Mrs Pargeter 01; A Nice Class of Corpse

∨ A Nice Class of Corpse ∧

43

The fact that there were two of them confused her. She had been so convinced that only one would follow; she was not quite sure how to proceed.

Her plan for confrontation with the murderer had been to talk to him in the shelters where she had spoken to Mrs Mendlingham. They combined both privacy and a degree of safety. She would be able to talk there in the confidence that there would be people in adjacent booths. Given the murderer’s cautious approach to his other crimes, he was not going to risk killing her with witnesses to hand.

But now both Mr Dawlish and Colonel Wicksteed were coming towards her, deep in conversation, the situation was different. The confrontation would not take place. The murderer had set out on his grim task, only to find that his friend had tagged along. He would have to delay his next murder attempt, and Mrs Pargeter would have to delay her confrontation.

That being the case, Mrs Pargeter couldn’t see much point in waiting around in one of the shelters to talk to them. The only conversation she’d get would be their usual circuitous banter, and she didn’t feel it was the moment for more of that.

So when she reached the shelter, she turned down on to the beach along the side of the Arun estuary. The sea was some way away. The tide, nearly at its lowest point, accelerated the rush of brown water in the river. It looked icy and evil as it swept past.

She was half-way down the beach, still walking alongside the torrent, when, for the first time, she thought of a conspiracy theory.

Suppose Mr Dawlish and Colonel Wicksteed had committed the murders together.

Suppose between them they had eliminated Mrs Selsby and Mrs Mendlingham. And now, between them, they were coming to eliminate her.

She looked back up the beach, and saw something that chilled her like a sudden blast of cold air.

The two men had left the Promenade and were coming down the beach towards her. They were not running, but they moved quickly and purposefully, following her exact course along the side of the swollen river.

Mrs Pargeter tried to speed up, but the sand got spongier the further she went down the beach, and snatched at her boots as they sank with each step.

She looked back. For a moment the two old men had stopped, just at the point where the old sea defence ended and there was only a low wooden fence between the sand and the river. Colonel Wicksteed’s tweed hat bent close to Mr Dawlish’s grey cap. They were talking animatedly, as if making final plans.

She ran on, now trying to cut left, away from the river, away from the sea, back up towards the safety of the Promenade and the Devereux. The beach was empty, except for the three of them. Early darkness and a soggy mist combined to isolate them, cut them off from the rest of humanity.

Her boots dragged in the hungry sand. She thought she could hear the heavy pad of pursuing footsteps. Stifling a scream, she looked back.

What she saw was the last thing she had expected. She missed the moment of his launch, but was just in time to see the body of Colonel Wicksteed, with tweed hat detached and arms outstretched, in mid-air between the sand and the river.

For a long second he seemed frozen, as in a photograph. Then he vanished from her sight into the unseen turbulence below.

Immobile with shock, she looked at the small, thin figure of Mr Dawlish, hardly fifty metres away. She waited for him to come towards her, and she felt that, when he did, she would have no will left to run, that she would just stand waiting, offering no resistance to his hypnotic advance.

It was a long, long moment. Mr Dawlish did not stir. He stayed looking down at the river, into which his friend had just disappeared.

Then he turned up towards the Promenade, and walked slowly back to the Devereux.