The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 7

DISCREET ENQUIRIES

‘Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.’

Oscar Wilde

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‘Well, here is a thing and a very pretty thing,’ said Dame Beatrice to her son who was breakfasting with her. ‘A pity Laura is not here. An accomplished swimmer might be very useful in helping me to deal with this very pretty thing.’ She handed a letter across the table. Sir Ferdinand studied it.

‘A girl drowned by swimming on an outgoing tide?’ he said. ‘The writer thinks it unlikely that she would have done such a thing, but I note that he does not say it is impossible. Holidaymakers take these foolish risks, as he admits.’

‘You will be leaving after lunch and Laura will not be back here for another fortnight. I am at leisure and I feel inclined to look into this matter. The writer thinks the drowned girl was involved with a man.’

‘Girls always are involved with a man. It’s what girls and men are created for. What possible interest can this particular case have for you? The writer says that the verdict at the inquest was clear and undisputed.’

‘It seems to me that, although he does not say it in so many words, he suspects that the girl was murdered.’

‘Well, girls on holiday are quite liable to pick up a wrong ’un, I suppose, but drowning fatalities are always a bit tricky. Very difficult to prove anything unless there is definite evidence of foul play.’

‘What are you proposing to do with yourself this morning?’

‘Oh, golf at Brockenhurst, I think. What time lunch?’

‘When you like.’

‘Let’s say one-thirty, then. I’m dining this evening with Radcliffe, so I have plenty of time. I shan’t need to hurry away from here this afternoon.’

When he had left her, Dame Beatrice read Adrian Kirby’s long letter again.

‘We hope it is not too presumptuous of us to ask your help,’ Adrian had written, ‘but our lawyer told us that you were probably the only person who could get to the bottom of this mystery, for mystery it most certainly is. We are convinced, my wife and I, from all that we know of Camilla Hoveton St John, that she had far too much sense of self-preservation and ordinary commonsense, too, to have done anything so foolish as to swim on an outgoing tide on this dangerous part of the coast. We feel that if only we could trace her movements after she and her suitcase left the cottage… ’ There followed several pages of explanation. Dame Beatrice perused them carefully for the third time. Then she went to the telephone, rang Adrian’s number and promised to meet him at his London flat on the following day.

There was no doubt whatever about the warmth of his reply. He was more than grateful, he said, that Dame Beatrice should be willing to interest herself in the matter and that his wife would be delighted to provide her (and anybody she chose to accompany her) with a bed for the night. Dame Beatrice assured him that that would not be necessary, since her chauffeur could easily make the double journey in a day. It was then arranged that Adrian and Miranda would be ready to receive her at any time after two in the afternoon.

‘Camilla was a very foolish girl,’ said Miranda sadly, when the visitor had been admitted to the flat and was settled in an armchair.

‘But her foolishness did not include being foolish enough to bathe on an outgoing tide,’ said Adrian. ‘Our friend Colin Palgrave tried it once and had great difficulty in getting back to the shore and Colin is a powerful swimmer. No, poor little Camilla died because somebody drowned her. According to the medical evidence given at the inquest, she was not a virgin. I think, therefore, that she was raped by one of the men she was in the habit of picking up, and then drowned by him so that she should not tell the tale. My main reason for wanting an enquiry, Dame Beatrice, is so that some other young girl shall not suffer the same fate at the hands of this monster. Such creatures don’t stop at a solitary victim. One has only to read the papers.’

‘As I understand the situation, proof of murder is going to be very difficult to come by,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘unless, also as you say, the person tries again.’

‘The person? You mean the man.’

‘Not necessarily. I admit that if murder has indeed been committed, a man is the more probable suspect, but I prefer to keep an open mind. Murder by a jealous wife or fiancée is by no means unknown. You see, if you are right and murder has been committed, the likeliest thing is that Miss Hoveton St John.was not drowned on an outgoing tide at all, but when the sea, as such, was perfectly safe for a swimmer. I am going on the assumption, at present, that you are right; that murder has been committed. If so, I think the body was left in the sea for the tide to turn and carry it away. If this was so, the murderer must have hoped that it would fetch up at some point on the coast a long way from Saltacres village.’

‘But that,’ said Miranda, ‘could involve Colin Palgrave. There is no doubt he went swimming with Camilla on the night she failed to return to the cottage.’

‘But she did return to the cottage,’ said Adrian. ‘She came back to collect her suitcase.’

