The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  “The young lady’s not dead, but it looks as though she may be a goner. Bruises on her throat from being choked, a wallop over the head, and bloodstains everywhere: including the print in blood of a man’s hand against the wall. But there’s nobody in that room except the victim, and it’s still locked up on the inside.”

  “H’m. Is that supposed to help us with this affair?”

  “Sir, I’m dead certain the solution does! Have you read the book, Dr. Garth?”

  “Yes.” Garth glanced up. “Yes, I’ve read it.”

  “Now what, Doctor, would you say was the important point about the solution?”

  “The same point, I suppose, you have already chosen for yourself.”

  “Oh, ah? And what might that be? Care to tell us?”

  “With pleasure.” Garth rose to his feet. “But I should like to be quite certain about your reading habits. Since you mention the trial scene, you must have read the book through to the end?”

  “Never you mind how far I read it! That’s no concern of ours now!”

  “On the contrary, it is very much our concern. You are unlikely to have read a book of nearly a hundred thousand words in the short railway journey between Fairfield and London. Mr. Twigg, why don’t you admit you prepared this ambush beforehand in the hope of trapping me in any blasted way you could?”

  “I’m asking the questions here, Doctor! What’s the important thing about that solution?”

  “The identity of the murderer, I should say. The murderer is one Frederic Larsan, an official police-detective who only pretends to be solving a whole series of crimes he has committed himself. That, no doubt, is the point to which you refer?”

  “God’s truth,” yelled Twigg.

  Only a sharp word from Cullingford Abbot cut him short. Briefly Abbot turned away, perhaps to hide a smile, for it was a face of poised cynicism he turned back under the queer, vari-coloured light of the lounge.

  “That is the point?” Garth inquired.

  “Well, no,” said Twigg, suddenly regaining all his blandness and looking rather more sinister than before. “No, Doctor; that’s not the point and you know it’s not. And I can be a comical fellow too. Maybe I’d better begin.”

  “Will you accept my assurance.” Garth said desperately, “that I never felt less humorous in my life?”

  “Oh, ah? Then what’s the game?”

  “Mr. Twigg, I can’t speak for the working of police minds. I don’t know how they work. But your illustration of the Yellow Room is nonsense, both practically and aesthetically too.”

  “‘Aesthetically,’” Twigg said in a stupefied kind of way. “Aesthetically’. Ho!” The word seemed to madden him as another word had done last night “Now what’s this ‘aesthetically,’ will you just tell me that?”

  “I mean you can’t have it both ways. You can’t select one part of some fictional story that seems to support your theory, and disregard another part that totally contradicts it. The situation at the Yellow Room is not in the least like the murder at the pavilion; and Lady Calder has no connection with either.”

  “Then I’ll ask you a question about Lady Calder. How many bathing-costumes has she got?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You heard me, Doctor. How many bathing-costumes does Lady Calder own?”

  Once more the oblique attack swooped at him. Fear, never far from Garth where Betty was concerned, invaded his whole mind. He could feel he was being outmanoeuvred at every step; he began to wonder if even Twigg’s rages were contrived; with great clarity he saw he could not continue to match himself against the police—and yet, somehow, he must manage it.

  “Yes, Doctor? We’re waiting.”

  “I don’t know how many bathing-costumes she owns,” Garth said truthfully. “I never asked her.”

  “But she’s got more than one? You’d agree to that?”

  “More than one? Yes, I think she has.”

  “Oh, ah! Now the lady don’t like other women using her bathing-costumes? Or her bathing-robe either, if it comes to that?”

  “And again I don’t know the answer,” Garth said truthfully, “because we never discussed that subject.”

  “And again I do know the answer,” said Twigg, “because I had a bit of a word with Mrs. Hanshew this afternoon. What does Lady Calder say about the bathing-costume her sister was wearing late Saturday afternoon? She says Glynis Stukeley found that bathing-costume, all unbeknownst to her, and put it on all unbeknownst as well. Lady Calder says that, don’t she?”

  “Very well. What if she does?”

