The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 8

TWO INTERVIEWS

‘To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy.’

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

« ^ »

More to the point was the local press in the form of a young reporter from the Stack Ferry Gazette and Advertiser. It was this youth’s practice during the summer season to make a weekly round of the hotels in the town in search of possible celebrities who might grant him an interview.

Visiting yachtsmen were his daily prey, so that his chief haunts were the saloon bars of the Stack Ferry pubs and hotels, as well as the bars down by the harbour. He was also not averse to glancing through the current entries in hotel registers when he could cajole the desk clerk (female, of course, and young) to let him take a weekly look at them.

When he saw Dame Beatrice’s signature he lost no time in getting in touch with her. There came a polite tap on her door just as she was ready to go down to lunch on the third morning of her stay and a voice said:

‘The Gazette on the telephone, Dame Beatrice.’

‘And who or what is the Gazette?’

‘The local paper, madam.’

‘Ask him, her or them to call again when I’ve had my lunch. Two-thirty would be a convenient time.’

‘Very good, madam. I’ll let you know when they ring through.’

However, Dame Beatrice did not receive a telephone call, but a visit from the enterprising young man in person. They met in the lounge, which was otherwise deserted at that hour on a fine summer afternoon. He introduced himself, a self-confident but disarming, friendly youth, as Keith Dunlop.

He was accompanied by an older man who carried a camera.

‘I wonder, Dame Beatrice, whether you will be kind enough to grant me an interview for my paper? I expect you get pretty bored with this kind of thing, but we’d be most awfully grateful. We don’t often get people of your eminence staying in the town.’

‘I always beware of flatterers, Mr Dunlop.’

‘But you will let me talk to you, won’t you?’

‘There are conditions attached.’

‘Don’t say I mustn’t quote you.’

‘That was not what I meant. If I do as you wish, will you, in return, do something for me?’

‘Honoured, Dame Beatrice.’

‘Good. I regard that as a promise. Well, what do you want to know?’

‘I’ve dotted down a list of questions. First, would you mind if we took a few photographs?’

‘Warts and all? Oh, very well. I have seen your paper. The photography is excellent and, I hope, reliable.’

‘Reliable?’

‘Not so much touched up and embellished as to render the subjects unrecognisable by those who, for want of a better description (and we could well do with one) are known as the men in the street.’

Dunlop beckoned to the photographer, who was standing just inside the doorway of the lounge, and Dame Beatrice permitted herself to be photographed.

Dunlop’s attendant sprite, having secured his picture, or, rather, his half-dozen pictures taken from several angles and at varying distances, then took himself and his camera away, since the interview itself held no interest for him. His last sitters had been a well-known pop group, and, after them, a psychiatrist, however eminent, was very small beer. Less well-informed than Keith Dunlop, he did not know that she was also a famous criminologist, or his views about her importance might have been different. However, he was not to be blamed. Her name seldom appeared in the newspapers as a solver of murder mysteries. Like some other famous sleuths, she preferred to leave all the credit to the police, partly, of course, for her own safety. ‘Are you making a long stay, Dame Beatrice?‘ asked Dunlop, creasing back a fresh page in his shorthand notebook.

‘I hardly think so. I shall be here today and tomorrow. After that I may return to London for a time.’

‘I thought – I looked you up, of course – I thought there was an address in Hampshire.’

‘Mr Dunlop, I said I thought you could help me. I know the press are discreet. I have had reason many times to put my faith in their promises. If I tell you the reason I am here, will you undertake that not a word of it will appear openly, or by inference, innuendo, speculation or veiled suggestion, in your paper until I say the word?’

‘That drowning fatality at Saltacres? I covered that, you know.’

‘You are an extremely astute young man. Will you give me your promise?’

‘Of course. It sounds as though you don’t believe it was an accident.’

‘So far, I have no idea whether it was an accident or not. I have merely been asked to make some enquiries. But, first, your questions.’

The interview followed the usual course and Dame Beatrice answered in the usual stereotyped fashion until Dunlop had worked through his list of basic questions and dotted down his last few shorthand notes.

‘Thanks very much,’ he said, ‘that should work up into something worth while. We’ll Special Feature it, with photograph, so it won’t be out until next week, I’m afraid, and you may not still be here.’

‘I am not sure. As I told you, it is very doubtful. My plans depend upon circumstances which are not under my control and the importance or otherwise of which I cannot, at the moment, estimate.’

‘May I send a copy of the Gazette to your home address, then, when my article comes out?’

‘It would be most kind of you.’

‘The Stone House, Wandles Parva, Hampshire, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that is the address, although, again as I told you, when I leave here I may be in London for a bit. But the Stone House will always find me.’

‘Is the house stone-built?’

