The Murder of Busy Lizzie

chapter ten

Boat and Scramble

‘Your stormy chiding stay;

Let zephyr only breathe,

And with her tresses play,

Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death.’

William Drummond

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Dame Beatrice, who had boundless faith in Laura’s ability to take care of herself and who, in any case, was convinced that the young (among whom she still included her secretary) should be given a free hand so long as it was not one which dealt trouble to other people, made no objection and offered no opposition to the proposed expedition.

Laura laid her plans carefully. She was anxious (and kind-hearted and tactful enough) not to allow the brother and sister to know that she proposed to follow a course against which she had persuaded them. She had also decided to make the sea-trip before she looked for clues on the cliff-top.

Sebastian and Margaret, ignoring their father’s advice, had gone off to see Ransome as soon as they left Puffins. Laura, having seen them on their way, climbed the knoll at the back of the house and kept them in view long enough to note that they had by-passed the hotel and were taking the road to the farm. Upon this, she took the cliff road down to the landing stage. Two or three fishing-boats were drawn up on the disconsolate shore and a little further up the coast the surf was thundering on to the unpromising-looking beach. The main-land away to the south was clearly defined in the late afternoon sunshine, and on the cliff to her left stood the modern lighthouse which guarded the channel.

Among the fishing boats was the malodorous little launch which ferried passengers to and from the mainland steamer, and near it, but anchored off-shore, was a bigger and better boat, a sea-going cruiser, the craft, in fact, which belonged to that Saint Christopher of churchgoers, J. Dimbleton. Having brooded upon its possibilities, Laura climbed the cliff and, keeping an eye open for Sebastian and his sister, she, too, followed the road.

J. Dimbleton’s cottage was near the church and stood alone in an overgrown garden containing an empty pig-sty, otherwise the only concession to tidiness and utility was in the form of a small vegetable patch near the dwelling. Laura pushed open a remarkably well-oiled gate and walked up to the cottage, trusting that at that hour Dimbleton would be at home and having his tea. She hammered on the front door with her fist and, like Goldilocks at the home of the three bears, lifted the latch and walked in.

Three persons were seated at a scrubbed wooden table and were indeed at tea. Father Bear she took to be Dimbleton himself, a big, sun-and-wind-tanned man wearing a blue jersey and a spotted neckerchief. Baby Bear was a slim young fellow in a reefer jacket and Mother Bear was Miss Crimp. They stared at Laura, but not malevolently, and Dimbleton stood up and came round the table to where she was standing.

‘Business?’ he asked. ‘Or would ee like a cup o’ tea. Made it for Miss Crimp, never touch the poison myself.’

‘Business,’ Laura replied. ‘Tomorrow at dawn, if you will be so good.’

‘You want to cross over first thing in the morning?’

‘No. I want to make a circular tour of the island.’

‘Oh, ay? Anybody going with you?’

‘No. My employer, on whose behalf I shall be making this survey, is not enthusiastic about rough sea-trips. She has read that this island used to be the haunt of smugglers, but she claims that landing cargo on these shores would have been too hazardous an undertaking to be feasible, and she wishes to prove her point in an article to a geographical magazine to which, from time to time, she contributes. I am to ask what you charge for the hire of your boat for such a trip.’

‘Oh, well, let me see now. You see, for the round trip I usually reckon on half-a-dozen passengers, and that come cheaper for each one of ’em, like.’

‘My employer does not wish me to be distracted. I shall be making notes, you see, and must remain undisturbed, so I am to make the trip on my own. She will meet any reasonable demand for a fee.’

‘Well, I dunno. What would you say to two pound fifty? I’ll be going with you to handle the boat, of course.’

‘Make it two pounds. There won’t be nearly as much wear and tear on your boat as there would be with six passengers, some of them, perhaps, sea-sick.’

‘You wouldn’t be sea-sick?’

‘No. Besides, I could crew for you if necessary.’

‘Two pound, then. Let’s wet it with a drop o’ Scotch.’

‘Right. And a small rake-off for me if I do crew for you.’

Dimbleton laughed and the young man at the table said, ‘You’ve caught a right one there, Jake.’

Miss Crimp said, ‘Well, if that’s all right about the fish, then, Mr Dimbleton, perhaps Mrs Gavin and I might walk back together, as our ways lie in the same direction.’

