The Mudflats of the Dead (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well—” Fenella and Mevagissey exchanged glances again. “Well— only sort of while she was still at the shop, if you know what I mean,” said Fenella.

  “She had to go to hospital,” said Claire.

  “I am accustomed to reading between the lines.” Dame Beatrice rose to go. “Thank you all for your help. You have clarified my own ideas to a most gratifying extent. Blackmail is a particularly nasty business.”

  Gerda accompanied her downstairs.

  “I don’t believe Camilla had a baby,” she said. “She was far too fly to go so far as that.”

  “She was not fly enough to avoid being murdered,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “People shouldn’t write or do things for which they can be blackmailed. It’s their own fault if somebody takes advantage of them and cashes in.”

  “What did you really think of Miss St. John?”

  “I was sorry for her. She was all the time chasing the bluebird and every time she caught it, it died on her.”

  “But the dog it was that died,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “The little bitch, you mean. Oh, she was that, all right,” said Gerda, “and we’re pretty sure about the blackmail, although we don’t know any names.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE MUDFLATS, LONDON RIVER

  “It’s a long, long watch that he’s a-keeping there,

  And a dead cold night that lays a-creeping there.”

  Henry Newbolt

  Briefed by Dame Beatrice when she returned to the hotel which they used when they were staying only a day or two in London, Laura went to the art dealer’s shop which the Kirbys had mentioned. She was armed with a list of requisites consisting of light-to-carry articles such as charcoal, paint brushes, a small sketching block, and some varnish, and Dame Beatrice had also prepared for her a series of questions to put to the proprietor.

  She was served by an auburn-haired girl of Burne-Jones aspect while a man whom Laura took to be the person she had come to question was busy with another customer. She gave her order with many pauses to consult a piece of paper on which she had written down the items she intended to purchase. The pauses were to gain as much time as she could in the hope that the shopkeeper himself would soon be free.

  Halfway through her list and while she was still playing for time, she said:

  “You’re not the one who served me about a couple of years ago, are you?”

  “Hardly,” said the girl. “I’ve only been here six months.”

  “Ah,” said Laura, inspecting the brushes which had been placed before her, “that would account for it. I’ll take, yes, this and this—or shall I?—perhaps—well, what do you think?”

  “It depends what you want them for. I mean, the kind of picture and the size of it, and whether you’re a splasher or a niggler, I suppose.”

  “Yes, I suppose it would. I’m not buying for myself, you see, but for somebody who is elderly and finds shopping difficult.”

  “Surely he told you the numbering of the brushes he wants?”

  “He’s only an amateur. Dabbles about just to have something to do, you know.”

  “You’re his nurse, are you?”

  “Oh, general factotum,” said Laura, trying to imagine Dame Beatrice needing a nurse. At this moment the other customer left and the proprietor came up to them.

  “Can I help?” he enquired.

  “The lady is shopping for somebody else and isn’t quite sure what is wanted,” said the girl.

  “Oh, well, I’ll take over, Miss Wareham, if you’ll attend to the customer who has just come in.”

  Laura completed her purchases under his advice and then said:

  “You used to have an assistant named Smith—Thomasina Smith—about two years ago.”

  “Certainly. She had to go into hospital and left shortly after she was discharged.”

  “You didn’t discharge her from your shop?”

  “She preferred to discharge herself. She still shops here occasionally. She is quite a casual visitor, though.”

  “A casual visitor?” said Laura. “I wonder what you mean by that?”

  “She came at intervals. It is some weeks, I believe, since we saw her. She brings us purchasers, of course.”

  “Apart from what I feel sure you have indicated with regard to her character and general demeanour—”

  “Please, please! You are not a woman police constable, are you?”

  “No, no. Why should you ask that?”

  “Because Miss Smith has not called here for some time. I wondered whether she was in trouble with the police.”

  “Well,” said Laura, “why should you care?”

  “I do not care. She was a very immoral young woman. She had to go into hospital, and I had good reason to be glad for her to leave. She was not a desirable employee. And now I am sorry, but I’ve got a customer, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Right. Thanks for your help. I’m sure my employer will like the brushes and things.”

  “We have a long list of satisfied customers, I am glad to say.”

  Laura went back to Dame Beatrice, wondering, as she went, whether the art dealer knew more about Camilla’s death than he could be expected to admit.

  “How went your errand?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “Only so-so. Anyway, it’s a very good shop, two large front windows, some decent originals and some very good copies on display and so many different kinds of artists’ materials that beshrew me if I don’t start up in the plaster, dab and palette knife routine myself, come the long winter evenings.”

  “Woodcarving would suit you, but tell me about the interview.”

  “I soft pedalled, as you told me, and two things emerged. The man has no idea that Thomasina Smith and Camilla Hoveton St. John are one and the same, for he still talks of her in the present tense. He certainly hasn’t a clue about the death, unless he has become suspect number one.”

  “Is that really the impression you received?”

  “Well, no, it isn’t, but there’s no doubt about two things. The girl did not go into hospital because of a car crash or any accident of that sort. He turned very cagey, as a matter of fact, about the hospital angle. I suspected she went into a maternity ward or had an abortion. One thing he did make clear. If she had not given in her notice at his shop, she would have been sacked.”

