The Mudflats of the Dead (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Not ever, madam, not even to oblige our regulars. It could mean leaving a cottage empty for half a week, you see, most people preferring Saturdays.”

  “I quite understand. If I might have an order to view?”

  She thought the three men would be back from their fishing trip and it would be too early for them to find the village pub open. She knocked on the door, therefore, at twenty minutes to six and presented the house agent’s order to view.

  “Oh, Lord! I’m afraid we’re in an awful mess,” said the youth who had answered the door. “We didn’t reckon on clearing up until the day before we go.”

  Dame Beatrice said that she quite understood and that if she might just take a quick look round she could soon satisfy herself as to whether the cottage would meet with her requirements.

  “Righto. Well, if you don’t mind waiting a minute, I’ll see whether the other two are viewable. We rather tend to sit about in what you might call déshabillement these very warm evenings.” He came back after a few moments and invited her in.

  The other two were in the kitchen. One took his feet off the table and both rose politely at her entrance. Dame Beatrice wished them good evening and said that she was sorry to disturb them, but if she might be permitted to look over the cottage she would be very grateful. She hardly thought it would be large enough for her requirements, as she would be bringing a party of six, including a teenage boy and girl.

  “Then it won’t be large enough,” said the man who appeared to be the oldest of the party and was, she judged, in his late thirties. “There are only two bedrooms with a single bed in each, and the third one of us—well, we take it in turns to doss down on the very hard couch in the sitting-room. It’s supposed to open out to make a double bed, but something’s gone wrong with the works.”

  “You seem to have much the same accommodation as there is in another cottage I visited and found unsuitable. In a way I am somewhat relieved, as my two youngest friends are reckless and, I’m afraid, irresponsible, and I believe there was a drowning fatality here recently.”

  “Stupid girl swam on an outgoing tide. People do the daftest things when they’re on holiday.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Sort of. She conned us into taking her fishing one day, but fortunately—although it wasn’t much fun at the time—she got most fearfully sea-sick, so that put an end to that.”

  “She was an oncoming little bit of goods,” said the young man who had answered the door, “and once she’d got her hooks into you she was as sticky as a burr.”

  “Was she an attractive young girl?”

  “Lord, no,” said the unchivalrous trio.

  “The newspapers referred to her as a pretty brunette of twenty summers,” said Dame Beatrice. “I suppose the drowning was an accident?”

  “So the newspapers said. Personally, I prefer to keep an open mind. Her sort can be the hell of a nuisance when all a man wants is fishing and the pub,” said the youth who had had his feet on the table.

  “Does any other holidaymaker take regular fishing-trips?”

  “Not regular trips, no. As a matter of fact, most of the chaps you meet down here are yachtsmen and own their boats. They may do a bit of fishing at times. We wouldn’t know.” He glanced at the others for confirmation.

  “You’ll excuse me for asking,” said the eldest suddenly, “but haven’t I seen you before somewhere?”

  “I have no idea,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Well, I’m a solicitor. My name is Billington. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you in court at some time.”

  “Not in the dock, I trust.”

  “No, no, of course not. Wait a minute. Didn’t you appear as a witness in one of Sir Ferdinand Lestrange’s cases at the Central Criminal Court a year ago?”

  “It is probable. He is my son, so I am always prepared to support him.”

  “That’s right. He was prosecuting. Ah! I’ve got it. You are Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and you were called to testify that the prisoner was fit to plead. The defence said he wasn’t and claimed diminished responsibility, but you made hay of their psychiatrist and the prisoner got life, and a good thing, too. He was a public menace and had more than one murder to his credit, although he was only indicted for the death of an old lady. Shall I stick my neck out and suggest that, like me, you don’t believe that girl’s death was an accident?”

  “I still have an open mind.”

  “And that this idea of wanting to look at the cottage was only an excuse for having a look at us?”

  “Dear me!” said Dame Beatrice admiringly.

  “Well, now that’s settled, I think we’ll send my brother and Carleton off to the pub, while you and I settle down to have a good talk.”

  “I should like that very much.” The younger men removed themselves and the host produced sherry.

  “Well, now,” he said invitingly, “let’s pool our ideas.”

  “I have very few to contribute. I was asked to make some enquiries, but, so far, little has resulted from them. I should be interested to know why you suspect foul play.”

  “Well, like you, I don’t exactly suspect it, but it seems to me a distinct possibility. I suppose the nature of my job conditions me. Our firm is sometimes concerned with cases of violent crime— muggings, rape, armed robbery, even murder—so I suppose I look on the violent or unexpected deaths of young women with a particularly jaundiced eye and, my word!—this specimen went about positively begging for trouble, as my young brother indicated.”

  “I suppose—perhaps it is an unfair question—but I suppose you have no suspicions of anybody in particular?”

  “No. She was quite promiscuous. One heard of skirmishes among the dunes and all that sort of thing. Chaps at the pub used to make jokes about her, you know. The better read called her Moll Flanders and to the coarser grained she was known as Eskimo Nell, so that will show you.”

  “She was very young to have gained that sort of notoriety.”

