death.
Dalgliesh was surprisingly warm and comfortable in the shelter of the marram grass. He could hear the wind whistling in the dunes and the insistent thudding of the tide. But the tall clumps of grass shielded him so effectively that he had an odd sense of isolation as if the roar of wind and sea was coming from far away. Through the thin screen of grasses he could see the hide, a familiar, ordinary, primitive hut outwardly no different from half a dozen others which fringed the bird sanctuary. He could almost persuade himself that it was no different. Touched by this sense of isolation and unreality, he had to resist an absurd impulse to see if Seton’s body were really there.
Jane Dalgliesh must have made good time. It was less than forty-five minutes before he caught the first glimpse of approaching figures in the lane. The straggling group came briefly into view and then they were hidden again behind the dunes. The second time he glimpsed them they seemed no nearer. Then, unexpectedly, they turned the last bend in the lane and were with him. He saw a windblown, incongruous little group, burdened with equipment and having the air of a badly organised and slightly demoralised expedition. Reckless was there, of course, grim-faced and rigid with anger, the ubiquitous raincoat buttoned to his chin. He had with him his sergeant, the police surgeon, a photographer and two young detective constables, carrying a stretcher and a rolled canvas shield. Few words were exchanged. Dalgliesh bellowed his report in the Inspector’s ear and then went back to his shelter in the dunes and left them to it. This wasn’t his job. There was no sense in having an extra pair of feet churning up the moist sand around the hide. The men got to work. There was much shouting and gesticulating. The wind, as if in spite, had risen to a crescendo on their arrival and even in the comparative shelter of the lane it was hard to make oneself heard. Reckless and the doctor disappeared into the hide. There at least, thought Dalgliesh, it would be sheltered enough. Sheltered, airless and stinking of death. They were welcome to it. After about five minutes they reappeared and the photographer, the tallest of the group, bent nearly double and edged his equipment through the opening. Meanwhile the two constables were making ineffective efforts to get up a screen around the hide. The canvas leaped and whirled in their hands and whipped around their ankles with every gust of wind. Dalgliesh wondered why they bothered. There were hardly likely to be many sightseers on this lonely shore nor were the sandy approaches to the hide likely to yield further clues. There were only three sets of prints leading to the door: his own, those of his aunt, and the third set which were presumably Digby Seton’s. They had already been measured and photographed and soon, no doubt, the flying sand would obliterate them completely.
It was half an hour before they got the corpse out of the hide and placed on the stretcher. As the constables struggled to hold down the mackintosh covers while the straps were applied, Reckless came over to Dalgliesh. He said: “A friend of yours telephoned me yesterday afternoon. A Mister Max Gurney. It appears he’s been keeping to himself some interesting information about Maurice Seton’s will.”
It was an unexpected opening. Dalgliesh said: “I lunched with him and he asked me whether he ought to get in touch with you.”
“So he said. You’d imagine he would be capable of thinking it out for himself. Seton was found dead with marks of violence on the body. It stands to reason we’d be interested in the money side.”
“Perhaps he shares your view that it was a natural death,” suggested Dalgliesh.
“Maybe. But that’s hardly his business. Anyway, he’s told us now and it was news to me. There was no record of it at Seton House.”
Dalgliesh said: “Seton took a carbon of the letter. Gurney will be posting the original to you and you’ll find the carbon markings on the back. Someone destroyed the copy, presumably.”
Reckless said gloomily: “Someone. Perhaps Seton himself. I haven’t changed my mind yet about that killing, Mr. Dalgliesh. But you could be right. Especially in view of this.” He jerked his head towards the stretcher which the two policemen squatting at the poles were now bracing themselves to raise. “There’s no doubt about this one. This is murder, all right. So we take our choice. One murderer and one unpleasant practical joker. Or one murderer and two crimes. Or two murderers.”
Dalgliesh suggested that this last was unlikely in such a small community.
“But possible, Mr. Dalgliesh. After all, the two deaths haven’t much in common. There’s nothing particularly subtle or ingenious about this killing. Just a whacking great dose of poison in Seton’s hip flask and the knowledge that, sooner or later, he’d take a swig at it. All the murderer had to do was ensure that he wasn’t too close to medical help when it happened. Not that it would have done him much good by the look of it.”
Dalgliesh wondered how the killer had succeeded in luring Seton to the hide. Had it been done by persuasion or by threats? Was Seton expecting to meet a friend or an enemy? If the latter, was he the sort of man to go alone and undefended? But suppose it were a different kind of assignation? For how many people at Monksmere would Digby Seton have been ready to walk two miles over rough ground on a cold autumn day and in the teeth of a rising gale?
The stretcher was moving forward now. One of the constables had apparently been instructed to stay on guard at the hide. The rest of the party fell into line behind the corpse like an escort of shabby and ill-assorted mourners. Dalgliesh and Reckless walked together and in silence. Ahead, the shrouded lump on the stretcher swayed gently from side to side as the bearers picked their way over the ridges in the lane. The edges of the canvas flapped rhythmically like a sail in the wind and overhead a seabird hovered over the corpse, screaming like a soul in pain, before rising in a wide curve to disappear over the marshes.
2
It was early evening before Dalgliesh saw Reckless alone. The Inspector had spent the afternoon interviewing his suspects and checking on Digby Seton’s movements during the past few days. He arrived at Pentlands just before six o’clock, ostensibly to ask Miss Dalgliesh again if she had seen anyone walking along the shore towards Sizewell on the previous day and whether she had any idea what could have induced Digby Seton to visit the hide. Both questions had been answered earlier when Dalgliesh and his aunt had met Reckless at the Green Man to give their formal account of the finding of the body. Jane Dalgliesh had stated that she had spent the whole of Monday evening at Pentlands and had seen no one. But then, as she had pointed out, it would be possible for Digby-or indeed, anyone else-to have walked to the hide by the sunken lane behind the sand dunes or by way of the beach, and this path for most of its length wasn’t visible from Pentlands.
“All the same,” said Reckless obstinately, “he must have come past your cottage to get into the lane. Would that really be possible without you seeing him?”
“Oh perfectly, provided he kept close in to the cliffs. There is a strip of about twenty yards between my access to the beach and the beginning of the lane when I might have glimpsed him. But I didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to avoid notice and chose his moment to slip past.”
Reckless muttered as if thinking aloud. “And that suggests a secret assignation. Well, we suspect that. He wasn’t the man to go birdwatching on his own. Besides, it must have been dusk before he set off. Miss Kedge said that he got his own tea at Seton House yesterday. She found the dirty tea things waiting for her to wash up this morning.”
“But no supper?” enquired Miss Dalgliesh.
“No supper, Miss Dalgliesh. It looks as if he died before he had his evening meal. But the PM will tell us more, of course.”
Jane Dalgliesh made her excuses and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Dalgliesh guessed that she thought it tactful to leave him alone with Reckless. As soon as the door closed behind her, he asked: “Who saw him last?”
“Latham and Bryce. But nearly everyone admits to having spent some time yesterday with him. Miss Kedge saw him shortly after breakfast when she went up to the house to do her chores. He has kept her on as a kind of secretary-housemaid. Making use of her rather as his half-brother did, I imagine. Then he lunched with Miss Calthrop and her niece at Rosemary Cottage and left shortly after three. He called in on Bryce on his way home to Seton House to gossip about the return of your aunt’s chopper and to try to find out what you were doing in London. That little trip seems to have aroused general interest. Latham was with Bryce at the time and the three of them were together until Seton left shortly after four.”
“What was he wearing?”
