The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 11

THE OLD MOLE

‘Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.’

Oscar Wilde

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Digging out the Old Mole proved to be a matter of no difficulty. Dame Beatrice reintroduced herself to Sleach’s aunt. The beggarman’s domicile, the least disreputable of the rotting warehouses, was pointed out with the warning that it was probably infested with rats, undoubtedly stank and, in any case, was no place for a lady.

Dame Beatrice enquired whether the old man had ever engaged the interest of the police, and was reassured.

‘That’s harmless. Fossick about on the shore, after the tide go out, for bits of wood, and room the doons for bottles and old tins. Like a jackdaw, that is, for anything that shine. What he do with the things nobody know for certain, but, with a bit of mumping, that live.’

Without being asked, but with a set, masculine expression on his face, George accompanied his employer to the building which had been pointed out. He was carrying a heavy spanner wrapped in a piece of brown paper to conceal its real nature and appearance. His alternative means of persuasion was in the form of a couple of tall cans of beer which he carried in the long pockets of the overalls he had assumed when Dame Beatrice had indicated the scope of their enterprise.

Knowing him, she deduced the nature of his precautions and observing merely that the carrot often produced better results than the bludgeon, and that she anticipated ‘none of what Mrs. Gavin would call the rough stuff, George,’ she kicked with a firmly shod foot at the rickety door. It flew open and disclosed the interior of the warehouse.

The bursting in of the door had caused the two sets of shutters, one on the north, the other on the east side, to fly open as well, so there was sufficient light to disclose the contents of the big shack. These included an elderly man wearing frayed trousers and what had been an Army greatcoat over a sweater. He came forward leaning on a crook-handled, white-painted stick.

He was unkempt, but not filthy, and although the building gave forth an odour of closeness and human occupation, to say that it stank would have been an exaggeration, Dame Beatrice thought. He said,

‘If it be you boys, go away. You know I can’t see you, so stop tormenting of me.’

‘Mr Mole, I presume,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘That’s a lady’s voice. I don’t want no soup kitchens. I manage all right on my own. Salvation Army, is it?’

‘You know very well that it is not. Where are my granddaughter’s clothes?’

The old man put what to him was a pertinent query.

‘I ent in trouble with police?’

‘Answer my question, please.’

‘You ent no right.’

‘I have every right.’

‘Come clean. It will be the better for you,’ said George, in a deep, histrionic growl.

‘I don’t know nothing about no clothes.’

‘Think again,’ Dame Beatrice advised him. ‘My granddaughter went swimming and left her things on the beach. I have reason to think you found them. Will you hand them over, or do you want the police to come for them?’

‘Make your mind up, chummie,’ said George, to the great admiration of his employer. ‘Stealing by finding is an offence under the law.’

‘I ent stole nothing. What’s left on beach is mine.’

‘That may be true of flotsam and jetsam,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is not true of property left on the beach by persons who have every intention of returning to claim it.’

‘What if they’m buried it, then? What about that? That’s buried treasure, that’s what that is.’

‘Buried it?’

‘Ah, that’s right. They buried it in the sand.’

‘In the dunes?’

‘That’s right. So I digs her up, see, and now she’s mine.’

‘Oh, no, she isn’t, not if she belonged to madam’s relative,’ said George. ‘I reckon, if she buried it, it was to hide it away from people like you. So come on, matie. Hand over.’

‘I don’t want trouble.’

‘Of course you don’t, so stop being an Artful Dodger,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘And keep your nose clean,’ said George, ‘or my superiors will be taking an interest in your doings.’

‘I reckon to sell what I find.’

‘Yes, but not what you steal,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘You are not a native of these parts, I think.’ She now realised what, to Sleach, ‘talk foreign’ meant.

‘Why you figure that out?’ the beachcomber enquired.

‘Because the local people are honest.’

‘Will you gimme something for my trouble? I been taking good care of that there bit of luggage till I find out who it belong to.’

‘Produce it,’ said Dame Beatrice, scarcely believing that she had heard him pronounce the word luggage, ‘and then we will talk of rewards.’

‘All right, then. I don’t want no trouble.’ He limped to the back of the shack where there was an opening which, judging from the configuration of the building seen from outside, led, Dame Beatrice thought, to a much more extensive part of the old warehouse. He emerged carrying a suitcase. ‘Buried, her was,’ he said, in a beggar’s whine. ‘How were I to know as somebody wanted her back?’ He dumped it down in front of them and waited. Dame Beatrice fished out a pound note and gave it to him. George disembarrassed himself of the cans of beer and put them down in the doorway before he picked up the suitcase and followed Dame Beatrice to what remained of the sea wall of the quay.

‘An outrageous and unkind bluff, George,’ she said, as he set the suitcase on the coping. ‘It is a dreadful thing to take advantage of the old and indigent.’

‘Take advantage nothing, madam,’ said George sturdily as Dame Beatrice opened the suitcase. ‘He would never have got a pound for flogging any stuff that’s in here, and the case itself is only one of those cardboard type things, and battered about, at that.’

