Death at the Jesus Hospital

22

Inspector Devereux was looking at his notes. Inspector Timpson was looking at his boots. Powerscourt was walking up and down. He hated failure. Johnny Fitzgerald had purloined the hotel wine list and was inspecting it with some interest. The constable was standing to attention in a corner. They could hear Sergeant Mark Vaughan before they could see him, his boots rattling across the Marine Hotel’s well-polished boards. Inspector Timpson was the first face he recognized.

‘Inspector Timpson, other Inspector, sirs, madam,’ he began, telling himself to present his news in an orderly fashion. The events might be dramatic, but there was no place for drama in the telling of them. ‘I believe the people in Estuary House have gone, Inspector Timpson, sir. There is a path from the side of the house leading down to the water that is so overgrown it is almost secret. At dusk or in the dark a man would be virtually invisible. The party from Estuary House have a yacht, sir. It is called Morning Glory and is normally moored in the harbour here on the East Portlemouth side across the water. It’s not there now. They have also contracted an experienced sailor called Nat Gibson who’s almost a professional boat captain. He left his house in Island Street about forty minutes ago. It is my belief, sir, that he will have picked up the Estuary House people at the Yacht Club landing stage just round the corner from this hotel.’

‘Does anybody know where they might have gone?’ Inspector Devereux felt they were back in the hunt now, some way behind the fox admittedly, but not out of contact altogether.

‘I haven’t told you the most important bit, sir.’ Sergeant Vaughan felt he had never had a more interested and interesting collection of listeners. ‘The Salcombe lifeboat, fully crewed, is at your service for this evening and however long it may take. They should be by the landing stage in five minutes’ time. They can take two people on board.’

‘Well done, young man, well done indeed.’ Powerscourt was now staring out of the window, up the harbour towards the open sea which lay a couple of miles away.

‘Sergeant Vaughan here is a local man, Inspector, Lord Powerscourt.’ Inspector Timpson had never known a case like it. It had started the afternoon before with an inquiry from the Met. Twenty-four hours later you were preparing to embark in a lifeboat in pursuit of some murdering villains who have hidden themselves away on your patch for months.

‘I’m sure the lifeboat coxswain will have an idea where they might go to, sir.’ Sergeant Vaughan was wondering if he might be one of the two people on the lifeboat. It was, in a manner of speaking, he thought, his lifeboat, as he had ordered it into action, but he suspected he might be too junior. ‘From here they could go down the estuary towards Kingsbridge if they wanted, but I don’t think they will. They’d be sailing into a channel they couldn’t get out of. They’d be trapped. I think they’ll head for the open sea. If they turn left at Prawle Point they could sail round the coast towards Dartmouth, or Torquay, or Exeter even. Go the other way and they could reach Plymouth fairly quickly. Dock the yacht, or leave Skipper Gibson to sail it home, and they could be on a train in a couple of hours.’

‘Could I suggest,’ Powerscourt was not going to be left out of the action this time if he could help it, ‘that Inspector Timpson, as the local man, and myself go on the lifeboat? Inspector Devereux, your expertise on the telegraph will be sorely needed here. We need to contact various other forces about possible railway escapes. Important information may also come in from South Africa. And in any case, apprehending the villains, if we do apprehend them, is only the beginning. The real interviews start when the suspects are back on dry land, not rolling up and down in the swell out on the open sea.’

Inspector Devereux laughed. ‘Very good, my lord. I would just like to ask Inspector Timpson if I could borrow Sergeant Vaughan while he is away. We need to contact the nearby lighthouses and suchlike places to keep watch. His local knowledge will be invaluable.’

‘Of course,’ said Inspector Timpson.

Powerscourt gave a name and a phone number to Inspector Devereux before he left. ‘Tell him it’s tonight. Suggest he leaves as soon as he can. God speed.’

Devereux whistled to himself when he read the name of the recipient. ‘Come on, Sergeant,’ he said to Mark Vaughan as he led the way upstairs to the telegraph room, ‘we’ve got work to do.’

Powerscourt and Inspector Timpson were ushered to their seats at the rear of the lifeboat with that careful air seamen have with landlubbers they suspect may be about to fall in. The William and Emma had a crew of twelve this evening, wearing their uniforms of dark grey trousers and jackets, their oars raised to the vertical position as they sidled up to the landing stage, now back in the water as they headed for the sea.

‘We’re after that big yacht, young Mark told me, sir,’ the coxswain, whose name was Robbie Barton, said to Powerscourt and the Inspector. Barton was a cheerful little man in his early thirties who worked as a fisherman by day. ‘You mightn’t think so, looking at this boat, that it could move quickly but it can. I’m sure we can make up some ground before we reach the English Channel.’

‘If you were a villain, trying to escape from justice,’ said the Inspector, ‘which way would you go once we reached the sea?’

