The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 12

PALGRAVE AGAIN

‘ “Right, as usual,” said the Duchess.

“What a clear way you have of putting things!” ’

Lewis Carroll

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Apart from impounding the suitcase and testing it for fingerprints, the police took no action except to point out to the Old Mole that finders were not always entitled to be keepers. They checked the fingerprints against those of the old beachcomber and found, most unsurprisingly, that they tallied. There were other prints, legible enough, but not able to be checked because they were not on record and as Adrian, Miranda, Palgrave and any number of unknown people could have handled the suitcase quite legitimately, there was nothing to be gained from the prints.

Dame Beatrice saw the Inspector again before she left Stack Ferry, but visited no other of the acquaintances she and George had made either there or at Saltacres. The Lowsons, she knew, had concluded their holiday before Dame Beatrice left her hotel for her home and then London. What she felt might be a crucial interview was yet to come, and it was not with them.

She returned to the Stone House in Hampshire, dealt again with correspondence and then put through a telephone call to Adrian’s flat. He gave her Palgrave’s number.

‘I wanted to keep in touch with him,’ he said. ‘Have you made any progress, I wonder, with you know what?’

‘Very little. I am being forced to conclude that we may have to accept the verdict.’

‘But you yourself? What do you think?’

‘The same as you do, but the evidence is not there. When I have visited Mr Palgrave I will come and talk to you and see whether you have any suggestions to offer.’

Palgrave, she realised, was likely to be still on school holiday and might not be at home, but she rang his number hopefully and found that he was in. He was not best pleased at being disturbed.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I’m terribly busy.’

‘I am the Home Office psychiatrist. My name is Bradley.’

‘Oh, yes? Are you one of the bees in Adrian Kirby’s bonnet?’

‘I am the queen bee, Mr Palgrave. Will you see me?’

‘I suppose so, but I’m up to my eyes in work. I’m writing a book. Can you manage half past two any day this week? I generally take a short break after lunch, so that’s my best time.’

‘Half past two on Wednesday, then. Thank you so much. Goodbye.’

‘Uncouth cub!’ said Ferdinand, who was visiting his mother again and who, at her suggestion, had been listening on the extension.

‘No, no. I expect he is very busy if he is writing a book,’ she said. ‘I shall not keep him long. All I want from him is an exact account of how he spent the evening on which the girl appears to have left the cottage for good, either with or without her suitcase.’

Palgrave, who, in spite of the tone he had employed over the telephone, appeared to be well-mannered, greeted her courteously.

‘Adrian told me you were looking into this rotten affair,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re wasting your time. Camilla did a damn’ silly thing and got drowned. There’s nothing else to be found out.’

‘So I am beginning to believe – not that there is nothing else to find out, but that my enquiry has foundered.’

‘Well, bad luck, of course, but I hope Adrian will be satisfied. You don’t really believe it was murder, do you?’

‘I am hoping that you will be able to persuade me that it was not.’

‘How do I go about persuading you?’

‘Well, except for the murderer – if there was one – you appear to have been the last person to have seen the girl alive. I understand that you returned to the cottage that night—’

‘Only to change my clothes and pick up my things!’

‘Quite – leaving Miss St John in the sea.’

‘Swimming about as merrily as a young water-beetle, I assure you. The tide certainly hadn’t turned when I left her.’

‘Of course not. I suppose one of the “things” you picked up at the cottage was not Miss St John’s suitcase?’

‘Good Lord, no! – only my own.’

‘You had not already put that in the boot of your car? – before you took the others for an evening drink, I mean.’

‘No, I hadn’t. I only intended to sleep in the car. I was going back to the cottage for breakfast. I thought I could collect my traps then.’

‘But you abandoned that plan. Why, Mr Palgrave?’

Palgrave faced her with hostile, suspicious eyes.

‘Look, what is this?’ he said angrily; but it was the anger of fear, she surmised. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with that wretched kid’s death, do you?’

‘I am waiting for you to convince me that you had not. Her suitcase has been found, you know.’

‘Well, if she took it out of the cottage, it was bound to turn up sooner or later, I suppose.’