‘It was the fishiest set-up you ever saw,’ said Laura to Dame Beatrice when she had left Miss Crimp at the hotel and had returned to Puffins. ‘She mentioned fish, incidentally, but I bet those particular fish were never taken out of either fresh or salt water.’

‘Your figure of speech eludes me.’

‘Fish,’ explained Laura, ‘is one of the Americanisms for money. If you ask me, smuggling is still a gainful occupation on this island. The young chap at the table wore gold rings in his ears and was a Cornishman. He was absolutely cut out for the part and so is Dimbleton, who can’t possibly make a living merely by hiring out his boat at odd times. He must have another source of income. I had a squint at his boat before I went to his cottage, and it’s a three-thousand pound job, put it at the lowest, and could have cost three times that much, if he bought it new. You could cross to America in it, I shouldn’t wonder, and I bet it’s fast, too. However, I’ll be able to assess it better when I go aboard. It begins to look as though there is method in Gavin’s madness in sending us here, after all.’

‘What else had Miss Crimp to say?’

‘Nothing more while I was in the cottage, except that she proposed to walk back with me.’

‘And then she conversed with you?’

‘Yes, about witches. Asked me whether I knew there was a coven on the island. I pleaded ignorance of any such thing, but said I had noticed some red paint splashed over one or two of the headstones in the churchyard, and I asked, in my innocent way, whether that was the doing of the witches. At this she waxed shrill and indignant and stated that the coven operated only for good, and that desecration of tomb-stones had no part whatever in its ritual. She added, though, that she knew vandalism was rampant on the mainland and she supposed that at some time it had been brought to Great Skua through the agency of some of the visitors. She hinted that she suspected two women, but she did not disclose any names.’

‘Did she say whether she herself is a member of the coven?’

‘I didn’t think I’d better ask her, and she didn’t volunteer the information, but she seemed to know a good deal about its doings, if that’s anything to go by, but I don’t think it is. I expect she only picks up gossip from the staff at the hotel.’

At dawn on the Friday morning, Laura slipped out of the house and went down to the landing stage. Dimbleton was there with a tiny dinghy. He rowed her out to the cruiser, they hoisted the dinghy aboard and, rounding the long promontory, turned northward up the west coast.

The dark cliffs exhibited a scowling, perpendicular face of savage grandeur and, although Dimbleton kept the boat well out, Laura could see that in the tiny bays which were part natural, part man-made by the quarrymen, it would be possible to run a small boat in if the pilot knew the coast. More exciting still, after they had passed the quarries and were approaching the old lighthouse from whose gallery the body of Eliza had first been sighted, caves began to appear, yawning black holes in the foot of the awe-inspiring, towering cliffs.

She exchanged no words with the skipper. He sat at the wheel and she was perched forward on the cabin top with her rubber-soled shoes pressed against the starboard rail and her notebook open on her knee. They passed the old lighthouse and then the mouth of the river in its deep gorge and, some way further on, came inshore a little to wave to the keepers of the modern lighthouse which guarded the north-west promontory.

They rounded this and, coming southward along the east coast where the cliffs, although formidably grand, lacked the terrifying authority of those on the Atlantic side, Dimbleton spoke for almost the first time.

‘Up there,’ he said, jerking his head, ‘be the remains of homes made three thousand and more years ago.’ Laura nodded. She had explored the island thoroughly in her days of occupation, usually after her early-morning swim, and was sufficiently versed in archaeology to recognise primitive hut-circles. She had found two groups of these perched on the windy plateau between the north-east point and the two swift-flowing little brooks which flowed eastward out of the great combe. Almost opposite the combe was a stack of tall, ragged rocks, part of the island before some natural cataclysm had created the combe and left some indestructible granite in the form of a hazard so dangerous to shipping that a light-ship was anchored half-a-mile to the east of the rocks to warn vessels of their proximity.

There were caves on this side of the island, too, as Laura carefully noted, particularly under the higher and more formidable cliffs on which was the disused lighthouse which Sebastian and Margaret had visited on their first survey of the island and which they had found locked against them. It was built on the southernmost of the south-east promontories and once the boat had passed it and had rounded the point and brought the modern lighthouse into focus, the low shores of the landing-place came into view and a few minutes later Dimbleton dropped anchor, lowered the dinghy and rowed Laura ashore.

‘Get what you wanted for your notebook?’ he asked, with kindly good humour. ‘You’re a grand sailor; I’ll say that for you. Get wet, did you, when we shipped a few off that northwest corner?’