‘I don’t rightly know. We don’t have to decide which way to turn yet.’

They were past East Portlemouth now, little more than a collection of cottages, and were heading towards Mill Bay, a small beach, on their left. The wind was growing stronger. There was a full moon, only visible occasionally through the cloud cover. Powerscourt was shivering with cold. The lifeboatmen were unaffected, pulling vigorously at their oars. As they passed the remains of Fort Charles and Salcombe Castle on the right-hand side of the harbour, the moon cleared for a couple of minutes. ‘There she is!’ a young lifeboat man at the prow shouted. ‘She’s just up there by South Sands. By God, she’s lovely to look at, that yacht.’

Johnny Fitzgerald had persuaded one of the waiters that it was vital for the success of the operation that he, the waiter, should open one of the hotel’s bottles of Chateau Lafite immediately. Johnny felt the Lafite would be wasted on the run-of-the-mill hotel guests with no knowledge of the great wines of Bordeaux. Refreshed by his first glass, he persuaded Lady Lucy to join him on a mission to Estuary House. They might find something useful, he said.

The lights were still blazing on all floors as they made their way round the back and in through the broken door. They started at the top and worked down. It seemed that the three men had separate rooms on the top floor. One was incredibly tidy, so tidy, Lady Lucy discovered, because all the clothes and other possessions had been removed. It looked, she said to Johnny, as if there were only two of them now. The other bedrooms showed signs of hasty departure, the odd sock or jumper left lying on the floor. The biggest room, they decided, must have belonged to Wilfred Allen, if that was his name. There was a powerful telescope by the window, pointing out to sea. Johnny Fitzgerald showed Lady Lucy how the top half of the window had been altered so you could point the device upwards to stare at the stars as easily as you could stare at the sea. Lady Lucy felt a sudden moment of pity for the man who had looked through this lens, hiding in the dark in a tiny English town, thousands of miles from home and consoling himself with visions of the stars turning in their courses across the night sky.

‘Look, Lady Lucy, look here!’ Johnny Fitzgerald was pointing to a strange wooden implement sitting on a book-shelf next to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was about two and a half feet long, with a circular knob rather like a thistle at the end. ‘This must be one of those knobkerrie things that Francis was so excited about. And it’s here. This is probably the one used on the victims.’

‘How horrible,’ said Lady Lucy, staring at the thing as if was a malignant snake. ‘Let’s have a look at the floor below. That thing makes me feel quite sick.’ Johnny put it in his pocket.

On the lower level there was further evidence of a speedy departure. Even in a couple of months, it seemed, people could accumulate an enormous amount of rubbish. Johnny was on his knees, examining a fragment of a letter or a note that had missed the waste-paper basket. ‘More police and a private investigator called Lord Powerscourt coming from London early this evening,’ he read, ‘to be here about seven o’clock.’ Johnny read it twice and handed it to Lady Lucy.

‘What do you think of this?’ he said.

‘My goodness! It looks like a note sent to the people here.’ Lady Lucy paused for a moment and looked carefully at Johnny. ‘Surely it can only have come from across the road? Wilfred Allen must have had an informant inside the Marine Hotel. That’s why they left before we got here.’

‘Come on, Lady Lucy,’ Johnny was running towards the stairs that led to the back door, ‘it’s time to find out.’

The men in the lifeboat had fallen into a deep rhythm now. They looked as if they could row for ever. The moon cleared once more as the William and Emma passed the Pound Stone. Powerscourt suddenly realized that a noise had stopped. Since they left the harbour the principal sound had been the oars dipping in and out of the water and the occasional command of the coxswain. But there had been another sound, coming from further up the channel which he now realized must have been the engine of the Morning Glory. They could see the yacht just ahead, not moving now with the engine turned off, nestling in the tiny bay beside South Sands a few hundred yards away. The yacht’s sails were being hoisted, Nat Gibson scurrying around the little ship.

‘We have to be careful in these waters,’ Robbie Barton the lifeboat coxswain said to Powerscourt and the Inspector. ‘Over there, a mile or so away on the other side of the channel, is the Bar, a spit of sand that can be treacherous in the wrong conditions. Many a vessel has come to grief there. They say, Inspector, Lord Powerscourt, that this is the bar Tennyson was thinking of when he wrote his famous poem. He’s said to have spent time in Salcombe. “Sunset and evening star, / And one clear call for me! / And may there be no moaning of the bar, / When I put out to sea.”’

Johnny Fitzgerald and Lady Lucy found Horace Ross, manager of the Marine Hotel, in the dining room, keeping a close eye on his waiters. Johnny beckoned him aside into the room reserved for the police.

‘Whose handwriting is this, pray?’ he asked, waving the scrap of paper at Ross’s face. The manager of the Marine looked at it closely.

