The Mudflats of the Dead

‘I think I must pay them a visit. We will try your staithe this afternoon. In such lovely weather they may well be enjoying a cruise on their yacht, but I have noticed, George, that people who own boats seem to spend much more time at moorings than they do out at sea or in navigating rivers. I wonder at what time Miss St John was landed after her trip with these Hamiltons?’

‘I asked, madam. The party came back while my informant and her husband were enjoying a cup of tea on board their own vessel, which was at moorings. She estimates that the time would have been around four-thirty and that she heard the young lady say that she must be getting back to her car. That was the last any of them – both boat parties, I mean – knew of her until they read about the drowning and saw the newspaper photograph.’

‘How long will it take us to get to this staithe?’

‘I can do it easily in an hour, madam.’

‘Then have the car ready by two-thirty.’ They were in luck. The only person on board the yacht was a young man whom Dame Beatrice rightly assumed to be Hamilton junior. She took the bull by the horns.

‘Ahoy, there, Juniper Mary!’ she called out in her beautiful voice. The young man, who had been doing something complicated with a coil of rope, straightened himself, smiled and waved his hand.

‘Coming!’ he shouted and leapt down on to the tiny quay. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I believe you made the acquaintance of a young woman named Camilla Hoveton St John a week or so ago, at a town called Stack Ferry, not far from here.’

‘I met – we met – a girl called Camilla, yes. She didn’t favour us with her surname. The poor kid got drowned a few days later. The local paper was full of it, complete with a blown-up photograph and a couple of columns of awful warnings to visitors about the danger of bathing on an outgoing tide. I was damn sorry to hear about it. She was a lively young specimen.’

‘Her friends do not think her death was an accident. Is there anywhere that we can sit and talk?’

‘Come aboard. This begins to sound interesting. Have her friends anything to go on?’

‘Not enough to take to the police, but enough to satisfy themselves that more enquiries should be made. I am authorised to make those enquiries.’

‘Golly! Are you a private eye, then?’

‘You may call me that.’ He assisted her on board, put out a deckchair for her in the cockpit and hoisted himself on to the cabin top where he sat with his long legs dangling and a look of anticipation on his youthful countenance. ‘I undertook the task because I feel her friends may well be right,’ she added.

‘Well, she certainly didn’t strike me as a girl who would easily drown.’

‘What causes you to say that?’

‘Oh, while my parents were looking at bird life and taking photographs, she and I sneaked off and had a swim. She was pretty useful in the water, I thought. Of course, if she was crazy enough to bathe on that outgoing tide the papers talked about, I suppose anything might have happened.’

‘We do not think she bathed on an outgoing tide. She knew all about the risks there are in doing anything so foolish.’

‘I say! Really? But surely that means either suicide or—’

‘Yes, it does, but, of course, we have nothing much to go on, so far, so perhaps—’

‘Oh, I won’t breathe a syllable to a soul!’

‘Why not? The more the suggestion is rumoured that the girl’s death was no accident, the sooner the murderer (if there is one) will have to make a move to cover his tracks.’

‘Oh, you’ve done this sort of sleuthing before, then?’

‘A number of times, yes.’ She produced her official card. ‘You must not think that only Miss Hoveton St John’s friends are interested in the case.’

‘Christmas!’ said the young man, handing back the rectangle of expensive pasteboard. ‘The Home Office, eh? Big stuff, no less. Well, what do you want me to tell you? So far as I was concerned, you see, she was just a girl I picked up—’

‘No, a girl who picked you up,’ said Dame Beatrice firmly. The young man looked rueful and agreed.

‘It wouldn’t actually have been the other way about,’ he said, ‘because she really did look more than a bit of a mess. Tatty old reach-me-downs, you know, and a gosh-awful dirty sweater far too big for her, and hair that could have done with a decent shampoo – not that one cares what people look like nowadays, of course, especially on holiday.’

‘But she heard you had a yacht and thought you were alone and told you how she longed to visit the bird sanctuary but could not afford to hire a boatman or join a pleasure cruise, so—’

‘Good Lord! You might have been there! Of course she hadn’t banked on my parents’ coming along. I could have done without them, too, of course, but I could have laughed at the expression on her face when they turned up, Ma complete with sunglasses and a tea basket and Dad in the frightful shorts he wears on the boat. Camilla looked daggers at me when they came aboard. She had shed the washed-out reach-me-downs and the dreadful sweater and was sunning herself in a bikini on the cabin top when they breezed along. She obviously hadn’t expected any additions to the party, and she was anything but pleased to see them. They weren’t too delighted to see her, either. She was a rather obvious little sea-serpent, if it isn’t disrespectful to say so. There’s a type, you know, and they are not very easy to choke off. I hadn’t bothered to attempt to shed her, as a matter of fact, because I knew that the parents, who are not exactly fin de siecle – I mean, they’ve heard of the Permissive Society, but that’s about all – would soon bottle up the young lizard, and so it happened for most of the time.’

‘For most of the time?’

‘Well, yes. She and I went for a swim when we landed at the bird sanctuary, as I think I mentioned.’

‘Did she give you any details about herself or her plans?’

‘When we went swimming?’

‘Or while you were all on the yacht.’

‘She told my mother she was studying art and was staying in Saltacres with some people at a cottage there, that’s all. Oh, she talked a lot of rot (intended to impress us, I suppose) about art being her religion, but I don’t think any of us were taken in by it, and when we reached the bird sanctuary it became pretty clear that she and I were to disappear among the sand-dunes, leaving the parents to look at birds.’

‘Did you find her suggestion embarrassing?’

‘Not really. It struck me as damn’ funny. She was so very undesirable. There are far better prospects at our local tennis club – and that’s not saying a lot! I said it was a swim or nothing, so we swam, but not for long. She was quite good, though – a stronger swimmer than I am, as a matter of fact. I’ll tell you another thing, too. She knew all about the tides along that coast. I believe her friends are right, you know. Funny she took a chance that night and got drowned. Could she have been a bit sloshed or something, and her drowning was accidental?’

‘That is a possibility which had not occurred to me.’

‘Girls can do strange things under the influence,’ said young Mr Hamilton, wagging his head and looking profound. ‘Men also, no doubt.’

‘I once took on a bet that I’d learn to pole-vault. Chickened out later, and lost the bet, of course, after I had sobered up.’ Dame Beatrice cackled and then asked: ‘What happened when you got back to Stack Ferry?’

‘She thanked us for a lovely outing and cut her stick. We never saw her again. I say! It’s tea-time. Do come back to the house and eat a few shrimps with us.’

‘May I venture to enquire whether your enterprise this day did thrive, madam?’ asked George, when, seen off with smiles and cordial hand-wavings by the Hamilton family, she joined him for the return journey to Stack Ferry.

‘Time will show, George. I may or may not have sown productive seed. Tomorrow we go home for the night. In Mrs Gavin’s absence there will be correspondence to deal with. After that, we return to these parts to interview the house agent who lets cottages to summer visitors. Do you like this neighbourhood, George?’

‘I prefer a more rolling and a more wooded countryside, madam.’

To their left stretched the miles of marshes, dunes and banks of shingle. Dame Beatrice had a sudden vision