‘No, it is built of mellow brick. It is called the Stone House because in its vicinity is a Stone of Sacrifice, so called.’

‘Human sacrifice?’

‘I perceive a gleam in your eye. Yes, human sacrifice, if local legend is founded on fact.’

‘May I use that in my article?’

‘Why not? The legend is current around my area of the New Forest.’

‘Is there any story of haunted woods, sacred groves – anything of that sort?’

‘Not so far as I am aware, but embroider as you will.’

‘Well, that’s marvellous.’

‘For good measure, throw in that a distant ancestress of mine was reputed to be a witch.’

Dunlop looked at her sharp black eyes, beaky little mouth and clawlike, yellow hands and smiled.

‘Maybe the ancestry wasn’t all that far back,’ he said, ‘if what I’ve heard of you, both as a psychiatrist and a solver of murder mysteries, is true. Well, now, you said there was something I could do for you. I’d be glad to have a try.’

‘It is something well within your scope. It concerns this death by drowning which we mentioned earlier, that of the young woman named Camilla Hoveton St John.’

‘Oh, yes, I know. We covered the story pretty thoroughly and were lucky enough to get a snap of the girl which her friends took when they first got to Saltacres. Our photographer who was here a while ago blew it up and we gave it front page treatment.’

‘Ah, then you know the details so far as these are known, and you know what conclusions were arrived at by the coroner.’

‘You don’t mean the verdict wasn’t correct? You don’t mean it was suicide? – not – I say! I say! You don’t think it was murder, do you?’

‘Her friends think so. For myself, I have formed no opinion up to the present. I am merely conducting an investigation on their behalf. You will say nothing about all this?’

‘Dumb as an oyster, I promise you.’

‘I have had it suggested to me that, on the day she spent here, Miss St John picked up some man whom she met again, without her friends’ knowledge.’

‘And he drowned her? Could be, I suppose. The chances are that he was one of the summer visitors, a yachtsman, perhaps. He may be anywhere by now.’

‘A yachtsman? The police wondered about that. In that case, other yachtsmen may know of him.’

‘What makes her friends think that the verdict on the girl was wrong?’

Dame Beatrice explained and Dunlop whistled. ‘They might have something there,’ he said. ‘The undertow on an outgoing tide is notorious all around these coasts, but you say the girl knew about the tides and wouldn’t have taken any risks.’

‘I know only what I have been told.’

‘Well, I’ll see what I can find out. Thanks very much for seeing me and letting me in on this. Silent as the grave until you give me the all-clear.’

‘Yes, silent as the grave,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘ “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.” ’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The girl had no discretion in some matters.’

‘Oh? Oh, I see. Well, there are plenty like her in this day and age.’

‘How much I deplore that overworked expression!’

‘Eh? Oh, me, too. One hears the words so often, though, that they trip to the tip of the tongue.’

‘We are all lazy in some way or another. If we were not, people could not live with us. We should be too much for them. I myself have an intense repugnance to gardening. “When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”, my reaction is to let them go on doing so.’

‘All the same, you’re prepared to use your time and energy to do quite a bit of weeding in the case of this drowned girl. Why?’

‘Curiosity. It killed the cat, Mr Dunlop, and in the end it will probably kill me.’

Dame Beatrice drove over to Saltacres on the following morning with the intention of inviting the Lowsons to lunch with her at The Stadholder. Cupar had already arranged to go sailing with a yachtsman friend, but Morag accepted the invitation with an eagerness which indicated that she was glad not to be alone for the day. As it was she and not her husband whom Dame Beatrice really wanted to talk with, the arrangements suited all parties.

Seated side by side on the back seat of Dame Beatrice’s car, the two women exchanged casual chat and then Morag said,

‘We had some good news by this morning’s post. I don’t know whether we told you that Cupar’s father took him into partnership when he qualified? He died a few months ago and Cupar has now sold the practice and is going in for research, as he has always wanted to do.’

‘How interesting. Research into what?’

‘Heart surgery. He thinks another breakthrough is on the way, and he wants to be one of the team.’

‘How interesting.’

‘Yes. It means moving from London to Lancashire, but I don’t mind that.’

The dining room at The Stadholder was full and in the general buzz of conversation there was little likelihood, Dame Beatrice thought, of her conversation with Morag being overheard, although she doubted whether anybody who did manage to overhear anything would make much out of it.

Morag had refused a cocktail in the lounge, so they went in fairly early to lunch and when they had ordered and the wine had been brought, Dame Beatrice abandoned polite chit-chat and settled down to business.

‘Have you heard from the Kirbys?’ she enquired.

‘Only a short note from Miranda to say that they had been to see Camilla’s flat-mates. A good thing they did, as those girls had heard nothing about her death.’