‘Not to notice,’ Laura replied. ‘Anyway, your money was in a waterproof pouch. Here you are, and thanks very much for the trip. That’s a fine boat you have. Must have set you back a bit, didn’t it?’

‘Oh, she’s syndicated. My partners put up most of the money. Couldn’t have afforded her myself. She’s a lovely little job, though, ain’t she?’

Laura agreed, made no reference to the partners he had mentioned and, having parted from him with a handshake, she climbed the cliff road back to a very late breakfast. Dame Beatrice had waited so that they might have it together.

‘And how did you get on?’ she asked, spreading honey on a thin slice of bread and butter while Laura, with a gusto which never failed to fascinate her employer, wolfed eggs, rashers, sausages, toast and fried tomatoes. ‘Did you enjoy your trip?’

‘Yes, marvellous! Dimbleton may be a smuggler—I’m more sure of it than ever, now that he’s told me his boat is the property of a syndicate—but he’s a very decent sort and knows how to handle his cruiser in choppy seas—and choppy I’ll say they were.’

‘Did you manage to get a glimpse of the place where the body was found?’

‘Not a very satisfactory one, but I’ll know a lot more when I get the bird-watchers on the job later on this morning. I’ve got an idea about it all, but I don’t know whether it will work out. Anyway, the police will have thought of it, too. I haven’t a doubt about that. Well, the landing-boat from the steamer was in pretty early on Thursday of last week, so I’d better sneak out and make my descent of the cliffs while those Lovelaine kids are still in the hotel. I’m rather surprised that their father is leaving them behind, but I suppose he thinks they’re old enough to look after themselves, and so, of course, they are.’

What, to Sebastian, would have been a hazardous exploit, was to Laura, an experienced rock-climber who had done the ‘Pinnacle Route’ on Sgurr-nan-Gillean and the west traverse to the top of Bruach-na-Frithe, nothing in particular. Nevertheless, she did not believe in taking chances, especially on cliffs and rocks she did not know, so she had enlisted the aid of two sturdy young men and two girls with whom she had struck up an acquaintance in the bar of the hotel and arranged for them to act as watchmen willing to go for help if she got stuck or had an accident.

She met her helpers at the appointed time and at the appointed place, but apparently the word had gone round that an assault on the cliffs of the terrifying west side was to be attempted, for at least a dozen of the younger ornithologists were assembled at the trysting-place anxious to witness the hazardous feat.

Laura, naturally, had not given her real reason for wishing to make the descent. She stated that she had seen seals on the flat rocks at the base of the cliff, and she also confessed to a desire to watch the plunging guillemots who would make the four-hundred-foot dive from the top of the cliffs for fish, plummeting down with boldness and accuracy in one of the most spectacular sights to be seen on the bird-haunted island.

As soon as she began the downward scramble seawards, she realised that it was not going to be too difficult, after all.

Although, looked down on from above, the face of the cliff appeared to be sheer and wall-like, she found plenty of foot and hand-holds and, after a month of unexpectedly dry weather, there was not much chance of her slipping. Owing to years of experience of rock-climbing and mountaineering in Scotland, Laura had a great head for heights, but she knew better than to look down until she guessed that she must be getting near the foot of the cliffs. As she disturbed them, sea-birds wheeled and screamed, and, adding a threatening bass to their discordant shrieking, the sea below her snarled and thundered as it hurled itself against the immovable granite.

Thirty feet above the waterline she came to an outcrop of rock which made a convenient ledge. On it she rested for a while and turned to look down at the sea. As she watched the waves crashing against the foot of the cliffs, she could see that a rocky shelf ran out some way into the water. It was similar to the shelf off the bathing beach at the southern end despite the water-waves which broke on it so threateningly, it had a friendly appearance which Laura recognised.

Where she was standing, her back against the cliff-face, clumps of sea-pinks were growing. To Laura they formed a welcome landmark. She had not climbed down the cliff vertically, but had been edging gradually away to her right, and she knew from her survey through field-glasses of the terrain, as it disclosed itself from Dimbleton’s boat, that she must be almost directly above the cave she had seen as a black hole in the cliff. The rocks among which Eliza Chayleigh’s body had been found were also well within view and were not far from the mouth of the cave.

‘Good thinking,’ said Laura, self-approvingly. ‘Now to get into the cave.’

