Here Harriet’s knowledge failed her. She had put it down as a fishing-boat – not because she could scientifically distinguish a fishing-boat from a 5-metre yacht, but because one naturally, when visiting the seaside, puts down all boats as fishing-boats until otherwise instructed. She thought it had a pointed sort of sail – or sails – she couldn’t be sure. She was sure it was not, for example, a fully rigged four-masted schooner, but otherwise one sailing-boat was to her exactly like any other; as it is to most town-bred persons, especially to literary young women.
‘Never mind,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’ll be able to trace it all right, All boats must come to shore somewhere, thank goodness. And they’re all well known to people along the coast. I only wanted to know what sort of draught the boat was likely to have. You see, if the boat couldn’t come right in to the rock, the fellow would have had to row himself in, or swim for it, and that would delay him a good bit. And he’d have to have somebody standing on and off with the boat while he did it, unless he stopped to take in sail, and all that. I mean, you can’t just stop a sailing boat and step out of it like a motor-car, leaving it on its own all ready to start. You’d get into difficulties. But that makes no odds. Why shouldn’t the murderer have an accomplice? It has frequently happened before. We’d better assume that there were at least two men in a small boat with a very light draught. Then they could bring her close in, and one of the men would bring her round to the wind, while the other waded or rowed alone, did the murder and got back, so that they could make off again without wasting a moment. You see, they’ve got to do the murder, get back to the boat and clear out to where you saw them within the ten minutes between the cry you heard and the time of your arrival. So we can’t allow a lot of time for pulling the boat to shore and making fast and pushing off again and setting sail and all that. Hence I suggest the accomplice.’
‘But how about the Grinders?’ asked Harriet, rather diffidently. ‘I thought it was very dangerous to bring boats close to shore at that point.’
‘Blow it! So it is. Well, they must have been very skilful sailors. But that would mean further to row or wade, as the case may be. Bother it! I wish we could allow them rather more time.’
‘You don’t think—’ began Harriet. A very unpleasant idea had just struck her. ‘You don’t think the murderer could have been there, quite close, all the time, swimming under water, or something?’
‘He’d have had to come up to breathe.’
‘Yes, but I might not have noticed him. There were lots of times when I wasn’t looking at the sea at all. He would have heard me coming, and he might have ducked down close under the rock and waited there till I came down to look for the razor. Then he might have dived and swum away while my back was turned. I don’t know if it’s possible, and I hope it isn’t, because I should hate to think he was there all the time – watching me!’
‘It’s a nasty thought,’ said Wimsey. ‘I rather hope he was there, though. It would give him a beast of a shock to see you hopping round taking photographs and things. I wonder if there is any cleft in the Flat-Iron where he might have hidden himself. Curse the rock! Why can’t it come out and show itself like a man? I say, I’m going down to have a look at it. Turn your modest eyes seawards till I have climbed into a bathing-suit, and I’ll go down and explore.’
Not content with this programme, unsuited to a person of her active temperament, Harriet removed, not only her glance, but her person, to the shelter of a handy rock, and emerged, bathing-suited, in time to catch Wimsey as he ran down over the sand.
‘And he strips better than I should have expected,’ she admitted candidly to herself. ‘Better shoulders than I realised, and, thank Heaven, calves to his legs.’ Wimsey, who was rather proud of his figure, would hardly have been flattered could he have heard this modified rapture, but for the moment he was happily unconcerned about himself. He entered the sea near the Flat-Iron with caution, not knowing what bumps and boulders he might encounter, swam a few strokes to encourage himself, and then popped his head out to remark that the water was beastly cold and that it would do Harriet good to come in.
Harriet came in, and agreed that the water was cold and the wind icy. Agreed on this point, they returned to the Flat-Iron, and felt their way carefully round it. Presently Wimsey, who had been doing some under-water investigation on the Wilvercombe side of the rock, came out, spluttering, and asked if Harriet had come down on that side or on the other to hunt for the razor.
‘On the other,’ said Harriet. ‘It was like this, I was up on top of the rock with the body, like this.’ She climbed out, walked up to the top of the rock, and stood shivering in the wind. ‘I looked round on both sides of me like this.’