  “Then she’s not telling the truth. She kept those things locked up. Mrs. Hanshew will swear to it. If Glynis Stukeley found a costume in that house or a bathing-robe either, she could only have got ’em because her sister gave ’em to her.

  “That’s one small point against the lady, Doctor. The bicycle is another one. She keeps that bicycle in a little shed against the north side of the house, near a cycle path up to the main road. She says she was out cycling up to the time she met you at just past six o’clock, and she says she passed young Mr. Ormiston. Young Mr. Ormiston swears, as flat as a man can swear it, she didn’t do anything of the kind.

  “And what about the piece of sash-cord that was used to strangle that Stukeley woman? Is it likely a total stranger walked into the house looking for a weapon to use? Or just hoped he’d find one? Or did find one in a back bedroom where some workmen had left it when they were repairing window-cords at the back of the house a week ago?”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Twigg! Can you prove the sash-cord came from that back bedroom?”

  “Oh, ah. We can prove just that. Mrs. Hanshew swears it did.”

  Cullingford Abbot sat down and began to whistle between his teeth. A roar of conversation filled the lounge. Twigg extended his hand.

  “Now you listen to me, Doctor. You don’t want me to question Lady Calder: is that it? All right; I’m not questioning her! You want a chance to defend her yourself: is that it? All right; I’m giving you a chance. Suppose you were in charge of this case, what would you do?”

  “If you mean that…”

  “I mean it. Try me!”

  “In the first place,” said Garth, “I should read a book called By Whose Hand? In the second place, I should ask what has happened to Michael Fielding.”

  “Michael Fielding? Oh, lummy, are you at THAT foolishness again?”

  “Well, where is he? He said he’d come back, but he hasn’t. There’s his hat on the table in front of you. Where is Michael himself?”

  That was the moment at which Garth saw Marion Bostwick.

  He was looking past Twigg’s shoulder towards the east side of the lounge, where high door-entrances of polished inlaid wood opened into the foyer. Marion stood at one of these doors, head raised, facing inwards, in her white dress. She did not seem to be scanning the lounge, but rather to be waiting. She was alone. “On Friday night, Mr. Twigg,” Garth said abruptly, but keeping his eyes off Marion, “I made a promise to a certain person. I have not yet broken the promise, although in justice to Lady Calder, it may soon be necessary.”

  “Oh, ah? What promise, Doctor?”

  “That remains to be seen. If you are not going to find Michael Fielding, I am. Now excuse me.”

  And he strode off towards the foyer.

  Twigg bellowed out something behind him, lost under the babble of talk. Cullingford Abbot’s voice struck in. But Garth paid no further attention.

  He could not hurry, lest he attract attention. It seemed to take several minutes, and took in actual fact six or seven seconds, to reach the florid line of doors. What Garth tried to remember was the face of the waiter who had brought Michael that message; and yet, as with the faces of most waiters, he had not even observed it at the time.

  The foyer was pretty well filled. Festoons of electric lights shone on polished wood in a hall kept sombre to heighten its ornateness. Round the walls, a dozen feet up, ran a frieze of twenty-o
dd panels each painted dramatically to show some fighting ship of the Royal Navy at full speed under smoke; the central panel, just above big doors leading out to Victoria Avenue, was of the latest dreadnought-class battleship added to the fleet.

  But these struck the only dramatic note.

  The hall-porter stood at his desk beside a clamouring telephone, and ignored its ring. Two lifts, each propelled by a white-gloved operator pulling at a steel cable, made stately journeys up and down six floors. Round the foyer, like carriages in Hyde Park, moved a slow and ceremonious parade of ladies’ hats.

  They were larger than they appeared, these hats, because of the narrow brims; they bloomed with flowers or flat-lying plumes. All the women were gloved, and most of the men too. It would present a fingerprint problem to Twigg if—

  And now Marion had disappeared too. Or, at least, Garth couldn’t see her.

  Where the devil was Michael?

