Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  Two or three years before, she had married, a weakness in a woman with a career, but she had been wise enough to let it make no difference to her work. Indeed, it was a standing joke in the office that on the eve of her wedding she had offered to put it off for a day or two, if no one else could be found to fill a certain assignment. Fortunately so extreme a measure had not been necessary, but it showed how keen she was.

  ‘Not long ago,’ added Mr Reynolds, to emphasize still further this point, ‘we had to ring her up on an emergency story one night she and her husband were giving a dinner party to some friends, and she came right along and never said a word.’

  ‘Well, now, think of that,’ murmured Mitchell when Mr Reynolds paused for him to express his admiration, but all the same in private Mitchell wondered if husband and friends had been equally complaisant, or whether they, or at least the husband, had been tempted to say perhaps a word or two. Then he asked, ‘Is Mr Curtis the gentleman who was well known at one time as an amateur boxer?’

  Mr Reynolds had no idea. The sports editor might know, but he did not. It was evident that Mr Reynolds’s interest in his staff was as entirely confined to their journalistic abilities as his interest in the universe was confined to its ability to provide headlines for his next issue – a man of one idea, in fact, which accounts for his value, his standing, and his reputation.

  It appeared, however, from something else he said that Miss Frankland’s standing in the office permitted her a certain initiative, and it was at her own request she had been allowed to go that afternoon to visit the sun bathing establishment at Leadeane Grange in order to write it up.

  ‘Though the Daily Intelligence did it a month or two ago, added Mr Reynolds, ‘so what made her think of doing it again I’ve no idea – unless,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘she was on the track of some scandal – a lot of Society people go there.’

  To Mr Reynolds, Society had but one interest – that of providing a scandal now and again. But he admitted that so far as he knew the Leadeane Grange sun bathing establishment was conducted with the utmost discretion.

  ‘Lot of well-known people go there – latest fad, you know. Lord Carripore goes twice a week regularly – I know that because we had to send there to interview him about the big fire that took place on one of the American liners the other day.’

  ‘I remember that,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘Now I come to think of it, it was there I had to send Owen to look for him with that note from the Commissioner,’ he added to Ferris, and then explained to Reynolds, ‘Owen’s one of our young men. Lord Carripore wants us to make some inquiries, but they haven’t come to anything so far. You have no idea if there was anything special that took Miss Frankland there?’

  ‘You might ask Miss Martin if you like,’ suggested Mr Reynolds; ‘she runs our woman’s page and was very friendly with Miss Frankland. Most likely Miss Frankland had something in her mind. She had a wonderful nose,’ he added admiringly.

  ‘Nose?’ repeated Mitchell, slightly puzzled.

  ‘For news,’ explained Reynolds. ‘She could smell out a story quicker than almost anyone I’ve ever known. Of course she went off on a false scent at times, like everyone, but I wouldn’t mind betting there was some reason she had for being keen on visiting Leadeane, though it may have been just she thought she could write it up better than the Daily Intelligence people did.’

  Then in his turn he began to question Mitchell very gently, very discreetly, very thoroughly, and Mitchell answered almost like a good little boy in Sunday school, so free and frank and innocent he was, till when he rose to go, and while Reynolds was already visualizing with excited approval the splendid headlines he would splash across the issue now preparing, Mitchell launched his devastating, sledge-hammer, high-explosive knock-out.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘all that’s quite confidential, Mr Reynolds, entirely between ourselves.’

  Less cruel would it have been to dash a cup of cold water from the parched lips of one dying from thirst. Mr Reynolds nearly wept. He tried to wheedle, coax, protest, but Mitchell clung to that word of power ‘confidential’, and leaving behind them as nearly heartbroken a news-editor as imagination can conceive, they made their way under the guidance of a messenger boy, through a labyrinth of passages, past a series of rabbit hutches miscalled offices and a good deal less modern than the exterior of the building promised, to the room where Miss Martin would have been waiting for them, had not the phone message warning her of their arrival somehow gone astray.