‘We don’t know that she did. I think it far more likely that she went back to the cottage while the rest of us were with Colin at the pub and took it away then.’

‘I can’t understand what he was doing to have to go upstairs and downstairs at all. If he came back to collect his things, well, they were all in the parlour, where he had always slept until Morag and Cupar turned up,’ said Adrian.

‘He may have wanted to change his clothes without disturbing Morag.’

‘Morag wasn’t there, and he wouldn’t have bothered about Cupar.’

‘Do we know Morag wasn’t there? – Oh, yes, of course we do. I heard her close the front door when she came back from her stroll, and that was some time after I’d seen Colin leaving.’

‘How long a time?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘I couldn’t say. I’d gone back to bed and I suppose I had gone to sleep. I don’t think there could have been much of an interval, though.’

‘Did Mrs Lowson know you had heard her come in?’

‘I don’t suppose so. I thought it might have been Colin back again – he had a key—’

‘He wouldn’t have needed it,’ said Adrian. ‘He told me, when I went over to Saltacres to see him after – after it happened – that he had not closed the front door behind him for fear of waking us up.’

‘You thought it might have been Mr Palgrave come back,’ said Dame Beatrice to Miranda. ‘What made you conclude that it was Mrs Lowson?’

‘First, because she closed the front door with quite a bang, whereas Colin had been very quiet, and, second, because I went to the top of the stairs and heard them – Morag and Cupar – talking. He said she had been out a long time and she said she had walked to the windmill to see it by moonlight. That was all I heard before I went back to bed.’

‘Where would Mr Palgrave have gone when he went upstairs?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, into Camilla’s room.’

‘Which means that he knew she was not likely to come back, do you mean?’

‘He certainly wouldn’t have gone in if he’d known she was likely to find him there,’ said Adrian. ‘The wretched – sorry! – the girl absolutely haunted the poor chap – pursued him, don’t you know. He was scared to death of her. I can’t think why he went for that bathe.’

‘However, it seems that he did and that they walked towards the sea together that night. The moon is the goddess of maidens. It is also apt to be a powerful aphrodisiac,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, I expect they only went for a swim,’ said Miranda. ‘Colin must have found it very uncomfortable if he tried to sleep in his car.’

‘I think I had better have a word with Mrs Lowson,’ said Dame Beatrice.

From Adrian’s description of its situation, the cottage at Saltacres was easy enough to find and Morag was in. Dame Beatrice produced her official card.

‘Oh, yes, come in,’ said Morag. ‘I think you have met my husband before. He will be back shortly. He has just gone into the village to get some fishing-tackle. Please sit down, Dame Beatrice. Adrian Kirby told us that he would try to get in touch with you. It is good of you to take an interest, but I don’t see that there is anything anybody can do. The verdict at the inquest was quite clear and the police were satisfied with it. I know what the Kirbys think, but, after all, even the most sensible girls do foolish things at times, and I would not have called Camilla St John a sensible girl.’

‘No?’ said Dame Beatrice, stemming the flow of prattle and wondering why Morag was so nervous. ‘Tell me what you know of her. Had you a long acquaintance with her?’

‘No, indeed. She was here when we arrived, but I had never met her before and my husband and I had been here no time at all before she – before it happened.’

‘Women size one another up very quickly. What did you make of her?’

‘Nothing much, though I was told that she was man-mad. That sort always run into trouble sooner or later.’

‘To put it bluntly, Mrs Lowson, I gather that you do not entirely dismiss what I take to be Mr Kirby’s opinion.’

‘That she was murdered? Oh, I can’t believe that! The most I would say is that she met somebody the rest of us did not know, went swimming with him and that he dared her or enticed her into swimming when the tide was going out, a thing which, left to herself, she never would have done.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, obviously she got into difficulties and when the man found that he couldn’t save her, I think he panicked and sheered off.’

‘I see. What I find difficult to understand is why either of them bathed on an outgoing tide at all. Miss Hoveton St John knew the dangers and one would think that she could have convinced the man of them.’

‘Girls are very silly where men are concerned, and Camilla, from what I saw of her, would have risked her life to get hold of one. Oh, here comes Cupar,’ said Morag, obviously relieved.

Cupar Lowson was red-haired, rubicund, the round-faced, cherubic type to which some Lowland Scots belong. He came from Fife, he had told Dame Beatrice when they met after one of her lectures, but she decided that, far back, one of his ancestors had been numbered among the marauding Danes who had harried Northumbria and may have moved over the Border later in history.

