Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  ‘Bear looking into,’ agreed Mitchell, ‘whisky explains a lot, and maybe it explains this, too – and maybe it don’t.’

  ‘There’s the poor creature’s hat,’ Ferris remarked, pointing to it, where it lay, oddly uninjured, flaunting as it were its gay and fashionable self against the background of dark tragedy.

  Somehow or another it had rolled to one side and had escaped both the fire and the effects of the fall.

  They found a handbag, too. It was badly burned, but within were two different sets of visiting cards, comparatively slightly damaged. One set bore the name of Mrs John Pentland Curtis and an address in Chelsea, the other was inscribed, ‘Miss Jo Frankland’, with the same address, and at the bottom the legend, Daily Announcer.

  ‘One of the Announcer staff perhaps,’ Mitchell commented. ‘Looks as if Curtis were her married name and Jo Frankland her own name she used in journalism still. Curtis – John Pentland Curtis,’ he repeated thoughtfully, ‘seem to know the name somehow.’

  ‘Amateur middle heavyweight champion two years ago,’ said Ferris, who was something of a boxer himself. ‘Beat Porter of the City force in the final, fined five pounds last year for being drunk and assaulting one of our men, but apologized handsome after, and gave another tenner to our man, so he didn’t do so bad, and another tenner to the Orphanage.’

  ‘Wonder if it’s the same man,’ mused Mitchell.

  They examined again the side of the embankment where the car had somersaulted down the steep incline, tearing earth and bushes with it, and they examined also the surface of the road. But the weather had been dry, the road surface was newly laid and in good condition; they found nothing to help them. Apparently the car had shot right across, across the pathway, through the railing, down the side of the cutting, and what had caused such a mishap on a perfectly good straight stretch of road there seemed nothing to show.

  By now help was beginning to arrive. A breakdown gang had appeared to clear the line under the superintendence of Ferris. Photographers and other experts were on the scene. Mitchell was kept busy directing the operations, but when a local doctor came at last – there had been difficulty in finding one – he left his other activities to take the newcomer aside for a moment and whisper earnestly in his ear.

  That the unfortunate victim of the accident was past all human aid was plain enough. Nevertheless the doctor carried out a very careful examination, and when he finished and came back to Mitchell there was a look of strange horror in his eyes.

  ‘There are injuries enough from the fall to cause death,’ he said; ‘the spine is badly injured for one thing. There’s the fire as well, the lower limbs are terribly burnt.’

  ‘The actual cause of death,’ Mitchell asked, ‘can you say that?’

  ‘There is a bullet wound in the body,’ the doctor answered. ‘She had been shot before the accident happened.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two Motor-Cyclists

  In all such tragic occurrences, much of the work that has to be done is of a purely routine nature, and Mitchell was soon satisfied that all that custom, regulation, and experience prescribed was being correctly carried out. Now that there was nothing to be seen to here that others could not attend to just as well, he began to think of departing on errands that seemed to him more pressing. Then Ferris with a touch of excitement showing beneath his calm official manner came up to him.

  ‘A pistol’s been found, sir,’ he reported. ‘A point thirty-two Browning automatic. It’s been pretty badly twisted up with the heat, but it makes it look to me as if it might have been suicide. If she shot herself, going at that speed, it would account for the way the car swerved off a perfectly straight road and went down over the embankment.’

  ‘So it would,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘Bear looking into... only I can’t help remembering the way the poor thing looked at me just before she died. Sort of surprised she seemed and indignant, too, asking for help, protection, asking what I was going to do about it – that’s how it seemed to me. You think I’m going silly, Ferris, talking a lot of fanciful rot.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ answered Ferris, in a tone that plainly meant, ‘Oh, yes, sir.’

  ‘I don’t wonder,’ Mitchell said, answering not the words but the tone. ‘All the same, Ferris, you might have felt the same if you had seen the look she gave me. Too late for help or protection we were, but anyhow I can see whoever did it don’t escape.’

