“You’re suggesting that this accomplice disposed of the body first, and then paddled downstream without it?”
“Yes. You see, as a matter of fact both the river and its banks appear to have been entirely deserted at that hour in the morning. But they couldn’t bet on their being deserted. Now, if they were seen, it was essential that there should be only one human figure in the canoe. If there were only one, the casual passerby would be prepared to swear afterwards that it was Derek. Casual passersby will always swear anything. The accomplice, therefore, went on by himself; it didn’t matter how many people saw him, except at the precise moment when he was engaged in scuttling the boat. It meant, you see, that he must leave the body somewhere, and somewhere where it wouldn’t be found.”
“Yes, I see that. I suppose, by the way, you’re taking it for granted that they meant to spirit the body away somewhere, not to let it be found in the river?”
“I’m working on that supposition. After all, though it is possible for a body to sink and never be recovered, the chances are very much against it. So that if the dragging hasn’t brought a body to light, that means there probably isn’t a body there. And if so, that’s because Nigel and his accomplice—to call them that for the sake of argument—didn’t want the body to be found.”
“Excellent. And, of course, that means in its turn—”
“That the body itself wouldn’t bear inspection; there were marks of violence, or some other marks on it, which wouldn’t look well at a coroner’s inquest. The body, then, must be left lying about for a time. The accomplice couldn’t take it in his canoe, Nigel couldn’t take it in his railway carriage. It would have been possible, but laborious, to sink it somewhere and recover it afterwards. It would be a simpler plan to hide it somewhere on land till they could fetch it away.”
“They hadn’t very long, you know. The search began about four hours afterwards.”
“Exactly. All the better reason for choosing a place where People wouldn’t look. And, for that reason, I’m inclined to think that they hid the body on the island. That other end of the island, you remember, away from the lock, is all deep in woods, and there’s plenty of bracken and undergrowth. Searchers would go up the river all the way to the lock, and would scour either bank for miles round. But the island would be just the place where they wouldn’t look. They would assume that if Derek had lost his memory, or if he had done a bolt for it, he would be miles away by that time. Did anybody search the island, as a matter of fact?”
“I don’t think they did. But there’s one point to consider—leaving the body on the island would make it precious difficult to cart it away again. They could hardly reach it, either by land or on water, without being seen.”
“I know. And yet, would it be so very difficult for them to take advantage of the searching operations. Nigel, at all events, seems to have been up till all hours on the Monday night looking for the corpse—what if he knew where it was, and found it? And having found it, proceeded to dispose of it?”
“Well, there’s still time to have a look round. Or do you want specially to get back to Oxford? If you’re a strong man with the paddle, it wouldn’t take us long to go up there in the canoe, and that makes it easier to hunt round.”
“Just the two of us?”
“I’m not going three in a canoe for anybody. Angela has insisted on spending two nights at home; she has some absurd idea that her children like her to be about. And I don’t think Mr. Quirk is on in this act. Let it be just the two of us.”
The river lay infinitely beautiful, windless under a cloudless sky. The tiniest fidgeting motion of your body pencilled fresh ripples on the cool surface of the stream. The red earth of the banks, and the green fringe that surmounted them, showed in mellow contrast under the equable light of evening. The reeds stood straight and motionless as sentinels, just fringed with a distant horizon of treetops. The splashing of cows in the shallows, the churning of far-off reaping-machines, the cries of children, punctuated the stillness with companionship. Mint and meadow-sweet and lying hay blended their scents with intolerable sweetness in that most delicate of all mediums, the smell of clean river-water. The stream, now dazzling in the sunlight, now mysterious and dark under the tree-shadows, seemed to conspire with the easy strokes of the paddle. Nature had determined, it appeared, to forget the tragedy and go on as if nothing had happened. Only the occasional dredgers reminded them of the past and their grim errand.
The island confronted them at last, a haunted spot, you would say, with its laced interplay of sun and shadow. There must be a complex in the blood of us island-born people that makes us feel, in the presence of an island, something of mystery and charm; it came out in us when we dug sand castles on the beach, it comes out in us still wherever the water isolates the land. But above all in lakes or in rivers; for here the strip of sundering tide is so narrow, the unattainable shore so near. Who has ever seen a Thames island that has not peopled it, in his imagination, with merry, lurking outlaws, or with the shy forms of some forgotten race of men? As you approached Shipcote Island, experience might remind you that at its higher end it was yoked with bridges and tamed with the laborious effort of human cultivation. But the illusion persisted in fancy; it seemed a spot remote,
