The Mudflats of the Dead

down to have a good talk.’

‘I should like that very much.’ The younger men removed themselves and the host produced sherry.

‘Well, now,’ he said invitingly, ‘let’s pool our ideas.’

‘I have very few to contribute. I was asked to make some enquiries, but, so far, little has resulted from them. I should be interested to know why you suspect foul play.’

‘Well, like you, I don’t exactly suspect it, but it seems to me a distinct possibility. I suppose the nature of my job conditions me. Our firm is sometimes concerned with cases of violent crime — muggings, rape, armed robbery, even murder – so I suppose I look on the violent or unexpected deaths of young women with a particularly jaundiced eye and, my word! — this specimen went about positively begging for trouble, as my young brother indicated.’

‘I suppose – perhaps it is an unfair question – but I suppose you have no suspicions of anybody in particular?’

‘No. She was quite promiscuous. One heard of skirmishes among the dunes and all that sort of thing. Chaps at the pub used to make jokes about her, you know. The better read called her Moll Flanders and to the coarser grained she was known as Eskimo Nell, so that will show you.’

‘She was very young to have gained that sort of notoriety.’

‘She gained it in so short a time, too. I have wondered whether somebody she knew at home – she was a Londoner, so the papers said – followed her down here with intent to do the deed, but it’s only a theory.’

‘What about the man who found the body?’

‘Yes, I know. Interesting you should mention him. That’s another matter on which I’ve pondered, but I guess the police investigated that possibility very thoroughly. After the deceased’s nearest and dearest relatives, the person who finds the body becomes the number one suspect. The fellow is still down here, if you want to speak to him. He was out cockling early in the morning when he saw her lying there, or so he said at the inquest. I spoke to him afterwards.’

‘I should like to speak to him. I doubt whether it is reasonable to suspect him, since I suppose that, if he was guilty, he would not have reported to the authorities. Simpler to have emulated the priest and the Levite, and passed by on the other side. There appear to have been no witnesses to his discovery of the body.’

‘Well, none came forward, but it’s quite extraordinary how many people do get up early on holiday so as to make the most of the day. Besides, there are the cockles to be had – they leave tell-tale marks on the sandy mudflats – and I believe you can also find small crabs. Some people – the locals mostly, I suspect – also gather edible samphire on the marshes. I don’t think you could guarantee that nobody would spot you, however early in the morning it was, if you were up to a bit of no good, but nobody else came forward. Then there are the off-shore yachtsmen. They all carry binoculars and could have seen if anything fishy was going on.’

‘I think the drowning – whether by accident or design – happened at night. In that case the cockler could quite innocently have come upon the body next morning. Will you give me his address?’

‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with you to visit him, if you like.’

‘That would be more than kind.’

The man’s name was Sleach. He lodged with a widow who let rooms down by the Old Quay. This was now a jumble of cottages, most of them derelict. There were also some timber-built, black-tarred warehouses now in use only for storing fishermen’s gear. A rotting duck-punt was pulled up on the stones and mud which formed part of the shore and a decrepit sailing barge, with its mast intact but its timbers beginning to rot away on the starboard side, was moored against the planks which formed a kind of continuous fender against the stonework of the cobbled quay.

‘ “Change and decay in all around I see”,’ murmured Dame Beatrice. Their quarry was not in.

‘That do spend most of his evenings at the pub,’ the landlady informed them.

‘I’m a solicitor,’ said Billington. ‘Have you known him long?’

‘He’s my nephoo.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘That’s not in any money trouble?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s in connection with that body he found on the beach.’

‘I reckon that was a terrible sad thing an’ all. Poor young mawther! But Billy only know what that testify at inquest. That don’t hev further to say.’

‘Surely not, but naturally the relatives are very much upset about the drowning and want as much information as they can get.’

The woman looked with some curiosity at Dame Beatrice. ‘You’ll be grandma, I whoolly think,’ she said. Dame Beatrice inclined a gracious head.

‘She was a wild girl, I’m afraid,’ she observed, but the fish did not rise to this fly.

‘I think,’ said Billington, when they reached the pub, ‘that I’d better go in and winkle him out. By the sound of it, the place is jam-packed. It’s still early in the evening, so he won’t be bottled yet and we may get something out of him which didn’t get said at the inquest.’

The pub was on the New Quay. Here the houses and store places were well built of flint with fairly high- pitched roofs and the pub itself was a pleasant, much altered three-storey building with a low wall around its forecourt and some lath and plaster work around the windows.

Dame Beatrice strolled towards the sea wall. Some tidy little sailing-boats were lying out on the hard, a couple of rowing-boats without their oars lay near them, and a lifebelt hung on a wooden board near by. It was a strangely orderly scene after the decrepitude of the Old Quay and, except for the sociable hubbub from the pub which still came to her ears, exceptionally quiet and deserted.

Billington and his prey soon joined her, each with a pint tankard in his hand.

‘Here’s Mr Sleach, Dame Beatrice. There’s a bench outside the pub. Shall we sit?’ asked Billington, leading the way.

‘Do you live in Saltacres, Mr Sleach?’ Dame Beatrice asked, when they were seated.

‘No. I work in Hull and take my summer fortnight with my auntie. I fare to go home tomorrow.’

‘I am greatly concerned about the death of young Camilla St John. Can you tell me exactly how you came to find her body? I did not know of the inquest until it was too late for me to attend it.’

‘This gentleman tell me he’s a lawyer. No trouble in it for me, is there?’

‘Oh, no. He is merely escorting me and will know all the helpful questions to ask, that’s all.’

‘What I hev to say I said at the inquest.’

‘Yes, I know, but I wasn’t there to hear it. Please begin at the beginning and tell me all you can.’

‘Oh, well, then, I go out early to get the cockles. They make a nice start to a meal with thin bread and butter. The visitors they go for to uncover them with their bare hands, but, being local born, though now I live in Hull, I know a better trick than that, so I take my cockling knife, give one little turn and up come the cockle.’

‘Ah, yes, the expert at work.’

‘Well, I obtain a nice little foo – coupla dozen or more – then I straighten up and shake the cockles – real Creeky Blues – down in my bucket to make more room. Then I spot something lying half in the water and half out. Tide was on the turn, so I say to myself that the last tide brought something in, so I go over and take a look and I find this poor young girl.’

‘So what did you do then?’

‘I go on with my cockling as soon as I know there’s nawthen I can do for her. Then when I reckon I get enough for auntie and me with our tea, I go back and tell auntie what I see. Her say to go to pub and ’phone police, so I do that and that’s the lot.’

‘When you had finished your cockling, was the body exactly as you had seen it first?’

‘Well, as to that, how could it be? Tide was on the turn, so I pull the poor thing up above highwater mark soon as I see what it was.’

‘Did you turn your back on it while you went on gathering your cockles?’

‘Times, yes, and times, no. You hev to take the cockles where they fare to be. That don’t grow in rows like turnips or sugar beet.’

‘Did you see any living person on the beach or the dunes?’