Had I no key to the bungalow?
Not that I knew of.
Miss Nutley was almost sure she had given me a spare key.
Well, of course, Dame Beatrice, all that was only the beginning of it. All the others were interrogated, but, according to the accounts they gave me of the interviews (at a mass meeting which Targe, who ghoulishly appeared to be in his element at the prospect of being mixed up in one of the real-life crimes which furnished him with the material for his books, insisted upon calling and which took place in my sitting-room), nobody could tell the police anything of importance.
We were all on tenterhooks for the next few days. An inquest was held and a verdict brought in of murder by person or persons unknown. Miss Minnie (identified by a smooth-faced, soft-voiced gentleman who announced himself as the proprietor of the quasi-religious journal of which Miss Minnie was editor) was buried at the journal's expense against the ultimate winding-up of her estate, floral tributes were sent by everybody in the house and, as the police made no reappearance at Weston Pipers for just over a fortnight, the reporters gave up pestering us and we went on much as usual.
If this seems a heartless and ill-conceived proceeding under the circumstances, it must be remembered that none of us had ever really known Miss Minnie and that, in any case, she had dissociated herself entirely from any of our activities. Soon, however, we were in the thick of the police enquiry once more.
It came as a surprise to all of us, I think. It certainly came as a shock to me. I suppose when all one asks for is a quiet life with no major upheavals, one is easily lured (as they say) into a false sense of security, so when Mrs Smith, who had been 'doing the hall' when they knocked, came to my sitting-room to tell me of their arrival, I felt the sense of Panic I used to experience at school when an interview with the headmaster was pending.
'Well, show them in here,' I said.
'Which I have told them to wipe their boots before doing so, sir, the drive being that mucky you would not credit.'
'They can't have walked up the drive. They come in cars,' I said.
'Which they have walked over to The Lodge and back, as I have seen with my own eyes out of the hall windows, being as how I was polishing the table for the letters when I heard the car drive up.'
The Detective Chief Superintendent was affability itself.
'Sorry to trouble you again, sir, but there are one or two little matters.'
I invited him and his sergeant to sit down and offered them drinks.
'Not just at the moment, thank you, sir. We won't keep you long, but we think you may be able to help us to clear up a point or so.'
'Glad to do anything I can, of course,' I said; but I was far from happy. His manner was much too smooth.
'Thank you, sir. When you first saw the body, did you notice anything unusual about it?'
'I thought it was altogether unusual, Chief Superintendent. The last thing one expects to find on one's property is a dead body, let alone one with-with-' I had a sickening recollection of Miss Minnie's smashed-up face. At the inquest the medical evidence had given drowning as the cause of death, so the head injuries inflicted after death could only have been the act of a sadistic lunatic, I felt, and I was still trying to fight a queasy feeling in my stomach when he spoke again.
'There was something on the body, sir, which I thought you might have noticed.'
'I noticed as little as I could,' I said. 'One glance was enough for me. I had a job not to be sick.'
'Strange you did not notice this, sir. The other gentlemen, Mr Targe and Mr Evans, both noticed it and mentioned it to me before I even asked them about it.' He took an envelope from his pocket, opened it and drew out a bit of seaweed. It was a piece of the dark red, rather pretty, fernlike kind. Most of our local seaweed was either that brilliant green mossy-looking sort which grows on flat rocks which are covered at high tide, or else the glutinous long strands with little dark-brown bladders on them - horrible, slimy stuff, I always thought it. I had seen a few bits of the kind he showed me, but it was not all that common in our bay.
'Well, I may have seen it unconsciously,' I said, 'but I was too horrified to notice any details that I can remember.'
'I see, sir. I believe you were the manager of a swimming pool before you went over to Paris.'
'That's right, yes.'
'You must have been pleased when you found you had a natural bathing-place at the bottom of your lawn.'
'Yes, of course, but one hardly uses it at this time of year.'
'Not even an experienced swimmer such as yourself?'
'I'm not keen enough to want to catch pneumonia.'
His questions, no doubt, would have alarmed a guilty man even more than they alarmed me, but they made me very uneasy.
'Do you never go swimming in the winter, sir?'
'Yes, in an indoor swimming pool where they warm the water, and there is nothing of the sort in these parts.'
'But you never swim in the open sea?'
'Not in the winter, no.'
'You attended the inquest on the body?'
'Of course. Besides, I was one of the witnesses.'
'Quite so. There was one item of information which we asked the coroner not to mention. You will recollect that the medical evidence was of death by drowning.'
'Well?'
'Well, sir, haven't you something you would like to tell me
