Death Among the Sunbathers

by E. R. Punshon

  Most of the newspaper men knew Mitchell, and they swooped upon him in a flock, avid for more details. But he by long practice knew how to answer at length, with the greatest frankness and friendliness, while saying precisely nothing, and on his side he learned from them that that Mrs Frankland and Sybil Frankland, Jo’s mother and younger sister, the inmates of the house and her only near relatives, already knew the dreadful truth that what had happened had been not accident but murder.

  It had been altogether too much for the older lady, who had retired to her room in a state of almost complete collapse. But Sybil, though dreadfully pale and shaken, appeared quite collected. This story indeed of her sister as the victim of a sensational and inexplicable murder was one that she seemed hardly able to realize as actual fact. She had the air of expecting every moment to wake from what would prove to have been only a bad dream. Probably till now murder had seemed to her a thing one read about, a thing in books or newspapers, far off and unreal as dreams and fairy tales; that such a thing could enter into her own life she found difficult to grasp. All the time she kept looking towards the door, as if expecting to see Jo herself come walking in with her long easy stride that went so well with her tall figure, ready to laugh and explain in her jolly way that it was all part of those odd journalistic activities that Sybil for her part had always found bizarre and bewildering enough.

  In appearance Sybil was small and slight, with nothing of her unfortunate sister’s height and somewhat imposing presence. But if her appearance was less striking, she was none the less very pretty in her quiet and pleasant way. Jo, no one could ever have passed at any time without notice. Sybil could easily have slipped by without earning a second glance, but less easily could anyone have been in her company for ten minutes without being aware of a certain gentle attractiveness she possessed. She was fair, as her sister had been, with sunny hair, less tortured by the hairdresser than the present mode commands; blue, candid eyes; and a lovely complexion on which she had the good sense to inflict no cosmetics save sun and rain and the fresh air of heaven, and also with a very engaging little smile that in more normal times, but not now, came and went in a shy, unexpected way, as if at her own secret thoughts. A certain clear roundness of outline her small, firm chin showed suggested, however, that she had her own viewpoint and one she would not change too easily, though at the moment it was distress and terror and sheer, utter bewilderment her features expressed most clearly.

  When Mitchell explained who he was she took him into the little drawing-room. She had no idea, however, where her brother-in-law could be. She could not understand his absence. She had rung up, she said, the Chelsea flat two or three times already, without getting any reply. To further questions she admitted, indeed there was no use trying to conceal what was so well known, that there had been a certain amount of disagreement between husband and wife, but she insisted with evident conviction that at bottom they had been still devoted to each other.

  ‘It was only that John was a little jealous of her work,’ Sybil said.

  And when Mitchell went on to ask her outright if she thought it possible Curtis could be guilty of the murder, she showed herself so horrified, so amazed, and in a way so amused, at a suggestion that had evidently never entered her mind as even the barest of possibilities, that Mitchell had to pacify her by explaining it was merely a theory their official position forced them to consider.

  ‘We have to think of everything,’ he told her, ‘especially when it’s a case like this and we can’t find Mr Curtis, or anyone to tell us where he is. You can’t give us any hint, Miss Frankland, of any enemy your sister had, or of anyone who could have a reason for doing her harm?’

  Then just for a moment there passed in her clear, blue eyes the shadow of an awful fear, passed and was gone again in a flash, as if resolutely thrust back into the unconscious.

  ‘Have you thought of something?’ Mitchell asked quickly.

  She shook her head. Her expression grew almost defiant. She said,

  ‘I’ll ring up the flat again and see if John is back yet.’

  Before they realized it she was out of the room, at the phone in the hall, and Mitchell muttered somewhat sourly to Ferris,

  ‘She did that to get time – there’s something she’s thought of, something she’s afraid of.’

  ‘Have to get it out of her then, somehow or another,’ growled Ferris, looking a little less hearty and smiling than usual.

  But Mitchell shook his head.

  ‘She won’t let it out to herself just yet, much less to anyone else,’ he remarked. ‘Not for a time. It looks to me there’s something in her mind she won’t confess even to herself, won’t admit could be possible even. Whatever it is, it’ll bear looking into.’

  Sybil came back into the room. She had obtained no reply. And now a certain change had come over her; she was more guarded in her replies, more watchful in her manner. Her answers were briefer, too, and she was more apt to plead ignorance. She repeated emphatically, however, when Mitchell returned to the point, that her sister had had no enemies. It was absurd to suppose anyone could have wanted to murder her. It was all some dreadful mistake. As for suicide, that was quite unthinkable – on the very threshold of a career that promised to be brilliant? Whatever the explanation, it was not suicide, of that Sybil was sure.

  ‘She would have known it would have killed mother,’ Sybil added.