‘Mr Kirby, in his letter, said that the girl would have been wearing jeans and a sweater. I notice the jeans, but the sweater appears to be missing.’

‘I fancy that old scoundrel was wearing it, madam.’

‘That would explain its absence from the suitcase, except that I do not believe it was put into the suitcase until after the girl’s death. Well, loth as I am to inform on the Old Mole, the police will have to be told. They are still looking for the suitcase.’

‘If I may ask, madam, how did you know this man had it?’

‘I did not know he had it. From what we were told by Mr Sleach, I guessed he might have collected the drowned girl’s outer garments which she would have shed before she entered the water, but finding the suitcase went far beyond my expectations, and the place in which it was found goes a long way towards proving Mr Kirby’s conviction that the girl was murdered. No girl in her senses would carry a suitcase across the marshes for the pleasure of carrying it back again when she had had her bathe.’

‘Not even if she did not intend to return to her friends, madam?’

‘I think not. There are plenty of places near the road where she could have hidden it, not to speak of the boot of a car. If she had intended to leave the Kirbys, she would not have gone off alone. From what I have been told about her, a man would have been involved.’

‘He might have been her murderer, don’t you think, madam?’

‘I think that whoever took that suitcase down to the sand-dunes and buried it so shallowly was pressed for time and is almost certainly the murderer. I also believe that the girl herself had no idea that the suitcase had ever left the cottage.’

The county police were sceptical, but not completely unimpressed.

‘We’ll look into it, Dame Beatrice, of course,’ said the Inspector. ‘The man who found the suitcase ought to have turned it in, and he must have known he ought. We’ve got that much to go on.’

‘I trust no charges will be pressed. I have committed myself, I fear, to a promise that there will be no repercussions.’

‘Mr Kirby or his wife will have to identify the suitcase and its contents, but so far as the finder is concerned, I daresay a warning that findings are not keepings will be sufficient to impress him. We know all about him and he’s never been in trouble. You say he gave up the suitcase without any bother?’

‘Oh, yes. I think it might be interesting to find out exactly where it was buried.’

‘And, if it was buried, how he came upon it – unless, of course, he knew exactly where to look.’

‘You mean he may have witnessed its interment? Most unlikely, I would have thought. More probably, the strong winds blew the loose sand away and uncovered it.’

‘We’ll find out, I dare say. Anyway, thank you for your information, Dame Beatrice. I’ll have a little talk with the chap and get the suitcase identified, and then we’ll see, but, unless he murdered the girl and then pinched the suitcase, I don’t think the verdict at the inquest will be easily upset.’

‘You really think that a girl intent upon a moonlight bathe would have carried all her belongings across the marshes?’

‘You never know what ideas girls get in their heads, madam, especially runaways.’

‘You do realise, Inspector, don’t you? – that, except for this very dubious business of the suitcase, there is no evidence that the poor child ever intended to leave her friends at all.’

‘That, Dame Beatrice, amounts to the serious implication that if Miss Hoveton St John didn’t remove the suitcase from the holiday cottage, one of its other inmates did. Can you substantiate that?’

‘My statement does not necessarily implicate the other tenants, but I admit it does seem rather far-fetched to suppose that anybody else entered the cottage, packed the suitcase, enticed the girl into the sea and drowned her.’

‘So you do think one of her friends did it!’

‘Unless the verdict at the inquest was the correct one, I hardly know what else to think.’

‘The verdict at the inquest mostly likely was the correct one, but we shall keep an eye on things and if you get hold of any more evidence, I’m sure you’ll let us know. Meanwhile, we’ll put the breeze up that mumping old vagabond and also put out a few feelers elsewhere. We know your reputation, madam, and a hint from you is worth thinking over. Did any of them stand to gain anything by the girl’s death, I wonder? A pity they’re not still here, but there! When there’s trouble round here it’s the visitors who cause it. We shall have to get some co-operation from the London end. I took Mr Kirby’s London address when I spoke to him before the inquest and I daresay he knows where the rest of his party can be found. They are all Londoners, I believe.’

Dame Beatrice had had her interview at the police station in Stack Ferry on the day following the discovery of the suitcase. Back at The Stadholder she decided to pay another visit to the Hamiltons on the following day. Mrs Hamilton herself answered the door and invited her in.

‘I must not stay. I am on my way to lunch,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but there is a question I would like to ask you, if I may.’

‘Do come in and ask it. I am quite alone in the house. It’s the maid’s day off, and my husband and son have gone out in the yacht. You’ll take a glass of sherry?’

‘If you are alone, why don’t we both lunch at my hotel? My car is outside and my man can bring you back at any time which suits you.’

‘That would be very nice. I’ll just go up and change and leave a note for my husband in case they get back early. What is your question?’

‘You may think it a strange one, but I have a good reason for asking it. As woman to woman, what did you think of that young Camilla Hoveton St John?’

‘I have a superstition about speaking ill of the dead.’

