

“Yes—violent words. I thought at the time they were that fierce.”

“You didn't hear what was said, I suppose?”

Mrs. Cowper shook her head with an air of disappointment, pondered for a moment, and then cheered up at a sudden recollection.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Grouch. I did catch the tail-end of it, as it were. Nothing much, mind you. Something about ‘getting even’ or words to that effect.”

The Constable whistled softly through his teeth.

“Those were the man's words, not Mr. Tregarthan's?”

“Yes—he said—drat! It's on the tip of my tongue—he said—‘I'll get even if I swing for it.’ That's it! I didn't think anything much of it then.”

“Naturally. You've done well to remember, Sarah,” said Grouch, descending from his official Olympus, and granting Mrs. Cowper a broad smile. “It may prove to be valuable information. Now as to this man. Can you describe him?”

“Well—he was shortish.”

“Very short?”

“I suppose so. He looked a real titch beside Mr. Tregarthan, but then, he was a big man.”

“Yes—can you describe his looks?”

Mrs. Cowper shook her head.

“He was standing back in the shadow of the bushes. There was only the light from the kitchen window.”

“What was he wearing?”

“I can't rightly say.”

“You noticed nothing particular about his clothes?”

“Only his gaiters. I noticed he was wearing gaiters when he went off up the drive.”

“Gaiters! Well, that's something. You've done very well, Mrs. Cowper. I shan't have to bother you any more, unless the Inspector wants to ask you a few questions later on. Will you send your husband in to us now. I won't keep him a minute.”

The moment Mrs. Cowper had closed the door the Constable swung round on Pendrill and the Vicar.

“Well, that's something, gentlemen! Very suspicious, eh? A quarrel. High words! Seems that we shan't have to look far for our man after all.”

Pendrill nodded.

“You've done well, Grouch. The Inspector should be pleased when he arrives. Eh, Vicar?”

“Eh? Eh?” demanded the Reverend Dodd, coming out of a brown study. “Inspector—pleased? Very. Remarkable progress, Grouch.”

And he lapsed forthwith into another deep rumination, wherein he turned the facts of the case over and over in his mind, a little disturbed, considerably bewildered. He wondered, somehow, if the case was going to be quite as simple as it was beginning to appear on the surface.

Cowper, now in a happier frame of mind, thanks to a stiff whiskey, soon proved to be an unimaginative and therefore reliable witness.

He corroborated his wife's story about the strange man on the drive, but was unable to give any further details as he had not gone to the kitchen window. He had been engaged in filling a coal-scuttle in the adjacent scullery when his wife had called him to come and look. But, as Cowper rightly said, Mr. Tregarthan's business was not his and he had other things to attend to. With regard to his actions after dinner, he had gone into the sitting-room with a trudge of logs just after his wife had taken in the coffee—that was to say, about a quarter to nine. He thought Mrs. Cowper might have been a little early with the coffee, because Miss Ruth had left the dinner-table half-way through the second course and Mr. Tregarthan had not lingered long over the sweet. He did not think that Mr. Tregarthan had any particular enemies, and as far as he, Cowper, was concerned, the whole thing was a “ruddy mystery.” It had upset him and he felt very sorry for Miss Ruth, who, he reckoned, would take “a packet of days” to get over the shock.

His evidence concluded, Cowper excused himself to the Vicar for having said anything in the heat of the moment that wasn't right and proper, and shaking the Constable unexpectedly by the hand, saluted the Doctor and went out of the room.

“And that's that!” said Grouch with an air of conclusion, shoving his pencil back into the binding of his note-book. “I'll have to run over this little lot with the Inspector when he arrives.” He turned to Pendrill. “By the way, sir, how long would you say Mr. Tregarthan had been dead when you made your examination?”

“I should say fifteen minutes at the outside. Perhaps half an hour, but I doubt it.”

“And it took you how long to come from the Vicarage?”

“Oh, two or three minutes.”

