Mystery at Lynden Sands

clearly, and I was absolutely taken aback by what had happened. I said to myself: ‘I’ve shot him!’ And at that my nerves got the upper hand completely, and I turned and ran up the beach to the car. I told Mr. Fleetwood at once what had happened. I wanted him to go down and look at the man, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He drove me back to the hotel, and we left the car in one of the side-alleys. I went in through the dressing-room, took off my blazer, and changed my golfing-shoes for my slippers. I was so much upset that I forgot to take the pistol out of the blazer pocket. And when I came out into the hotel corridor, I heard that Mr. Fleetwood had tripped on the stairs and hurt himself badly. That put the pistol out of my mind at the moment; and when, next day, I remembered about it, and went to get it, someone else had taken it away. That terrified me, for I knew someone was on my track.”

She paused for a moment, and then added:

“That’s really all I have to tell. It was the purest accident. I didn’t mean to kill him. When I took the pistol with me to the shore, I only meant to frighten him with it. But he’d been drinking, and I wasn’t ready for him when he attacked me. I was terrified, and my finger must have twitched the trigger without my knowing what I was doing. I’d never have shot him in cold blood, or even intentionally in a fit of anger. It was the merest accident.”

She stopped there, evidently having said everything that she could bring herself to tell.

“One moment, Clinton,” Wendover interposed as the chief constable turned to question Stanley Fleetwood in his turn. “There’s just one point I’d like to have cleared up. Would you mind telling me, Mrs. Fleetwood, whether you can recall how Staveley was dressed when he met you?”

Cressida, looking up quickly, seemed to read the sympathy in Wendover’s face, for she answered readily enough.

“It wasn’t a very good light, you understand? He wore some sort of lounge suit, but I couldn’t tell the colour of it. And when I got down to Neptune’s Seat he was carrying a light coat of some kind over his arm; but as I came up he tossed that down on the rock beside him.”

“He didn’t put it on again, did he?” Wendover demanded.

“Not so far as I can remember,” Cressida replied, after some effort to recall the point.

“You were caught in the rain before you got back to the hotel, weren’t you?” Wendover pursued.

“Yes. It came down hard just after the car started.”

Wendover’s satisfaction at these answers was too plain to escape Cressida’s attention. She looked at him with a faint gleam of hope in her expression, as though expecting him to come to her help; but her face fell when he turned to the chief constable and indicated that he had nothing further to say. Sir Clinton took his cue.

“Now, Mr. Fleetwood,” he inquired, “you didn’t stay by the car as you had arranged, did you?”

Stanley Fleetwood looked suspiciously at his interlocutor.

“As it happened, I didn’t,” he admitted, rather with an ill grace. “It was bad enough to let my wife meet that scoundrel at all. You couldn’t expect me to stand off at a distance, could you? I’d promised her not to interfere; but that didn’t hinder me from getting as near them as I could, just in case of accidents. I went down to the shore, keeping behind a groyne that runs down towards Neptune’s Seat.”

“So we supposed,” Sir Clinton commented. “You haven’t a second Colt pistol, have you?”

“No. One’s all I have.”

“So you didn’t fire a shot from behind the groyne, by any chance?”

Both Fleetwood and Cressida seemed completely taken aback by this question. They glanced at each other; and then Stanley Fleetwood answered:

“No, of course I didn’t. How could I, when I hadn’t a pistol?”

“Of course not,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Occasionally one has to ask questions as a matter of form, you know. Now, what happened after Mrs. Fleetwood’s pistol went off? I mean, what did you yourself do?”

“I saw her hurrying up the beach towards the road, where she expected to find me; so naturally I bolted up the way I’d come and joined her at the car.”

“And then?”

“She told me she’d shot Staveley. I shed no tears over him, of course; but I wanted to get my wife away as quick as I could, in case anyone came along, attracted by the noise of the shot. So I drove up towards the hotel. I didn’t put on the lights of the car, because they might have been noticed by someone in the distance; and I didn’t want to be traced through the car if I could help it. I’m being quite frank with you, you see.”

“I wish we could persuade everybody to be quite frank,” Sir Clinton confessed. “It would lighten police work considerably. What happened next, please?”

“As I was driving up, it suddenly struck me that we’d left all these tracks on the sand, and that when everything came out our footprints would be evidence connecting us with the business. So I made up my mind⁠—I’m being perfectly frank with you⁠—I made up my mind that after I’d dropped my wife at the hotel I’d take the car back again and see if Staveley was alive, If he wasn’t, then I’d make hay of our tracks⁠—rub ’em out somehow and get clear away if possible. Then it occurred to me that Staveley alive would be better than Staveley dead. If he was only hurt, then the whole affair might be hushed up somehow. Apart from that, frankly, I’d rather have had him dead. Anyhow, when I got to the hotel I bolted upstairs to my room to get a flask of brandy I keep for emergencies. I meant to revive him