Crossword Mystery (33 page)

“Plenty of water up there in the tank,” agreed Mitchell, “but not to drink.”

“To hide, then,” Bobby cried. “To hide the lost gold.”

“Anyhow, the bottom of the tank would make a good hiding-place, and one likely to occur to the Wintertons,” Mitchell said. “Drive your car into the garage with the boxes of gold on board, dump them into the tank, the work of a few minutes, lock up the garage, and walk off, and who was to guess anything out of the way had happened? Burying them under the garage floor, or anywhere else, would have been a much longer, much more troublesome job. You couldn't be sure of not being seen, or of not leaving some traces behind someone about the place – servants or someone – mightn't notice.”

“We'll have a look,” Major Markham cried, and Andrews, who had been listening very intently, said:

“There's a tap somewhere, you can empty the tank by quite easily. Perhaps that's why it was put in. The builder who had the job told me about it. Of course, the tank can be emptied by cutting off the supply from the spring and opening all the taps in the house. When he had the tap put in, Mr. Winterton said he wanted a quicker way of emptying the tank when it had to be cleaned, but perhaps it was the gold he wanted to be able to get at in a hurry, if he had to.”

“It might be that,” Mitchell agreed.

The tap in question was soon found, and by the aid of tools, brought from the motor-car tool-boxes, it was easily opened. Watching the water running away by the channel provided, Major Markham remarked:

“We may be too late. It may not be there now.”

“You mean, perhaps we aren't the first to guess the riddle of the blue pencil correction of “The Ancient Mariner”?” Mitchell remarked. “No. But it would be a long, awkward job to fish up all those ten boxes. They had to be found, hoisted to the edge of the tank, carried away. And there's not been too much time, for it can't be many hours since Ross was attacked. I doubt if there's been more than one night to remove the gold in. And they would hardly dare to bring a car right up to the house, any more than they would dare empty the tank the way we are doing – even if they knew about the tap. They had to work in silence. They would never dare risk the noise and commotion of all that water running off. Most likely they left their car on the main road, and carried each box of gold to it in turn as each box was retrieved.” Andrews, who had been up above, watching the lowering of the level of the water, came to the head of the steps.

“There's something showing, sir,” he called, with excitement in his voice. “Looks like boxes.”

They all joined him. Someone had an electric torch, and was flashing its light into the interior of the tank. The retreating, gurgling water showed the tops of five boxes. Mitchell said:

“Looks like they got away with just half of them. To-night, I expect the other half would have gone.”

They waited a little longer, till all the water had run off, save for a few puddles and trickles that remained in the cracks of the cemented floor. Andrews, followed by Bobby, dropped over the edge of the tank. Mitchell, who had the torch in his hand now, and was flashing its beam to and fro, called out:

“What's that just by your foot, Owen?”

Bobby stooped to pick it up. It was a leather pocket-book, soaked through and through by its immersion. Bobby got it carefully on his folded handkerchief, and then passed it up to Mitchell, who retreated with it to the garage below, where he busied himself with it while the rest of them occupied themselves with the five remaining boxes.

That task accomplished, and the boxes safely deposited on the floor of the garage, Major Markham crossed to where Mitchell was still busy with the pocket-book and its soaked contents.

“Found anything useful?” he asked.

“It has Cooper's name and address on it,” Mitchell answered. “Quite useful when criminals leave their name and address behind. I suppose it fell out of his pocket while he and his wife were busy hauling up the five boxes they got away with. They were a bit over-excited, most likely, and forgot to be as careful as usual. At last they had the gold in their possession that they had been working for so long, and a detail like a dropped pocket-book got overlooked. Like those two in Chicago who planned a perfect murder and then left a spectacle-case belonging to one of them on the scene of the crime. And it would be their excitement and hurry recovering the gold prevented them from making sure Ross was really dead.”

“That was why they left his body here, instead of trying to hide it, I suppose,” Major Markham remarked.

“Well, as for that,” Mitchell answered slowly, “they may have thought this was as good a hiding-place for the body as anywhere else for the time being. It couldn't have been removed without a good deal of risk, and they had their hands full – working out where the gold was, and then getting hold of it. Later on, I expect they would have come round in a boat and sunk the body far out to sea, well weighted. If they had done that, and the gold and Ross were both missing, what with that, and the evidence already against him, no one would have felt much doubt of his guilt, and we should have been looking for him all over the world, while all the time his body was lying quietly a few miles out there at the bottom of the North Sea. This is interesting, too,” he went on, and showed, among other papers – some of them had been packed tightly round it, and had largely protected it from the action of the water – the original of the crossword puzzle, carefully written out in George Winterton's handwriting, with his signature, and a note of the date, two days before his death, when it had been completed. But the puzzle had all its blanks filled in in a different writing, and the words from which Bobby had constructed the hidden message were scribbled in the same writing all over the margin. Then in one place they were written in the order in which Bobby also had placed them, and were followed by the initials:

“C R.”

“That's Ross's writing, and his initials, too,” Bobby said.