“And say another three minutes for Miss Tregarthan to have got through to the Vicarage via Rock House. That leaves about nine or ten minutes. So in all probability, seeing that Miss Tregarthan found her uncle at nine-fifteen, the chances are that he was shot a few minutes after nine.”

“Probably.”

“And Mrs. Cowper saw him alive at about fifteen minutes to nine. So we can fix within reasonable limits, sir, the period of time within which the murder must have been committed. Between eight-forty-five and say, nine-five.”

Further discussion on this point was interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Bigswell and a uniformed chauffeur. He had started from Greystoke a few minutes after receiving Grouch's intimation of the tragedy, but a faulty carburettor had hung him up
en route
. Unfortunately the engine had petered out on a lonely road and he had been unable to board a private car. He offered this explanation not so much as an apology for his tardy arrival, but to vindicate the excellence of police routine in the eyes of the Doctor and the Vicar. Pendrill judged him to be a man of keen intelligence, quicker witted, though more reserved, than the Constable. A man, moreover, who inspired confidence. He brought to the proceedings a cut-and-dried manner which was both efficient and business-like. Grouch drew him aside in the hall and gave a résumé of his enquiries, outlined the main points of the case, showed him the body, the bullet holes in the window and reported the results of the Doctor's examination. When the Constable had posted his superior up to date, the two men joined Pendrill and the Vicar, who were chatting in the dining-room.

Mrs. Cowper reported that Miss Tregarthan was in her room and wanted to know if the Inspector wished to see her again that night. The Inspector shook his head.

“As far as I can see it will be quite unnecessary for me to trouble her any further. I quite understand how she must be feeling. No. Tell her to get as much rest as she can. She's a rather trying time in front of her, I'm afraid.” Adding as Mrs. Cowper was on the point of leaving, “You and your husband had better do the same, Mrs. Cowper.”

When the housekeeper had retired, Inspector Bigswell addressed himself to Pendrill and the Vicar.

“I've no reason to keep you any longer, gentlemen.”

“We can be of no assistance, I suppose, Inspector?”

“Well, I won't say that, Doctor. If you and the Reverend care to stay, I daresay you can give me a little local information as we get on with our investigations. The lie of the land, as it were.”

“In that case ...” said Pendrill with an enquiring look at the Reverend Dodd.

The Vicar nodded.

“Anything we can do, Inspector.”

“Good,” concluded Bigswell. “Suppose we start by making a further examination of the sitting-room.”

The four men returned once more to the scene of the crime, and after the Inspector had made a cursory examination of the body, he had it laid on the big Chesterfield and covered with a rug which Grouch had found in the hall.

The Inspector's next move was to cut out the two bullets from the wall where they had lodged, the one in the oak beam under the ceiling, the other behind the oil-painting. The third bullet, the one which had crashed through Tregarthan's skull obviously at short range, was found near the fender, where it had apparently ricocheted off the sideboard. The Inspector placed the three bullets in the palm of his hand and examined them with interest.

“Well,” he said at length, looking up at his little audience. “What d'you make of it? Revolver bullets, eh? Army Service pattern I should say. The sort of revolver carried by officers of the B.E.F. in the war. That won't get us far. It
may
narrow things down a bit, but not much, I'm afraid.”

He swung round and pointed at the french windows, the curtains of which were still undrawn.

“That door—where does it go?”

“Into a little walled garden,” explained Pendrill, who knew the place well. “Just a small rectangle of lawn surrounded on three sides by a flower border.”

“Suppose we look,” suggested Bigswell.

“I have a torch—a pocket lamp,” put in the Vicar helpfully.

The Inspector smiled.

“So have I, sir, and the Constable ought to have ... of the regulation pattern. Eh, Grouch?”

Grouch grinned appreciatively, rather flattered in sharing this little joke with his superior, and unhooked his lamp off his belt.

The four of them went out into the garden.