  It was as though all those hats, with the stolid faces beneath them, impeded Garth and kept him powerless. Then past him swam a figure he thought he knew, a figure in a striped waistcoat; and, though he could not call out, he stepped squarely in front of that figure and made it stop.

  “You’re the one, aren’t you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Aren’t you the waiter who carried a message, about fifteen minutes ago, from some lady to a young man who was with me in the lounge?”

  Cold outrage froze out at him like the glances of passers-by.

  “No, sir, I am not. Any message of that sort, sir, would have been carried by a page-boy. If you will excuse me, sir—”

  “Just a moment, please! Are you on duty here, or in the lounge?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About half an hour, sir. Now if you will kindly—”

  “Then you must have seen him, at least. There weren’t all these people in the foyer then.” Garth gave a rapid description of Michael. “He was in some haste. He wore no gloves and carried no hat.” Unobstrusively money changed hands. “Can’t I refresh your memory? Didn’t you see him at all?”

  The waiter turned away, struggled, and turned back.

  “I might have taken a message from a lady, sir. It sometimes happens.”

  “Who was the lady? Can you describe her?”

  “No, sir, I cannot. I would not have looked at the lady, sir. She was just a lady.”

  “Look here, man. I am not a jealous husband trailing his wife. This is a matter even more important than that. Here, let me refresh your memory a little more!”

  Suddenly, under his breath, the waiter became all too human.

  “I can’t take any more money, sir,” he said in an anguished hiss. “It wouldn’t do any good, anyway, not if you was to give me ten pound. We’re not allowed to notice ’em, and I didn’t. And she spoke behind my ear. Honest to God.”

  “Then how do you happen to remember at all?”

  “Because the lady asked him to meet her in the Grotto, sir.”

  “What’s the Grotto?”

  “That’s the billiard-room downstairs. It’s not open on Sunday.”

  “If it’s not open on Sunday, how could he meet the lady there?”

  “I don’t mean it’s locked. But the covers are on the billiard-tables and there aren’t any lights to see by. Sir, you’ve got to excuse—”

  “One last question! Did the young man go down there?”

  “Yes, sir. He went down alone.”

  Sunday or no Sunday, there were shapes from the realm of nightmare that stretched out again to touch David Garth. The hall-porter’s telephone went on ringing. The waiter dived away and disappeared.

  This foyer, so full of feminine presence, held a scent of perfume or flowers or both. On the wall of polished wood, with an arrow pointing along a corridor towards the north, a sign in gilt Gothic lettering said, “To the Grotto.”

  Halfway along that corridor the electric lighting ceased. Sunday had closed down its law at the proper boundary. But the carpets remained deep, the corridor wide. Garth, hurrying still farther along that corridor, might have been in darkness if somebody had not left open a window of mosaic glass at the end. A little dwindling daylight, at past five o’clock on the north-east side of the hotel, showed him the shape of a newel-post. The staircase led downwards, with another arrow and another gilt sign, “To the Grotto.”

  “Michael!” Garth said aloud.

  He expected no answer, and got none.

  The staircase, broad and carpeted, faced back in a northerly direction as you stood at its top. At the left-hand side, along the panelling of the stairwell, hung boards mounted with those improbable-looking fishes which seem as though they must be dummies and can never have been caught. But their eyes were conspicuous, as had been the eyes of the fish in the aquarium. light ended at the foot of the stairs.

  Garth ran halfway down; then he hesitated, and walked slowly the rest of the way. A rather low archway, as the entrance to the Grotto or the billiard-room or whatever else they might call it, opened on darkness.

  He cried out, “Michael!” And then, in a louder voice, “Who’s there?”

  There was no time to wonder what might happen if he met someone he had no wish to meet in the dark. For he knew beyond any question someone was there, without being able to identify the rustle or movement that told him he knew.

  Standing in the doorway, he took a box of matches out of his pocket and struck one. He shielded the flame until it burned steadily, but it showed him nothing except the edge of a covered billiard-table a little distance away.