‘It turned up in an unexpected place and under what I consider were very suspicious circumstances.’

‘Oh? How do you mean?’

‘Never mind. I may tell you later. First I must hear your own account of that evening and why you changed your plans about breakfasting at the cottage.’

‘Oh, that’s easily explained. Look here—’ he had abandoned his belligerent attitude and spoke quietly, almost placatingly – ‘please tell me what all this is about, won’t you? Am I being accused of anything?’

‘I am not in a position to accuse anybody. Tell me your story of that night and the following morning.’

‘I suppose,’ said Palgrave, half ruefully, half humorously, ‘you can check what I tell you about myself?’

‘To a certain extent, yes, unless Mrs Kirby and Mr Lowson have been lying to me.’

‘What did they say?’

‘I will fill in the gaps if you leave any.’

‘You’re a hard nut to crack, Dame Beatrice. Does anybody know you are here?’

‘Oh, yes, my son knows, and so does Mr Kirby. I always make certain that more than one person knows where I am when I am employed on Home Office business.’

‘I thought Adrian Kirby was employing you.’

‘I do not accept employment from private persons in cases where there is a suspicion that murder has been committed. Mr Kirby drew my attention to this case, that is all. I could hardly invoke the assistance of the police if—’

‘Oh, the police are still in on this, are they? I was under the impression that they had accepted the verdict given at the inquest, and were going to leave me alone.’

‘The discovery of the suitcase—’

‘Oh, that damned suitcase!’

‘— may have shaken their complacency a little, I fancy. So now, since you are a busy man, let us have your account and then I can be gone and leave you to your writing. How is the book going?’

Palgrave smiled for the first time during the interview. ‘Marvellously!’ he said. ‘Of course I’m finding one or two snags. I suppose every writer does. Apart from that, the thing almost writes itself. I spent months trying to get the right idea, but when it came there was no holding it. Of course I’m only on the first draft and I can see already how I can polish up certain bits, but the main theme is dead right. I know that in my bones. It’s all I can do not to show it around to my friends and have them tell me how damned good it is, but most people shy away from reading a typescript and say they’ll wait until they can get the book from the library.’

‘I am delighted to hear that you are making such good progress with it. You are still on holiday?’

‘Yes. I shall have to slow up when I begin school again, but I shall have the book so well set by then that it won’t matter all that much. Those marshes have been sheer inspiration.’

‘ “Mud, mud, glorious mud, Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood” ’, carolled Dame Beatrice, to her hearer’s astonishment.

‘Yes, well, you wanted to hear how I spent that evening,’ he said. ‘Where do you want me to begin?’

‘Did you dislike Miss St John?’

‘What a question to ask me when you think somebody murdered her!’

‘Well, did you dislike her? And why did you leave the cottage?’

‘Dislike her, no. She wouldn’t have been a bad little bint if only she’d had a bit more sense, but I got sick to death of it when she insisted on pursuing me when I was trying to work out something for my novel. I could have wrung her skinny little neck! All the same, I didn’t drown her.’

‘Plainly and clearly stated.’

‘It’s perfectly true, I assure you. I decided to leave the cottage when I discovered my former fiancée and her husband there. The Kirbys were a bit upset when I said I was leaving, but the situation was too much for me to cope with. All the same, I didn’t just want to walk out on the Kirbys. They had been very kind to me, and Morag didn’t seem to bear me any grudge. Although I’d jilted her she seemed friendly, so I suggested a little farewell party at the pub, all drinks on me.’

‘So where was Miss St John? Did she know what you had planned?’

‘I don’t think we’d seen Camilla all day. Oh, wait a minute, though. I didn’t see her myself, but I think the others must have done. She was at supper with us the night before, I’m certain, and she must have been there at the next breakfast with the others – this was before Morag and Lowson turned up, of course – but I didn’t see her then because I got my own breakfast that morning and had it early and went over to Stack Ferry for the day, and Camilla wasn’t there when I got back in the evening.’

‘And this was before Mr and Mrs Lowson arrived at the cottage? You are sure of that?’