  However, she was not far off. Like, by now, everyone else in the building, she had heard of what most of them still believed to be the accident to their colleague. It had evidently been a great shock to her, and she was eager for details, but she, no more than Mr Reynolds, had any idea what had made Miss Frankland suddenly desirous of writing up the Leadeane sun bathing. She admitted that in her view sun bathing had now dropped from the news class into the category of the accepted. She could only suppose that Miss Frankland had seen her way to make something of it. Anyhow, anything she wrote would always have been sure of favourable consideration. Miss Martin evidently knew more, too, than Mr Reynolds had done of Miss Frankland’s private life. She knew she had a sister, for instance, named Sybil, who lived with their mother in Ealing. She gave Mitchell the address. The father had died, she thought, many years ago. Mitchell’s further question as to whether Miss Frankland had any known enemies, either private or journalistic, evidently startled Miss Martin a good deal.

  ‘Good gracious, no,’ she declared. ‘Jo was amazingly popular. What makes you ask that?’

  ‘I have a reason,’ Mitchell replied. ‘About her husband; do you know if they got on well together?’

  ‘They were tremendously in love when they got married,’ Miss Martin answered evasively. ‘Jo was a perfect idiot about him.’

  ‘And after the marriage?’ Mitchell asked.

  Quite plainly Miss Martin did not very much want to answer. But she gave way to Mitchell’s gentle insistence and admitted that certain differences had arisen. Both were strong-willed, somewhat egotistic people, self-willed and hot-tempered. All the same, there was no doubt, Miss Martin insisted, that they were still amazingly in love with each other. Mitchell referred to the story Reynolds had told of the interrupted dinner-party when Mrs Curtis had been summoned from her husband and guests to attend to some journalistic errand.

  ‘I wondered a little how Mr Curtis took that,’ Mitchell remarked: and Miss Martin had to admit that Mr Curtis had failed to take it quite as one would have hoped.

  ‘He never seemed able to realize that a journalist must put her paper first,’ observed Miss Martin. ‘On principle.’

  ‘Ah, yes, on principle,’ observed Mitchell. ‘Wonderful thing – principle.’

  ‘Poor Jo was very upset about it,’ Miss Martin added. ‘Then, too, I don’t think Mr Curtis quite understood the way she had to go about – I’m not sure sometimes he wasn’t rather jealous because she met so many people he knew nothing about.’

  Mitchell asked a few more questions, and then told her gently that the reason for his asking them was that her friend had met her death not by accident but by murder. It was a great shock to Miss Martin, who indeed seemed at first hardly able to believe it. She was so shocked indeed that she even forgot the news value of the information and could think of nothing but the tragedy. And she told them that that very afternoon, just before the unfortunate Jo Frankland had started out to get her story, Mr Curtis had called at the office and had made a most unpleasant scene.

  ‘I think he must have been drinking,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it was about, I only heard of it afterwards. I expect Wilkins, the porter downstairs in the hall, could tell you.’

  The two men thanked her and went away to find Wilkins, who inhabited the great entrance hall downstairs, all in marble and gold, the pride, for its great sweep and splendid lines, of the architect who had designed it, but who had never in all his dreams bargained for the l
ittle hutch, half-glass half-wood, that had now been erected by the side of the great central stairway, to the somewhat doubtful improvement of its upward spring. From this erection Wilkins watched to make sure no unauthorized person penetrated to the mystic realms above whence day by day proceeded the Announcer’s version of the version they had received of the reported facts of what it was believed might possibly have happened during the last four and twenty hours.

  Wilkins, duly impressed by the fact that he was talking to a police superintendent – though he had stopped once without turning a hair an authentic film star from ascending those stairs, and had made even the writer of the current best-seller wait while his card was sent up in the usual way, nor in either case had lightnings from heaven destroyed him – proved communicative. He, too, had heard the news of the accident, as he still believed it to be, and showed himself quite human in his concern. Too bad, too, he thought, after the flare up there that afternoon. It might be worrying about that, he thought, had caused the accident, for generally Miss Frankland was a good, careful driver.

