The Mudflats of the Dead

CHAPTER 13

INTERIM

‘Hence! home, you idle creatures,

get you home: Is this a holiday?’

William Shakespeare

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When Dame Beatrice returned to her home it was to find her secretary there. She greeted Laura warmly, but added: ‘I did not expect you back so soon.’

‘Oh, Gavin was called upon at short notice to attend an Interpol conference in West Germany. It seemed pointless to stay on without him, so here I am, filled with the London ozone of lead poisoning and petrol fumes, and with a heart for any fate, as the Master of English Prose so often said. You didn’t tell me much about it in your letters, but I gather you’ve been busy on a case of murder.’

‘That it is a case of murder has not been proved. There is every likelihood that it never will be proved.’ She gave Laura a brief but sufficient account of her activities concerning the death of Camilla Hoveton St John.

‘So this Palgrave mentioned blackmail, did he?’ said Laura. ‘He’s a schoolmaster, you say – Caesar’s wife, in other words. Wonder whether the girl had anything to go on?’

‘Before I left him we discussed the matter. He did not believe the girl would have carried out her threat and he assured me that there was nothing in her insinuations and that she withdrew them on the plea that she had been joking. Apparently he threatened her that his union would sue her for defamation of character.’

‘Yes, well, it’s not the sort of joke a man who teaches in a mixed comprehensive, where the kids stay on until they’re seventeen or eighteen, would find very funny. I think, on the face of it, that he’s your murderer.’

‘He may be the chief, but he is not the only suspect. The girl seems to have involved herself with other men while she was living in the cottage. So far as Mr Palgrave is concerned, I gave him every chance to tell me some easy lies, but he did not avail himself of the opportunity.’

‘Oh, yes? Clever enough to see the snares you were laying, perhaps.’

‘Yes, but it must have been a temptation to take an obvious way out. He must know that he is the chief suspect, so I gave him the opportunity of saying that he was not the only member of the cottage party who was out of the house that night. He did not take advantage of this. He agreed that Mrs Lowson was out walking, but he was compelled to admit this as others, of course, can testify to it. Besides, on the face of it, she appears to be the last person to have needed to lay violent hands upon Miss St John, since she had met her for the first time that day.’

‘What about the husband?’

‘Cupar Lowson? He is well out of it, it seems. He was in bed, presumably asleep, at the time when Palgrave left the cottage to drive to Stack Ferry that night. Palgrave saw him.’

‘Palgrave said Lowson was in bed?’

‘Palgrave said so. My suggestion that both the Lowsons and both the Kirbys may have been out he ignored. As Mrs Kirby told me that Miss St John had attempted to seduce Adrian Kirby, I thought that Mr Palgrave might have risen to my bait, but he did not.’

‘So exit Palgrave and all’s well?’

‘By no means. I mention the matter for what it is worth. The difficulty is that if none of the cottage party was involved, that brings us to the need to consider an incalculable number of outsiders. The place was teeming with yachtsmen and other summer visitors and the girl was avid for male society. Further to that, but for the mysterious business of the suitcase, as I explained to you, there is little reason to think that the verdict at the inquest was mistaken.’

‘That the girl swam on an outgoing tide and was drowned because she couldn’t get back to shore? As a swimmer myself, I still can’t swallow that. Mind you, if she was the kind of little tramp you indicate, and some man was there, egging her on, well, she might have been daft enough to do it, I suppose.’

‘I think the possibilities have all been considered and I am inclined to reject that one.’

‘There is just one thing,’ said Laura. ‘When Palgrave admitted that Lowson was in bed and asleep that night, was that both when he entered the cottage and when he left it?’

‘He seems to have assumed that it was both. Palgrave was in the cottage for about half an hour. He groped around for his suitcase, went upstairs to change his clothes, went into the kitchen to shave and straight out to his car when he had done this.’

‘Why should he go upstairs to change?’

‘Not to disturb the sleeping man.’

‘I don’t believe he would have bothered about that. Do you know what I think? I think that when Palgrave nipped in and groped around for his suitcase, he assumed that both the Lowsons were asleep in bed. It was only when he was leaving that he discovered that Lowson was on his own in the room.’

‘You may be right. I wonder why Mr Lowson did not accompany his wife on her moonlight walk? One would have thought that in a strange environment he would have been anxious to be with her.’

‘They may have had a bit of a toss-up and she was walking it off while he preferred to fume and sulk in bed.’

‘What an imaginative mind you have!’

‘Another possibility is that Lowson murdered the girl and sneaked back while Palgrave was upstairs or in the kitchen. Anyway, there could be a simple explanation for the girl’s suitcase being found on the dunes.’

‘In what way?’

‘You said that Palgrave took the others to the pub that night. They probably didn’t bother to lock up before they went. People don’t, in the country. Couldn’t a thief have oiled in, pinched the girl’s suitcase and hidden it among the sand-dunes until he could sell it and her clothes?’

