The Mudflats of the Dead

they had moved it and I had to grope around for it, not liking to put on the light.

‘I decided to change my clothes before appearing at the hotel in Stack Ferry – I was hoping, you see, that they could have me a day or two early, although my booking didn’t actually start until the weekend – but then it occurred to me that if I changed in the parlour I might wake the Lowsons up, so, knowing that Camilla’s room would be empty until she came back from her bathe, I sneaked upstairs with my suitcase and changed up there.

‘I wasn’t going to bother about shaving. I thought there would certainly be a barber’s shop somewhere in Stack Ferry where I could get a shave and a trim before I went to the hotel, but I altered my mind.’

‘Did you see Miss St John’s suitcase when you used her room?’

‘Not that I remember, but I wasn’t noticing much. I wanted to be quick in case Camilla came back and found me in possession.’

‘Did you see her night attire anywhere in the room?’

‘I don’t suppose she had any, you know. Child of nature and all that. Of course I suppose she could have tidied it away – stuck it in a drawer or under the pillow or something – but, judging from the state of the room, I shouldn’t think it very likely.’

‘So, having completed your preparations for departure, you left the cottage.’

‘That’s right, after I’d shaved in the kitchen. There wasn’t a bathroom.’

‘With your own suitcase you left the cottage?’

‘Quite — and not with Camilla’s, as the police seemed to think.’

‘You have referred to the Lowsons. Can you be sure that the Kirbys were in the cottage while you were changing your clothes in Miss St John’s room?’

‘Be sure? Well, Mrs Kirby saw me leave the cottage after I’d shaved. She was at the bedroom window.’

‘So she said.’

‘Don’t you believe her?’

‘I believe nothing without proof. You see, it might be just as well for the Kirbys to appear to produce some evidence that they were in the cottage at that particular time.’

‘Good heavens! You don’t suppose Miranda Kirby drowned Camilla, do you? She can’t even swim.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘She said she couldn’t. Adrian couldn’t, either. They never bathed in the sea.’

‘She said she couldn’t? You are singularly trusting, Mr Palgrave. What did Mrs Kirby think about Miss St John?’

‘Just that she was a thundering little nuisance, that’s all.’

‘You said that you had a difference of opinion with Miss St John when she borrowed your car without permission and went to Stack Ferry in it.’

‘She fully deserved the ticking-off I gave her.’

‘She took Mr Kirby with her on this jaunt?’

‘She took good care to lose him as soon as they got to Stack Ferry, I expect. I bet she only took him with her so that I shouldn’t blow my top about the car. She was mistaken. I did blow my top. Of course, if Adrian had known she had snitched the car without permission, he would never have gone with her. I’m certain of that. Adrian is a very decent chap, one of the best. He can be a bit tedious at times – you know – tiresomely informative and all that, but —’

‘We wander from the point, Mr Palgrave.’

‘Which is, I take it, that I can’t prove I did not drown Camilla before I went back that night and changed my clothes. One person I can definitely swear was in the cottage at the same time as I was, because I actually saw him asleep in the parlour, and that’s Lowson.’

‘Ah, yes. You left Miss St John in the sea —’

‘Yes, and swimming about like a little fish.’

‘I was not suggesting anything else. You returned to the cottage. How did you say you got in?’

‘I had a key, but when I had changed and shaved and gone out again, I remember that I did not close the door behind me for fear of waking Lowson.’

‘So you did not wake him when you entered the cottage?’

‘Apparently not. Surprising, in a way, because I had to hunt around for my suitcase. They’d moved it from where I’d left it. I think I told you that. I had to find it before I could change my clothes, of course.’

‘How long did all this take you?’

‘Half an hour or so. Yes, quite that.’

‘And Miss St John did not return?’

‘Not while I was there.’

‘And Mrs Lowson?’

‘Oh, I see! Now that I remember, she wasn’t there. I expect she was out enjoying the moonlight. She used to say it made her fey. Highland blood, you know.’

‘Miss St John’s suitcase was found half buried in a sand-dune, and I cannot believe that she herself took it there and hid it.’

‘That does seem a bit odd, unless she had hidden it there earlier, before we bathed. She would have had plenty of time while we were all at the pub that evening.’

‘Not a new suggestion, but why should she do such a thing?’

‘Well, if she’d decided to flit when she knew the Lowsons were going to stay, and she had no place to leave a suitcase, I suppose she might have carried it down to the dunes, although it doesn’t seem very likely unless she was expecting somebody to pick her up in a dinghy, but, even so, hardly at night.’

‘I wonder whether Miss St John had a similar reason to your own for vacating the cottage?’

‘How do you mean, Dame Beatrice?’

‘That she had known the Lowsons – or one of them – before, and did not welcome them as house- mates.’

‘I think she was simply planning to go on a toot with some bloke. Ever so much more likely, in my opinion, and I knew her, whereas you did not.’

‘How right you are!’

‘But the suitcase remains a mystery.’

‘The person who buried it (and so inadequately!) remains a mystery.’

‘Is it just because of the suitcase that you talk about a murderer?’

‘Oh, dear me, no! Do you think Miss St John would have bathed in deep water on an outgoing tide?’

‘No, I don’t. What’s more, on that particular evening the tide was pretty high, as I said, but it wasn’t nearly on the turn when I left her. It could have had as much as an hour to run before there was slack water and then the ebb. Even Camilla wouldn’t have stayed in as long as that.’

‘The murderer can hardly have been a local person. He or she thought, no doubt, that the ebb would carry the body right out to sea, not knowing that, at Saltacres, what the sea removes it returns, sooner or later, to very much the same place. Did the Lowsons swim?’

‘Oh, not that day, I’m sure. I don’t know about any other day, but they’d only come down that same afternoon. I found them there when I got back after dining in Stack Ferry.’

‘And you saw nobody on the marshes or the shore that night except your companion, Miss St John?’

‘I thought I had answered that. I saw nobody until I was back in my car and was ready to drive off. Then I thought I saw somebody wearing white, but the thing was quite a long way off.’

‘All the same, by moonlight it is still possible to recognise a figure, if not a face.’

‘I was mistaken in what I thought. The person I thought it might have been was no longer wearing white that evening. All I saw was marsh mist.’

Dame Beatrice did not press the point.

CHAPTER 13