‘Why, it’s my head porter’s writing, man by the name of Mills, Timothy Mills. What of it?’

‘Simply this, Mr Ross. We found this piece of paper on the floor in Estuary House. It looks as if the recipient was trying to tear the message into pieces and drop them into the waste-paper basket, but he ran out of time. If you read it carefully you will see that it looks as if your Timothy Mills has been sending messages to the enemy, as it were. Could you summon him here for a little conversation, do you think? Now? This minute?’

At Powerscourt’s suggestion the lifeboat coxswain had brought the William and Emma to within fifty yards of the Morning Glory. The men stopped rowing as Powerscourt rose to his feet. The beach seemed to be glistening in the moonlight.

‘Mr Allen, I should like to speak to you! My name is Powerscourt,’ he shouted across the water between the two vessels. Powerscourt had suggested that they should not get too close in case of gunfire.

There was no reply. Nat Gibson seemed to have completed his work with the sails and was returning to the tiller.

‘Mr Allen!’ Powerscourt tried again. The lifeboat crew stared as if spellbound by the sirens as a head, then a trunk, then finally a whole person emerged very slowly from the inner cabin of the yacht. The one eye and the red eye patch seemed to Powerscourt to shriek defiance to the world.

‘I am Allen,’ the man said, glaring at the William and Emma with his one eye. ‘I know about your activities, Powerscourt. What do you want of me?’

‘You must know perfectly well what we want of you, Mr Allen. The police and myself would like to question you about three recent murders carried out on your instructions.’

Allen laughed. ‘Are you asking me to give myself up, you fool? I have been in Salcombe all the time for the last three months and I can prove it. You are very stupid indeed if you think I am going to be convicted of anything at all.’

‘But what of your associates? Your bearded colleague who travelled here second class to murder your enemies?’

‘I have to tell you, Powerscourt, your attentions are becoming very unwelcome. You traced me to this little town. Now you are following me around in that ridiculous wooden boat. You are annoying me, I tell you. I came here to carry out a mission. That mission is now complete. I advise you now to drop the matter, to abandon your inquiries. You may hope to place me in the dock. I tell you that I will never stand in the dock. You hope to beat me. I tell you that you will never beat me. I am going below now. You will never see me again. Gibson, let’s move out of here as fast as we can. Goodbye, Powerscourt. It may interest you to know that while you may have troubled me, your activities in my case were like a fly trying to wound an elephant.’

Ten minutes later, with the wind rising and the shelter of the estuary losing its power, the Morning Glory had pulled well away from the lifeboat. Neither Powerscourt nor the Inspector could see any trace of the Bar. But Robbie assured them that they were past it now. Dimly ahead, he could see the bulk of Bolt Head which marked one side of the end of the long estuary and the beginning of the English Channel. Now then, he said to himself, which way is the Morning Glory going to turn? As the cloud lifted again they could see her, two sails aloft, heading straight ahead.

‘She ain’t out of the estuary yet, not proper,’ said Robbie Barton. ‘She’s got to pass Prawle Point on the other side before she’s really out in the open sea.’

The stereotype for a head porter would be a tall figure, well over six feet in height, solidly built, possibly wearing a top hat, dispensing taxis and greetings by the front door of one of London’s great hotels like the recently opened Ritz halfway along Piccadilly. Timothy Mills, head porter of the Marine Hotel, Salcombe, was just over five feet six inches tall and as thin as a whippet. He looked defiant when Johnny Fitzgerald showed him the slip of paper from Estuary House.

‘This is your handwriting, I believe,’ said Johnny.

‘It is. I’m sorry if I’ve done the wrong thing. My wife’s been ill, so very ill, you see, and I needed the money for the doctor’s bills. You’re not going to arrest me, are you? I couldn’t bear to leave Bertha on her own.’

‘I’m not going to arrest you, Mr Mills. I’m sorry to hear about your wife. The best thing would be if you could tell us everything you did for the Estuary House people and everything you know about where they’ve gone.’

‘Well now, my main job,’ said Mills, ‘was to tell them when anybody was making inquiries about them, and sending notes to Nat Gibson about that boat over the way. Oh, I nearly forgot.’ Mills, having cheered up a little on hearing he was not to be arrested, looked really anxious all of a sudden. ‘I had to go into Plymouth for them shortly after they arrived.’

‘And what did you have to do in Plymouth, Mr Mills?’

‘I didn’t quite know what to make of it, actually. I had to buy a uniform for the young man.’

‘What sort of uniform?’

There was a pause and then the words were pulled out like a bad tooth. ‘A policeman’s uniform.’

‘God in heaven,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘What on earth did they want with a policeman’s uniform?’

‘Well, sir,’ said Mills, ‘there’s only the old one gone off on the boat. The young one’s still here, or if he’s not, maybe he’s going round pretending to be a police officer.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Johnny and shot off to the telegraph room to consult with Sergeant Vaughan.