  Mitchell asked for details of the scene Wilkins had talked of and with some hesitation Wilkins gave them.

  ‘But, you understand, sir,’ he said, ‘Mr Curtis had been drinking, or he wouldn’t ever have talked the wild way he did.’

  ‘What was that?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘It was some place where he had seen her, he said,’ Wilkins explained. ‘Howland Yard, it was, I think, and a Mr Keene with her, or following her. So Miss Frankland told him off, bitter like; not much she said, but the way she said it, spying, she said, and then he whipped out a pistol and showed it her.’

  ‘Did he, though?’ exclaimed Mitchell, startled this time. ‘That was going a bit far.’

  ‘Gave me a bit of a turn,’ Wilkins admitted.

  ‘Did you see what make it was?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘One of those automatics – a Browning automatic – point thirty-two calibre most likely, but I’m not sure,’ Wilkins answered. ‘I heard him say, “You had better be careful – you and Keene, too.” She stood up to him well; blazing with anger she was. “I’ll never forgive you for that, John,” she said, and he gave her a queer, sick sort of look, as if he knew she meant it, but only just that moment knew what he had done. So then he put the pistol back in his pocket and walked straight outside, and I wasn’t sorry to see him go either. Miss Frankland stood looking after him. Then Mr Freeman came in and started talking to her. Of course he hadn’t any idea of what had been going on, and she answered him just as cool as could be.’

  ‘Who is Mr Freeman?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Well, he was one of the gentlemen here,’ answered Wilkins, ‘but he got the push two or three months back – something went wrong, we missed a story and they thought it was his fault. So he got the push and I did hear he had been through a bad time, jobs not being so easy to get along of now. He had been asking Miss Frankland to try to help him to get back, and she had been doing her best, but, lor’, you know yourself, it’s a sight easier to get pushed off than to get pushed on again.’

  ‘Why was she interesting herself?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Were they specially friendly?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ answered Wilkins, ‘only Miss Frankland was like that, always ready to help you if she could – wasn’t a better liked lady in Fleet Street.’

  On the general popularity of Jo Frankland, Mitchell allowed the good Wilkins to dilate for a moment or two, and then, satisfied there was no trace of any secret enmity to be discovered in the Announcer office, he suggested to Ferris that they had better be pushing along to Ealing to see what the relatives had to tell them.

  ‘For up to the present,’ he commented to Ferris as they made their way towards their waiting car with Jacks still at the wheel, ‘up to the present we don’t seem to have hit on much in the way of a motive.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Ealing Villa

  ‘Rummy,’ commented Mitchell again as he settled himself in his seat in the car, ‘Rummy that Howland Yard keeps popping up – you remember, Ferris, you thought the description of the second motor-cyclist answered to Hunter’s. Can it have been his place in Howland Yard Mrs Curtis was visiting? But then who is Keene? Have to put Owen on to that.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Ferris, ‘but if you ask me, it seems to be getting pretty clear. Jealous husband on the booze, threats and pistol and all. Looks plain enough to me.’

  ‘Think he can have been in the car when we saw it pass us?’ Mitchell asked. ‘If he did it, he must have been either in the car or have joined her somehow afterwards.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to work that out,’ Ferris answered. ‘Curtis might have been in the car; none of us saw him, but he might have been there all the same, though it’s not likely. We all thought at the time she was alone, and I would be pretty near ready to swear to it myself. But going at the rate that car was travelling, it ought to have got to where the smash happened quicker than it did.’

  ‘You mean,’ Mitchell observed thoughtfully, ‘there was a longer interval between our seeing the car pass and our hearing the smash than there would have been normally, if the same speed had been kept up?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ferris. ‘In my humble opinion it’s on the cards that Curtis was on the road, waiting for her perhaps. If the car slowed down or stopped, which it is next to certain it did, it must have been for some reason. What? But with all this talk about motor bandits and the rest of it, in my humble opinion no woman motorist, driving alone after dark, would be likely to stop unless it was for someone she knew. But if she recognized her husband, for instance, it would be perfectly natural for her to slow up.’