‘You didn’t look down in this direction, by any chance?’ inquired Wimsey’s head, standing up sleek as a seal’s out of the water.
‘No, I don’t think so. Then, after I’d fussed about with the corpse a bit, I got down this way. I sat on something just about here and took my shoes and stockings off and tucked my things up. Then I came round in this direction and groped about under the rock. There was about eighteen inches of water then. There are about five feet now, I should think.’
‘Can you—?’ began Wimsey. A wave slopped suddenly over his head and extinguished him. Harriet laughed.
‘Can you see me?’ he went on, blowing the water out of his nostrils.
‘I can’t. But I heard you. It was very amusing.’
‘Well, restrain your sense of humour. You can’t see me.’
‘No. There’s a bulge in the rock. Where, exactly, are you, by the way?’
‘Standing in a nice little niche, like a saint over a cathedral door. It’s just about the size of a coffin. Six feet high or thereabouts, with a pretty little roof and room to squeeze in rather tightly sideways, if you’re not what the Leopard called “too vulgar big”. Come round and try it for yourself.’
‘What a sweet little spot,’ said Harriet, scrambling round and taking Wimsey’s place in the niche. ‘Beautifully screened from all sides, except from the sea. Even at quite low tide one couldn’t be seen, unless, of course, somebody happened to come round and stand just opposite the opening. I certainly didn’t do that. How horrible! The man must have been in here all the time.’
‘Yes, I think it’s more plausible than the boat idea.’
‘Bright!’ said Harriet.
‘I’m so glad you think so.’
‘I didn’t mean that – and it was my idea in the first place. I meant Bright, the man who bought the razor. Didn’t the hairdresser person say he was a small man – smaller than you, anyway?’
‘So he did. One up to you. I wish we could get hold of Bright. I wonder – Oh, I say! I’ve found something!’
‘Oh, what?’
‘It’s a ring – the sort of thing you tie boats up to, driven right into the rock. It’s under water and I can’t see it properly, but it’s about five feet off the ground and it feels smooth and new, not corroded. Does that help with our boat-theory at all, I wonder?’
‘Well,’ said Harriet, looking round at the lonely sea and shore, ‘there doesn’t seem to be much reason why anyone should habitually tie a boat up here.’
‘There doesn’t. In that case the murderer, if there was one—’
‘We’re taking him for granted, aren’t we?’
‘Yes. He may have put this here for his own private use. Either he tied a boat up, or he—’
‘Or he didn’t.’
‘I was going to say, used it for something else, but I’m dashed if I know what.’
‘Well, that’s fearfully helpful. I say, I’m getting cold. Let’s swim about a bit, and then get dressed and discuss it.’
Whether it was the swim or the subsequent race over the sands to get warm that stimulated Harriet’s brain is not certain, but when they were again sitting by the lunch-basket, she found herself full of ideas.
‘Look here! If you were a murderer, and you saw an interfering wo
man pottering about among the evidence and then going off in search of help, what would you do?’
‘Leg it in the opposite direction.’
‘I wonder. Would you? Wouldn’t you like to keep an eye on her? Or possibly even do away with her? You know, it would have been fearfully easy for Bright – if we may call him so for the moment – to slaughter me then and there.’
‘But why should he? Of course he wouldn’t. He was trying to make the murder look like suicide. In fact, you were a very valuable witness for him. You’d seen the body and you could prove that there really was a body, in case of its subsequently getting lost. And you could prove that there actually was a weapon there and that therefore suicide was more likely than not. And you could swear to the absence of footprints – another point in favour of suicide. No, my dear girl, the murderer would cherish you as the apple of his eye.’
‘You’re right; he would. Always supposing he wanted the body found. Of course there are lots of reasons why he should want it found. If he inherited under a will, for instance, and had to prove the death.’
‘I don’t fancy friend Alexis will have left much in his will. In fact, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. And there might be other reasons for wanting to tell the world he was dead.’