Sharp Tor, Starehole Bay, Shag Rock, Pig’s Nose, Ham Stone, Gammon Head, Mew Stone, Robbie Barton called out the names of the landmarks along the coast as they passed. There was no sign of the William and Emma changing over to sail yet. The coxswain told his passengers that they probably made better speed with the oars. The wind was rising now, changing direction, blowing hard towards the shore. The moon came out and stayed out for a couple of minutes. Powerscourt saw that the contest was deeply unfair. The odds were stacked in favour of Morning Glory, even with the wind against her. She was built for speed and for grace. The William and Emma was built to be solid, to keep afloat however bad the storms, to reach the wrecks off the Devon shore and bring the passengers and the seamen home to safety. It was a dray horse against an Olympic sprinter.

‘She’s not turning to the left or the right, Inspector, my lord. No late supper in Plymouth or Dartmouth by the look of it.’

‘My God,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’ve been a fool! Why didn’t I think of it earlier. Of course she’s going straight out to sea. Once she’s three miles from the coast she’s outside British territorial waters altogether, and outside British jurisdiction. Inspector Timpson here couldn’t arrest them even if we could catch them.’

‘Well,’ said Robbie, ‘she’s not three miles out yet. She’s got some way to go. But we’d better start praying for a miracle if we’re ever to catch up with her.’

It took Sergeant Vaughan less than half an hour to find William James Strauss, disguised as a police constable, making his way very slowly along the road from Salcombe to Kingsbridge where the railway connected you to a wider world. Lady Lucy took the young man into the Imperial Suite away from the police uniforms. Johnny Fitzgerald had been reunited with his bottle of Chateau Lafite.

‘You must be William James Strauss,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘And the older gentleman is a Mr Allen, a Wilfred Allen, is that right?’

‘People call me Jimmy,’ said the young man, speaking with a strong South African accent, ‘and the older man, as you put it, is Wilfred Allen.’

‘And there was a third person, I think, was there not? Elias Harper, if my memory serves me. What became of him?’

The young man turned pale. ‘Do I have to answer that?’

‘You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to,’ Lady Lucy replied. ‘I’m not a policeman, as you can see. Not tall enough for a start.’

Jimmy Strauss managed a ghost of a smile. ‘Can I tell you what happened? What’s been going on, I mean. I feel it’s all bottled up inside me.’

‘Of course,’ said Lady Lucy.

The flares lit up the night sky as if some celestial switch had been turned on. Half a mile away from the lifeboat, directly across the path of the Morning Glory, lay the nine thousand tons of HMS Sprightly, one of His Majesty’s destroyers based in Plymouth. There was a roar of gunfire and Powerscourt could see the splashes a couple of hundred yards to the left of the yacht.

‘Morning Glory!’ said a voice trained to rule the waves. ‘His Majesty’s Ship Sprightly, at your service. You are to turn round and return to Salcombe at once.’

The voice from the yacht did not have the same carrying power but the crew of the William and Emma heard the words territorial waters and three miles out mentioned at least once.

‘Did you bring a measuring tape with you, Morning Glory? Don’t talk to us about territorial waters,’ the voice replied. ‘Round here territorial waters are what the Royal Navy says they are. I repeat, turn around and return to Salcombe.’

This time the key word in the reply seemed to be international law.

‘Round here, I repeat, international laws are the same as territorial waters, Morning Glory. They are what the Royal Navy says they are. Turn around, I say.’

There was another complaint from the Morning Glory. There was a brief silence from HMS Sprightly. Then there was another roar of gunfire, the shells dropping this time fifty yards on either side of the yacht. Powerscourt thought the spray must have reached the boat.

‘Turn around, Morning Glory. If you want to see another morning, start turning about right now. Next time I’ll sink you. My boys need some shooting practice.’

Another burst of flares lit up the scene. There was another bellow from HMS Sprightly.

‘Salcombe Lifeboat William and Emma! Stay where you are! Our coxswain wants a word!’

The Morning Glory was turning round. And at the stern a man was climbing down the steps into the little rowing boat being towed behind her. Nat Gibson, it seemed, had had enough. The little boat set off towards the William and Emma. Wilfred Allen, the man come from Johannesburg to Devon, was on his own now.

‘It all started with that battle long ago,’ said Jimmy Strauss, ‘when the three of them left him for dead. A local woman found Mr Allen several days after and nursed him back to health. It took a long time. She thought her gods must have saved him from death. By the time he was well, and his eye had healed out, the other three had all gone back to England.’

‘Why did he stay in South Africa? Why didn’t he come back?’

‘His parents were dead. He told me he wanted a new start. And of course he became very rich through the gold and diamonds. He became one of the biggest traders in the world.’