‘Oh, yes. I had the shock of my life when I got back in the evening and found them there.’

‘And Miss St John was not there when you got back? – so you really did not see her all that day? Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Otherwise I would have invited her to go with us to the pub. I didn’t grudge the little limpet a couple of drinks. Of course I did see her later when we had our moonlight dip.’

‘If you did not see her all day, perhaps she had given up pursuing you.’

‘As to that, I’d had a bit of a toss-up with her because the day before (I think it was) she had sneaked off with Adrian in my car, of all the damn’ cheek, and I’d rather told her what I thought of her.’

‘And when your little party at the public house was over?’

‘Ah, we’re coming to the point now, I suppose you think.’

‘Well, I think that what you are about to tell me may prove interesting, if not particularly useful.’

‘You won’t be able to check it, but I’ll tell you the truth.’ Dame Beatrice waited. It seemed that Palgrave was assembling his thoughts, or perhaps his memories, and arranging them in some sort of order. At last she asked: ‘Is the truth so complicated?’

‘Eh? Oh, sorry! I was just thinking. Well, when we left the pub I got into my car to spend the night on the back seat, as I thought, but it was so chilly and downright uncomfortable that I soon had to get out and tramp up and down for a bit to warm up and get the stiffness out of my legs. It was bright moonlight and that’s how I came to spot Camilla coming towards the car.’

‘From which direction?’

‘Oh, from the cottage, of course.’

‘Carrying her suitcase?’

‘No, she wasn’t carrying anything like that, so far as I remember; she certainly wasn’t carrying a suitcase. She had a towel, I think.’

‘So you met and she suggested a moonlight bathe.’

‘That’s it. My swim-trunks were back at the cottage in my suitcase, of course, but I didn’t think they mattered at night with nobody about. It seemed a long way across the marshes to the sea, but Camilla held my hand and sang all sorts of rather maudlin little songs, some in French – Si j’étais l’oiseau des bois – that sort of thing – and some in English—’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Wearing? Oh, her usual gear of jeans and a sweater. She was wearing her bikini underneath.’

‘And you?’

‘Grey flannels, shirt and blazer. I’d packed my sweaters. I could have done with a sweater in the car, but walking was all right and I made sure we kept up a solid tramping. There’s a causeway that crosses a little bridge and takes you as far as the dunes, so I took her along at pretty well marching pace. All I wanted was to walk and swim, not to indulge in a bit of dalliance among the marsh-plants.’

‘You preferred that it should operate among the sand-dunes, no doubt.’

Palgrave laughed.

‘Not I,’ he said. ‘There was a very nasty, penetrating night wind blowing. We stripped off and I went straight into deep water.’

‘Deep water?’

‘Yes, the tide must have been almost full. Anyway, it was still coming in. Almost at once the water was waist-high and in no time at all it was deep enough for swimming. I didn’t stay in long. I followed my usual practice of going out until I couldn’t touch the bottom when I put my feet down, and then swimming level with the shore for a hundred metres or so, then turning and swimming back. I think I only did this a couple of times before I got out.’

‘But Miss St John remained in the water?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. She called out to know what I was doing and when I called back that I was getting dressed she called me by a rude name which I won’t repeat, and joined me on shore.’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘Oh, no! I told her if she wanted to play games among the sand-dunes to choose a nice sunny day. I said I was wet and was getting cold and all I wanted was to dry myself, get some clothes on and walk briskly back to my car. She said I was no sort of sport, but I threatened what I’d do if she didn’t either dress or get back in the sea.’

‘Most praiseworthy!’

‘There is no need to jibe. I simply didn’t want any of that sort of thing. There had been just one occasion on a lovely day when we had bathed together and were lying out on the sand-dunes and the sand was soft and warm and there were seagulls white and lovely against the blue of the sky and I was feeling relaxed and the girl was naked – well, that was one thing – but at night, with a chilly wind and my wet body that only asked to be warm and dry and clothed, there was no temptation at all. In fact, the little devil’s attempts to blackmail me only nauseated me because I’d seen and spoken to Morag that day and evening. My mind was full of her. I wanted her pretty badly and I knew I couldn’t have her. I’d chucked my chances away and I felt savage with Camilla, who was offering herself as a substitute. I could have murdered her – but I didn’t. I dried myself on my shirt and went back to the cottage.’