He greeted Dame Beatrice with the utmost cordiality and reminded her that they had met in Edinburgh.

‘I remember being particularly impressed by your theories as to the psychological reasons for infanticide,’ he said pleasantly.

‘Including infants of just under twenty-one years of age?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Ah, you’ve been in touch with Adrian and Miranda Kirby. But surely they’ve got a bee in their bonnet?’

‘That remains to be seen. However, the death of a young girl is always more of a tragedy than one can contemplate unmoved, and no doubt the Kirbys were fond of the child.’

‘I don’t think Adrian was,’ said Morag, ‘if you ask my opinion.’

‘Well, at any rate, I received a most interesting letter from him. Whether he has convinced me that the girl’s death was no accident is another matter entirely.’

‘I don’t see how any further enquiry can help clear things up,’ said Lowson. ‘The verdict at the inquest was clear enough.’

‘I know you saw little of the girl while she was with you, but what impression did you form of her?’

‘The same impression as I formed when we had her in my hospital about eighteen months ago. She had had a bit of a knock from a car – nothing very serious – and we took her in for observation, so I had a look at her as a matter of course. She tried to get on my list when I was taken into partnership by my father after I’d qualified, but I wasn’t having any. I knew she’d be everlastingly in the surgery if I took her on. I told her I had got my full quota of N.H. patients and that I didn’t take private cases. Both stories were lies, but I made her swallow them. I had a job to convince her. She was a very persistent young lassie. No doubt the Greeks had a word for her.’

‘She was the complete man-chaser,’ said Morag. ‘Miranda told me about her.’

‘But hardly a man-trap,’ said her husband, grinning. ‘A skinny, leggy, untidy little creature, I thought her.’

‘She was a menace,’ said Morag.

‘She only needed some fellow who’d stand no nonsense. If such had married her, the lassie would have been well enough. He’d have made her eat regular meals, for one thing, and filled her out a bit.’

‘It would be interesting to find out what happened to her suitcase,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘According to something Mr Kirby mentioned in his letter to me, the police are interested in it and it seems doubtful whether Miss St John herself took it out of the cottage while the rest of you were at the public house, or whether Mr Palgrave took it. Mr Palgrave, again according to Mr Kirby, suffered some harassment from the police on this score, but they seem to have satisfied themselves that it was not in his possession. However, I shall make my own enquiries. I understand he stayed at The Stadholder in Stack Ferry.’

Dame Beatrice approved of The Stadholder – Adrian had mentioned in his letter that Palgrave had stayed there. She asked whether they could let her have a room and one for her chauffeur. As it happened, they had received a cancellation that very morning. Dame Beatrice mentioned that a young acquaintance of hers, a Mr Palgrave, had stayed at the hotel recently.

‘Ah, yes, Mr Palgrave vacated his room a few days ago. Your man could have that, if agreeable to you.’

Dame Beatrice inspected the room, looked at the very narrow bed and the Spartan furnishings and made her opening gambit.

‘Mr Palgrave did not have his wife with him, then,’ she observed. She learned (not at all to her surprise!) that Mr Palgrave had been alone during his stay except for two men who had merely joined him in the bar. They had never set eyes on either of them before. One had slumped down as though he was very tired and from the dust on his shoes (the sharp-eyed receptionist observed) they concluded that he had walked a considerable distance. He certainly had not come by car.

As the way to the room which was now allotted to her chauffeur was reached by way of the public bar, and as, to get to the bar, the cash customers had to pass the receptionist’s counter, Dame Beatrice was certain that, wherever Camilla might have gone, it was not to join Palgrave at The Stadholder. She was shown her own room, a pleasant apartment on the first floor, and reflected that the next part of her task was likely to present difficulties. It would need to be carried out in Saltacres village and the problem would be to find somebody, preferably a native of the place, who would have something to report and who would be willing to talk to her. From what she knew of the oyster-like impenetrability of the inhabitants of this particular county, especially of this northern part of it, she thought that all further proceedings would be slow ones.

For a start she spent an hour or so during the afternoon in wandering around by the Stack Ferry quay. When she returned to the hotel it was to find her chauffeur seated sedately in the entrance vestibule reading a newspaper and waiting for orders. He rose.