‘Did he indeed. But why did he wait thirty years before taking his revenge?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘I think it had to do with his wife. She was ill for years and years with one of those wasting diseases that doesn’t actually kill you, but just leaves you weaker and weaker all the time. He would never have left her, Mr Allen. She only died last year. Three days after the funeral he saw Sir Rufus walking down the street in Johannesburg. He told me, Mr Allen, that he didn’t know he had that much rage in him. Everything about the battle, the promises beforehand that they would all look after each other, it all came back and flooded him like a tidal wave. That’s when he decided to come back and give the three of them their just deserts.’

Lady Lucy thought she would take a chance. She had no evidence at all for what she was about to say but she thought it might be the truth, or close to the truth.

‘But he didn’t actually kill any of them himself, Mr Allen, I mean. The other man did that, didn’t he? Mr Elias Harper, the man who travelled here in second class.’

‘How did you know that? Harper did the dirty work all right. Mr Allen was tucked up in Estuary House all the time.’

‘And where is Mr Harper now?’ Lady Lucy suddenly remembered the drowned man, the corpse that nobody claimed, the body never reported missing. ‘He went for a sail, didn’t he, Jimmy?’

Jimmy nodded.

‘And he didn’t come back?’

Jimmy shook his head.

Another voice boomed out across the English Channel from HMS Sprightly, that of Captain Fruity Worthington himself this time.

‘Francis?’

‘Fruity?’

‘How are you, my friend. Lady Lucy well I trust?’

‘Very well indeed, thank you, Fruity. Thank you so much for coming along. You’ve saved our bacon.’

‘Don’t mention it. Pity we couldn’t sink her, mind you. We’re going to hang around until Morning Glory’s tucked up inside that harbour. No point in taking any chances, what?’

‘Thank you again, Fruity. We must return to the harbour to talk to the fellow when he’s back in Salcombe.’

Morning Glory was just about to go past the William and Emma. The vessels were less than thirty yards apart. Allen was holding some long thin object in his left hand. Nat Gibson, the hired skipper, had come aboard the lifeboat, saying he didn’t mind sailing yachts for people who might not be one hundred per cent reliable, but he was damned if he was going to be shot at by his own side.

‘Morning Glory!’ shouted Powerscourt as the yacht slipped past. There was a volley of oaths in reply.

‘Damn you, Powerscourt! Damn you to hell!’ Allen yelled with hatred in his voice. ‘If you’re trying to ruin me, two can play at that game!’

Powerscourt could just see Allen raise the long thin object to his shoulder and start firing a heavy rifle. It was difficult shooting in the swell but Allen was lucky. One shot hit the man sitting next to Powerscourt in the shoulder and the blood spurted out on to Powerscourt’s jacket. Another one seemed to have hit the lifeboat below the waterline as seawater was now pouring into the bottom of the boat. Soon it was over their boots and rising fast. Powerscourt left the sailors to deal with the leak. A very tall man appeared and rigged up a temporary bandage on the wounded shoulder. Powerscourt and Inspector Timpson dragged their pistols out of their pockets and began raking the Morning Glory with gunfire. There was a scream to tell them that one of their bullets must have struck home. But the yacht was still under control, turning away from the William and Emma and heading for the Prawle Point side of the estuary. When the Morning Glory was out of range, Powerscourt realized that the damage to the lifeboat was far greater than he had thought.

The boat was sluggish. His knees were nearly submerged. Only four men were left at the oars. Two others were trying out various different shapes of cork plug to fill the hole where the bullet must have passed through. The rest of them were bailing desperately as fast as their arms would go. Powerscourt was told by the man next to him that the bullet had landed on the overlap between two planks and thus forced a larger hole than it would have done if it had struck in the middle of the board. Powerscourt and the Inspector pulled their shoes off and began to bail. The level still seemed to be rising.

‘Should we row, or bail, Coxswain?’ Powerscourt shouted.

‘Row!’ came the reply, as Barton manoeuvred another piece of wood, fished out of a vast locker at the stern, bent into a slight curve to fit over the plug where the bullet had passed through, on to the damaged section of the boat. Nat Gibson had taken the tiller as Powerscourt and the Inspector took their places side by side on the oars. Gibson seemed to be steering, not towards Salcombe, but towards the nearest point of land.

The William and Emma was making virtually no headway. Only the wind, strengthening again and blowing towards the shore, moved them along very slowly. Powerscourt wondered if for him, too, this was going to be his last case. He would die, not at the Reichenbach Falls, but here, drowned in the English Channel a couple of miles from the shore. He tried to calculate the distance to dry land and thought it might just as well be the Atlantic Ocean, he could never swim that far. He pulled at his oar, trying to capture the rhythm of the other oarsmen. He wondered about Lucy, hearing of her husband’s death in a strange hotel on the coast of Devon, her children far away.

