‘They haven’t said a word about that, Sergeant. Maybe they don’t know.’
‘I was wondering, sir, about the men on duty at the entrances to the town. Should we stand them down?’
Inspector Devereux paused for a moment. ‘I think not,’ he said finally. ‘Think about it. We’re engaged on a triple murder inquiry here. We’ve got an awful lot of guesses but very few facts so far. Keep them there for the time being.’
Sergeant Vaughan cycled off into the night to tell his men to remain at their posts until further notice.
After ten minutes’ rowing, Powerscourt felt his palms and his shoulders beginning to ache.
‘How much further to go?’ he asked the back in front of him.
‘It’s not the distance that’s the problem, my lord. It’s this bloody leak. It’s getting worse, not better. It must be about two miles or so from here to the coast.’
‘That’s about half the length of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race,’ his neighbour on the oars chimed in. ‘They do that in about twenty or twenty-five minutes.’
‘But their boats aren’t full of bloody water, are they? They’re not actually sinking, like we are.’
‘One of them did sink,’ chipped in Nat Gibson from the tiller. ‘Cambridge sank in eighteen fifty-nine, I think it was. Bloody boat was too light, she shipped water from the start, went down just after Barnes Bridge.’
The water inside the William and Emma was a third of the way up the sides now. Inspector Timpson, a God- fearing member of Trinity Church in Kingsbridge, was saying his prayers very softly. He’d done the Lord’s Prayer twice and was halfway through the Creed. Powerscourt thought he would be eligible with these memories for a place at the Jesus Hospital where the ability to recite those prayers was one of the few requirements needed for entry. A short man with a slight limp came to take Nat Gibson’s place at the tiller. Gibson went for a conference with the men inspecting the pieces of wood by the leak.
‘We can’t risk it,’ said Coxswain Barton at last. ‘I would like to nail one of these pieces of wood into the area around the leak. But putting in the nails might split the side right open. We’d be full of water and sinking inside a minute. We’re going to have to wrap the plug in oilskin and try to hold it in place by other means. And we’re going to have a major attempt at getting this water out of the boat or we’ve had it.’
One man sat with his back to the rowers’ bench and pressed with his feet against a piece of wood placed over the hole.
‘Hang on in there, Jimmy,’ said Robbie Barton, ‘you could be there some time. We’ve got to bail as we’ve never bailed before.’
More containers were handed out. Only two men were left at the oars to give the boat some leeway. All the rest were pressed into service. Barton began shouting at them as if they were galley slaves of old.
‘One, two three, bail! One, two three, bail!’
Bend down, fill up, throw. Bend down, fill up, throw, bend down, fill up, throw, Powerscourt said to himself. It didn’t seem to be making much difference.
‘One, two, three, bail! One, two three, bail!’
Johnny Fitzgerald had gone back to Estuary House on his own. He made his way to the top floor and peered out into the night through the telescope on the top floor. He could see a few lights at East Portlemouth on the far side of the harbour and some more in the centre of town. But out to sea he could see nothing at all. None of the birds he loved so much were to be seen or heard, only the whisper of the sea. He thought of his friend out there in the English Channel. He remembered some of the adventures they had shared together. Rather like Lady Lucy, Johnny didn’t think his friend was really safe on his own during these investigations. He needed someone at his side, somebody to look after him.
After five minutes’ bailing, Powerscourt was sure their time was up. The water level didn’t seem to be going down at all. The valiant mariner stayed locked in position, his feet anchoring the piece of wood against the hole. Powerscourt didn’t think it could stop the flow but it should make it less. Then, just after the point where he was sure his arms were going to break, there was a shout from Nat Gibson.
‘Well done, lads,’ he cried, it’s going down. Keep it up! Keep it up!’
Powerscourt felt he wasn’t making his proper contribution to the evening’s entertainment. He was growing sluggish. He had lost the rhythm completely. Suddenly he heard voices in his head. It was the twins, Christopher and Juliet, and they were shouting at him. ‘Keep it up Papa,’ they cried happily, ‘keep it up.’ Powerscourt smiled and redoubled his efforts.
The clouds lifted suddenly and they could see the Morning Glory way over to their right on the Prawle Point side.
‘Great God, Robbie,’ cried Nat Gibson, ‘do you see where he’s heading? I did tell him about it on the way out but it can’t have sunk in.’
‘These are the worst possible conditions for the Salcombe Bar,’ said Robbie Barton, hurling yet more water out of his lifeboat. ‘An ebb tide and a strong onshore wind. Great God! Would your man hear if we shouted?’
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ said Nat Gibson, ‘not a chance.’
Everybody on board the William and Emma was watching as they bailed, hypnotized, as the Morning Glory sailed towards her doom. She was nearing Limebury Point where the sand bar starts. Inspector Timpson crossed himself and quoted from the poem: ‘But such a tide as moving seems asleep,/Too full for sound and foam/When that which drew from out the boundless deep/Turns again home.’
‘Tell me if I’m wrong, Jimmy,’ Lady Lucy smiled at the young man, ‘but I think it worked something like this. Mr Allen organized everything, the details of how to find the places, the train times and so on. Mr Harper did the actual killings, all of them.’
‘That’s right. Mr Allen hired a car and a driver some of the time to take him around. A great big car it was too. He sent it to Marlow and up to Norfolk so Elias Harper could get away from that school where he killed the bursar.’
‘And why are you all still here? You could have left Salcombe a long time ago, couldn’t you?’
‘We could have, but the next Durban boat doesn’t leave until next week. One of the ships had to go in for repairs, I think, so they lost a sailing.’
‘And why did you come to Salcombe in the first place? Why not hide away in a big city like London or Bristol?’
‘I’m not sure you’re going to believe this,’ said Jimmy, ‘but Mr Allen came here once as a child and liked it so much he decided to come back.’
‘Why didn’t you go with him, with Mr Allen? Why were you left here trying to escape disguised as a policeman?’
‘He said that if I was with him and he was caught, the police would assume I was guilty too, even though I hadn’t committed any crimes. He thought I’d have a better chance on my own.’
‘Tell me, Jimmy, is there a link of some sort between you and Mr Allen?’
There was a pause. Finally Jimmy said, ‘He’s my grandfather, Lady Powerscourt. My father died when I was very young so he’s more or less taken his place. I think he brought me along because he liked being with me, one of his own flesh and blood.’
The water level in the William and Emma dropped gradually while the men watched the drama by Salcombe Bar. The lifeboat had almost stopped moving now. The cloud had lifted again and the moon shone over the mouth of the Salcombe Estuary. The Morning Glory had about fifty yards left before she hit the bar. Several members of the William and Emma were praying now, their eyes tightly closed, their lips moving. Usually they were called out here after disaster struck. Now they were looking at disaster unfolding in front of them. Nat Gibson was leaning out over the side to get a better view. He told the crew that the yacht was carrying far too much sail. A long way behind them the grey bulk of HMS Sprightly maintained her watch over the proceedings. Then it happened. Morning Glory capsized. She keeled over very slowly like a drunken man. There was a tearing, screeching sound as if a mast or some of the rigging had broken free. There was one very long scream. There was no sign of the man aboard.
‘What should we do, in heaven’s name?’ asked Robbie Barton. ‘Should we head over there and see if we can find him?’
Nat Gibson was definite. ‘No, we shouldn’t. We’re in no fit state to rescue anybody. It’ll be all we can do to rescue ourselves.’
‘What would you say are the chances of his being alive?’ Inspector Timpson spoke very quietly.
‘Very small,’ said Nat Gibson. ‘Tiny. Many ships have been lost like that on the Salcombe Bar over the years.