  ‘Don’t quite see myself,’ Ferris observed, in his voice a carefully restrained note of incredulity, ‘if you don’t mind my saying so, sir, how she could possibly have been still alive – shot through the body same as the doctor says, all smashed up going over the embankment at sixty per hour, and then in the middle of that blaze till we came up. But if she was, sir, and you’re sure of it – why, that goes to show she must have been shot only just the minute or two before the thing happened. And that looks like suicide again.’

  ‘I don’t know that that follows,’ Mitchell objected; ‘it might have been done some time before – she might have been lying unconscious till the shock of fall and fire brought her back to life for a moment just before the end came. For life’s a rum thing, Ferris, and I’ve read stories of men having been executed by beheading and the head showing signs of consciousness afterwards, as if life still clung to it. Anyhow, I’m certain there was life and meaning in that poor creature’s eyes for just the moment when she looked at me, and I’ll swear she was asking what I meant to do about it.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Ferris, slightly in the tone of one humouring a child’s fancies, while to himself he thought that after all Mitchell must be getting near the age limit and no doubt his years were telling. He went on, ‘I sent Jacks to find out at the pub up the road if they had heard anything like a shot. I thought we had better inquire before they got to know about the pistol, or half of them would most likely be ready to swear they heard the report and believe it, too. People will swear anything, you know, sir, once they let their imaginations go.’

  Jacks came up and saluted.

  ‘No one at the George and Dragon seems to have heard anything, sir,’ he said, ‘not even the sound of the smash. Anything they did hear, they just thought was something on the railway; they seem sort of trained not to notice noises on the line. But it seems a lady driving a Bayard Seven stopped there this afternoon to ask the way to Leadeane Grange. I don’t know if you would like to speak to Mr Ashton yourself, sir.’

  Mitchell nodded acquiescence. Ashton, interested and busy, was not far away. He remembered the incident clearly. He was certain the car had been a Bayard Seven. To the driver of the car, however, he had apparently given less attention. That she had been a woman, and young, was about all he could say.

  ‘She wanted to know if she was right for Leadeane Grange,’ Ashton said. ‘I told her all she had to do was cross the bridge and keep straight on.’

  ‘Leadeane Grange far? Who lives there?’ Mitchell asked.

  Ashton permitted himself a grin.

  ‘No one don’t live there,’ he said. ‘Not more than three miles or it might be four, but there’s no one lives there.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Mitchell asked. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a place for them sun bathers,’ Ashton explained. ‘Sit out there on the lawn without any clothes on, they do, and if there ain’t any sun, there’s rays instead. A fair scandal I call it.’

  Mitchell asked a few more questions and gathered that Ashton cherished a faint grudge against the sun-bathing establishment, partly on those high moral grounds which make us all disapprove of the activities of others, and still more because, though since it had come into existence it had greatly increased the traffic passing by, none of that traffic ever stopped at the George and Dragon except to ask the way.

  ‘I get fair fed up,’ he admitted, ‘telling ’em to cross the bridge and keep straight on – a poor skeleton lot if you ask me, that look as if a good glass of beer would do ’em more good than sitting in th
e sun dressed same as when they were born. Only I will say I seem to remember she looked better than most, and so did the fellow on the motor-bike that caught her up.’

  Ferris interrupted suddenly. He exclaimed:

  ‘Leadeane Grange? Of course, I thought I knew the name – it’s where Lord Carripore said he was the other day, where he caught his sciatica most like, though he wouldn’t admit it.’

  ‘That’s right, I remember now,’ agreed Mitchell. He turned back to Ashton. ‘Fellow on a motor-bike caught her up?’ he asked. ‘Do you mean he stopped her?’

  ‘Yes, following her he seemed,’ Ashton answered. ‘He slowed down outside my place and I was just wondering whether he would be taking something or whether he was another of ’em wanting to know the way where he could have a sun bath instead of a regular Saturday night like everyone else, when he caught sight seemingly of the Bayard Seven on the top of the rise beyond the line and went off on top speed – fair vanished he did, doing eighty or more.’

  ‘Did he catch her up, do you know?’