‘They had not seen a newspaper report?’

‘They don’t read the papers much, I gather. Anyway, I expect, in the London dailies, an accidental death by drowning would only have rated a small paragraph tucked away somewhere. It’s not as though the poor child was anybody important.’

‘I have been interviewed by the Stack Ferry press.’

‘About the drowning?’

‘Well, that was not the original purpose of the interview, but I have invoked the reporter’s help. He suggested that Miss Hoveton St John may have been taken for a sail in somebody’s yacht on the day she came here with Mr Kirby and, at my request, the reporter is following up his own suggestion.’

‘I can’t see that it would help, even if somebody did take her sailing that day. It was long before she was drowned.’

‘Yachtsmen belong to sailing clubs and their boats are registered with such. Yachtsmen can be traced. Whether one of them can tell me anything which will help my enquiry I do not know.’

‘Dame Beatrice, you seem to be taking all this very seriously. Do you think Camilla was murdered? Are you saying that some crazy yachtsman took her out to sea and pushed her overboard?’

‘I am saying nothing of the kind at present. I know that she met her death by drowning, but I know nothing about what happened to her beforehand.’

‘I can tell you one thing, for what it’s worth,’ said Morag. ‘It’s about the suitcase.’

‘Yes? You mean you know where it is?’

‘No, I don’t mean that.’

‘It might help a great deal if we knew where she had deposited it, because we should at least know where she went when she left the cottage.’

‘Well, I haven’t a clue about that. All I know is what I expect people have already told you. Whenever she took her suitcase to wherever it is, she didn’t leave the cottage with it on the night she went off and did not come back, and that was also the night on which Colin Palgrave left us.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I don’t know how much – I mean, how many details – you’ve been given, but to recap, as they say, Colin didn’t want to stay in the cottage after Cupar and I turned up. It wasn’t just that he didn’t like Miranda’s rearrangement of the sleeping quarters; it was because he had once been engaged to me. He felt it was awkward our both staying in the same house. As for the broken engagement, I didn’t mind in the least. I wouldn’t have been happy if I’d married him. I know that now. Of course, I was hurt and humiliated at the time – any girl would have been – but I soon got over it and then Cupar came along.’

‘A happy solution, I am sure.’

‘Yes, it certainly was. It would never have done for me to have married Colin, particularly now.’

‘You refer, no doubt, to the death of Miss St John.’

‘Well, after Colin bathed with her that night, she was never seen alive again, was she?’

‘We cannot be sure that that is so. Certainly nobody has come forward to say he saw her.’

‘Please tell me something, Dame Beatrice. A woman of your eminence doesn’t interest herself in a matter of this sort unless—’

‘Unless she believes that something more than an accident was involved?’

‘Well, yes. Was she murdered?’

‘I am not the Delphic oracle, my dear.’

‘And, if you were, you would give me one of its double-tongued answers, I suppose.’

‘How well you understand me. Let us take a liqueur with our coffee. I must drink to our better acquaintance.’

‘And then I’m afraid I must go. Cupar will be back and he likes to find me there when he gets in.’ But she did not hurry, Dame Beatrice noticed. They took coffee and brandy in the lounge and their chat became desultory. Dame Beatrice thought that Morag was trying to decide whether to disclose some item of important information or whether either discretion or fear was suggesting that she remain silent on the subject she was turning over in her mind.

At last she appeared to make it up. She spoke abruptly, almost disjointedly, as she asked whether Dame Beatrice had made any enquiries at The Stadholder about Camilla’s missing suitcase.

‘No. I changed my mind,’ Dame Beatrice said. ‘Wherever the suitcase is, it is not in this hotel. I am certain of that.’

‘Well, I don’t believe the girl herself took it out of the cottage. In fact, I know she didn’t.’

Dame Beatrice waited for more, but all Morag asked, before they left the lounge and went out to the car, was not put in a serious tone, but in a light, almost amused one which did not deceive the hearer. The question was intended seriously.

‘Do you believe a murderer always returns to the scene of the crime, Dame Beatrice?’

‘In my experience, a good many murderers cannot leave the scene of the crime without exciting suspicion,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, you’re speaking of domestic murders, family affairs,’ said Morag. She sounded relieved.

‘You began a subject you did not finish.’

‘Did I?’

‘It seemed so to me. How do you know that Miss St John did not take her suitcase when she left the cottage?’

‘Because Cupar saw her leave the cottage while I was still out walking. He says she was carrying nothing but a towel.’

‘That has little or no significance. She probably removed the suitcase from the cottage while the rest of you were at the public house.’

‘I only meant that Cupar actually saw her leave the cottage.’

‘That is a most important statement.’ But Dame Beatrice did not disclose wherein its importance lay, or even whether she believed it.