Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I made no attempt to do anything of the kind.”

  “I can’t understand it—his trotting off like this, I mean.”

  “Neither can I, unless…”

  “Unless he does know something about those disappearances and is afraid of giving himself away, knowing that you are She Who Makes Nets of Our Words and Uses Them to Ensnare Us? So you think he’s got a guilty secret, do you?”

  “I think it might be interesting to obtain the full story of how the escaped convict spent his few hours of freedom. How did you get on with the nervous Mrs. Spalding?”

  “Oh, all right. We’re not twin souls, of course, and I’m not much inclined to believe her when she says she does her best to hold off Colin. My ears and observations have led me to a different conclusion. Still, I suppose poor old Howard bores her silly, and Colin, of course, is at the stage of ‘Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue’s sweet air more tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear when wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear.’”

  “Dear me! You are well-versed in the language of the heart.”

  “Not so that you’d notice, although Gavin (and I’d hate to remind him of it) did once tell me that ‘after that a star danced,’ and under it I was born. I thought it was very nice of him. That was before we were married, needless to say.”

  “Mrs. Spalding seemed over-anxious to underline the assertion that Mr. Ferrars had visited the lighthouse on one occasion only, and that in company with Colin,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Far too over-anxious, in my opinion. Proof presumptive she was lying. In fact, we know she was. We know he came over there pretty often on his own, and I’m certain he spent that last afternoon there until he was due to meet the girl he’d dated up.”

  “It is a long walk from the school to the lighthouse, and a longer one from the lighthouse to the mainland, where I understand he was to meet the girl,” said Dame Beatrice. “One would have supposed a journey by car, but it seems that his automobile is still at the school.”

  “All the more certain that he did go to the lighthouse to see Fiona,” said Laura. “Howard might have heard the car, you see. I’d worked that one out some time ago.”

  “You speak as one having authority,” commented Dame Beatrice, admiringly.

  “One has sown one’s wild oats,” admitted Laura, grinning.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Convict’s Story

  “…his wandering, guilty and hunted life.”

  By virtue of her honorary position as consultant psychiatrist attached to the Home Office, Dame Beatrice’s contacts were many. She found no difficulty, therefore, in getting in touch with the governor of the island prison and was invited to visit him for a report upon the experiences of the escaped prisoner.

  The prison itself was a grim fortification built of the dark-grey island stone, but the governor’s quarters were snug and comfortable and his sherry was delicious. He chatted on general topics at first and then said:

  “You wanted some information about Marsh. I have a report here. It’s not a transcript of his own words, but it has been carefully checked and, wherever possible, corroborated, so I think you’ll find it’s accurate, so far as it goes. Whether it will tell you what you want to know is a different matter. Anyway, for what it’s worth, here it is. As it has to be retained here for our files, I’m afraid I can’t have it taken out of the building, but you are welcome to stay here as long as you like to study it. I’ll leave you in peace to make what you can of it. When you’re through, just give me a buzz. I shall be in my office next door.”

  “May I take notes?” Dame Beatrice asked.

  “So far as I am concerned, you can copy out the thing as it stands, if that will help you. The Home Office has a draft of it, of course. There’s nothing top secret about it.”

  Rendered into official language, the report was short and stilted. It gave the convict’s name, age, and number, the nature of the offence for which he had been committed to this particular prison, his previous convictions, and his medical report. Then followed the account of his escape and recapture.

  He seemed to have been in and out of prison for the past thirty-five years, and had been sentenced twice for housebreaking, and three times for burglary. There was no suggestion, however, that he had ever resorted to violence or made any attempt to resist arrest. This was his second attempt to escape. The first time he had been at large for nearly a fortnight. This last time he had been picked up in a matter of a few days.

  He had made a bolt from a quarrying party as the result of a prearrangement, it was thought, with some of the others. He did not admit that there had been a conspiracy, but a fight had broken out and while the warders in charge of the party were settling it, he had downed tools and sneaked off. By the time the fracas was over and he was missed, he had managed to get clean away, the island topography affording plenty of cover.

  His first concern was to effect a change of clothes and to procure food. His next was to reach the mainland before road blocks were set up and a police cordon thrown across the causeway which connected the island with the mainland.

  At first his only plan was to put as great a distance between the prison and himself as he could, but by doing this he had to go south towards the Point instead of north towards the mainland, for the prison was only two miles from the end of the causeway and he saw no chance of being able to leave the island, by the only way out, until he had got rid of his prison garb.

  While he had been taken, day after day, to the quarry—the blasting had been done by skilled quarrymen, not the prisoners—he had tried to make out the lie of the land and had decided that his best chance was to take full advantage of the broken country which lay between the quarry and the only woods he could see, and lie up in the latter until he could get, under cover of the darkness, to a house at which to procure a change of clothes.

  The woods, as it happened, where those which clothed the hillside at the back of the school, and he had soon realised that they were no refuge for a hunted man when there were boys all over the place. Taking considerable risks, therefore, he had scrambled down part of the cliff and, more by luck than judgment, had come out upon some flat rocks which he traversed until he came to a place where it was possible to climb the cliffs again. From here he had seen the fishermen’s cottages and, beyond them, the lighthouse.