“Evidently he worked the thing out the same way as you did,” Mitchell agreed. “Then he came along here, and the Coopers followed him. I expect they had been watching him. Perhaps they had guessed that the crossword held the secret of the gold. They watched and followed. They saw him overcome by the gas he released. They took their precautions, before they entered the garage after him. They found he was still breathing, and used a knife on him to make sure, as they thought, and afterwards forgot everything else in their eagerness to discover where the boxes of gold were hidden. Possibly, too, the gas had affected them to some extent. Perhaps Mrs. Cooper's head was not as clear as usual. We could wait for them here, if we liked, for I take it they are sure to return to-night. But I don't think there's any need. It seems to me our evidence is complete.”

He looked at Major Markham, who answered slowly:

“They will be at Fairview, I suppose. Yes, I think we can go and find them there.”

It was decided that one of the constables of the county police, who had been acting as chauffeur for Major Markham, should remain on the spot until arrangements could be made for the removal of the body of the unfortunate Colin Ross. Meanwhile the five remaining boxes of gold, all in sovereigns minted in 1915-16, were removed from the bottom of the tank, and packed safely in the waiting cars – an operation taking up some time. While it was being carried out, Major Markham, in the company of Mitchell, went through the rest of the soaked papers in the pocket-book they had discovered. There seemed to be nothing more of much interest, and Major Markham observed thoughtfully:

“Anyhow, there's enough to prove the thing is Cooper's property, and that's all we want. Yet, apart from that, I doubt if even now we have enough foolproof evidence to convince a jury, after a clever counsel has been suggesting doubts and picking holes in it for an hour or two. And I don't see we have much except pure assumption to put forward to identify the two Coopers with the murder of George Winterton.”

“Luckily that doesn't matter,” Mitchell remarked. “Even for three murders, one hanging is quite satisfactory. All the same, it makes a fully coherent story.”

“Even now,” Major Markham said, “I don't quite understand how they managed to carry out the first murder – that of Archibald Winterton, assuming they did, that is.”

“It was the first step in Mrs. Cooper's planned scheme to get possession of the gold she knew the Winterton brothers were importing secretly,” Mitchell answered. “It was the secrecy that gave her her chance. They wanted secrecy so as to be secure against official interference, and all the general upset and confusion of the outside world. A poor sort of security it proved that led to both their deaths. In this world, the more you seek security, the more you invite danger.”

“You suspected the Coopers from the first?” Major Markham asked.

“Only one suspicion among a host of others,” answered Mitchell. “Suspicion's easy; it's proof that's difficult. The start was the certainty that something of value had been landed from that motor-launch, and that in consequence George Winterton was afraid of something. The difficulty was to find out what the something of value actually was, and to understand why a man apparently engaged in secret, and therefore probably illegal, activities of some sort or another, should himself invite police protection. One can understand that, now one knows what he was doing was importing boxes of English gold sovereigns. There is nothing illegal or immoral, I suppose, about bringing into a country its own gold coinage, even in these days when all kinds of what used to be ordinary business transactions have become criminal. Yet one can understand, too, that Winterton, with his ideas, his fanatical belief in gold, his conviction that in gold alone lay real actual value, and that only if you held actual gold did you hold actual value, was anxious to keep secret his possession of a store of it. He felt safe then – the old story of seeking security, and so creating a greater peril. Of course, in his case, there was the additional factor that, until his associate and partner, Herr Nabersberg, was released, any hint of their transactions that had got public, and reached the German Government's ears, might have been very serious for Nabersberg – sort of ‘shot at dawn' for him. Only the other day I read in the papers about some poor devil in Berlin getting a stiff sentence for paying his own money from a Swiss bank to an Hungarian one, and already in Russia and the United States it's a criminal offence to have gold in your possession. Apparently, too, Winterton was more than half afraid of an attack by the men who had been on the launch in which the gold was brought over. He seems to have thought they might make a night landing and try to secure it by force, and apparently he suspected it was they who were responsible for Archibald Winterton's death. If he had only known it, his real danger lay in his own household. But I suppose he never thought of quiet Mrs. Cooper, going about her household duties, or ever realised how she felt her managing and organising abilities were cramped and stifled, or how she saw a chance in his gold to give them a wider field where they could grow and expand as she knew they could.”

“And the first step was to get rid of the elder brother,” commented Major Markham. “But how was it done? There was no sign of any struggle – nothing. I remember you were talking about a cat as we came along, but I didn't know what you were referring to.”

“One of the first things I noticed,” Mitchell explained, “was that Mrs. Cooper was very keen in proving an alibi for George Winterton. There was no real suspicion against him; it wasn't at all likely he had had any hand in murdering his brother. But Mrs. Cooper seemed oddly anxious to prove an alibi for him. That might have been pure devotion towards her employer. It might have been simply that she wanted to bring her name into the case. People are like that sometimes. It might have been that, in proving an alibi for her employer, she incidentally proved one for herself and her husband as well. Anyhow it was quite clever. Normally a guilty person tries to throw suspicion on others. Mrs. Cooper is a better psychologist than that. She knew that when you insist on other people's innocence, at the same time you suggest your own. Besides, with her intelligence, she probably realised there was no real case against her master. But to prove the alibi, she told a story of a black cat on his window-sill, and how, in chasing it away for fear it might disturb him, she and her husband had seen George Winterton, through the open window of his room, sound asleep in bed. That was all very well, but young Bobby Owen happened to overhear a chance remark to the effect that, at the exact moment when the Coopers declared the only black cat in the village was on their master's window-sill, one of the fishermen of the village was chasing it away from his boat, because he thought it brought bad luck. That meant there was a discrepancy somewhere – a mistake or a lie somewhere. It wasn't much to go on; it might have been a quite unintentional, unimportant confusion of dates. If it was a lie, it might merely have been that of a loyal servant protecting her master against an accusation she knew to be false. But it did suggest Mrs. Cooper was worth watching, and last night another little bit of useful information came in.”