Inspector Miles Devereux leant back in his chair in the telegraph room at the Marine Hotel. ‘Some people in South Africa are working late on our behalf.’ He showed Sergeant Vaughan the cables piling up in front of him. ‘Johannesburg reports that he was one of the richest men in South Africa. They know from the tickets that he left the country in the middle of December bound for Southampton. They’ve even got on to his yacht club in Durban, for heaven’s sake. He was a keen yachtsman, our friend Allen. He moored a whole series of boats there, all with the same name, Cyclops, after the blinded giant in the Odyssey. The latest was Cyclops Four.’

‘Have they said anything about how he lost his eye at all, sir?’ Sergeant Vaughan asked.

‘They haven’t said a word about that, Sergeant. Maybe they don’t know.’

‘I was wondering, sir, about the men on duty at the entrances to the town. Should we stand them down?’

Inspector Devereux paused for a moment. ‘I think not,’ he said finally. ‘Think about it. We’re engaged on a triple murder inquiry here. We’ve got an awful lot of guesses but very few facts so far. Keep them there for the time being.’

Sergeant Vaughan cycled off into the night to tell his men to remain at their posts until further notice.

After ten minutes’ rowing, Powerscourt felt his palms and his shoulders beginning to ache.

‘How much further to go?’ he asked the back in front of him.

‘It’s not the distance that’s the problem, my lord. It’s this bloody leak. It’s getting worse, not better. It must be about two miles or so from here to the coast.’

‘That’s about half the length of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race,’ his neighbour on the oars chimed in. ‘They do that in about twenty or twenty-five minutes.’

‘But their boats aren’t full of bloody water, are they? They’re not actually sinking, like we are.’

‘One of them did sink,’ chipped in Nat Gibson from the tiller. ‘Cambridge sank in eighteen fifty-nine, I think it was. Bloody boat was too light, she shipped water from the start, went down just after Barnes Bridge.’

The water inside the William and Emma was a third of the way up the sides now. Inspector Timpson, a God-fearing member of Trinity Church in Kingsbridge, was saying his prayers very softly. He’d done the Lord’s Prayer twice and was halfway through the Creed. Powerscourt thought he would be eligible with these memories for a place at the Jesus Hospital where the ability to recite those prayers was one of the few requirements needed for entry. A short man with a slight limp came to take Nat Gibson’s place at the tiller. Gibson went for a conference with the men inspecting the pieces of wood by the leak.

‘We can’t risk it,’ said Coxswain Barton at last. ‘I would like to nail one of these pieces of wood into the area around the leak. But putting in the nails might split the side right open. We’d be full of water and sinking inside a minute. We’re going to have to wrap the plug in oilskin and try to hold it in place by other means. And we’re going to have a major attempt at getting this water out of the boat or we’ve had it.’

One man sat with his back to the rowers’ bench and pressed with his feet against a piece of wood placed over the hole.

‘Hang on in there, Jimmy,’ said Robbie Barton, ‘you could be there some time. We’ve got to bail as we’ve never bailed before.’

More containers were handed out. Only two men were left at the oars to give the boat some leeway. All the rest were pressed into service. Barton began shouting at them as if they were galley slaves of old.

‘One, two three, bail! One, two three, bail!’

Bend down, fill up, throw. Bend down, fill up, throw, bend down, fill up, throw, Powerscourt said to himself. It didn’t seem to be making much difference.

‘One, two, three, bail! One, two three, bail!’

Johnny Fitzgerald had gone back to Estuary House on his own. He made his way to the top floor and peered out into the night through the telescope on the top floor. He could see a few lights at East Portlemouth on the far side of the harbour and some more in the centre of town. But out to sea he could see nothing at all. None of the birds he loved so much were to be seen or heard, only the whisper of the sea. He thought of his friend out there in the English Channel. He remembered some of the adventures they had shared together. Rather like Lady Lucy, Johnny didn’t think his friend was really safe on his own during these investigations. He needed someone at his side, somebody to look after him.

After five minutes’ bailing, Powerscourt was sure their time was up. The water level didn’t seem to be going down at all. The valiant mariner stayed locked in position, his feet anchoring the piece of wood against the hole. Powerscourt didn’t think it could stop the flow but it should make it less. Then, just after the point where he was sure his arms were going to break, there was a shout from Nat Gibson.

‘Well done, lads,’ he cried, it’s going down. Keep it up! Keep it up!’

Powerscourt felt he wasn’t making his proper contribution to the evening’s entertainment. He was growing sluggish. He had lost the rhythm completely. Suddenly he heard voices in his head. It was the twins, Christopher and Juliet, and they were shouting at him. ‘Keep it up Papa,’ they cried happily, ‘keep it up.’ Powerscourt smiled and redoubled his efforts.

