The Mudflats of the Dead

help me to decide what to do.’

‘But you did not know, at that point, that Miss St John had been blackmailing your husband. You did not know that until you read Mr Palgrave’s book and tackled your husband about it.’

‘Oh, well, perhaps I had guessed. The drinks didn’t really help, so when we went back to the cottage I wrote a note to Camilla telling her to get out or it would be the worse for her. I took it up to her room and pinned it to the pillow. Then I saw her suitcase, so I packed it with everything of hers I could find, waited until Adrian and Miranda were in their room, and then took the suitcase down to the sand-dunes and buried it.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I don’t know. Just to be thoroughly bitchy to her, I suppose, and to add a little bit to the warning I’d given her in my note.’

‘Ah, yes. Perhaps you had had enough to drink, after all. Where was your husband while all this was going on?’

‘In bed and asleep. He had been putting away double whiskies. Whisky always makes him sleepy.’

‘Double whiskies? Poor Mr Palgrave!’

‘Oh, Colin didn’t pay for them after the first round, and Cupar wouldn’t have gone on drinking like that if he hadn’t been so worried about Camilla’s being at the cottage.’

‘But she did not accompany the party to the public house?’

‘No. She wasn’t with us that evening. I was coming back from planting the suitcase when I saw her go up to Colin’s car. Then they went off over the marshes and I followed them. I didn’t suppose they would hear me, and I took a chance that they wouldn’t turn round and see me. I didn’t really care, though, whether they did or not. I had as much right on the marshes by moonlight as they had.’

‘Surely. Up to that point, then, you did not have murder in mind?’

‘No, not until Colin had come out of the water and left her there alone. Then something came over me. I undressed behind a breakwater and swam out to her. She was floating on her back, being rocked very gently by the waves.’

‘The tide was still coming in, then?’

‘I suppose so. I didn’t notice. Then after I had pushed her under and kept her there, I dressed and went back to the cottage.’

‘And found your husband still asleep?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. Cupar was still asleep.’

‘Do you remember noticing whether Mr Palgrave’s car was still there?’

‘I can’t remember anything except that the front door was unlatched, so I didn’t have to use my key.’

‘And when morning came, and both Miss St John and her suitcase had disappeared—?’

‘Oh, the others took it for granted that she had picked up a man and gone off with him.’

‘Ah, yes! It was bad luck that the tide brought the body back almost to the spot where it had drowned. Did you never think that Mr Palgrave might be suspected of having made away with the girl?’

‘If there had been any trouble for him, I suppose I would have confessed.’

‘Now tell me about his death. Where did you stay in London on the night he was given the arsenic?’

‘It wasn’t in London.’

‘Was your husband with you?’

‘No. I had read Colin’s book—’

‘And done what you could to suppress it.’

‘Yes. Cupar had to go to a conference —’

‘Another one?’

‘Oh, well, yes. Since that terrible girl died, Cupar has been engaged in some most valuable research work, so I telephoned Colin and said I wanted to talk to him about the book and asked him to come to Richmond, where I was staying the night, and he came and I slipped the arsenic into his black coffee and that was that.’

‘How did his body get on to the Thames mudflats?’

‘I tipped it in off the parapet of the bridge.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Your husband knew nothing of this?’

‘How could he? He was at his conference, as I told you.’

‘And the hotel where you stayed?’

‘What does it matter where I stayed?’

Before Dame Beatrice could say more, the door-bell rang. Morag excused herself, adding that it was the servant’s free afternoon. She came back with a uniformed sergeant of the county police and, to Dame Beatrice’s mild surprise, with Pinhurst.

‘I think, Mrs Lowson, you had better sit down,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid the sergeant has some very bad news for you.’

‘But how did you know that her confession was all lies?’ asked Laura. ‘And what made you ask for the story, anyway?’

‘All I wanted was for her to admit that the letter to the literary agents was a forgery. As for her confession to two murders, as soon as the police told her that it was her husband’s body which I had found on Ampletide Sands, she retracted it.’

‘But why did she make it in the first place?’

‘Mistaken idealism plus panic. She was afraid that I had found out the truth, and so I had, of course. She thought that her husband’s medical research was far too important for him to be given a life sentence for murder, so she decided to take the rap, as you would say.’

‘Good gracious! But how did you find out the truth?’

‘I began by believing Colin Palgrave’s story that he had left Miss St John alive and still enjoying her moonlight bathe and that he had left the cottage that night with his own suitcase and not hers. I was sure that Dr Lowson was not in the cottage when Palgrave came in, but returned while the young man was shaving in the kitchen. Then I decided to investigate the only real mystery in the whole affair. There is such a thing as coincidence, of course, but, even allowing for all its extraordinary laws, it seemed to me quite outrageous that of all the places there are in which to spend a quiet holiday, the Lowsons should not only have selected the same little village as the Kirbys, whom at that time they had never met, but had even booked the same cottage as that in which Camilla Hoveton St John was staying.’

‘So you went to the house agent?’

‘And was assured that there had been no mistake over the booking. The holiday cottages are booked only from Saturdays, never mid-week. The Lowsons’ tenancy was to begin when the Kirbys’ tenancy ended. There was one other small point. I was sure that Lowson was not in bed when Palgrave came in that night, otherwise he would have been aware of a man groping for a suitcase and would have made some remark. Well, then, of course the story of blackmail unfolded itself and the death of Colin Palgrave clinched matters, although I had to find out whether Lowson had read his book. That book could not damage Mrs Lowson directly, but it might – or so Dr Lowson thought – seriously injure his own medical career. Mrs Lowson was persuaded by her husband to invite Palgrave to discuss his book with her. The invitation must have come from her – in fact, when she broke down after hearing that her husband was not only dead, but had left a full confession, she admitted that she had invited Palgrave to spend the weekend with them in their Lancashire home. Dr Lowson was to pick him up in a car near his lodgings and then drive up to Lancashire through the night and return Palgrave to his lodgings on the Sunday evening.’

‘So no hotel entered into the arrangements at all!’

‘As the police found out. In any case, Lowson would never have risked being seen at a hotel in the company of a man he intended to murder. They would have had coffee and sandwiches in the car as soon as they got out of London. The autopsy showed that arsenic was in both the food and the drink. As soon as Palgrave was taken ill, Lowson drove towards the river – there are alleys wide enough for a car – and dragged the body out of the car and then pushed it over the bank into the Thames.’

‘I wonder who cleaned the car? It must have been in a pretty awful mess,’ said Laura, practical as ever. ‘So Lowson went to Saltacres with the full intention of killing Camilla the blackmailer. How would he know where she was?’

‘They would have kept in close touch because of the blackmail payments.’