  By this time the short March day was beginning to close in, and he saw that, beyond the first lighthouse, there was another. He could not understand why there should be two, or why one should show no light from the lantern, whereas, from the other, the great light was already revolving and flashing.

  Lighthouse keepers and fishermen, he argued, were likely to be rough, tough customers, unlikely to be argued or bullied into helping him. He supposed his best plan would be to lie up until the morning and then prospect for some house or cottage where there was nobody at home except a woman whose husband had gone off to work and so had left, it was to be hoped and expected, a Sunday suit behind him. The plan did not commend itself as being anywhere near ideal, and he was hungry, but it was the best he could think of, so he crawled away inland and went to ground in a disused quarry.

  From his hiding-place he could see the top of the unlighted tower, and became aware that someone was up there. He could see a dark shape against the sky. Then, carried on the wind, which was blowing strongly in his direction, he heard a woman’s voice call out:

  “Are you going to be much longer? Your supper’s nearly ready. I’m sick of being down here by myself!”

  It was very cold in the quarry. That, and the mention of supper, gave him an idea. It was clear to him that, whatever its present purpose, the lighthouse was no longer functioning as such, for the beams and flashes further out on the Point indicated the true guide and warning to mariners. There was only one person—a man, presumably—on the tower he was watching, and, with any luck, only one person—a woman, judging by the voice—down below. There might be a chance to slip in
side the place when the man came down for his supper, and an opportunity to steal some food when both had gone to bed. He also thought that, possibly, if he played it right, he might even get hold of a suit of clothes.

  The warning of his escape had already been given, but he deduced that nobody would think that he had run southwards. They would concentrate all their energies in watching the approaches to the mainland. He reckoned that if he could only hide up for the better part of the night he could make his getaway at dawn if only he could exchange his prison garb for civilian clothes.

  He crawled out of the quarry, which was muddy and damp, and cautiously approached the disused lighthouse. Then he crouched under the protection of the wall which enclosed the yard and waited and listened. At the end of about ten minutes he heard movement on the other side of the wall, and the woman’s voice again raised in high and semi-hysterical tones.

  “Do come down! I’m frightened! Supper’s ready! Do you hear?”

  There was a shout from above, but he could not make out the words. Shortly after this, a clattering sound indicated that somebody in heavy shoes was descending from the gallery and, as he could hear the sounds so clearly, he decided that the door at the foot of the tower must be open.

  A light from an open door in the living-quarters showed him a gate in the wall, and a man’s silhouette crossed this. There was an exclamation of relief from the woman, a slight noise as something fell, and a response in a peevish voice from the man, followed by a vexed exclamation, “Oh, bother! I’ve dropped my torch!”

  “Look for it in the morning,” said the woman. Then came the sound of a door being shut. The convict crept inside the gateway and crouched and listened, and strained his eyes against the blackness to try to make out the door to the tower. Thinking he had located it, he went forward on hands and knees and suddenly put his hand on the torch which the man had dropped.

  Hoping that the door to the tower was open, he switched on the torch, found that his supposition had been right, stood up, and entered the tower. Still using the torch, he climbed half a dozen stone steps which mounted spirally, and tried a door on the right-hand side. It was locked. Cursing his luck, he went higher, and, twenty feet up, found another door. This he opened.

  It led into a small, cramped, stone-floored room half-choked with junk of various kinds. By the light of the torch, he made out empty cardboard boxes and packing-cases, a roll of worn carpeting and various bales and bundles, old newspapers, and the like. He unrolled the carpeting, thinking that it would make some sort of shakedown, and found inside it a complete set of clothes.

  These items had been listed in red ink on the report Dame Beatrice was reading, and were as follows:

  Items recovered from Marsh:

  One string vest, almost new

  One singlet, ditto

  One pair knee-length drawers

  One pair brown brogue shoes

  One pair grey flannel trousers

  One tweed sports jacket

  One belted raincoat.

  It had also been noted that nothing had been found in the pockets of jacket or trousers, and there was a further note to the effect that the garments had been identified as the property of one Ronald Ferrars, a master at Castle Hotel School and now reported missing, and that they were being retained by the police.

  The convict’s story went on to say that he had changed into these clothes immediately and then, deciding that his luck was too good to last, had bundled up his own clothes, stolen out again, put down the torch more or less where he had found it, thrown his prison clothes into the quarry, and then had put as much ground as he could between himself and the lighthouse tower. He had kept to the road, had seen a light in a cottage, and, emboldened by acute hunger and his own changed appearance, had knocked at the door and told a story which got him food and a mug of cocoa, and directions as to the best way to get to the mainland. It was not yet eight o’clock at night, so his appearance had occasioned neither suspicion nor alarm, and his account of how he had fallen on rough ground and twisted his ankle was accepted without surprise. He was even given the address of a man with a motor-cycle and sidecar who would give him a lift as far as the town. The self-contained islanders of the small village obviously did not know either that a convict had escaped or that the island hotel had been taken over by the school. Fortified by the meal, unwilling to risk discovery by asking for the lift, but sustained by that particular brand of unthinking optimism which makes many criminals what they are, he had set out northwards, but retained enough commonsense not to risk his luck a third time. He walked and rested until morning. From the quarry in which the prisoners worked he had often seen the ruined keep on the cliff-top above the broken ground which eventually led down to Laura’s cove, and he decided to take shelter in it.