“What was that?” Markham asked quickly.

“We had been getting a line on her past life, you know,” Mitchell answered, “and now we've found that she acted as swimming instructress at one time at a small seaside resort on the south coast. You'll get a note of the details by the first post this morning, I expect. But here, at Suffby Cove, she had always let it be understood she couldn't swim. She had even staged some little performance to give people here that impression. One point that had seemed difficult was to understand how the Coopers, either one or both of them, supposing they had a hand in the murder of Archibald, had managed to escape observation. It was certain they were back at Fairview quite early. But if they had come back by land, they must have been seen, and there was no record of a boat, which also, for that matter, would most likely have been seen. But an expert swimmer could easily swim across the opening of the Cove, from one headland to the other, would almost certainly have escaped notice at that hour in the morning, and could easily have towed a non-swimming companion across as well, especially one furnished with some sort of air-bladder or another for additional support. As we know now, Mrs. Cooper was a good swimmer, that is most likely how she or they returned to their own side of the Cove. They carried out the murder without much difficulty. One or other of them – I imagine Mrs. Cooper; I think she carried it out alone – hid during the night near the beach from which the elder Winterton used to start for his swims. After he had swum out some distance, Mrs. Cooper appeared from her hiding place, and the Airedale, knowing her quite well, gave no alarm. Mr. Winterton was in the habit of taking a thermos flask of hot coffee with him, to drink after coming out of the water. Owen noticed as soon as he arrived at Fairview that thermos flasks were always put ready with hot drinks for any before-breakfast bather. It struck him that it would not be difficult to tamper with Archibald Winterton's flask, or even to substitute for it another that had been already drugged. So he complained of toothache, and Mrs. Cooper, who always wanted to manage everything for everyone, and to tell everyone what to do, gave him the name of a dentist to consult, and meanwhile provided him with laudanum to relieve his – er – pain. Laudanum is not easy to get hold of under the new regulations, but she seemed to have a good supply of it; and it was at least possible that when Archibald Winterton came out of the water he took a drink of coffee that had been dosed with laudanum, and then, in his resulting dazed, half-conscious condition, was taken back into the water, so that the tide should carry him out till he was caught in the current that sets in along this coast with the movement of the tide, and was swept out to sea. Defending counsel might make out that was all pure conjecture, but to my mind it gives a clear, coherent picture, and I feel pretty sure that's what happened, and that it was the first blow in Mrs. Cooper's campaign to obtain possession of the gold. She meant it to open for her the wider life she believed her powers had a right to, just as poor young Ross wanted it to start his ideal racing stable – she had her ideal too; sometimes ideals can lead you wrong as well as right, I think, unless you remember still to be careful about your means. Well, after that there remained the other brother to dispose of. The first step was to get rid of the Airedale. A much inferior intelligence to that of Mrs. Cooper would have seen that, if another death occurred without the dog giving an alarm, suspicion would at once be directed to the people the dog knew. So it was killed. Mrs. Cooper probably knew the gold had been originally hidden in the summer-house, but did not know that subsequently it had been moved. By testing the floor with water, they made sure digging had taken place there, and the exact spot. Then came the ‘released from prison' telegram to warn her they had no time to lose. I imagine they kept a close watch on their employer's correspondence, and knew exactly how things were going. Most likely Mrs. Cooper saw at once that the telegram would be very apt to throw any investigation all wrong – as it did, too. How she managed to induce Winterton to dodge the watch Owen was keeping, and to get him out on the lawn that night, I don't suppose we shall ever know for certain, unless she tells us, but it wouldn't have been difficult to fake a 'phone call, or some other message, purporting to come from Nabersberg, and making an appointment outside the house in the dark, on some pretext of being watched or followed and being afraid to come in the day-time. Then, of course, Colin Ross helped them a lot by drawing suspicion on himself. It's pretty certain he knew something about the purchase of the gold, and I fancy his uncle was a little scared of him, and afraid he might ferret out the secret, and perhaps betray it. Somehow he had guessed that the secret of its hiding-place was hidden in the crossword puzzle. When Ross saw his uncle lying dead on the lawn that morning, the temptation was too much for him. Instead of giving the alarm, he saw his chance to get hold of the crossword, and secure for himself the clue to the whereabouts of the gold. He slipped downstairs, and took possession of the dead man's pocket-book; in doing so, leaving finger-prints on the book itself, and on the handle of the door he had come out by, and so providing evidence that might very well have hanged him.”