‘There are objections to that theory. It assumes that the intruder knew that the cottage was empty. If so, there was nothing to prevent a thief from looking around to find something worth stealing. Surely the holiday clothes of Dr Lowson and his wife, not to mention those of Mr Palgrave, would have been better worth taking than Miss St John’s admittedly small and dingy little outfit?’

‘Perhaps he didn’t think he had much time. As I see it, he would have popped in and out as quickly as he could.’

‘Then why go upstairs when there were three suitcases to hand just inside the front door? Even if Mr Palgrave is lying, and his own suitcase was already in the boot of his car, there were still the Lowsons’ things ready for the picking up. Even if he did risk going upstairs, why choose Miss St John’s —’

‘Tatty little outfit in preference to the Lowsons’ kit? Very well, then. Pass, theory that there could have been a thief, although to my mind it is still a possibility which ought to be taken into account if no other evidence is forthcoming. But, surely, so far as you’ve gone, doesn’t everything point to Palgrave? There’s no doubt he bathed with the girl that night, he came back to the cottage knowing she wouldn’t be there, and his rather feeble story seems to have been that he “left her in the sea”. Well, she had not only made a perfect nuisance of herself to him, but had actually threatened (jokingly or not) to blackmail him. Add to this the fact that, instead of sleeping in his car as he had said he had intended doing, he admits that he drove around in the small hours until he found a café where he could get breakfast. Then he went to the hotel at Stack Ferry and took up his reservation earlier than he had intended. Sounds very fishy to me.’

‘And may well be so, I agree, although, of course, hotels do take customers mid-week.’

‘Then, since you are convinced there was murder done, why do you think I’m wrong?’

‘I would not say – in fact, I have not said – that you are wrong. Moreover, you have made a most valuable suggestion, although it had already occurred to me.’

Time passed. The holiday season ended. The yachtsmen laid up their boats, the holiday cottages were vacated, the hotels paid off their auxiliary staff, the beaches were almost deserted and melancholy settled over the salt-marshes. The creeks and channels on the east side of Stack Ferry were left to the densely packed colonies of crustacean-eating knots and the winter visitors, including wild geese, mallard, teal, wild duck, widgeon and the predatory wild-fowler who was licensed to shoot them. Dame Beatrice, after exploring such avenues as remained open in the case of Camilla, decided to settle down to an autumn routine and the business of getting Christmas out of the way and hoping, with Mr Micawber, that something would turn up.

Laura said no more about the death and might have been excused for thinking that Dame Beatrice had lost all interest in the case. She knew her employer too well, however, to suppose anything of the kind.

Palgrave returned to his classroom and its puerilities and when the school closed for a week at the half-term holiday at the end of October, he booked himself in again at The Stadholder with the proviso that he be allotted a better room than his previous little attic and one with facilities for his writing. This, he felt, was going extremely well. As soon as the chores of marking exercise books and preparing for the following day’s lessons were done with, he had accustomed himself to a discipline of writing until one in the morning. His weekends, except for a Sunday round of golf with a colleague, were similarly devoted to his novel and his pile of typescript was becoming encouragingly high.

At Stack Ferry he took daily exercise by walking towards Saltacres and, rather to his own surprise, one morning he felt impelled to drive into the little town where the house agent lived and book the cottage of which he had such traumatic memories, proposing to spend the three weeks of his Christmas holiday there, although where the impulse came from which prompted him to do this, he did not know. All the descriptions of the scenery that he needed were already down on paper, he thought.

He told himself that he was merely trying to avoid having to spend Christmas in London, but he found this reason strangely unconvincing. Miranda sent him, at the beginning of December, an invitation for Boxing Day, and he was glad that he had a legitimate reason for refusing it. He wrote that he would be away for the whole of the Christmas holiday, but something prevented him from telling her where he was going. School broke up on the eighteenth of December. He loaded the boot of the car with the provision he had made for Christmas fare as well as with the more day to day tins of meat, fish, biscuits and vegetables he would need, and on the Saturday he set out blithely on his hundred-mile journey.

There were no problems. He lunched early at a pub outside Cambridge and reached Saltacres well before dusk, early though the sun set at that time of year.

He had schooled himself to believe that there might be some haunted quality about the cottage when he had it all to himself, but this was disproved as soon as, with the key for which he had called at the house agent’s on his way up, he let himself in. Except that the place seemed smaller, darker, dingier and damper than he remembered it, all seemed familiar and reassuring.

Having dumped his luggage and unloaded his provisions, he parked his car in the accustomed place a little further up the street, returned to the cottage, lit the gas fire in the parlour and then made an investigation upstairs in order to decide upon his sleeping-quarters. He had never been inside the larger bedroom, but as soon as he looked at it he favoured it.

He went into what had been Camilla’s room, but it evoked no painful memories. Downstairs the studio couch, well-worn but offering no suggestion that it could also do duty as a bed – and Morag’s bed, at that! – and his little work-table still in the window, were reminders of the previous holiday, but he experienced no traumatic reaction. He unpacked his typescript and placed it on the parlour table, put his portable typewriter beside it, drew the curtains and lit the gas-mantle. Then he got himself a meal and afterwards finished the evening at the warm and friendly pub.

