causeway which led across the marshes. The moonlight made everything unreal. The dunes, in the distance, were black and silver; the creek was full of stranger and lovelier light than the sun’s rays ever discovered; the distant sea, which, to Palgrave, had seemed almost silent by day, had now found an eerie voice and, as they approached it, a luminosity apart from the flooding moonlight, for every creaming little wave was tipped with silver as the incoming tide lazily tossed it on to the shore and then gently but inexorably pulled it back again.
Camilla slipped off her jeans and sweater and ran across the sand. Palgrave undressed more slowly, shivering as the night wind made its first impact upon his naked body. Then he too ran across the strip of muddy beach and splashed his way to water deep enough for swimming. As he warmed up, he began to enjoy himself.
‘Swim
He swam over to her, put his hand on her head and thrust her under. When she surfaced, laughing and pushing the hair out of her eyes, he asked, coming behind her, taking her by the elbows and towing her along on her back:
‘Is that the game you were playing with the boyfriend the other morning?’
‘What other morning?’
‘No, it couldn’t have been. You were paddling and skylarking, not swimming. The tide was going out.’
‘How do
‘“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.”’
‘Oh, don’t come the little schoolmaster over me! Catch me if you can!’ She freed herself from him by suddenly sitting up, for he was not so much grasping her elbows as supporting them. As he was about to retort, for he felt the implied contempt in her remark, he went under and came up choking. He soon recovered and after another short, fast burst out to sea, he splashed ashore, dried himself on his shirt, put on the rest of his clothes and floundered his way across the marshes, leaving the girl still in the water.
When he reached the road the thought of spending the rest of the night in the car, cramped, uncomfortable and cold – for now he lacked even his shirt, which was too damp to put on – made him think longingly of that other bed in Camilla’s room. In any case, his suitcase was still in the cottage. It would supply him with a dry shirt. He would have plenty of time to nip indoors and put on the clean shirt, whether, in the end, he slept in the bed or not.
Miranda had given him a key to the front door of the cottage and, a Londoner and so accustomed to take such precautions, he had always locked the front door before he went to bed. He assumed that the newcomers would do the same. He had the key in his trousers pocket, so he entered as noiselessly as he could and groped for his suitcase, but it had been moved to make room for the luggage of the new tenants and it took him a few moments to find out where it had been placed.
He located it stealthily at last, picked it up and crept up the stairs and into Camilla’s room. Here he took off and packed the things he was wearing and put on a suit and a smarter pair of shoes. To do all this he had to put on the light and he was wryly amused to note that Camilla, in what he supposed had been a hopeful spirit, must have pulled the two single beds close together so that they looked like a double.
The temptation to get into one of the beds and sleep was strong. He even reached the stage of pulling the beds apart and flinging back the covers of the one nearer the door, but recognising immediately the compromising nature of this policy if he intended to keep the persistent nymph out of his arms, he put the temptation aside, took a look at himself in the fly-blown mirror over the dressing-table and decided that he needed a shave and that there might be no other opportunity for this before he presented himself at the hotel in Stack Ferry and asked whether he might take up his option earlier than had been arranged.
He crept down the steep stairs and went into the kitchen. Here he heated some water, took off his jacket, shaved, patted on some aftershave lotion, repacked the suitcase whose contents he had had to disarrange and then, picking up the suitcase once more, he stole into the sitting-room and went towards the front door.
This time he saw that a shaft of moonlight had fallen across the studio couch. It picked out a man’s bare arm lying outside the coverlet and across a stubbled cheek and stiff red hair.
‘Must be a sound sleeper, especially for a doctor,’ thought Palgrave. ‘Surely my groping around for my suitcase when I first came in ought to have woken him up?’ Of Morag there was no sign. Palgrave supposed that she was taking a moonlight stroll. The moon had always fascinated her, he remembered, and during the months of their engagement he had remonstrated with her more than once about her moonlit walks and the possible danger of taking them alone. She had never given way, he remembered.
Palgrave stood looking down on the sleeping man, the man who now slept nightly with Palgrave’s woman. Turbulent thoughts and crazy fantasies passed through the watcher’s mind. Suppose that Cupar died? Suppose there was a rail crash or a street accident? Suppose a gang of murderous young thugs set upon him and killed him? If Cupar ceased to exist, perhaps Morag would turn to Palgrave for comfort and from comfort to love and from love to marriage. His wild thoughts ran away with him.
‘And there’s my book!’ Palgrave suddenly said aloud. ‘I didn’t intend to write a thriller, and I shan’t. This will be a psychological novel of sex and violent death. Eureka! I really believe I have it!’
Because he had said the words aloud, he disturbed the sleeping man. Cupar snorted, rolled over and opened his eyes. Palgrave retreated into the shadows and waited for the other to settle down again. Then he made for the door and, baggage in hand, sneaked out without actually latching the door behind him. Morag and Camilla would be returning sooner or later, he supposed. He half wondered whether he would meet Morag on the road, for he had given up all intention of trying to sleep in his car. The road, however, was deserted and there was nothing moving on the marshes except the tall plants along the shores of the creek. They were swaying and whispering in the moonlight and seemed to be dancing to the soundless music of a gentle but persistent off-shore wind.
Palgrave walked to his car, put his luggage in the boot and took the driver’s seat. He fastened his seat-belt and decided to drive westwards along the coast road. There was nobody about. Morag, if she was out walking, must have gone in the opposite direction, he supposed, or else she was out on the marshes or among the dunes. Possibly she, too, had gone for a swim.
There was no sign of Camilla, either, but this was not surprising. Both the dunes and the pebble-ridge would hide her from his seat in the low-slung car, whether she was still in the water or not. He did not suppose she was still swimming. The tide had been nearly at the full. Either it was slack water by this time, or else the tide was on the turn. She surely would be out of the water by now. He half thought of leaving the car and going down to the beach to make certain of this, but just as he was about to unfasten his seat-belt, he saw what he took to be Morag. She had been wearing white trousers and a white cardigan at the farewell party, and it was a white form which appeared in the distance flitting over the marshes.
‘Must be a will o’ the wisp,’ he thought, ‘Gases rise over marshes. I shall have to put Morag out of my mind. Curse young Camilla and her sexy urges!’ He let in the clutch and drove in the moonlight towards Stack Ferry.
CHAPTER 5
THE DEAD
‘In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears.’
« ^ »
He drove west and then south, found, in the early morning, a lorry-drivers’ cafe, breakfasted on delicious ham and eggs and execrable coffee, and then set course north and east for Stack Ferry. His chosen inn, The Stadholder, had its own courtyard. He drove in under an archway, locked the car and went off to kill time before presenting himself at the reception desk to ask whether he might move in straight away instead of waiting until Saturday.
The marshes of Stack Ferry stretched away north of the town itself, and both east and west of the estuary. Those to the west had been drained and grass-sown, for they were freshwater marshes, and were now turned into a public park and a caravan site. Palgrave explored them, but found them uninteresting. Beyond the park, however, the marshes were as Nature had intended them to be.
Those on the east side were sea-marshes, but, unlike the stretches at Saltacres, these at Stack Ferry were