  “She gained it in so short a time, too. I have wondered whether somebody she knew at home—she was a Londoner, so the papers said—followed her down here with intent to do the deed, but it’s only a theory.”

  “What about the man who found the body?”

  “Yes, I know. Interesting you should mention him. That’s another matter on which I’ve pondered, but I guess the police investigated that possibility very thoroughly. After the deceased’s nearest and dearest relatives, the person who finds the body becomes the number one suspect. The fellow is still down here, if you want to speak to him. He was out cockling early in the morning when he saw her lying there, or so he said at the inquest. I spoke to him afterwards.”

  “I should like to speak to him. I doubt whether it is reasonable to suspect him, since I suppose that, if he was guilty, he would not have reported to the authorities. Simpler to have emulated the priest and the Levite, and passed by on the other side. There appear to have been no witnesses to his discovery of the body.”

  “Well, none came forward, but it’s quite extraordinary how many people do get up early on holiday so as to make the most of the day. Besides, there are the cockles to be had—they leave tell-tale marks on the sandy mudflats—and I believe you can also find small crabs. Some people—the locals mostly, I suspect—also gather edible samphire on the marshes. I don’t think you could guarantee that nobody would spot you, however early in the morning it was, if you were up to a bit of no good, but nobody else came forward. Then there are the off-shore yachtsmen. They all carry binoculars and could have seen if anything fishy was going on.”

  “I think the drowning—whether by accident or design—happened at night. In that case the cockler could quite innocently have come upon the body next morning. Will you give me his address?”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with you to visit him, if you like.”

  “That would be more than kind.”

  The man’s name was Sleach. He lodged with a widow who
let rooms down by the Old Quay. This was now a jumble of cottages, most of them derelict. There were also some timber-built, black-tarred warehouses now in use only for storing fishermen’s gear. A rotting duck-punt was pulled up on the stones and mud which formed part of the shore and a decrepit sailing barge, with its mast intact but its timbers beginning to rot away on the starboard side, was moored against the planks which formed a kind of continuous fender against the stonework of the cobbled quay.

  “‘Change and decay in all around I see,’” murmured Dame Beatrice. Their quarry was not in.

  “That do spend most of his evenings at the pub,” the landlady informed them.

  “I’m a solicitor,” said Billington. “Have you known him long?”

  “He’s my nephoo.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “That’s not in any money trouble?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. It’s in connection with that body he found on the beach.”

  “I reckon that was a terrible sad thing an’ all. Poor young mawther! But Billy only know what that testify at inquest. That don’t hev further to say.”

  “Surely not, but naturally the relatives are very much upset about the drowning and want as much information as they can get.”

  The woman looked with some curiosity at Dame Beatrice.

  “You’ll be grandma, I whoolly think,” she said. Dame Beatrice inclined a gracious head.

  “She was a wild girl, I’m afraid,” she observed, but the fish did not rise to this fly.

  “I think,” said Billington, when they reached the pub, “that I’d better go in and winkle him out. By the sound of it, the place is jam-packed. It’s still early in the evening, so he won’t be bottled yet and we may get something out of him which didn’t get said at the inquest.”

  The pub was on the New Quay. Here the houses and store places were well built of flint with fairly high-pitched roofs and the pub itself was a pleasant, much altered three-storey building with a low wall around its forecourt and some lath and plaster work around the windows.

  Dame Beatrice strolled towards the sea wall. Some tidy little sailing-boats were lying out on the hard, a couple of rowing-boats without their oars lay near them, and a lifebelt hung on a wooden board near by. It was a strangely orderly scene after the decrepitude of the Old Quay and, except for the sociable hubbub from the pub which still came to her ears, exceptionally quiet and deserted.

  Billington and his prey soon joined her, each with a pint tankard in his hand.

  “Here’s Mr. Sleach, Dame Beatrice. There’s a bench outside the pub. Shall we sit?” asked Billington, leading the way.

  “Do you live in Saltacres, Mr. Sleach?” Dame Beatrice asked, when they were seated.

  “No. I work in Hull and take my summer fortnight with my auntie. I fare to go home tomorrow.”

  “I am greatly concerned about the death of young Camilla St. John. Can you tell me exactly how you came to find her body? I did not know of the inquest until it was too late for me to attend it.”

  “This gentleman tell me he’s a lawyer. No trouble in it for me, is there?”

  “Oh, no. He is merely escorting me and will know all the helpful questions to ask, that’s all.”

  “What I hev to say I said at the inquest.”

  “Yes, I know, but I wasn’t there to hear it. Please begin at the beginning and tell me all you can.”

  “Oh, well, then, I go out early to get the cockles. They make a nice start to a meal with thin bread and butter. The visitors they go for to uncover them with their bare hands, but, being local born, though now I live in Hull, I know a better trick than that, so I take my cockling knife, give one little turn and up come the cockle.”

  “Ah, yes, the expert at work.”

  “Well, I obtain a nice little foo—coupla dozen or more—then I straighten up and shake the cockles—real Creeky Blues—down in my bucket to make more room. Then I spot something lying half in the water and half out. Tide was on the turn, so I say to myself that the last tide brought something in, so I go over and take a look and I find this poor young girl.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I go on with my cockling as soon as I know there’s nawthen I can do for her. Then when I reckon I get enough for auntie and me with our tea, I go back and tell auntie what I see. Her say to go to pub and ’phone police, so I do that and that’s the lot.”