  ‘Couldn’t help, moving at that speed. And when he did they had a sort of row together seemingly.’

  ‘Did they, though?’ exclaimed Mitchell, interested. ‘Could you see them? Or hear?’

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was George,’ Ashton explained. ‘He was in a field close by where the fellow on the bike overtook her, and he says he could see ’em throwing their arms about, so to speak, and kind of hollering at each other.’

  Mitchell expressed a wish to see the George referred to, who, when produced from the constantly augmenting collection of spectators doing their best to get in the way of the police and busily telling each other all about it, proved to be a not very intelligent, middle-aged labourer. All he had to say was that he had seen the motor-cyclist overtake the Bayard Seven, had seen the car stop, and had gathered from their gestures and their rather loud voices that the motorcyclist and the driver of the Bayard Seven were quarrelling. Finally the lady banged her car door and drove off faster than before, and the motor-cyclist returned by the way he had come. George had not been near enough, however, to catch any of the actual conversation, nor had it occurred to him to try, and of course no one had thought of taking the number of the cycle, though the make – it was a B.A.D. – had been duly noted. The description of the cyclist himself was hardly more satisfactory – full, reddish face, dark hair and eyes, small dark toothbrush moustache, was about all Mitchell succeeded in obtaining from Ashton and George together, and one of them was certain that he was wearing overalls and a cap, and the other was sure that he had been wearing a leather coat and no hat at all. It did not seem much to go on, but Ashton, a little jealous of the success of George and the attention his story had excited, remembered now that another motor-cyclist had preceded the arrival of this one. He, too, had asked the way to Leadeane Grange, but he had not proceeded there, and after sitting outside the George and Dragon for nearly an hour with a glass of lemonade he never touched, as if waiting for someone, had finally gone off back again by the way he had come in the direction of town.

  ‘And I wasn’t sorry we was closed except for minerals and such like,’ Ashton added, ‘for it was easy to see he had had all the drink was good for him.’

  ‘He could manage his cycle all right?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, it wasn’t that he was far gone, only you could tell all right by the funny look in his eyes and the way he tripped in his talk every now and again. In our line you soon get to know when a man’s had his whack, same as this chap had – and then some.’

  ‘What was he like?’ Mitchell asked.

  Ashton looked worried.

  ‘I should know him again,’ he said, and seemed to think that a fully satisfactory reply.

  About all that further questioning extracted was that the stranger had been a big man and either fair or else dark, Ashton wasn’t quite sure which. He was nearly as indefinite about everything else, and then suddenly he brightened up.

  ‘There was one thing I noticed,’ he said. ‘He had a bit of a thick ear, same as if he had done a bit of boxing in his time.’

  ‘A point to remember,’ conceded Mitchell; and saw that Ferris, too, had noticed the significance of these last words.

  ‘If that was Curtis and he did it,’ Ferris muttered to the superintendent aside, ‘and we went at once, we might get him red-handed so to speak.’

  ‘Not likely to be as easy as that,’ Mitchell answered, as he and the inspector, followed by two plain clothes men, climbed into the car Jacks was soon driving London-wards again. ‘Anyhow, we’ve made some progress. Two mysterious motor-cyclists, one of them seen quarrelling with her and one of them possibly her husband – but no proof, Ferris, remember, that that lady in that Bayard Seven was identical with this other one, and not too much chance of identifying either of the cyclists on the evidence of George – or Ashton either. But it’ll bear looking into, bear quite a lot of looking into.’

  ‘I don’t know if you noticed it, sir, and I dare say it’s only a coincidence,’ Ferris observed, ‘but the description of the man the lady in the Bayard Seven is supposed to have been quarrelling with would fit Mr Hunter, of Howland Yard.’

  ‘Why, so it would,’ admitted Mitchell. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but then it would fit plenty of others as well – fit hundreds of other men. Bear looking into all the same. We’ll have to set Owen on to that. I rather wish Owen had been here to-night – might have proved useful.’