The clouds lifted suddenly and they could see the Morning Glory way over to their right on the Prawle Point side.

‘Great God, Robbie,’ cried Nat Gibson, ‘do you see where he’s heading? I did tell him about it on the way out but it can’t have sunk in.’

‘These are the worst possible conditions for the Salcombe Bar,’ said Robbie Barton, hurling yet more water out of his lifeboat. ‘An ebb tide and a strong onshore wind. Great God! Would your man hear if we shouted?’

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ said Nat Gibson, ‘not a chance.’

Everybody on board the William and Emma was watching as they bailed, hypnotized, as the Morning Glory sailed towards her doom. She was nearing Limebury Point where the sand bar starts. Inspector Timpson crossed himself and quoted from the poem: ‘But such a tide as moving seems asleep,/Too full for sound and foam/When that which drew from out the boundless deep/Turns again home.’

‘Tell me if I’m wrong, Jimmy,’ Lady Lucy smiled at the young man, ‘but I think it worked something like this. Mr Allen organized everything, the details of how to find the places, the train times and so on. Mr Harper did the actual killings, all of them.’

‘That’s right. Mr Allen hired a car and a driver some of the time to take him around. A great big car it was too. He sent it to Marlow and up to Norfolk so Elias Harper could get away from that school where he killed the bursar.’

‘And why are you all still here? You could have left Salcombe a long time ago, couldn’t you?’

‘We could have, but the next Durban boat doesn’t leave until next week. One of the ships had to go in for repairs, I think, so they lost a sailing.’

‘And why did you come to Salcombe in the first place? Why not hide away in a big city like London or Bristol?’

‘I’m not sure you’re going to believe this,’ said Jimmy, ‘but Mr Allen came here once as a child and liked it so much he decided to come back.’

‘Why didn’t you go with him, with Mr Allen? Why were you left here trying to escape disguised as a policeman?’

‘He said that if I was with him and he was caught, the police would assume I was guilty too, even though I hadn’t committed any crimes. He thought I’d have a better chance on my own.’

‘Tell me, Jimmy, is there a link of some sort between you and Mr Allen?’

There was a pause. Finally Jimmy said, ‘He’s my grandfather, Lady Powerscourt. My father died when I was very young so he’s more or less taken his place. I think he brought me along because he liked being with me, one of his own flesh and blood.’

The water level in the William and Emma dropped gradually while the men watched the drama by Salcombe Bar. The lifeboat had almost stopped moving now. The cloud had lifted again and the moon shone over the mouth of the Salcombe Estuary. The Morning Glory had about fifty yards left before she hit the bar. Several members of the William and Emma were praying now, their eyes tightly closed, their lips moving. Usually they were called out here after disaster struck. Now they were looking at disaster unfolding in front of them. Nat Gibson was leaning out over the side to get a better view. He told the crew that the yacht was carrying far too much sail. A long way behind them the grey bulk of HMS Sprightly maintained her watch over the proceedings. Then it happened. Morning Glory capsized. She keeled over very slowly like a drunken man. There was a tearing, screeching sound as if a mast or some of the rigging had broken free. There was one very long scream. There was no sign of the man aboard.

‘What should we do, in heaven’s name?’ asked Robbie Barton. ‘Should we head over there and see if we can find him?’

Nat Gibson was definite. ‘No, we shouldn’t. We’re in no fit state to rescue anybody. It’ll be all we can do to rescue ourselves.’

‘What would you say are the chances of his being alive?’ Inspector Timpson spoke very quietly.

‘Very small,’ said Nat Gibson. ‘Tiny. Many ships have been lost like that on the Salcombe Bar over the years. There have never been any survivors, never.’

Robbie Barton looked sad as he reorganized his men. No lifeboatman, trained to rescue people from the sea, gives up easily on what he regards as his primary duty. Half, including Powerscourt and the Inspector, were to row. The rest kept bailing. Robbie sent up two great flares to alert HMS Sprightly so she might be able to send out a rescue mission to the remains of the Morning Glory.

‘Twilight and evening bell,’ Nat Gibson was pronouncing an epitaph over the missing man, ‘And after that the dark!/And may there be no sadness of farewell,/When I embark.’

It took a long time for the William and Emma to limp into the harbour. They dropped Powerscourt and the Inspector at the Yacht Club landing stage and staggered off to their own quarters in the centre of the town. Inspector Timpson was assured that the local doctor, who treated everybody rescued by the William and Emma, would attend to the wounded shoulder. Powerscourt promised Robbie Barton fifty pounds for the repair of the boat.