‘This is the life,’ he said to himself, and had thoughts of throwing up his job at the end of the summer term, buying the cottage, if the agent would sell, and living on his savings plus a little assistance, perhaps, from an indulgent government while he blossomed out into full, professional authorship.

In the morning, after breakfast, he went out for the walk he had decided to take daily for exercise, but, after a couple of miles, the biting wind made walking so unpleasant that he was glad to return to the cottage for the rest of the day. During the night the wind dropped and the snow fell. He woke to a shining, white-blanketed, silent world. Gone were the wild wastes of the marshes as he had seen them. The apparently illimitable wilderness was still there, but the alchemy of the snow had changed it into something so rich and strange that he was awed by it and, at the same time, he was filled with the liveliest anticipation and delight.

He stepped out of the cottage feeling like the first man on the moon, and tramped over the crisp, virgin purity of the snow with the pleasure of a child who recognises the magic of his own footprints.

‘I never thought of snow for chapter ten,’ he said aloud. He returned to the cottage and settled down to record this new phenomenon of an enchanted, utterly unexpected world. ‘Just what I needed, and I never thought of it!’ he repeated joyously.

He continued to take his morning exercise, but his walks grew shorter every day. No more snow fell, but what was there remained. He worked on his book from nine until half past twelve each morning, then got himself some lunch and after he had washed up his plates, cutlery and the glass he had used, he went for a short drive more for the sake of the car than because he wanted a change of scene and occupation. After that, it was back to his work again to check over the morning’s output and to make any corrections, alterations and embellishments which seemed necessary. He did not think he had ever been so happy. His evenings he spent at the pub. A couple of pints was his self-imposed ration, and he made them last, his ear alert for any tit-bits of conversation or news which might be worthy of inclusion in the opus.

The days passed quickly. On Christmas Day he went to church. It was the first time he had ever been inside the building. Its size was a tribute to a bygone age when the village had been a prosperous township and port, and the congregation at this latter day was almost ludicrously small, although he assumed that it was larger than on any other occasion except at the pagan festival of thanksgiving for the harvest.

Like the church at Stack Ferry, this one proclaimed its former trade relations with the Netherlands by its dedication to St Nicholas, the Dutch Santa Claus. Palgrave spent most of the service by taking in, surreptitiously but fully, the hammer-beam and arch-braced roof, its traceried spandrils and flowers, the dropped window-sill of the sedilia in the south wall at the end of the chancel, the Easter sepulchre and the Stuart communion table. The chancel, he noted, was a couple of centuries earlier than the vast and columned nave.

The church must certainly go into his book, he decided. He indulged in a daydream. He and his heroine – he had made her a fascinating combination (he thought) of Morag and Camilla – should marry his hero (himself, Colin) in this most suitable edifice. He sat back in his pew and reflected on what might have been.

The vicar did not detain his small congregation very long. By twelve the Christmas service was over. There were half a dozen misericords under the choir stalls. Palgrave inspected them, but hardly thought they compared with others he had seen at Ripon, Wells, York and Christchurch, let alone the later, more sophisticated and sometimes extremely explicit examples he had seen in French churches. However, he had enjoyed his Christmas morning, for he felt he now had another chapter for his book.

He joined the men of the village in the holly-decked, paper-chained pub before returning to the cottage for his tinned ham and tinned chicken. Then he roughed out a simple marriage ceremony which was to take place in the church, now to be incorporated in a later chapter of his book, and after that he went for a drive over the still snowbound countryside. On the following evening he drove to the most expensive hotel in Stack Ferry for the Boxing Night dinner-dance which he had booked. He was almost struck dumb when Cupar Lowson and Morag came up to his table and suggested that he should join them at theirs.

‘Cupar doesn’t dance,’ said Morag, as though this explained everything. She looked delightful, he thought. He was glad that the fifth and sixth-form girls had insisted upon teaching him the South American style of dancing so that he could stand up with them at school end-of-term parties, but he was better pleased when the hotel orchestra put on some sentimental waltz tunes. It went to his head a little to have Morag in his arms again. He ordered champagne. The other two were staying in the hotel, so neither he nor they left the scene until the dinner-dance closed down at two in the morning.

He drove back to his cottage in moonlight. The effect, over the snow-covered marshes, was fantastic and disturbing. Camilla’s ghost must be out there somewhere, he thought. He took his mind back to Morag. The utterly unexpected meeting with her had been equally fantastic and disturbing, especially as it had followed so quickly upon his daydreams in the church.

He began to believe that there was something strange about the book he was writing. Something or somebody was doing the job for him. Suddenly he found he did not like the thought of something which was beyond his control. The book was writing its own story, and not the story he had in his notebook.

He reached his cottage, went in and poured himself a drink. Then he took out the script and had a look at it. With what he recognised as a superstitious reaction, he crossed himself, put the script away and went to bed. In the morning he took his book out again and this time his reaction was different. He began to read and, as he read, he said aloud, ‘But this is damn’ good stuff. Damn’ good. Morag is going to like this when I show it to her.’