This proved to be the most difficult part of the undertaking. She scrambled to within four feet of the water and was immediately drenched with spray and half-deafened by the noise of the waves as the incoming tide flung the whole of its force at the granite fortress of the Atlantic coast of the island. Disregarding all this, she worked her way, precariously but with great caution, still further to her right. Here the rocks which had harboured the body were taking the full force of the assault, so at one place the water did no more than cream in over the island shelf. Laura decided to chance her luck. She got within two feet of the water at this quieter point, glanced down, watched the retreating wave, dropped in, and the next oncoming breaker washed her into the cave.

‘Shouldn’t want Gavin to see me do that,’ she thought, as she floundered forward into the darkness and found the water getting shallower. ‘Wonder whether my torch still works?’ Realising that, even if she did not need to enter the water, she must inevitably be soaked by the spray when she reached the foot of the cliffs, Laura had wrapped her electric torch in a bit of oil-skin and buttoned it in the zipped pocket of the waterproofed anorak she was wearing. Scrambling onward into the cave and at last finding that her feet were on dry sand, she got out the torch and switched it on.

‘I went back to my gang on the top of the cliff,’ said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice on her return to Puffins, ‘and mighty surprised they were when I came upon them from the rear. They’d seen me drop into the water and disappear and the girls said they were a bit worried, but the boys, after their easygoing masculine manner, said I’d be all right and the girls were not to panic. They were going to give me an hour and then, if I didn’t show up, they would raise the alarm. Well, I found that the water only comes about halfway up the cave. After that it’s quite dry and, of course, being another of these smugglers’ hidey-holes, there’s a way out from the back. The ladder I found is pretty new and on the sand there’s a scuffle of footprints in the form of an almost perfect circle. If you ask me,’ concluded Laura impressively, ‘the cave is now the meeting-place of the witches and witches may be the smugglers. What do you say to that?’

‘Imaginative, ingenious, inspired and, of course, quite probable.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing, although it will change the subject. Dimbleton has an empty pig-sty in his garden.’

‘The trouble will be to find out when last he had a pig in it. But to revert to the smuggling, if it is what Robert and the others suspect, what can be gained by it?’

‘Well, there don’t seem to be any coastguards, so supposing the goods are not so much smuggled into the island as out of it? Gun-running to some trouble spot somewhere, for instance? No bother about getting the things either in or out, you see, and a fat profit at the other end.’

‘There I admit that you open up an avenue for thought.’

‘I guessed perhaps I might,’ said Laura, squinting modestly down her nose. ‘Of course, all the islanders must be implicated. You couldn’t risk having informers.’

‘But what has all this to do with the death of Eliza Chayleigh?’

‘I have no idea. But don’t you think my theory about the empty sty needs following up?’

‘Your ideas are always picturesque.’

‘And bear no relation to reality, I suppose!’

‘Reality is always relative, dear child. So far as the death of Mrs Chayleigh is concerned, I think first we must find out why she died, for we must remember that, so far, we cannot be certain that she was murdered.’

‘But you think she was, don’t you?’

‘It is as likely and as unlikely as that she committed suicide or was killed as the result of an accident, but I prefer to await the result of the inquest before I make up my mind.’

‘Meaning,’ said Laura shrewdly, ‘that you don’t propose to be bound by its findings. Is that your attitude?’

‘I have no more to say. Speculation is useless at the moment.’

‘Then shall we get on with the memoirs?’

‘I should prefer to take the air. Will you show me whereabouts on the cliff-top the bolt-hole from this cave comes out? I do not propose to scramble down the face of the cliffs as you did, but your ‘fairly new’ ladder sounds a possible means of descent, even for one of my advanced years.’

‘Well, all right, so long as we get back in time for our next meal. So you do think this was murder, and not accident or suicide, don’t you? I wish we knew why she really consented to come to this house and who it was she met here. Incidentally, the passage up from the back of the cave comes out at the end of the quarries, so one way of reaching it, if you wanted to throw people off the scent, might be to start from the back of this house, worm your way into the quarries and approach the entrance to the passage that way. You’d never be spotted unless somebody was actually in the quarries at the time, because they’re all overgrown with plants and small bushes and so there’s plenty of cover. My bet is not only that Mrs Chayleigh was conned into coming to this house and murdered here, but that the body was taken to the cave and put into the sea on an outgoing tide. What do you think of that for an idea? There must have been more than one murderer, of course. That’s why I thought of the smugglers. I don’t believe one person could have managed all that alone.’