Hamilton herself answered the door and invited her in.
‘I must not stay. I am on my way to lunch,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but there is a question I would like to ask you, if I may.’
‘Do come in and ask it. I am quite alone in the house. It’s the maid’s day off, and my husband and son have gone out in the yacht. You’ll take a glass of sherry?’
‘If you are alone, why don’t we both lunch at my hotel? My car is outside and my man can bring you back at any time which suits you.’
‘That would be very nice. I’ll just go up and change and leave a note for my husband in case they get back early. What is your question?’
‘You may think it a strange one, but I have a good reason for asking it. As woman to woman, what did you think of that young Camilla Hoveton St John?’
‘I have a superstition about speaking ill of the dead.’
‘I feel you have answered me.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, Dame Beatrice, I thought she was quite appalling, and I was annoyed and rather worried when my son brought her on board. Fortunately, when we rounded the Point on the return trip, the sea became rather boisterous.’
‘Fortunately?’
‘Yes. We are all good sailors, but the girl was violently sick. Nothing puts a young man off so completely as seeing the admired object in the throes of extreme nausea. The poor girl was quite revolting and I’m ashamed to say that I was glad of it. I did not want my son to continue the acquaintanceship. It was quite unsuitable in every way. He is still at university and very impressionable.’
‘I understand that for a short time they bathed together. Did he comment at all on her prowess as a swimmer?’
‘Yes, he was quite impressed by it.’
‘Did he make any comment when it was known that she had drowned?’
‘He said he could hardly believe it. The girl had told him about a friend of hers, a man, a very powerful swimmer, who had been foolish enough to bathe off Saltacres on an outgoing tide and had experienced great difficulty in getting back to safety. My son said that unless the girl had intended suicide, he did not believe she would ever have taken such a risk.
‘It is possible, of course. Did you form any opinion as to her state of mind while she was with you?’
‘Her state of mind (except that she was making open overtures to my son) did not concern me. She seemed perfectly happy, so far as I could tell, although, obviously, the presence of my husband and myself rather cramped her style. When we reached the bird sanctuary, which was our objective, she soon detached my son from us, and they wandered off, as you know, to bathe.’
‘Did your son ever show any sign of intending to meet Miss St John again?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when they were in the car. Mrs Hamilton laughed.
‘I think the bout of sea-sickness would have given romance a mortal blow,’ she said. ‘At any rate, he never did meet her again unless he slipped out after we had gone to bed, but, if he had done that, I should have heard the sound of the car. I am a very indifferent sleeper. He would hardly have
‘Your yacht?’
‘At night? And without his father to help him? Impossible, I would think. Rounding the Point is a tricky operation, and my son is still a novice at sailing.’ She paused and then said: ‘I am not sure I like your questions very much, Dame Beatrice. Is there something behind them?’
‘I appreciate your feelings. The questions are only to clear the air. You see, Mrs Hamilton, I have been briefed to enquire into what I am now quite convinced was a case not of accident or suicide, but of murder.’
‘So my son has indicated, and I refuse to be associated with anything so dreadful.’
‘I was obliged to ask the questions. You have answered them.’
‘All the same —’
‘Please do not distress yourself. I have met your son, remember. All I have done is to clear him out of the way. To tell you the truth, this is just as likely – I am beginning to think
‘In that case, you might as well suspect
‘Oh, I do, and to exactly the same extent,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her crocodile grin. ‘I do not suspect either of you of having had more than a few hours’ completely innocent acquaintance with Miss St John.’
‘But, Dame Beatrice, you will have to tell me more than that!’
‘Yes, of course I shall. Miss St John’s luggage disappeared from the cottage at which she was staying, and the police have been looking for it. It was found by a beachcomber. He was searching the beach and the sand- dunes at Saltacres, as was his custom, when he came upon the suitcase partly buried in the sand. He impounded it, that is all.’
‘But what was it doing there?’
‘My theory, which, I may add, the police do not wholly accept, is that the murderer hoped to hide it in order to give the impression that the girl herself had taken it out of the cottage and was not intending to return. I think he may have hoped, also, that if the body turned up again, it would have been in the sea and among the sea-creatures so long that it would be unrecognisable.’
‘That sounds to me like someone who had no knowledge of how the tides run in these parts. Such a person is unlikely to have been a yachtsman, so my family is in the clear, I suppose, simply because of that.’
‘Mrs Hamilton, you must not allow me to offend you. The discovery of the girl’s suitcase in the place where it was found convinces me that I am investigating a case of murder. Any help which I can get from anybody who met Camilla St John may turn out to be the pivot on which the whole case turns.’
‘My son tells me that you do a lot of this kind of work.’
‘Sometimes it fits in with my commitments to the Home Office; sometimes, as in this instance, it is simply because of a desire to find out the truth. One more question?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Are you certain you saw the girl meet and go off with a man in a car?’
‘Oh, yes, I am perfectly certain. When we moored after our trip to the bird sanctuary we landed the girl and then I remembered that I had to call for some food I had ordered from the Chinese take-away shop. I had the girl in my sights – she did not look round and, in any case, I had neither the wish nor the intention to follow her. There was a short cut through the public car park. I took it and saw her get into a car in which a man was already sitting.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Except that he was bearded, no.’
A bearded man might as well be Adrian Kirby as anybody else, Dame Beatrice thought. In any case, Camilla had arrived safely back in Saltacres that night. There seemed nothing more to be gained by enquiries at Stack Ferry or from the Hamiltons.
CHAPTER 12
PALGRAVE AGAIN
‘ “Right, as usual,” said the Duchess.
“What a clear way you have of putting things!” ’
« ^ »
Apart from impounding the suitcase and testing it for fingerprints, the police took no action except to point out to the Old Mole that finders were not always entitled to be keepers. They checked the fingerprints against those of the old beachcomber and found, most unsurprisingly, that they tallied. There were other prints, legible enough, but not able to be checked because they were not on record and as Adrian, Miranda, Palgrave and any number of
