The Mudflats of the Dead

INTERIM

‘Hence! home, you idle creatures,

get you home: Is this a holiday?’

William Shakespeare

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When Dame Beatrice returned to her home it was to find her secretary there. She greeted Laura warmly, but added: ‘I did not expect you back so soon.’

‘Oh, Gavin was called upon at short notice to attend an Interpol conference in West Germany. It seemed pointless to stay on without him, so here I am, filled with the London ozone of lead poisoning and petrol fumes, and with a heart for any fate, as the Master of English Prose so often said. You didn’t tell me much about it in your letters, but I gather you’ve been busy on a case of murder.’

‘That it is a case of murder has not been proved. There is every likelihood that it never will be proved.’ She gave Laura a brief but sufficient account of her activities concerning the death of Camilla Hoveton St John.

‘So this Palgrave mentioned blackmail, did he?’ said Laura. ‘He’s a schoolmaster, you say – Caesar’s wife, in other words. Wonder whether the girl had anything to go on?’

‘Before I left him we discussed the matter. He did not believe the girl would have carried out her threat and he assured me that there was nothing in her insinuations and that she withdrew them on the plea that she had been joking. Apparently he threatened her that his union would sue her for defamation of character.’

‘Yes, well, it’s not the sort of joke a man who teaches in a mixed comprehensive, where the kids stay on until they’re seventeen or eighteen, would find very funny. I think, on the face of it, that he’s your murderer.’

‘He may be the chief, but he is not the only suspect. The girl seems to have involved herself with other men while she was living in the cottage. So far as Mr Palgrave is concerned, I gave him every chance to tell me some easy lies, but he did not avail himself of the opportunity.’

‘Oh, yes? Clever enough to see the snares you were laying, perhaps.’

‘Yes, but it must have been a temptation to take an obvious way out. He must know that he is the chief suspect, so I gave him the opportunity of saying that he was not the only member of the cottage party who was out of the house that night. He did not take advantage of this. He agreed that Mrs Lowson was out walking, but he was compelled to admit this as others, of course, can testify to it. Besides, on the face of it, she appears to be the last person to have needed to lay violent hands upon Miss St John, since she had met her for the first time that day.’

‘What about the husband?’

‘Cupar Lowson? He is well out of it, it seems. He was in bed, presumably asleep, at the time when Palgrave left the cottage to drive to Stack Ferry that night. Palgrave saw him.’

‘Palgrave said Lowson was in bed?’

‘Palgrave said so. My suggestion that both the Lowsons and both the Kirbys may have been out he ignored. As Mrs Kirby told me that Miss St John had attempted to seduce Adrian Kirby, I thought that Mr Palgrave might have risen to my bait, but he did not.’

‘So exit Palgrave and all’s well?’

‘By no means. I mention the matter for what it is worth. The difficulty is that if none of the cottage party was involved, that brings us to the need to consider an incalculable number of outsiders. The place was teeming with yachtsmen and other summer visitors and the girl was avid for male society. Further to that, but for the mysterious business of the suitcase, as I explained to you, there is little reason to think that the verdict at the inquest was mistaken.’

‘That the girl swam on an outgoing tide and was drowned because she couldn’t get back to shore? As a swimmer myself, I still can’t swallow that. Mind you, if she was the kind of little tramp you indicate, and some man was there, egging her on, well, she might have been daft enough to do it, I suppose.’

‘I think the possibilities have all been considered and I am inclined to reject that one.’

‘There is just one thing,’ said Laura. ‘When Palgrave admitted that Lowson was in bed and asleep that night, was that both when he entered the cottage and when he left it?’

‘He seems to have assumed that it was both. Palgrave was in the cottage for about half an hour. He groped around for his suitcase, went upstairs to change his clothes, went into the kitchen to shave and straight out to his car when he had done this.’

‘Why should he go upstairs to change?’

‘Not to disturb the sleeping man.’

‘I don’t believe he would have bothered about that. Do you know what I think? I think that when Palgrave nipped in and groped around for his suitcase, he assumed that both the Lowsons were asleep in bed. It was only when he was leaving that he discovered that Lowson was on his own in the room.’

‘You may be right. I wonder why Mr Lowson did not accompany his wife on her moonlight walk? One would have thought that in a strange environment he would have been anxious to be with her.’

‘They may have had a bit of a toss-up and she was walking it off while he preferred to fume and sulk in bed.’

‘What an imaginative mind you have!’

‘Another possibility is that Lowson murdered the girl and sneaked back while Palgrave was upstairs or in the kitchen. Anyway, there could be a simple explanation for the girl’s suitcase being found on the dunes.’

‘In what way?’

‘You said that Palgrave took the others to the pub that night. They probably didn’t bother to lock up before they went. People don’t, in the country. Couldn’t a thief have oiled in, pinched the girl’s suitcase and hidden it among the sand-dunes until he could sell it and her clothes?’

‘There are objections to that theory. It assumes that the intruder knew that the cottage was empty. If so, there was nothing to prevent a thief from looking around to find something worth stealing. Surely the holiday clothes of Dr Lowson and his wife, not to mention those of Mr Palgrave, would have been better worth taking than Miss St John’s admittedly small and dingy little outfit?’

‘Perhaps he didn’t think he had much time. As I see it, he would have popped in and out as quickly as he could.’

‘Then why go upstairs when there were three suitcases to hand just inside the front door? Even if Mr Palgrave is lying, and his own suitcase was already in the boot of his car, there were still the Lowsons’ things ready for the picking up. Even if he did risk going upstairs, why choose Miss St John’s —’

‘Tatty little outfit in preference to the Lowsons’ kit? Very well, then. Pass, theory that there could have been a thief, although to my mind it is still a possibility which ought to be taken into account if no other evidence is forthcoming. But, surely, so far as you’ve gone, doesn’t everything point to Palgrave? There’s no doubt he bathed with the girl that night, he came back to the cottage knowing she wouldn’t be there, and his rather feeble story seems to have been that he “left her in the sea”. Well, she had not only made a perfect nuisance of herself to him, but had actually threatened (jokingly or not) to blackmail him. Add to this the fact that, instead of sleeping in his car as he had said he had intended doing, he admits that he drove around in the small hours until he found a cafe where he could get breakfast. Then he went to the hotel at Stack Ferry and took up his reservation earlier than he had intended. Sounds very fishy to me.’

‘And may well be so, I agree, although, of course, hotels do take customers mid-week.’

‘Then, since you are convinced there was murder done, why do you think I’m wrong?’

‘I would not say – in fact, I have not said – that you are wrong. Moreover, you have made a most valuable suggestion, although it had already occurred to me.’

Time passed. The holiday season ended. The yachtsmen laid up their boats, the holiday cottages were vacated, the hotels paid off their auxiliary staff, the beaches were almost deserted and melancholy settled over the salt-marshes. The creeks and channels on the east side of Stack Ferry were left to the densely packed colonies of crustacean-eating knots and the winter visitors, including wild geese, mallard, teal, wild duck, widgeon and the predatory wild-fowler who was licensed to shoot them. Dame Beatrice, after exploring such avenues as remained open in the case of Camilla, decided to settle down to an autumn routine and the business of getting Christmas out of the way and hoping, with Mr Micawber, that something would turn up.