There have never been any survivors, never.’
Robbie Barton looked sad as he reorganized his men. No lifeboatman, trained to rescue people from the sea, gives up easily on what he regards as his primary duty. Half, including Powerscourt and the Inspector, were to row. The rest kept bailing. Robbie sent up two great flares to alert HMS Sprightly so she might be able to send out a rescue mission to the remains of the Morning Glory.
‘Twilight and evening bell,’ Nat Gibson was pronouncing an epitaph over the missing man, ‘And after that the dark!/And may there be no sadness of farewell,/When I embark.’
It took a long time for the William and Emma to limp into the harbour. They dropped Powerscourt and the Inspector at the Yacht Club landing stage and staggered off to their own quarters in the centre of the town. Inspector Timpson was assured that the local doctor, who treated everybody rescued by the William and Emma, would attend to the wounded shoulder. Powerscourt promised Robbie Barton fifty pounds for the repair of the boat.
Inspector Devereux’s prophecy on the train came true, but with only a few minutes to spare. The Chief Constable of Devon, Colonel St John Weston-Westmacott, arrived at the Marine Hotel shortly before ten o’clock, wearing a dinner jacket and a scarlet cummerbund. Inspector Devereux, as the senior officer present, briefed him on the proceedings so far. The colonel said ‘jolly good show’ to all and sundry, including the head porter who scarcely deserved it. They were all assembled in the reserve dining room. Jimmy Strauss had gone down to the seafront to await the return of his grandfather.
Very wet and rather pensive, Inspector Timpson and Powerscourt came back, water squelching from their boots. Jimmy Strauss stayed behind at the waterfront, praying for a miracle that never came. The Inspector delivered the news.
‘There is a chance that Allen might survive, but I very much doubt it.’
Normally it was Powerscourt who filled in the gaps and answered any remaining questions at the end of his cases. This time it was Lady Lucy who filled the company in on what she had learnt from Jimmy Strauss. Inspector Devereux reported on the further details that had been forwarded by the South African police. Elias Harper had been suspected of murder on no fewer than three occasions but there was never enough evidence for a conviction. Jimmy Strauss would be a very rich young man once the formalities had been carried out. Wilfred Allen had endowed one hospital in Johannesburg already and a school for the poor. The Inspector had also wired to the two other Inspectors, one in Maidenhead and the other in Norfolk, that their crimes had now been solved and they could regard the matter as closed.
‘I think you’ve all done jolly well,’ the Chief Constable said again. ‘Four murders solved, including the villain who was taken out in a boat and never returned. And to think the centre of the whole affair was here in Salcombe, and that the final action took place on the Salcombe Bar:“For though from out our bourn of Time and Place/The flood may bear me far./I hope to see my Pilot face to face/When I have crossed the bar.”’
Three days later the Powerscourts were eating breakfast in Markham Square. The case of the death in the Jesus Hospital, Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy in the train on the way back, had been one of the most unusual he had ever investigated. Not until the very very end, he said, had we known that we were on the right track. The whole case, so full of conjecture, might have disappeared in a puff of smoke at any moment. This morning Lady Lucy was opening her mail. He checked that her husband wasn’t looking as she pulled out a couple of sheets of paper and positioned them carefully behind the teapot. The correspondence came from Salcombe. Before they left she had asked Jimmy Johnston, Sergeant Vaughan’s estate agent friend, to send her details of substantial properties in and around the town. Well, here they were, a Georgian rectory in a neighbouring village, and a Victorian fantasy castle high up on the cliffs west of the town, with breathtaking views of the harbour and the estuary. She peered discreetly at the prices. My word, she thought, this place is nearly as expensive as London. But look at the view. Look at the ridiculous battlements and little towers in the Victorian extravaganza. Should she say anything to Francis? Probably not, she said to herself. No point in worrying him before things have been decided.
Francis was muttering into his Times. Lady Lucy thought she caught the words ‘bloody fools’ three times. At first she thought he was talking about the House of Lords. Then she realized he was talking about a cricket match. Slowly and carefully she placed the Salcombe properties back in their envelope.
The next and final piece of correspondence felt stiff inside its expensive envelope. Lady Lucy approved. She had always had a weakness for high-quality writing paper and stationery. Inside this one was an invitation. ‘Lady Hermione Devereux’, it said on the top line. Then in a slightly larger typeface ‘At Home’. Then ‘Devereux Hall, Southwick, Northamptonshire’.
Then ‘June 27th, 1910, 10 o’clock’. And then, the moment of glory, ‘Dancing’. Lady Lucy looked across at her husband. ‘What do you know of Devereux Hall, Francis?’
‘Huge pile, Lucy, slowly falling down for lack of money. There’s a lake there with an island in the middle. Very romantic, I should say, if you like that sort of thing.’
Powerscourt was well aware that his wife did like that sort of thing, as he put it. Come to that, he would have had to admit that he quite liked that sort of thing too.
‘What of it, Lucy? Are they offering guided tours? Charging coach parties to restore the family fortunes?’
‘Not so, my love, not so at all. They’ve invited us to a ball.’
‘Great God, Lucy, this must be the first time we’ve been invited out by one of my police Inspectors. When is this great event?’
‘It’s at the end of June. It must be round about the longest day of the year.’
‘It seems rather a long way to go, just for a couple of dances, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, but his eyes betrayed him.
‘Francis, how could you? Of course we’ll go.’ Lady Lucy sank into a kind of reverie. Beneath her feet she could feel the sprung floor of the ballroom. Around her glided beautiful people bedecked with tiaras and emeralds, their men wearing sashes of the military, medals shining on their chests. The air was filled with the perfume of the flowers. Strauss’s ‘Emperor’ waltz wrapped them in its rhythms, the dancers circling the floor in time with the music.
‘Oh, Francis, we must go. We can dance until the dawn and watch the sun come up from the island in the lake. It’ll be magnificent, a night to remember in the heart of England!’