  “Her notice, yes,” said Dame Beatrice. “According to the artists with whom she shared an apartment, she was able to give up paid employment only because she was blackmailing somebody.”

  “And the somebody turned nasty and made away with her? Do you think there is any point in pursuing the thing any further?”

  “Probably no point at all. The women in the flat have no proof of what they told me, anybody at the art school could have known that the girl was to spend a fortnight’s holiday with the Kirbys, and I do not suppose that Mrs. Kirby made any secret of the fact that the holiday was to be spent at Saltacres. The girl herself may have told her murderer where she would be.”

  “Leaves a big field to cover.”

  “I will let the police know of the rumour that blackmail could be involved and then, unless some bit of clear evidence turns up, which seems unlikely after all this time, I shall sit back and allow the police to solve the problem, or not, as they see fit.”

  Laura looked at the sharp black eyes and beaky little mouth and said:

  “I believe that in your own mind the problem is already solved.”

  “Yes,” said Dame Beatrice, “in my own mind it is, but there is not a shred of proof. Besides, I dislike blackmail and I always feel sympathy for a worm which has the courage to turn.”

  “All the same, you can’t be blackmailed unless you’ve done something silly or naughty, can you?”

  “True. Well, to other matters. We have several invitations to spend Christmas with relatives and friends. What are your plans?”

  “Paris with Hamish, and Hogmanay with Eiladh and Tom, unless yo
u want me with you.”

  “You are included in my invitations, of course.”

  “Thanks, but Gavin thinks he can snaffle a few days at the beginning of January.”

  “Then I shall go to Carey in Oxfordshire.”

  “You wouldn’t like to give me a hint about our murderer, would you?”

  “No.”

  The weeks passed. Christmas, and Palgrave’s unexpected meeting with Morag and Cupar Lowson, came and went. By the middle of January both Dame Beatrice and Laura were settled down again in the Stone House and the vexed subject of Camilla’s death was not raised again by either of them. One pale, early spring morning, Dame Beatrice, coming into the room her secretary used as an office, said:

  “Authors are the most egoistic of human beings, with the possible exception of politicians.”

  “You’re thinking of Palgrave?”

  “In more ways than one. He has telephoned me about this book he has written. He calls it a psychological treatise in the form of a novel and would like my blessing on it.”

  “You’ll have to write him a preface, then, if you agree to sponsor the thing. It’s a bit of a cheek for him to ask you. Shall you do it?”

  “Not until I have read the book, of course. Tomorrow morning we will draft a reply.”

  “May be too late,” said Laura bluntly.

  “I wonder what you mean?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. Maybe we shall both know when we have read the book. Have you seen the evening paper?”

  “No. Why?” Dame Beatrice looked curiously at her secretary.

  “The mudflats appear to have claimed another victim,” said Laura.

  “At Saltacres?”

  “No, at low tide on the Thames.”

  The entrance to the small up-river docks was being dredged. The dredger was an old one of the bucket type and had a squat, black, filthy-looking hopper alongside. As the work went on, bucket after bucket of slimy mud, stones and an incredible assortment of river debris came up and was deposited in the hopper.

  The docks were at the confluence of the river and a canal and served as a short-time repository for the goods brought on the canal boats from the Midlands, and as a temporary warehouse for the cargoes to be carried north again.

  Although a dead man lay out on the mud a hundred yards away, the four men working on the dredger did not notice him; neither did the occasional stroller along the path on the opposite side of the river. There were willows on that side and, further to that, the banks were high and had been shored up with sacks of concrete and the dead man was lying too far in, where the high tide had left him, to be visible to any casual walker who did not go right up to the edge of the bank and peer over.

  The person who first spotted him was the youthful cox of a pair-oar racing skiff who was out early practising with his two-man crew for the local Easter regatta. As the skiff was undergoing a time trial over what was to be the course on the great day, he said nothing of his discovery until the skiff was being paddled back to the boathouse.

  “Go easy and pull over to the Surrey side when we gets to the dredger,” he said to his brothers. “I reckon I seen a stiff laying out on the mud.”

  His rowers were sceptical, but he soon proved himself to be right. They could not take their frail craft up to the edge of the river, for fear of damaging her, but even from twenty yards out there could be no doubt that, fairly close under the bank, lay a very dead man. He was fully clothed, even to the extent of wearing an overcoat, although his head was bare.

  “Dead drunk, and fell in and the tide took him,” said bow oar as they paddled downstream.

  “Suicided hisself, poor b—,” said stroke. “Lots does it in the river.” The youthful cox said:

  “Means the police, anyway. I got to go to school and, anyway, they wouldn’t take no notice of me, so one of you better tell ’em.”

  “We’ll get Dad to do it. He’s the one with the spare time. We got to get to bloody work,” said bow oar.

  “Tell ’im it might be a murder. That’ll be meat and drink to Dad. Loves his murders. Sunday paper lasts him all day and Monday as well,” said stroke. “Besides, he knows the Sergeant.”