Inspector Devereux’s prophecy on the train came true, but with only a few minutes to spare. The Chief Constable of Devon, Colonel St John Weston-Westmacott, arrived at the Marine Hotel shortly before ten o’clock, wearing a dinner jacket and a scarlet cummerbund. Inspector Devereux, as the senior officer present, briefed him on the proceedings so far. The colonel said ‘jolly good show’ to all and sundry, including the head porter who scarcely deserved it. They were all assembled in the reserve dining room. Jimmy Strauss had gone down to the seafront to await the return of his grandfather.

Very wet and rather pensive, Inspector Timpson and Powerscourt came back, water squelching from their boots. Jimmy Strauss stayed behind at the waterfront, praying for a miracle that never came. The Inspector delivered the news.

‘There is a chance that Allen might survive, but I very much doubt it.’

Normally it was Powerscourt who filled in the gaps and answered any remaining questions at the end of his cases. This time it was Lady Lucy who filled the company in on what she had learnt from Jimmy Strauss. Inspector Devereux reported on the further details that had been forwarded by the South African police. Elias Harper had been suspected of murder on no fewer than three occasions but there was never enough evidence for a conviction. Jimmy Strauss would be a very rich young man once the formalities had been carried out. Wilfred Allen had endowed one hospital in Johannesburg already and a school for the poor. The Inspector had also wired to the two other Inspectors, one in Maidenhead and the other in Norfolk, that their crimes had now been solved and they could regard the matter as closed.

‘I think you’ve all done jolly well,’ the Chief Constable said again. ‘Four murders solved, including the villain who was taken out in a boat and never returned. And to think the centre of the whole affair was here in Salcombe, and that the final action took place on the Salcombe Bar:“For though from out our bourn of Time and Place/The flood may bear me far./I hope to see my Pilot face to face/When I have crossed the bar.”’

Three days later the Powerscourts were eating breakfast in Markham Square. The case of the death in the Jesus Hospital, Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy in the train on the way back, had been one of the most unusual he had ever investigated. Not until the very very end, he said, had we known that we were on the right track. The whole case, so full of conjecture, might have disappeared in a puff of smoke at any moment. This morning Lady Lucy was opening her mail. He checked that her husband wasn’t looking as she pulled out a couple of sheets of paper and positioned them carefully behind the teapot. The correspondence came from Salcombe. Before they left she had asked Jimmy Johnston, Sergeant Vaughan’s estate agent friend, to send her details of substantial properties in and around the town. Well, here they were, a Georgian rectory in a neighbouring village, and a Victorian fantasy castle high up on the cliffs west of the town, with breathtaking views of the harbour and the estuary. She peered discreetly at the prices. My word, she thought, this place is nearly as expensive as London. But look at the view. Look at the ridiculous battlements and little towers in the Victorian extravaganza. Should she say anything to Francis? Probably not, she said to herself. No point in worrying him before things have been decided.

Francis was muttering into his Times. Lady Lucy thought she caught the words ‘bloody fools’ three times. At first she thought he was talking about the House of Lords. Then she realized he was talking about a cricket match. Slowly and carefully she placed the Salcombe properties back in their envelope.

The next and final piece of correspondence felt stiff inside its expensive envelope. Lady Lucy approved. She had always had a weakness for high-quality writing paper and stationery. Inside this one was an invitation. ‘Lady Hermione Devereux’, it said on the top line. Then in a slightly larger typeface ‘At Home’. Then ‘Devereux Hall, Southwick, Northamptonshire’.

Then ‘June 27th, 1910, 10 o’clock’. And then, the moment of glory, ‘Dancing’. Lady Lucy looked across at her husband. ‘What do you know of Devereux Hall, Francis?’

‘Huge pile, Lucy, slowly falling down for lack of money. There’s a lake there with an island in the middle. Very romantic, I should say, if you like that sort of thing.’

Powerscourt was well aware that his wife did like that sort of thing, as he put it. Come to that, he would have had to admit that he quite liked that sort of thing too.

‘What of it, Lucy? Are they offering guided tours? Charging coach parties to restore the family fortunes?’

‘Not so, my love, not so at all. They’ve invited us to a ball.’

‘Great God, Lucy, this must be the first time we’ve been invited out by one of my police Inspectors. When is this great event?’

‘It’s at the end of June. It must be round about the longest day of the year.’

‘It seems rather a long way to go, just for a couple of dances, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, but his eyes betrayed him.

‘Francis, how could you? Of course we’ll go.’ Lady Lucy sank into a kind of reverie. Beneath her feet she could feel the sprung floor of the ballroom. Around her glided beautiful people bedecked with tiaras and emeralds, their men wearing sashes of the military, medals shining on their chests. The air was filled with the perfume of the flowers. Strauss’s ‘Emperor’ waltz wrapped them in its rhythms, the dancers circling the floor in time with the music.

‘Oh, Francis, we must go. We can dance until the dawn and watch the sun come up from the island in the lake. It’ll be magnificent, a night to remember in the heart of England!’