‘Leaving Miss St John to go back into the sea? Did you actually see her do this?’

‘Oh, yes. When she found there was nothing doing, I think the cold wind drove her back into the water. It was definitely warmer in the sea than on land.’

‘Did you have the beach and the dunes entirely to yourselves?’

‘The beach, yes. The dunes I can’t answer for. They are all dips, rises and hollows, as perhaps you know, and a lot of holidaymaking youngsters sleep rough. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were couples snugged down here and there. I wasn’t aware of anybody, but that says nothing. Even by daylight you can pretty nearly tread on them if you’re not careful.’

‘You saw nobody walking across the marshes?’

‘Not a soul while I was on them. There was a bit of white mist I half thought was somebody, but it wasn’t.’

‘Well, now, so far, Mr Palgrave, your story lacks corroboration, but, from the time you reached the cottage that night until the time you left it, I have been given one or two pieces of information about your movements.’

‘So I’d better watch my step? Fair enough. Well, I got back to the cottage—’

‘Why not to your car?’

‘I knew I’d never get to sleep in it, so I opted to sneak into the cottage and get my things and then take the car out Stack Ferry way and drive around until breakfast time.’

‘And at the cottage—?’

‘Ah, yes. That’s where you’ve got the drop on me, isn’t it? I went in as quietly as I could, because, of course, the front door opened straight into the room which had been mine before the Lowsons took it over, and I didn’t want to wake them if they had gone to sleep. Then I crept about trying to locate my suitcase. There was nowhere in the room to hang up clothes or stick things in drawers, so I’d been living in and out of the suitcase for days, but they had moved it and I had to grope around for it, not liking to put on the light.

‘I decided to change my clothes before appearing at the hotel in Stack Ferry – I was hoping, you see, that they could have me a day or two early, although my booking didn’t actually start until the weekend – but then it occurred to me that if I changed in the parlour I might wake the Lowsons up, so, knowing that Camilla’s room would be empty until she came back from her bathe, I sneaked upstairs with my suitcase and changed up there.

‘I wasn’t going to bother about shaving. I thought there would certainly be a barber’s shop somewhere in Stack Ferry where I could get a shave and a trim before I went to the hotel, but I altered my mind.’

‘Did you see Miss St John’s suitcase when you used her room?’

‘Not that I remember, but I wasn’t noticing much. I wanted to be quick in case Camilla came back and found me in possession.’

‘Did you see her night attire anywhere in the room?’

‘I don’t suppose she had any, you know. Child of nature and all that. Of course I suppose she could have tidied it away – stuck it in a drawer or under the pillow or something – but, judging from the state of the room, I shouldn’t think it very likely.’

‘So, having completed your preparations for departure, you left the cottage.’

‘That’s right, after I’d shaved in the kitchen. There wasn’t a bathroom.’

‘With your own suitcase you left the cottage?’

‘Quite — and not with Camilla’s, as the police seemed to think.’

‘You have referred to the Lowsons. Can you be sure that the Kirbys were in the cottage while you were changing your clothes in Miss St John’s room?’

‘Be sure? Well, Mrs Kirby saw me leave the cottage after I’d shaved. She was at the bedroom window.’

‘So she said.’

‘Don’t you believe her?’

‘I believe nothing without proof. You see, it might be just as well for the Kirbys to appear to produce some evidence that they were in the cottage at that particular time.’

‘Good heavens! You don’t suppose Miranda Kirby drowned Camilla, do you? She can’t even swim.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘She said she couldn’t. Adrian couldn’t, either. They never bathed in the sea.’

‘She said she couldn’t? You are singularly trusting, Mr Palgrave. What did Mrs Kirby think about Miss St John?’

‘Just that she was a thundering little nuisance, that’s all.’

‘You said that you had a difference of opinion with Miss St John when she borrowed your car without permission and went to Stack Ferry in it.’