‘Then you think that when I’d gone, the murderer just trotted off home to Lesston Hoe? He can’t have gone the other way, unless he deliberately kept behind me. Do you think he did that? He may have followed me up to see what I was going to do about it.’
‘He might. You can’t say he didn’t. Especially as you left the main road quite soon after, to go up to the farm.’
‘Suppose he missed me there and went on ahead of me along the road to Wilvercombe. Would it be possible to find out if he had passed over the level-crossing at the Halt, for instance? Or – I say! Suppose he’d gone along the main road and then turned back again, so as to pretend he’d come from Wilvercombe?’
‘Then you’d have met him.’
‘Well, suppose I did?’
‘But – oh! lord, yes – Mr What’s-his-name from London! By Jove!’
‘Perkins. Yes. I wonder. Could anybody be genuinely as foolish as Perkins appeared? He was a rat of a man, too, quite small, and he was sandy-haired.’
‘He was short-sighted, didn’t you say, and wore glasses. Merryweather didn’t say anything about Bright’s wearing them.’
‘It may have been a disguise. They may have been quite plain glass – I didn’t examine them, à la Dr Thorndyke, to see whether they reflected a candle-flame upside-down or right way up. And, you know, I do think it’s awfully funny the way Mr Perkins simply evaporated when we got to the village shops. He was keen enough to come with me before, and then, just as I’d got into touch with civilisation, he went and vanished. It does look queer. If it was Bright, he might just have hung round to get some idea of what I was going to say to the police, and then removed himself before the inquiry. Good lord! Fancy me, meekly trotting along for a mile and a half hand in hand with a murderer!’
‘Juicy,’ said Wimsey, ‘very juicy! We’ll have to look more carefully into Mr Perkins. (Can that name be real? It seems almost too suitable.) You know where he went?’
‘No.’
‘He hired a car in the village and got himself driven to Wilvercombe railway station. He is thought to have taken a train to somewhere, but the place was full of hikers and trampers and trippers that day, and so far they haven’t traced him further. They’ll have to try again. This thing is getting to look almost too neat. Let’s see how it goes. First of all, Alexis arrives by the 10.15 at the Halt and proceeds on foot or otherwise, to the Flat-Iron. Why, by the way?’
‘To keep an appointment with Perkins, presumably. Alexis wasn’t the sort to take a long country walk for the intoxicating pleasure of sitting on a rock.’
‘True, O Queen. Live for ever. He went to keep an appointment with Perkins at two o’clock.’
‘Earlier, surely; or why arrive by the 10.15?’
‘That’s easy. The 10.15 is the only train that stops there during the morning.’
‘Then why not go by car?’
‘Yes, indeed. Why not? I imagine it was because he had no car of his own and didn’t want anybody to know where he was going.’
‘Then why didn’t he hire a car and drive it himself?’
‘Couldn’t drive a car. Or his credit is bad in Wilvercombe. Or – no!’
‘What?’
‘I was going to say: because he didn’t intend to come back. But that won’t work, because of the return-ticket. Unless he took the ticket absentmindedly, he did mean to come back. Or perhaps he just wasn’t certain about it. He might take a return-ticket on the off-chance – it would only be a matter of a few pence one way or the other. But he couldn’t very well just take a hired car and leave it there.’
‘N-no. Well, he could, if he wasn’t particular about other people’s property. But I can think of another reason for it. He’d have to leave the car on top of the cliff where it could be seen. Perhaps he didn’t want people to know that anybody was down on the Flat-Iron at all.’
‘That won’t do. Two people having a chat on the Flat-Iron would be conspicuous objects from the cliff, car or no car.’
‘Yes, but unless you went down close to them, you wouldn’t know who they were; whereas you can always check up on a car by the number-plates.’
‘That’s a fact – but it seems to me rather a thin explanation, all the same. Still, let it stand. For some reason Alexis thought he would attract less attention if he went by train. In that case, I suppose he walked along the road – he wouldn’t want to invite inquiry by taking a lift from anybody.’
‘Certainly not. Only why in the world he should have picked on such an exposed place for the appointment—’
‘You think they ought to have had their chat behind a rock, or under some trees, or in a disused shed or a chalk quarry or something like that?’
