The Mudflats of the Dead

was still alive. It was the act of a guilty person.’

‘Do you think Colin Palgrave was that guilty person?’

‘We wondered, but his own death seems to let him out.’

‘I think,’ said Dame Beatrice, rejoining Laura, ‘that I will go and see the Lowsons myself. It will be interesting to find out which of Mr Palgrave’s private readers saw fit to suppress the book, and as the narrator of the story is supposed to be a doctor the Lowsons may be promising material.’

‘I don’t suppose Dr Lowson himself would bother to read the typescript of a third-rate novel,’ said Laura, ‘but I bet Mrs Lowson has read it.’

CHAPTER 18

THE MUDFLATS, AMPLETIDE SANDS

‘Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,

In the morning gleam as the tide went down.’

Charles Kingsley

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Laura Gavin had never lacked valour; under Dame Beatrice’s tutelage she had learned caution and discretion. When a second call came from Adrian Kirby to say that he had conferred with his wife and they had decided to let the Lowsons know that a visit from the police was impending, Laura informed him that Dame Beatrice was out and she did not know when to expect her back, but that she would deliver his message as soon as Dame Beatrice returned. Then she rang up Pinhurst.

‘Dame Beatrice has gone to Lancashire,’ she said, ‘and I don’t trust those Lowsons.’

As she was the wife of an Assistant Commissioner and therefore, in police opinion, an honorary member of the Force, Pinhurst listened patiently and promised that Dame Beatrice’s safety would be taken care of, and that he would make liaison with the Lancashire lads. Comforted, Laura thanked him and rang off, but in less than an hour he rang her.

‘What is Dame Beatrice’s object in going to see the Lowsons?’ he asked. ‘They can’t be implicated, living where they do. Do you think she has got on to something?’

‘I don’t think so, if you’re talking about Palgrave’s death. She is trying to find out who forged that letter to his agents. She thinks it may be a pointer, that’s all. And, of course, she’s on the track of the original copy. She thinks the Lowsons may have it, as the book is dedicated to M, and Mrs Lowson’s name is Morag and she and Palgrave were once engaged to be married.’

‘Well, we’ve had a go at the Kirbys and at that young schoolmaster who seems to have been given a copy, and the Lowsons are next on our list, but there was nothing actionable in the book. I’ve read it myself, and a bigger lot of claptrap and balderdash I’ve never had to wade through. Apart from the forged letter, we’ve still got plenty on our plate down here. We still don’t know where Palgrave got to on that Friday evening. The locals have checked out all the hotels within miles of where his body was found, but there isn’t a thing. We’ve tried all the people at his school and he certainly did not visit any of them. When he was seen leaving his digs by that neighbour, he had nothing with him but a fairly large briefcase.’

‘Big enough to hold pyjamas and his shaving tackle, if he was going to spend the night somewhere. It’s all my husband brings when he comes to spend a night with me at the Stone House, and quite often he does not bother about the pyjamas,’ said Laura. ‘He can always get into a pair of mine if it’s cold – the trousers, anyway – and I can always lend him a sweater.’

‘Oh, Lord! If he spent the night – or was prepared to – it could have been anywhere, except that he didn’t take his car. I wonder whether somebody picked him up? We’ve tried London Transport and the taxi-drivers.’

Upon arrival at her hotel, which was on a slope above the shores of Ampletide Sands, a small resort on the long inlet which runs past Cartmel out of Morecambe Bay, Dame Beatrice had rung up the Lowsons to ask when (not whether) she might call. She had been invited to come on the following afternoon.

After lunch on that day she went down the long drive of the hotel, through pleasant woods, (the hotel stood in its own grounds), to the sea-front. As she strolled along a concreted promenade made extremely narrow because a railway line ran directly behind it, she surveyed the expanse of shining mud left by the tide and then, stopping to apostrophise an oyster catcher and aware of the warning notices which had been put up all along the sea-wall, she said to the handsome, red-legged bird:

‘Well, wader, scavenging for molluscs, crustaceans and worms, I think the waters here must resemble those of the Solway. Perhaps you remember Sir Walter Scott’s ballad of Young Lochinvar? “Love swells like the Solway and ebbs like its tide”. How true, in so very many cases! I wonder whether it applies in this one? Could it have been malice aforethought which caused poor Colin Palgrave to dedicate his book to his lost love, or was it intended only as a reminder of what may have been “an old passion” and meant only as a tribute to that? More likely, I think. The book is pretentious, but not malicious.’

The bird, suddenly aware of her presence, although not of being addressed, uttered a shrill, protesting klee-eep, klee-eep, ran rapidly across the mud and then, tucking away its long red legs, it took off with low flight and shallow wingbeats, changed its note to a slightly trilling and a shorter call and put distance between itself and the intruder.

Dame Beatrice, with a suspicious look at the distant sea, then focused her attention upon a dark mass on the edge of the deceptively mild-mannered water. She said to the sea: ‘My name is King Canute. Stay where you are!’

The sands (so called in the brochures) were firmer than she had expected. At a surprising pace for so extremely elderly a lady, she crossed them and then knelt at the sodden sea-verge to examine the body. A very brief inspection was enough. It was a dead body and one which she recognised. She made all speed back to the hotel and telephoned the police. They rang back within the hour.

‘Papers of identification on the body confirm your theory, Dame Beatrice, ma’am. There was a suicide note. Took prussic acid, it says, only it calls it hydrocyanic acid. Quick, that’s one thing. Good on you, ma’am, for recognising the body, if you’d only seen him once before, and some time ago and alive, at that. We’ll need you for the inquest, ma’am, I’m afraid.’

‘Come in,’ said Morag. ‘You said something about a book.’

‘Colin Palgrave’s novel. I believe you have a copy of it,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh, that!’

‘I also have a copy. From the dedication to M, I deduced that the book was written especially for you.’

‘Good gracious, no! Through here, Dame Beatrice, and then we can look out on to the garden. I don’t suppose the dedication was meant for me at all, although, of course, at one time—’

‘Yes, so I have been told. He wanted me to write a preface to the book. You can help me. The work appears to be autobiographical. Would that be so?’

‘Goodness knows!’

‘And I thought perhaps you could tell me whether it throws any light upon the manner of his death.’

‘But we know the manner of his death. Miranda Kirby sent me a cutting from the local paper. He died of arsenical poisoning, didn’t he? I think poor Colin committed suicide. Arsenic is easy enough to come by. There are weed-killers, flypapers, all sorts of things.’

‘So that is why arsenic was chosen, because it is easy to come by. It is also easily administered. The powdered form can be disguised in a cup of black coffee, especially to a man already under the influence of narcotics, perhaps, or drink.’

Morag had been standing at the window overlooking the garden. She turned round and went across the room to a bookcase from which she took a brown paper parcel.

‘Here is my copy of the book, if that is what you came for,’ she said. ‘Are they going to publish it after all?’

‘Not unless you are willing to admit to a forged letter.’

Morag put the parcel down on to a small table, went unsteadily to an armchair and sat down.

‘So you know,’ she said. ‘How much do you know?’