It was the first clear indication to me that Cork-Bradden and Mrs Croll had been indulging in adulterous relations in a systematic manner. Their choice of venue shocked me particularly, attributable as it was to his privileged position as churchwarden. However, it was my clients’ contractual dispositions that concerned me, not their morals.
I accordingly attended upon Mrs Croll the next morning and gained her promise to keep the appointment.
The remainder of the day I spent at my Flaxborough office. Towards the end of the afternoon, I was surprised to receive a telephone call from Mrs Cork-Bradden. It was an invitation to drinks at Church House at nine o’clock that evening.
Such an inappropriate function did not appeal to me, but I had no wish to offend the Cork-Braddens, so I presented myself at their house at nine and was admitted by Priscilla.
Drinks were served in the lounge. As I had foreseen, my fellow guests were Raymond Bishop, Mrs Whybrow, Palgrove and Spencer Gash. Another lady was present but she was not introduced and I learned only later that she was Mrs Gash. At ten o’clock, we were given some supper, and soon afterwards Mrs Gash was sent home. Mrs Cork-Bradden excused herself and retired for the night at eleven.
Her husband took the rest of us to his study on the first floor and poured more drinks. At about eleven-twenty, he got up and switched off the light, saying, if I remember rightly, “Let us see if the lady has turned up.” He drew back one of the curtains, near which I was sitting, and I looked out. The candle burning in the church was plain to see. Close beside it was something white and rectangular.
I was still watching the candle flame when Mrs Whybrow said loudly, “There she is!” I saw movement beyond the light. It was a woman, and she came to where the candle was, but I could not recognize her because her face was turned towards the white rectangle. I supposed it to be a notice of some kind. It absorbed her attention.
I jumped when I heard Cork-Bradden’s voice behind me in the darkness. He was standing by the door, and what he said was, “Dick, open the window, there’s a good fellow; it’s getting a bit stuffy.”
It was a perfectly ordinary request to make, yet even as I raised the casement catch, I hesitated. There had been a certain self-consciousness in Cork-Bradden’s manner, almost as if the remark had been rehearsed. Everyone else was silent, and this added to my feeling of unease.
I pretended the window was stiff because I wanted an excuse for taking so long. I looked back towards the door. It was just closing. A moment later, I heard another door open and close, not far away.
The obvious explanation was that our host was paying a visit to the lavatory before leaving to keep the appointment in the church. It seemed a good opportunity for me to slip away. I pushed open the window and secured the stay, then moved over to Mrs Whybrow to tell her my intention.
At that moment, we heard a sound that drove other matters from my mind. It was a scream, and I would have sworn that it came from inside the house.
I got to the door as quickly as I could, opened it and stood listening. Everything now was absolutely silent. It was Bishop who spoke first. He said, “Hello, it looks as if she’s pushed off.” Then Mrs Whybrow said something about the woman being “too damned impatient”. I looked out of the window, across to the church. The light was not there any more.
When Cork-Bradden came back in the room two or three minutes later, he at once switched on the lamp. They told him about the candle going out. I don’t think he was surprised. He was pale and did not look well, but he went round re-filling our glasses.
I drank my final brandy as quickly as I decently could and prepared to leave. Cork-Bradden saw me to the front door, where he had the grace to apologize for my having wasted my evening. Nothing more was said by either of us. I walked a little way along the path, then stopped in order to accustom my eyes to outdoor conditions.
It was while I was standing there that an alarming thought entered my head. Had that supper party been deliberately contrived in order to compromise me, to involve me in something I knew nothing about?
The more I considered my clients’ failure to keep the appointment with Mrs Croll, the more unreasonable it seemed. I was now feeling angry that I had been considered capable of being duped, and I determined to learn the truth of the matter.
For a start, I would look inside the church.
As I expected, the south door was unlocked (Cork-Bradden would have left it so for Mrs Croll to come and go). I let it close gently behind me, then, very carefully, I moved forward, alert for obstacles but resolved to use only if absolutely necessary the small pocket torch I always carry when I am out at night.
The first thing I noticed was a distinct odour of cosmetics above the church smells of damp and mould and candles. I thought it a rather cheap kind of scent, not very pleasant. Soon afterwards, my foot struck some metal object. I stepped over it. It was then that I saw something lying further off, dark and shapeless against the paler stone of the floor, and I knew that I could put off no longer the use of my torch.
One hears many arguments nowadays about the definition of death, but that this poor woman was dead could not be doubted for an instant. Some dreadful blow had twisted and stretched her neck like that of a slaughtered bird.
I do not know if even the little light I allowed myself had been noticed, but as I looked down at the body of Bernadette Croll I heard the sound of a door shutting in the distance.
As luck would have it, in the very instant of extinguishing my torch my eye fell upon a piece of wood caught in strands of the woman’s clothing. I freed it and thrust it in my pocket before hastening to the door—not a moment too soon, for already there reached me the sound of footsteps on the path from Church House.
That concludes my statement, so far as personal evidence is concerned, but I hope that before my good friends the police re-open the case in which they were so cleverly deceived, they will permit me to present them (posthumously, alas) with the solution.
It is now clear to me, after reflecting upon all the facts set out above, that Bernadette Croll did not fall from the tower gallery, as was supposed at the inquest, but was killed with a blow from some heavy wooden article which, if not since destroyed, should be identifiable from the fragment I recovered from the body and kept thereafter in secure but visible custody (in the hope that the murderer might thereby be harrowed into confession).
I believe that the supper party at Church House was staged for the purpose of persuading me that Mrs Croll was killed at the very moment when my four clients were with me and safely remote from the scene of the crime.
In common parlance, I was to be their alibi, should the police decline to believe the suicide story. Had I not seen Mrs Croll alive and in the church shortly before half-past eleven? And heard the scream she uttered on being attacked?