‘She fully deserved the ticking-off I gave her.’

‘She took Mr Kirby with her on this jaunt?’

‘She took good care to lose him as soon as they got to Stack Ferry, I expect. I bet she only took him with her so that I shouldn’t blow my top about the car. She was mistaken. I did blow my top. Of course, if Adrian had known she had snitched the car without permission, he would never have gone with her. I’m certain of that. Adrian is a very decent chap, one of the best. He can be a bit tedious at times – you know – tiresomely informative and all that, but —’

‘We wander from the point, Mr Palgrave.’

‘Which is, I take it, that I can’t prove I did not drown Camilla before I went back that night and changed my clothes. One person I can definitely swear was in the cottage at the same time as I was, because I actually saw him asleep in the parlour, and that’s Lowson.’

‘Ah, yes. You left Miss St John in the sea —’

‘Yes, and swimming about like a little fish.’

‘I was not suggesting anything else. You returned to the cottage. How did you say you got in?’

‘I had a key, but when I had changed and shaved and gone out again, I remember that I did not close the door behind me for fear of waking Lowson.’

‘So you did not wake him when you entered the cottage?’

‘Apparently not. Surprising, in a way, because I had to hunt around for my suitcase. They’d moved it from where I’d left it. I think I told you that. I had to find it before I could change my clothes, of course.’

‘How long did all this take you?’

‘Half an hour or so. Yes, quite that.’

‘And Miss St John did not return?’

‘Not while I was there.’

‘And Mrs Lowson?’

‘Oh, I see! Now that I remember, she wasn’t there. I expect she was out enjoying the moonlight. She used to say it made her fey. Highland blood, you know.’

‘Miss St John’s suitcase was found half buried in a sand-dune, and I cannot believe that she herself took it there and hid it.’

‘That does seem a bit odd, unless she had hidden it there earlier, before we bathed. She would have had plenty of time while we were all at the pub that evening.’

‘Not a new suggestion, but why should she do such a thing?’

‘Well, if she’d decided to flit when she knew the Lowsons were going to stay, and she had no place to leave a suitcase, I suppose she might have carried it down to the dunes, although it doesn’t seem very likely unless she was expecting somebody to pick her up in a dinghy, but, even so, hardly at night.’

‘I wonder whether Miss St John had a similar reason to your own for vacating the cottage?’

‘How do you mean, Dame Beatrice?’

‘That she had known the Lowsons – or one of them – before, and did not welcome them as house-mates.’

‘I think she was simply planning to go on a toot with some bloke. Ever so much more likely, in my opinion, and I knew her, whereas you did not.’

‘How right you are!’

‘But the suitcase remains a mystery.’

‘The person who buried it (and so inadequately!) remains a mystery.’

‘Is it just because of the suitcase that you talk about a murderer?’

‘Oh, dear me, no! Do you think Miss St John would have bathed in deep water on an outgoing tide?’

‘No, I don’t. What’s more, on that particular evening the tide was pretty high, as I said, but it wasn’t nearly on the turn when I left her. It could have had as much as an hour to run before there was slack water and then the ebb. Even Camilla wouldn’t have stayed in as long as that.’

‘The murderer can hardly have been a local person. He or she thought, no doubt, that the ebb would carry the body right out to sea, not knowing that, at Saltacres, what the sea removes it returns, sooner or later, to very much the same place. Did the Lowsons swim?’

‘Oh, not that day, I’m sure. I don’t know about any other day, but they’d only come down that same afternoon. I found them there when I got back after dining in Stack Ferry.’

‘And you saw nobody on the marshes or the shore that night except your companion, Miss St John?’

‘I thought I had answered that. I saw nobody until I was back in my car and was ready to drive off. Then I thought I saw somebody wearing white, but the thing was quite a long way off.’

‘All the same, by moonlight it is still possible to recognise a figure, if not a face.’

‘I was mistaken in what I thought. The person I thought it might have been was no longer wearing white that evening. All I saw was marsh mist.’

Dame Beatrice did not press the point.