“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he was covered with seaweed and soaked with salt water. If I hadn’t given him a bath, the whole house’d smell.”
“Hm. And then, after washing the dog, you cleaned your kitchen.” The Inspector ran a hand over his chin, as if checking the quality of his morning’s shave. “You don’t often find dead bodies on the beach, do you, Mrs Seddon?”
“No, of course I don’t!”
“So, given the fact that it’s an unusual – and probably rather a shocking – thing to happen to you, can you understand why I’m surprised that you bathed your dog and did some of your housework before reporting it?”
“I can see that, with hindsight, it may sound rather odd, but at the time it seemed the perfectly logical thing to do.”
“Did it?”
“Maybe I was in shock. Maybe I needed to do something mechanical, something mundane, to calm myself down.”
“Or maybe, Mrs Seddon, you just needed time to work things out.”
“Work what out?”
“What you were going to say when you rang the police.”
“I didn’t need to work that out. I just had to say exactly what I’d seen.”
“The body on the beach?”
“Precisely.”
“And to direct us to where that body was lying?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mrs Seddon, everything you’ve told us this morning makes perfect sense.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“We followed your directions to the letter. They were very clear.” Carole nodded in acknowledgment of the compliment. “We went down to the breakwater you described and everything was absolutely fine…except for one small detail.”
“And what was that?”
“When we got to the breakwater, there was nothing there. There was no body on the beach, Mrs Seddon.”
? The Body on the Beach ?
Four
Carole Seddon felt upset after the police’s departure. They had come to the house with an agenda; their semaphore of little nods and eyelid flickers had been prearranged. Having arrived believing her to be a hysterical attention seeker, nothing she could say was going to make them leave with any change in their attitude.
That’s what hurt – that they had thought her anything less than sensible. Throughout her career in the Home Office, Carole Seddon had prided herself on being a safe pair of hands. Male colleagues had paid her the ultimate compliment of appearing unaware of her gender. Even at times of crisis, when she returned to work after the birth of her son, when her marriage to David was turning horribly sour, she had never let her emotions show in her professional life.
And here she was faced with a detective and a WPG being understanding about her mental state.
There was nothing wrong with her mental state. Certainly nothing wrong with her hormonally. What stage she was at with her menopause was nobody’s business but her own. And yet the attitude of the two police officers had undermined her confidence. She knew she wasn’t a hysteric, but the fact that someone could imagine her to be a hysteric upset the carefully maintained equilibrium of her life.
The unease didn’t dissipate during the course of the day. She went through the motions of her normal routine. Did a bit of housework for the rest of the morning. Forced down some soup and a hunk of granary bread at lunchtime, then settled to the regular mental aerobics of the
Round four, she took Gulliver out for a shorter walk, through the back gate to do his business in the rough ground behind the row of cottages. Jude and her carpet were no longer in their front garden, but, Carole noted with disapproval, the structure of boxes still was. Her new neighbour would have to learn. People in Fethering didn’t leave anything in their front gardens, except for staddlestones, tasteful statuary and – in one rather regrettable instance – gnomes.
Gulliver seemed to have caught his mistress’s mood, sloping along by her side with none of his usual frenetic attacks on invisible windmills. The light too was depressing. True to its early promise, the day had never felt like day, and its leaden sky was now thickening into a November night. The cold stung her exposed cheeks and she shivered. Her circulation hadn’t got properly going all day.
Still Carole Seddon couldn’t lose the unpleasant aftertaste of her morning’s visitation by the police.
Despite the sour mood they’d engendered, the thought did not for a moment occur to her that she might be in the wrong. There was no doubt that she had seen the body on the beach. The fact that the police hadn’t found it was down either to their incompetence or – more likely – to the interference of some outside agency. Maybe they’d taken too long, arriving after the tide had come in far enough to move the body on. Maybe someone had moved it deliberately.
Once the body had been found – as she knew it would be – Carole Seddon was determined to get a very full apology from the West Sussex Serious Crimes Squad. Public-spirited citizens should not be treated like criminals.
Though the prospect of receiving some ultimate moral compensation was a comforting one, when she returned home Carole still felt unsettled. As she put on the lights and drew the curtains, she even asked herself if she was over-reacting, if she actually was in an emotional state. Maybe a delayed response to the shock of seeing the dead body and to the implications of the wounds on its neck?
Uncharacteristically, she wanted to talk to someone about the whole incident. For a brief, irrational moment, she even contemplated confiding in her new neighbour. She couldn’t forget the unusual quality of empathy she’d seen in those wide brown eyes.
But that was ridiculous. Even if Carole Seddon had been the kind of person who talked to her neighbours about anything more weighty than the weather, she didn’t even know this woman.
These uncharacteristic thoughts were interrupted when the doorbell rang.
She had received no early warning over the previous couple of days. No acquaintance was due to come round for tea. It must be someone selling something, Carole concluded as she approached the front door. Probably one of those men with a zip-up bag full of dishcloths, oven gloves and plastic storage boxes who would flash some laminated card of authorization. If it was, she’d send him off with a flea in his ear. There was a consensus view in Fethering that all such visitors were lookouts for criminal gangs. Carole Seddon wasn’t about to have her joint cased for the benefit of burglars.
By the time she opened the door, she had built up a healthy head of righteous steam against the expected salesman and was surprised to be confronted by a thin, haunted-looking woman she had never seen before.
¦
“Did you find a body on the beach this morning?”
Now Carole knew why she had let the woman in. Her instinct was always to get rid of unexpected callers – particularly callers in grubby jeans and purple quilted anoraks. But something in the woman’s eyes had indicated that her visit was serious, maybe even important. Carole had ushered her stiffly into the sitting room, sat her down and waited till the reason for her presence was explained.
Now she knew she’d done the right thing. In the same armchair where Detective Inspector Brayfield had sat