‘I feel you have answered me.’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, Dame Beatrice, I thought she was quite appalling, and I was annoyed and rather worried when my son brought her on board. Fortunately, when we rounded the Point on the return trip, the sea became rather boisterous.’

‘Fortunately?’

‘Yes. We are all good sailors, but the girl was violently sick. Nothing puts a young man off so completely as seeing the admired object in the throes of extreme nausea. The poor girl was quite revolting and I’m ashamed to say that I was glad of it. I did not want my son to continue the acquaintanceship. It was quite unsuitable in every way. He is still at university and very impressionable.’

‘I understand that for a short time they bathed together. Did he comment at all on her prowess as a swimmer?’

‘Yes, he was quite impressed by it.’

‘Did he make any comment when it was known that she had drowned?’

‘He said he could hardly believe it. The girl had told him about a friend of hers, a man, a very powerful swimmer, who had been foolish enough to bathe off Saltacres on an outgoing tide and had experienced great difficulty in getting back to safety. My son said that unless the girl had intended suicide, he did not believe she would ever have taken such a risk. Could it have been suicide, Dame Beatrice?’

‘It is possible, of course. Did you form any opinion as to her state of mind while she was with you?’

‘Her state of mind (except that she was making open overtures to my son) did not concern me. She seemed perfectly happy, so far as I could tell, although, obviously, the presence of my husband and myself rather cramped her style. When we reached the bird sanctuary, which was our objective, she soon detached my son from us, and they wandered off, as you know, to bathe.’

‘Did your son ever show any sign of intending to meet Miss St John again?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when they were in the car. Mrs Hamilton laughed.

‘I think the bout of sea-sickness would have given romance a mortal blow,’ she said. ‘At any rate, he never did meet her again unless he slipped out after we had gone to bed, but, if he had done that, I should have heard the sound of the car. I am a very indifferent sleeper. He would hardly have walked over to Saltacres, where she informed us she had a holiday cottage. It is over thirty miles from here.’

‘Your yacht?’

‘At night? And without his father to help him? Impossible, I would think. Rounding the Point is a tricky operation, and my son is still a novice at sailing.’ She paused and then said: ‘I am not sure I like your questions very much, Dame Beatrice. Is there something behind them?’

‘I appreciate your feelings. The questions are only to clear the air. You see, Mrs Hamilton, I have been briefed to enquire into what I am now quite convinced was a case not of accident or suicide, but of murder.’

‘So my son has indicated, and I refuse to be associated with anything so dreadful.’

‘I was obliged to ask the questions. You have answered them.’

‘All the same —’

‘Please do not distress yourself. I have met your son, remember. All I have done is to clear him out of the way. To tell you the truth, this is just as likely – I am beginning to think more likely – to have been a jealous woman’s crime. It need not concern a man.’

‘In that case, you might as well suspect me as suspect my son!’

‘Oh, I do, and to exactly the same extent,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her crocodile grin. ‘I do not suspect either of you of having had more than a few hours’ completely innocent acquaintance with Miss St John.’

‘But, Dame Beatrice, you will have to tell me more than that!’

‘Yes, of course I shall. Miss St John’s luggage disappeared from the cottage at which she was staying, and the police have been looking for it. It was found by a beachcomber. He was searching the beach and the sand-dunes at Saltacres, as was his custom, when he came upon the suitcase partly buried in the sand. He impounded it, that is all.’

‘But what was it doing there?’

‘My theory, which, I may add, the police do not wholly accept, is that the murderer hoped to hide it in order to give the impression that the girl herself had taken it out of the cottage and was not intending to return. I think he may have hoped, also, that if the body turned up again, it would have been in the sea and among the sea-creatures so long that it would be unrecognisable.’

‘That sounds to me like someone who had no knowledge of how the tides run in these parts. Such a person is unlikely to have been a yachtsman, so my family is in the clear, I suppose, simply because of that.’

‘Mrs Hamilton, you must not allow me to offend you. The discovery of the girl’s suitcase in the place where it was found convinces me that I am investigating a case of murder. Any help which I can get from anybody who met Camilla St John may turn out to be the pivot on which the whole case turns.’

‘My son tells me that you do a lot of this kind of work.’

‘Sometimes it fits in with my commitments to the Home Office; sometimes, as in this instance, it is simply because of a desire to find out the truth. One more question?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Are you certain you saw the girl meet and go off with a man in a car?’

‘Oh, yes, I am perfectly certain. When we moored after our trip to the bird sanctuary we landed the girl and then I remembered that I had to call for some food I had ordered from the Chinese take-away shop. I had the girl in my sights – she did not look round and, in any case, I had neither the wish nor the intention to follow her. There was a short cut through the public car park. I took it and saw her get into a car in which a man was already sitting.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Except that he was bearded, no.’

A bearded man might as well be Adrian Kirby as anybody else, Dame Beatrice thought. In any case, Camilla had arrived safely back in Saltacres that night. There seemed nothing more to be gained by enquiries at Stack Ferry or from the Hamiltons.