‘George,’ she said, ‘could you get into conversation with a fisherman or a yachtsman and find out how the tides run on these coasts? I am wondering what happens to drowned bodies, but that need not be mentioned, although flotsam and jetsam of non-human origin would be in order as a subject of conversation. The stretch of coast I have in mind is from the bathing beach of this town round to the village of Saltacres.’

George came back with the report she had been expecting. From the Stack Ferry beach, which was to the west of the town, the tides set slantwise, coming in slightly from the west. The outgoing tide at Stack Ferry would carry flotsam round towards a village called Hallings, where the coast dipped southwards. It was impossible for anything put into the sea at Stack Ferry to fetch up at Saltacres. If it fetched up anywhere, it would be round Hallings way, and was unlikely to be washed offshore again, the outgoing tide being sluggish in those parts.

At Saltacres whatever went in on an outgoing tide was apt to come back again on the turn. There was the story of a small yacht which had slipped its moorings and which returned to them on the next tide. Whether the tale was apocryphal or not, Dame Beatrice did not know, but it indicated that Camilla Hoveton St John probably had been drowned at Saltacres and certainly not at Stack Ferry. There remained the question of when she had drowned, since between a yacht which must have remained afloat and a body which, for some time, would have been submerged, there was a difference, Dame Beatrice supposed.

In his letter, however, Adrian Kirby had referred to the visit he and Camilla had made in Palgrave’s car to Stack Ferry. There, in his eagerness to follow his own pursuits, he had lost track of the girl, and he had admitted that while she had been about her own devices she had most probably picked up an acquaintance who might have contacted her again at Saltacres, probably by arrangement rather than by chance.

‘I think we would have known about a man at Saltacres, though,’ Adrian had written, a statement which, from what she had been told about the girl, Dame Beatrice thought unduly optimistic unless some busybody had made a report which Adrian had not mentioned.

The more she thought about it, the more Dame Beatrice realised the kind of task which confronted her. If Camilla had drowned on the night when she swam with Palgrave, either her death was as accidental as the verdict at the inquest had claimed, or else Palgrave might be implicated, and very seriously implicated. That was a fact which had to be faced.

The tide-tables which she studied were not of much help, since it was not known exactly when Palgrave had given up his moonlight bathe and left Camilla still (presumably) enjoying hers. Even so little as half an hour, since they must have been swimming near enough to full tide, could have made all the difference between safe and dangerous bathing on that apparently treacherous coast.

Supposing, however, that Camilla, having removed her suitcase from the cottage while the rest of her party were enjoying Palgrave’s hospitality at the inn, had met some so far unidentified acquaintance and had gone off with him, she could have been drowned, either by accident or design, at an entirely different time from that which had been supposed.

In such a case, her movements between the time Palgrave had left her, and the time of her death, would have to be traced and accounted for. Dame Beatrice went to the police, produced her credentials and asked for their help.

They were courteous, acknowledged the difficulty and agreed that there was much in what she said. They gave her an account of their own so far unavailing efforts to find the suitcase, and admitted that they themselves were no longer completely satisfied by the findings of the coroner and his jury.

‘We’re keeping the case open, of course, madam, and shall continue to prosecute our enquiries into the whereabouts of the missing suitcase, but that’s about all we can do. If this Mr Palgrave, or the married couple he was staying with, know anything about it, they are not telling us. If she did go off with somebody, well, so far he hasn’t come forward, and, if there is any suspicion of foul play, he isn’t likely to. The chances are that the drowning happened just as the coroner indicated and that the girl herself deposited the suitcase earlier, intending to leave the cottage anyway when she knew that Mr Palgrave was determined to do so. In that case, the piece of luggage may be in some lock-up cubbyhole at the bus depot, or in a railway station left-luggage office. Without the ticket it’s going to be a long job finding it. If she was going off with a yachtsman – quite a likely thing in these parts – the suitcase could be on somebody’s boat unless the owner got wind-up when he heard of the girl’s death. In that case he may have dumped her bag in the sea and it could be halfway to Holland by now, if it hasn’t disintegrated.’

‘So much for that!’ said Dame Beatrice, and thanked them. She telephoned Laura.

‘Bathed in brilliant moonlight and knew about the tides?’ said that accomplished swimmer. ‘She wouldn’t have risked it. She could have seen whether the sea was coming in or going out, if there was bright moonlight. No marks of violence? You wouldn’t need to inflict any to drown a person in deep water. The kid was murdered. Wish I were with you!’