CHAPTER FIVE
Full Fathom Five
‘And first I tried an English lass, but she was fat and lazy …
Away, haul away, haul away, oh!
And then I tried an Irish lass who well-nigh drove me crazy …
Away, haul away, haul away, oh!’
(1)
‘Yes, it’s like the others,’ said Gavin, ‘except for one or two points which might indicate that it’s a copycat murder and not one in the sequence. For one thing, my chaps and Phillips have traced where she comes from. She’s an Irish girl who lived in Swansea, so the first difference is that she wasn’t, in the usual sense of the words, a foreigner. Then, second point, she has no connection whatever with that comprehensive or any other school. She wasn’t one of the campers, either, and as nobody on the site had ever seen her before, the police chaps didn’t at first know why she was in the neighbourhood. The inference was that she was on holiday, or else, of course, that she had taken a job around these parts, but they found out all about it later.’
‘Didn’t any of the campers hear anything suspicious?’ asked Laura.
‘Not a thing, so far as any of them can remember. The police have checked on all of them very carefully, as you may imagine, but I’m told there’s nothing even remotely suspicious about any of them. At this time of year the camping season hasn’t really got into its stride, so there are only five caravans on the pitch, and as there’s nothing much to do after dark the people all turn in pretty early. Whoever dumped the body – she’d been dead for some days when she was found – probably carried her some distance so as not to bring a car within hearing of the campers. She was a well-built girl, so the chances are that her murderer was a man, although, of course, some women would be quite strong enough to kill her, dump her in a car and then drag her over the short turf to the edge of the pond where she was found. Only her head and one arm were in the water.’
‘How did the police find out where she came from?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘They recovered her handbag from the water. It had been gutted, but the murderer had overlooked the fact that in a tiny pocket inside the otherwise empty notecase was the return half of a railway ticket to Swansea. After that, of course, it was a routine check, a long, boring sort of job, like most police work, but they also issued a description and her Welsh landlady recognised it and came along. Said the girl had answered an advertisement for a children’s nurse, but it was only for a fortnight while the parents were on holiday. The pay was good, so the girl took her own holiday by exchanging dates with another typist in the same office, and hoped to combine business with pleasure, as it were.’
‘So that accounts for the return ticket,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Had the landlady been shown the advertisement?’
‘Yes. One clause in it struck her as peculiar, although not suspicious. It was that an application from a young woman of Irish extraction would be preferred to any other.’
‘But the advertisement had been sent to a Swansea local paper?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What had the paper to say about it?’
‘Nothing helpful. It had been paid for at their usual rates, there was no explanatory letter and the notice was to be displayed for a week unless it was cancelled earlier.’
‘Did the paper file the application?’
‘Oh, yes, and turned it up for us. It was typewritten and signed in ball-point T. H. Edon (Mrs). It bore the address of an empty bungalow near Ringwood, a place with one of those enormously long front gardens with a postbox on the front gate. The chaps have tried to find somebody who saw this postbox being rifled, but the bungalow is remotely situated, so the chances are that, if the murderer was careful, nobody saw anything of him.’
‘The girl must have answered the advertisement and received a letter back.’
‘Yes, she did, and showed it to the landlady. Again, the letter telling her to come along was typewritten, with the same signature, but, as I told you, everything in the handbag was missing except the return ticket, and all the ticket did was to save my chaps a bit of time, as the landlady assured them (and there’s no reason to disbelieve her – she’s a motherly soul and seems to have been quite fond of the girl) that she would have made enquiries at once if the girl had failed to return at the end of the fortnight and had not written to explain her prolonged absence.’
‘So the fortnight was not up when the body was discovered?’
‘It had eight days to run. The inference is that the murderer met the girl at Bournemouth and murdered her that same night. Well, you know what tremendous crowds get off the Bournemouth trains as soon as the holiday season starts. The chances are one in a thousand that anybody at the station remembers any particular traveller or notices who met her. There’s always a rush for taxis, and any number of private cars are parked in the road outside. Of course, the chaps are still trying, but it’s a forlorn hope that anybody will come forward with a useful bit of information, especially by this time.’
‘Did the landlady remember what the girl was wearing when she left Swansea?’
‘Oh, yes. She went to see her off. She was wearing exactly the same outfit as the one she had on when the body was found. That’s why we are pretty sure she was murdered almost as soon as her killer met her.’
‘What about her luggage?’
‘She had only one suitcase, bought at Marks and Sparks, and it hasn’t been traced. It may