  “Been dead a couple of days or more,” said the police surgeon. “Who is he?”

  “Nothing to show,” said the local Superintendent of Police. “No papers, no wallet, nothing to identify him at present. Have to be an autopsy before the inquest, I suppose, just in case.”

  “In case he’s been mugged and murdered? You’re quite right, of course, to investigate,” said the doctor, “although it looks a straight case of suicide to me. Clothes seem quite good. Well-kept body, too, well-nourished and clean. Age somewhere around thirty, at a guess. All his own teeth and well-tended hands and feet. Professional class I should think. Not a manual worker, anyway. Who found him?”

  “Three young lads out rowing. They told their father that the kid acting as cox had spotted him on the foreshore mud when they were out for early morning practice, and the old man came along and made a report. I’ve got their names and the address. Locals. Practising for the regatta. Well, until somebody comes forward and reports him as missing, it’s not going to be easy to identify him. Clothes came from one of those multiple chain stores which sell menswear—Angler Brothers, to be exact—and the shirt was the kind you can buy at any M and S store, socks ditto. The shoes were from Bugloss, who’ve got a shop in every town in the country and dozens in London alone. We’ll probably have to wait till somebody misses him. If it’s a suicide, probably nobody will. Half of ’em do it because they’re either loners or misfits.”

  “Not to worry. Somebody will come forward. It’s not as though he was one of the Embankment down-and-outs with nobody to care whether he lived or died. Probably in a job. If so, he’ll be missed at work after a day or two.”

  This prophecy was fulfilled three days later. The first day on which Palgrave failed to turn up at school without telephoning that he would be unable to take his classes affected nobody but the deputy head, who had to deprive resentful colleagues of their free periods, and these colleagues themselves. The headmaster, who, secure in his sanctum behind his desk, was unaffected by the changes, merely remarked, when Palgrave’s unexplained absence was reported to him: “Not like Palgrave. He must be too ill to get to the telephone.”

  “There is a landlady, Headmaster. She could have rung up,” said the deputy head.

  “Some people don’t think of these things or else can’t be bothered. Are his classes catered for?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “That’s all right, then. I expect we shall hear tomorrow. If not, somebody had better go round there.”

  This short conversation took place immediately after Assembly on the Monday morning after the body had been found on the same day. No message came during the afternoon or on the following day. When, after Assembly on the Wednesday, Palgrave was still reported missing, the headmaster was sufficiently concerned to send a junior master, who had a car which was parked in the school playground, to Palgrave’s address to make enquiries. He returned with unhelpful news.

  “I couldn’t get an answer at the house, sir, so I enquired of the neighbours. They told me the landlady was called away last Friday to nurse her mother who lives in Basingstoke and they know nothing at all about Palgrave.”

  “We shall have to notify the police and ask them to break in, I suppose,” said the headmaster, discussing the matter with his deputy. “If the poor fellow is ill in bed with nobody to look after him, matters may be serious.”

  He rang up the police station. An inspector came to the school.

  “Not reported for duty so far this week, sir? Last seen at your school on last Friday afternoon? I shall have to request you to come down to the station, sir, before we go to the lengths of breaking into a private house.”

  “Down to the police station? Whatever for?”

  “We’ve got a photograph we want identified, sir.”

  Mys
tified and not too pleased, the headmaster did as he was asked. The photograph was not pretty, but it was identifiable.

  “To make sure, sir, the body having been in the water—there’s an autopsy report pending, we understand—I’ll have to ask you to identify the clothes the deceased was wearing. Perhaps you would come along again, sir, when we’ve got them, and see if they tally with your identification of the photograph.”

  “I couldn’t guarantee to do that, unless the clothes are the ones Palgrave wore to school, Inspector. As the poor fellow seems to have drowned either last Friday night or on the Saturday or Sunday, one of my younger staff would be of more use to you than I shall. Mr. Winblow was closer to Palgrave than any other, I think. They played golf together, I believe, and spent weekends together sometimes for this purpose. Winblow doubtless will be more familiar with the contents of Palgrave’s wardrobe than I am.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Winblow identified first the photograph and then the clothes.

  “Do you know of any relatives who ought to be informed, sir?” the Superintendent asked the young man.

  “I knew he was an orphan, but I never heard of brothers or sisters, or anybody close to him.”

  “Oh, well, there’s nobody to get a nasty shock, then. You wouldn’t have any idea why he did it, I suppose?—not that it’s a criminal offence any more.”

  “Did it? Did what? Good Lord! You don’t suppose it was anything but an accident, do you?”

  “We have every reason—it doesn’t matter telling you this, sir, because it will have to come out at the inquest, where we shall want you to repeat your evidence of identification—but we have every reason to believe that it was suicide.”

  “But—Palgrave? He wasn’t the type! I knew him pretty well. He had no troubles, no worries. He’d just finished his second novel and was all lined up to write a third. Those sort of chaps don’t put an end to themselves.”

  “I’m afraid the evidence given at the inquest will convince you, sir, that sometimes they do.”

  “So it’s our old friend arsenic, Bob,” said the Inspector, when Winblow, still expressing disbelief, had left.