  ‘What do you think happened then?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Why, he was crazy with drink and jealousy and we know he had a pistol. Perhaps he thought she had come straight from meeting someone. He shot her and then ran the car over the embankment. Possibly he climbed down afterwards and set it on fire in the hope of concealing the crime. He could easily get away afterwards along the line without any risk of being seen or leaving any tracks.’

  ‘Almost good enough to put before Treasury Counsel,’ agreed Mitchell. ‘Anyhow, I think it’s right there was a slight delay of some sort after she passed us, before the thing happened. The question is, why? Was it because Curtis stopped her? Or was it someone else? Or was it for some other reason altogether?’

  ‘Odds on the husband, in my humble opinion,’ pronounced Ferris.

  Mitchell leaned forward and spoke to Jacks, who stopped the car almost immediately on coming at once in sight of the call box he had been told to look out for. Mitchell alighted and, after using the phone, returned to the car. The man he had left on watch outside the Chelsea flat had been instructed to report the moment any sign of life or movement was visible there, but so far it seemed nothing had been heard from him. Plainly therefore Curtis had not yet returned, and Ferris nodded complacently at this confirmation of his theory.

  ‘Most likely he’s making for the continent,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think, sir, it might be as well to have all the continental boats watched?’

  Mitchell agreed that the precaution might be useful and went back to the phone to ask that it should be done. Once they were on their way again, he remarked thoughtfully:

  ‘I wonder why she was so keen on writing up this sun bathing place? I thought that seemed to puzzle them quite a lot at the Announcer office, and I must say I should have thought myself sun bathing was a bit stale news by now for an up-to-date paper. Bear looking into, that.’

  ‘In my humble opinion,’ declared Ferris, ‘there was someone she wanted to meet, and sun bathing was a handy cover.’ But Mitchell shook his head.

  ‘Plenty of opportunities for a woman working on her own to meet anyone she wanted to without telling all the world where she was going,’ he objected. ‘Besides, she didn’t sound like that sort to me; too keen on her work, too ambitious, to be fooling about with any other man when most likel
y she was half sorry about tying herself up to her husband. I agree if we can get young Owen to identify the second motorcyclist who was seen quarrelling with her as Mr Hunter, of Howland Yard – it’ll look a bit different. But if she was going to Leadeane Grange to meet him, why did he wait for her on the way and start a quarrel at once? Don’t seem to fit in.’

  ‘Main points,’ commented Ferris, ‘are, so far – (1) Find Curtis. (2) Check up Curtis’s movements this afternoon from time seen outside George and Dragon. (3) Check up possible identification of Hunter, Howland Yard, with second motorcyclist. (4) What was cause of apparent stopping of deceased’s car after passing us? (5) What was connexion between deceased and Howland Yard?’

  ‘Instruct Owen accordingly,’ said Mitchell. ‘Further, why did deceased want to write up the sun bathing place, and who is the “Keene” Curtis talked about according to Wilkins? Is it possible that is another name for Hunter?’

  Jacks brought the car to a standstill and said to them: ‘This’ll be the place, sir, I think.’

  They had stopped before one of those small ‘semi-detached villas’ common in Ealing as in most of the other London suburbs. The lighted windows, a bustle of people about, several cars standing in the roadway, told that something unusual had happened. Mitchell guessed correctly that already news of the tragedy was here, nor was he sorry to be spared the task of breaking such tidings to the relatives. From the scene of the catastrophe itself, and from all the newspaper offices, reporters had swarmed on that little Ealing house, anxious, each and all, to be the first to tell of what had happened, for every news editor in town wished to be able to say, and intended to say, whether able or not, ‘The first news of the tragedy was brought to the victim’s relatives by our representative.’ Their task, too, it would be to describe in language of discreet emotion how the intelligence was received, since these are days when private grief must not hide from public curiosity, to secure also photographs for the back page, and above all to get word of the whereabouts of John Curtis, of whose odd disappearance some rumours were already circulating and an interview with whom for the morning’s issue was plainly indicated as desirable.