  From daybreak onwards his story coincided with that of Laura. As soon as dawn broke and the mist began to lift, he had discovered, as she had, a dangerous but possible means of circumventing the purpose of the barbed wire. He had gained first the gatehouse, then the interior of the keep, and, lastly, the little hidey-hole—probably the remains of a medieval garde-robe—in which he had been found.

  Just as he had decided to sneak out and try his luck, he had heard Laura, but had not seen her. He did not realise that he had lost the handkerchief, but he heard her go away. He had climbed down into the courtyard and possessed himself of her ashplant, but he thought, from the weight of the stick, that she was a powerful man, so he decided to wait where he was until the coast was clear. Then the prison working-party came into the quarry below, and he dared not show himself. He had proved an easy prey when his captors came along.

  Dame Beatrice read the account very carefully twice. She did not need to take any notes. She buzzed for the governor.

  “Well,” he said, “I hope it was of some help.”

  “I cannot say, at present, whether it will help us or not,” she responded. “It contains no clue to the whereabouts of the little boy Manoel, and, in itself, it does not throw any direct light upon what has happened to young Mr. Ferrars.”

  “The bit about visiting the lighthouse, and finding Ferrars’ clothes there, is incredible,” said the governor. “On the other hand, this man Marsh has no record of violence, and there was no blood, only slight staining by sea-water, on the clothes when we took them off him.”

  “Slight staining by sea-water,” said Dame Beatrice, thoughtfully.

  “Seems to me the Spaldings have got some explaining to do,” observed Laura, when Dame Beatrice has given her an account of the convict’s story.

  “Why?” Dame Beatrice enquired. “As the governor indicated, what evidence is there that the man ever went to that lighthouse at all? The Spaldings have only to deny his statement, and everybody will believe them.”

  “Everybody except you,” said Laura shrewdly. “Now, if only he’d had the sense to leave his prison uniform behind in the tower, instead of fatheadedly throwing it down one of the quarries, we should know where we were.”

  “Oh, no, we should not, not by a very long way. For one thing, we should need the police and a search warrant in order to obtain access to the room in the tower, supposing that the Spaldings objected to our searching it—which they would have every right to do—and, for another, even if the convict’s clothes had been found there, there is no evidence to show that that is where he obtained Mr. Ferrars’ garments, is there?”

  “You mean, the weather being what it is at this time of year, he may have preferred to strip and change in the tower rather than in the open? A bit risky, wasn’t it? I mean, either Howard or Fiona might have heard him.” She paused, then added, “It’s a pretty circumstantial story, isn’t it, though? I mean, it’s quite unlikely he would have invented all that about the lighthouse, isn’t it?”

  Dame Beatrice did not answer the questions. She said, “I wonder whether the police have got any further in tracing Manoel?”

  “Will you want me this afternoon?” asked Laura, in an
equally disconnected manner. “I ask because, like Yvonne Arnaud in Tons of Money, I have an idea!”

  “If it leads to equal devastation, I wish you would forget it,” said her employer, “but I suppose you were born to be a law unto yourself, and to get into trouble as the sparks fly upwards.”

  “Bless you for those few kind words,” said Laura. “Do you think the convict killed Ferrars to get his clothes?”

  “If so, he did not kill him in the lighthouse.”

  “Mrs. Spalding was in a blue funk when we called there. Something has to make sense somewhere or other, hasn’t it?”

  “Slightly stained with sea-water,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Sounds as though Ferrars went swimming, leaving his clothes on the rocks, and got himself drowned, and the Spaldings found the clothes and took them back to the lighthouse. Oh, I don’t know!” said Laura.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In a Beautiful Pea-Green Boat

  “We’ll have favourable winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty of finding the spot…”

  When three more days had gone by and no trace of Manoel’s movements had come to light, Mr. Eastleigh telephoned the Querigua Montes embassy in London to give them the information that the son of the president was missing. Their reply, although reassuring in one sense, was the reverse in another. Querigua Montes was, for the fifth time in nine years, the scene of a revolution, and the president’s troubles and anxieties were such (and his future, the caller indicated, so uncertain) that the headmaster was urged to leave matters in the hands of the English police and to refrain from worrying either the embassy or the president himself until the outcome of the revolution was known.

  “Well, at least we shan’t have the embassy giving us the run-around, or the president coming over here to badger us,” said the headmaster to his wife, Dame Beatrice and Laura. “Neither does it seem likely, under the circumstances, that the child has been kidnapped.”