  Ferris looked as if he did not share that opinion. He was in fact slightly jealous of Owen, a young man not long in the force who had certainly done well in the case of the murder of Sir Christopher Clarke, but probably owed his success more to luck than anything else. Mitchell, however, had certainly taken a fancy to him, and seemed inclined to think at once of him whenever any special mission needed executing. Mitchell went on as if talking more to himself than to Ferris:

  ‘It’s none of it clear. Whoever it was quarrelled with whoever the lady may have been, seems to have left her and gone straight back to town. And if it was Curtis who hung about outside the George and Dragon, he seems to have gone off before the Bayard Seven lady appeared, and to have gone off back to town, too.’

  ‘Ashton said he had been drinking,’ Ferris remarked. ‘When a man’s been drinking–’

  Mitchell nodded an agreement.

  ‘Oh, it’ll bear looking into,’ he said, ‘and the first job indicated is an interview with Mr Curtis.’

  When, however, they reached the Chelsea address they had discovered in the burning car – it proved to be on the first floor in one of those large, new blocks of flats that are springing up all over London – it was to find themselves unable to secure any answer. They knocked and rang in vain. Then they tried ringing up from an adjacent call-box without getting any reply. The porter in charge had seen both Mr and Mrs Curtis go out as usual that morning, one to his place of business, one to the office of the Daily Announcer, where, as Mitchell had guessed, Mrs Curtis was on the staff, but did not think either of them had returned. The daily woman they employed was only there in the mornings and had gone long since. There seemed nothing for it but to wait till Mr Curtis should return; and so, leaving one of the plain-clothes men there on watch to notify them the moment he appeared, Mitchell and Ferris went on to the office of the Daily Announcer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The ‘Daily Announcer’

  The Daily Announcer, one of those great national papers that today provide the people of this country with all their needs, from their opinions and beliefs down to their sets of standard authors in best imitation half calf, possesses, as all the world knows, offices in Ludgate Hill that for their magnificent modernity have become one of the sights of London, so modem indeed as to make those of their most up-to-date Fleet Street rival appear almost antediluvian. Nowhere in the building is any material used save rustless steel that is for ever as bright as though a regiment of charladies did nothing but polish it all day long,
and glass of the new type that is warranted to keep out all those harmful rays that nature so inconsiderately mingles with its sunshine. Even the easy chairs in the waiting-room are of shining steel; and the gossip that says that those in the editor’s private sanctum are of homely wood upholstered in the style that father knew, is most likely merely malicious – but only those can tell for certain who have ever penetrated into that awesome chamber, and they are too few in number, and most likely in any case too dazzled by the splendour of the presence, for their evidence to be available. A superb house telephone system enables every member of the staff to communicate with anyone else in the building without leaving his desk, and it is often possible to ring up the man in the room across the corridor opposite yours, and then get up and go and have your talk with him, and come back again to find you have already been put through.

  In fact, the Announcer is the last word in efficiency. Wherever a machine could do a man’s work, a machine was installed. As for their news service, that functioned with a really marvellous certainty and speed, and this evening for instance they had already the news of the tragedy on the Leadeane Road, though not as yet the further fact that it was murder and no accident that had occurred. But already reporters were out, gathering every detail.

  The news editor, Mr Reynolds, hearing of the arrival of two high Scotland Yard officials, received them himself, for his instinct told him at once it must be more than a mere accident, however tragic. And when he heard that foul play had taken place, he was shocked as a man, distressed as a colleague, and as a news editor thrilled with the thought of the headlines with which he would be able to bring out the next morning’s issue. ‘Exclusive Announcer interview with Police Chiefs’ would be the smallest of them.

  Miss Frankland, Mrs Curtis in private life, was, he said at once, a valued member of their staff. She had been with them some years, an extraordinarily capable, energetic journalist, whose heart and soul were in her profession; ambitious, too, for it was known she cherished the hope of becoming some day the first woman editor of one of the great national papers. After all, as she was accustomed to say, a woman had already been a Cabinet Minister, and why should not another woman climb to still more dazzling heights and win through even to the editorial chair of one of the great dailies? A dazzling thought, but what man has done, woman will do.