The wind had died down and the air, though fresh and salty, was no longer damp-laden. It was obvious that the rain had spent itself with the storm, for the sky had cleared and a crescent moon shed a ghostly glitter over the dark swell of the Atlantic. Under the brief cliff the waves were chopping and slapping, but beyond that the night was profoundly still.

Bigswell was so far puzzled by the case. There was little enough to go on. Mrs. Cowper's story about the strange man on the drive might prove to be a successful line of investigation, but the description of this man was extremely scrappy. Gaiters. That was something. Shortish. That was something further. But if the gaitered individual
had
committed the murder there was nothing to prevent him from discarding his leg-wear as being too distinctive. And shortish men were not uncommon! At the moment he was more concerned with finding the spot where the murderer had stood when he had fired the fatal shot. There might be—indeed there
must
be—footprints, for the ground, softened by rain, would be amenable to impressions, and since the rain had stopped shortly after the supposed time of Tregarthan's death, these valuable imprints should not be blurred.

“Now,” he said briskly, flicking on a powerful electric torch. “Suppose we work methodically over these flower-beds. If the murderer did enter the garden over the wall he couldn't have avoided the beds. You notice their width. It would have taken an extremely agile fellow to have cleared them in one leap.”

“And even if he had,” put in the Vicar with a serious air of consideration, “he would have landed so heavily on the border of the grass that the marks would be obvious.”

“Precisely,” exclaimed Bigswell.

He darted a keen glance at the rotund little figure and made a mental note that the Reverend Dodd was a cleric with the right sort of intelligence. His mind ran along the right rails. It had the proper analytical twist.

“Well, let's make sure,” he said.

The three rings of light travelled carefully over the empty flower borders, empty, that was, save for a few thin clumps of early daffodils. But the result was negative. On the lawn, too, the searchers drew a blank. It was perfectly obvious that nobody had set foot inside the wall that night.

“Which means that we must try our luck on the other side of the wall,” said Bigswell. “Careful,” he added, as Grouch plodded across the border and flung himself astride the curved cement coping. “No trampling about, Grouch.”

The three sides of the wall were bounded by three distinct paths. At the bottom of the garden ran the cliff-path. On the Boscawen side was a rough track which led round the side of Greylings and entered the front drive through a clump of laurel bushes. Against the cliff end of this wall were piled a few hurdles, obviously bearing some connection with the sheep which grazed on the common. On the side furthest from the cove, the south side, a more defined track ran from the cliff-path to a side door in the south face of the house.

The north track, a mere ribbon of muddied grass, proved unprofitable. Save for a few half-obliterated hoof-marks left by the sheep there were no other prints of any kind.

Avoiding the cliff-path for the time being, by the simple expedient of recrossing the garden, the party made an exhaustive examination of the side-door path. There the Inspector found exactly what he was looking for—two sets of tracks clearly defined in the soft, soggy soil. One set ran toward the side-door, the other away from it. The footprints were those of a feminine foot in a high-heeled shoe.

“This, at any rate, fits in with Miss Tregarthan's story,” observed the Inspector as the concentrated light from the three torches flooded on to a patch of the path. “She went out for a walk by the side-door and returned the same way. There's nothing unusual here. I didn't expect there would be. If you wanted to shoot a man standing in the window, Grouch, where would you take up your position?”

“On the cliff-path, sir.”

“Exactly. The angle from either of these side-paths would be too acute, too chancy, as I see it. The cliff-path runs directly parallel with the house.”

The little group, led by the Inspector, moved off on to the cliff-path. At once they were drawn up short as the Inspector stopped dead and uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure.

“Ah!” he said, squatting close to the ground. “This looks more like it. There's a new set of tracks here, Grouch. See, gentlemen. These, of course, are Miss Tregarthan's—notice the small, round heel. But these—” and he pointed to a somewhat broader foot “—belong to somebody else.” He peered closer. “Hullo! Hullo! What's this? A heel missing?”