  At his left, just inside the doorway what looked like a flattish wooden box was attached lengthwise to the wall. The keyhole of the box gleamed just before the match went out. Garth’s gloves were thin, and the box unlocked. His fingertips pried it open, and someone’s voice cried out at him as he pressed down the electric switches one after the other.

  Three canopies of light shone out softly over three covered tables in a low-ceilinged, stone-floored room with grottoesque arches round the walls and more boards showing stuffed fishes like a frozen aquarium. Beyond the first billiard-table stood Betty Calder.

  Never before had he seen Betty in a rage, but she was in a rage now.

  “What are you doing here?” she screamed at him. “What do you want? Can’t you ever, ever let me alone?”

  “What am I doing here?”

  “Yes!”

  Possibly she saw the shock in his face, at what he feared or almost feared. It may have been that even Betty’s rage was curiously ineffectual or else that she could never hate enough even though she loved. In any event, when she struck the edge of the table with her fist, it was as much in sheer despair as with any other emotion.

  “Oh, what’s the good of our going on? What’s the good of our thinking we can ever be happy? We area’t being frank with each other even now, are we?”

  “No, Betty, we are not being frank with each other.”

  “And we never can be! We never can be! Why don’t you go away and let me alone? Even if I did want her dead—”

  “Good God, Betty, do you know what you’re saying? Where’s Michael Fielding?”

  “I don’t know where he is! How should I know? And I don’t care either!”

  “You will care, my dear. You will care very much if that young man is dead and Twigg finds us together again at the wrong time.”

  Betty’s lower lip had gone down so that her mouth was pulled almost square over the fine teeth. Nobody could have called her face evil or ugly, but it seemed almost so in the shock she clearly felt. The hat under a short flat plume, the dove-grey dress and short dove-grey jacket with its pearl buttons, added grotesque formality to that loss of control.

  “Dead? What makes you say he’s dead?”

  “He has disappeared, at least. Some woman summoned him out of the lounge hardly a minute after you yourself had gone. Betty, it wasn’t you who summoned him?”

&nb
sp; “No!”

  “He’s known to have come down here alone. Did you see him?”

  “No!”

  It was cool and almost damp in this billiard-room. Round the walls its grottoes of twined stone made alcoves inside each of which a very dim electric lamp was set over the board of each prize catch so that you could read in white letters who had caught the fish and the date on which it was caught. But Garth was staring hard at the near edge of the billiard-table behind which Betty stood.

  Something, all but unnoticeable against the dark-grey canvas covering even when the canopy-lights shone down on it, caught and held his eye.

  “Betty—”

  He strode forward, whipping off his gloves and stowing them away in his pocket at the same time he took out a handkerchief. He touched the edge of the table with his forefinger. Then quickly he brushed his hands on the handkerchief and put it away.

  “Go gently, now,” he said, “and try not to lose your head any further. But this,” he tapped the edge of the table, “this is a bloodstain. Betty, where is Michael Fielding?”

  15

  “I DON’T KNOW. I never saw him. You must be mad if you think I did.”

  “How long have you been down here?”

  “T-two or three minutes. Not longer. That’s all.”

  “If there is anything else, Betty, you needn’t fear to tell me.”

  Betty drew a deep breath.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m quite aware I needn’t. I know you’ll protect me. You’re already protecting someone else, aren’t you?”

  The soft voice had also gone out of control, becoming a gasp. Garth stood staring at that waxen pallor and the dead-looking brown eyes. It would do no good to tell her that a woman, any woman, can choose the worst possible moment for displays of hurt or jealousy carried to the edge of raging spite.

  “I see,” he said. “It was you outside the door of the sitting-room last night. You heard what I was saying to Marion Bostwick.”

  “Yes, I heard. All of it. Even after the second time you nearly caught me.”

  “Betty, can you possibly understand…!”

  “No, I can’t. Up to then I was blaming myself and hating myself for how badly I’d treated you. After that it was rather funny. Have I ever been as bad as your dear, dear friend Mrs. Bostwick? Have I ever been one-tenth as bad? Now I’m going to tell you what really happened on Saturday.”