‘Wouldn’t it seem more natural?’
‘No. Not if you didn’t want to be overheard. If you ever need to talk secrets, be sure you avoid the blasted oak, the privet hedge and the old summer-house in the Italian garden – all the places where people can stealthily creep up under cover with their ears flapping. You choose the middle of a nice open field, or the centre of a lake – or a rock like the Flat-Iron, where you can have half-an-hour’s notice of anyone’s arrival. And that reminds me, in one of your books—’
‘Bother my books! I quite see what you mean. Well, then, some time or the other, Bright arrives to keep his appointment. How? And when?’
‘By walking through the edge of the water, from any point you like to suggest. As for the time, I can only suggest that it was while you, my child, were snoozing over Tristram Shandy; and I fancy he must have come from the Wilvercombe side, otherwise he would have seen you. He’d hardly have taken the risk of committing a murder if he knew positively that somebody was lying within a few yards of him.’
‘I think it was pretty careless of him not to take a look round the rocks in any case.’
‘True; but apparently he didn’t do it. He commits the murder, anyhow, and the time of that is fixed at two o’clock. So he must have reached the Flat-Iron between 1.30 and 2 – or possibly between one o’clock and two o’clock – because, if you were lunching and reading in your cosy corner, you probably wouldn’t have seen or heard him come. It couldn’t be earlier than 1 p.m., because you looked along the shore then and were positive that there wasn’t a living soul visible from the cliffs.’
‘Quite right.’
‘Good. He commits the murder. Poor old Alexis lets out a yell when he sees the razor, and you wake up. Did you shout then, or anything?’
‘No.’
‘Or burst into song?’
‘No.’
‘Or run about with little ripples of girlish laughter?’
‘No. At least, I ran about a few minutes later, but I wasn’t making a loud noise.’
&n
bsp; ‘I wonder why the murderer didn’t start off home again at once. If he had, you’d have seen him. Let me see. Ah, I was forgetting the papers! He had to get the papers!’
‘What papers?’
‘Well, I won’t swear it was papers. It may have been the Rajah’s diamond or something. He wanted something off the body, of course. And just as he was stooping over his victim, he heard you skipping about among the shingle. Sound carries a long way by the water. The baffled villain pauses, and then, as the sounds come nearer, he hurries down to the seaward side of the Flat-Iron and hides there.’
‘With all his clothes on?’
‘I’d forgotten that. He’d be a bit damp-looking when he came out, wouldn’t he? No. Without his clothes on. He left his clothes at wherever it was he started to walk along the shore. He probably put on a bathing-dress, so that if anybody saw him he would just be a harmless sun-bather paddling about in the surf.’
‘Did he put the razor in the pocket of his regulation suit?’
‘No; he had it in his hand, or slung round his neck. Don’t ask silly questions. He’d wait in his little niche until you’d gone; then he’d hurry back along the shore—’
‘Not in the direction of Wilvercombe.’
‘Blow! Obviously, you’d have seen him. But not if he kept close to the cliff. He wouldn’t have to bother so much about footprints when the tide was coming in. He could manage that all right. Then he’d come up the cliff at the point where he originally got down, follow the main road towards Wilvercombe, turn back at some point or other, and meet you on the way back. How’s that?’
‘It’s very neat.’
‘The more I look at it, the more I like it. I adore the thought of Bright’s being Perkins. I say, though, how about this lop-sided, hunch-backed business. Was Perkins upright as a willow-wand, or how?’
‘Not by any means. But I shouldn’t have called him actually crooked. More sloppy and round-shouldered. He had a rucksack on his back, and he was walking a bit lame, because he said he had a blister on his foot.’
‘That would be a good way of disguising any one-sidedness in his appearance. You’re always apt to hunch up a bit on the lame side. Bright-Perkins is our man. We ought to get the police on to this right away, only I do so want my lunch. What time is it? Four o’clock. I’ll slip along in the car and telephone to Glaisher, and then come back. Why should we give up our picnic for any number of murderers?’
Have His Carcase Page 11