  “When you had finished your cockling, was the body exactly as you had seen it first?”

  “Well, as to that, how could it be? Tide was on the turn, so I pull the poor thing up above highwater mark soon as I see what it was.”

  “Did you turn your back on it while you went on gathering your cockles?”

  “Times, yes, and times, no. You hev to take the cockles where they fare to be. That don’t grow in rows like turnips or sugar beet.”

  “Did you see any living person on the beach or the dunes?”

  “A fair way off there were other folk getting the cockles.”

  “But they did not come near you or the corpse?”

  “When they go, they go the other way, towards the church.”

  “Was the corpse clothed?”

  “She hev a kind of little bodice that hardly cover her breasts (not that she hev much up there to cover) and a little pair of bathing drawers that hardly cover—”

  “Yes, a bikini. I see. What about the clothes she must have taken off before she bathed?”

  “Oo, I wouldn’ know nawthen about any other garments but those I describe. Now I come to recollect, though, Crowner did ask the gentleman who spoke to knowing the body—”

  “Mr. Kirby?”

  “That’s him.”

  “The coroner asked Mr. Kirby about the girl’s clothes?”

  “Yes, that did. The gentleman said the young woman was liable to run straight out of the cottage in her bathers and, when she’d had her dip, that would lie out on the doons and dry off.”

  “What about shoes?”

  “I couldn’t go for to say.”

  “Well, she might have done all that in the sunshine, although I think she would have worn shoes of some sort to cross the marshes,” said Billington, “but at night she surely would have something on over her bikini and have taken a towel with her? It gets chilly at night when there’s no sun to dry you.”

  “I couldn’t speak as to any of that, but if she had any clo’es and a pair of shoes, I reckon she left ’em on the doons out of tide reach and the Old Mole had ’em.”

  “And who is the Old Mole?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “That’s an old mumper live by himself and talk foreign. When he ent mumpin’, that scavenge up and down the place looking for driftwood or empty bottles, or maybe bits of sandwiches and cake left behind by picnickers, or anything else that’s there. Proper old jackdaw. Pick up whatever take his fancy.”

  “Oh, a beachcomber,” said Billington. “And where is he to be found?”

  “That doss down in a shed on the Old Quay.”

  “Oh, a neighbour of yours!”

  “That’s harmless. We pass the time of day.”

  “What, exactly, is a mumper?” Dame Beatrice enquired. “The word is new to me.”

  “Dialect for beggar,” Billington explained. “Why is he called the Old Mole?” he asked Sleach.

  “On account that purtend to be blind. Carry a white stick, but that’s only to poke about with. Help him in his mumpin’ to let the visitors think he’s blind. Makes them feel sorry for him, if you take my meaning, but that’s an old fraud, that is. Can see as well as you and me, and don’t miss nawthen if there’s anything worth picking up on the beach or among the doons.”

  “He sounds an interesting and enterprising character. So you think, Mr. Sleach, that if the dead girl’s clothes had been left on the shore, this man will have found and kept them? Maybe he has sold them by now.”

  “Too fly for that, I reckon, ma’am. That wait until all the fuss die down. If he hev the po
or young mawther’s clo’es, they’re still in his shack.”

  “Then I must ask him to produce them.”

  “We’ll come with you,” said Billington.

  “No. My thanks for the chivalrous thought, but that will be quite unnecessary. I see that my man has followed me up with the car. He will escort me and I have no doubt, Mr. Sleach, that your aunt will be good enough to point out where this man lives. I am most grateful for your assistance, both of you.”

  “A pleasure,” said Billington. “Come on, then, Sleach. I can do with another pint and so can you.” He walked over to the car with Dame Beatrice and added, “I can see you don’t want to involve Sleach any further. Will you let me know how you get on with the Old Mole?”

  “It is the least I can do, although I expect nothing to come of my visit to him.”

  “Would it help your enquiry if it does turn out that he picked up the girl’s clothes?”

  “To a certain extent, I think it would, particularly if he is willing to tell me which day he found them. She does not appear to have returned to her cottage on the night of the moonlight bathe she took with a friend, so the inference is that that is the night on which she was drowned, but, so far, that has not been proved.”

  “Ah, yes, the medical evidence was more than a bit sketchy regarding the actual time of death, I remember. But if the Old Mole does have the clothes, isn’t that going to be a bit awkward for the—for her fellow bather?”

  “He is already under some suspicion.”

  She got into the car and gave George directions to take her back to the Old Quay.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE OLD MOLE

  “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”

  Oscar Wilde

  Digging out the Old Mole proved to be a matter of no difficulty. Dame Beatrice reintroduced herself to Sleach’s aunt. The beggarman’s domicile, the least disreputable of the rotting warehouses, was pointed out with the warning that it was probably infested with rats, undoubtedly stank and, in any case, was no place for a lady.

  Dame Beatrice enquired whether the old man had ever engaged the interest of the police, and was reassured.