  ‘And you can’t suggest who the man could be I described to you who was seen to stop her car and apparently engage in some dispute with her,’ persisted Mitchell.

  ‘I can’t even think of any little man she knew,’ Sybil answered.

  ‘I don’t think I said little exactly,’ Mitchell remarked.

  ‘I thought you said it was a little man?’

  ‘Description,’ said Ferris, reading it from his note-book, ‘dark, medium height, good-looking – not much to go on.’

  ‘Well, I can’t think of anyone she knew like that. Or anyone I know, either,’ Sybil declared with a certain decision and at the same time with a certain air of relief.

  There came a knock at the door, and one of the waiting journalists put his head in.

  ‘Oh, Miss Frankland,’ he said, ‘there’s a chap here who says his name is Keene, says you know him and he must see you. I told him I would let you know he was here.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘Bobs-the-Boy’ Appears

  That Sybil welcomed this interruption as a relief from questioning she was beginning to feel a strain, was evident enough. She fairly ran from the room, with but the merest muttered word of excuse thrown to the two detectives; and the journalist, torn for a brief moment between using this opportunity to try to get an informing word or two from Mitchell, and his feeling that the newcomer might be a bringer of fresh news, decided finally to follow her.

  Turning to Ferris, Mitchell said thoughtfully,

  ‘Notice the name, Ferris? Keene... where does he come in and why was Curtis talking about him?’

  Ferris still had uppermost in his mind his theory of the jealous husband.

  ‘Looks to me as if this girl knew something,’ he remarked.

  ‘I should put it this way,’ Mitchell said. ‘There’s something in her mind, but what it is even she herself hardly knows yet, and she’s doing her level best not to know. Interesting to see if this Keene is a tall man.’

  ‘Tall? Why?’ asked Ferris, slightly bewildered.

  ‘If you noticed,’ Mitchell explained, ‘she wanted the motor-cyclist seen quarrelling with her sister to be a small man. The description said medium height, and you said medium height, and twice over she turned that into “little”, because she wanted it to be a little man that story referred to, or rather, because she was afraid of his being described as tall.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ferris doubtfully. ‘I don’t pretend myself to understand all this new-fangled stuff about people knowing what they don’t know they know. It’s fellows like Owen crowding into the force t
he way they are doing now that hand out that sort of dope.’

  In spite of his respect for his official chief he could not altogether repress the reproach that burned in his voice, for Ferris was of the old-fashioned type, and had indeed only scraped through the necessary promotion examinations by the special favour of the Assistant Commissioner of the day, who had known his value. Mitchell felt the reproach in his old comrade’s voice, and was not insensible to it, but yet stuck to his own point of view.

  ‘I’m a great believer in education,’ he said; ‘no really good man was ever yet the worse for it, and then, too, the force has got to keep up with the crooks – you don’t find them despising education. And if we find a six-footer in touch with Miss Sybil Frankland, then—’

  He paused. The door opened and Sybil came in again, followed by a young man who could claim to be a six–footer with a couple of inches at least to spare. He was of rather ungainly build, with a small body for his height, with long, sprawling limbs terminating in enormous bony hands and feet, but with the face of a pouting cherub, so round and smooth it was, with such small, well-shaped, handsome features, wide, innocent-looking eyes and a pursed-up, red-lipped mouth, above which flickered the dawning of a faint moustache that apparently had not yet decided whether to face the world in growth or not. An unusual-looking youngster altogether, Mitchell felt; one of the self-willed, rather spoiled type, and yet easily led as well. Sybil was clinging to his arm with both hands, and remembering that she wore an engagement ring on her left hand, Mitchell guessed they were an engaged couple.

  ‘Mr Keene?’ he asked amiably. ‘A friend of the family, I believe?’

  ‘Miss Frankland and I are engaged,’ Keene explained. ‘I came along as soon as I heard. It doesn’t seem possible, I couldn’t believe it at first.’ He added to Sybil, ‘I saw some fellow dodging about the garden as I came in – is he another of these journalist chaps?’

  ‘Oh, they’re everywhere,’ Sybil said wearily.

  ‘You knew Mr and Mrs Curtis?’ Mitchell asked him.

  ‘Yes, of course. Jo called at the shop only this morning... and now... I can hardly believe it’s true even yet.’

  ‘What shop is that?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘Yes. I’m an art dealer; my place is in Deal Street, Piccadilly,’ Keene explained. ‘Mrs Curtis came in this morning.’

  ‘Any special reason for calling?’ Mitchell asked, and it did not escape his attention that Keene hesitated for a moment before answering, and that he chose his words with a certain care as he replied,

  ‘Well, yes... I suppose so... Miss Frankland and I are hoping to get married pretty soon, and Mrs Curtis wanted us to put it off for a time.’

  ‘Why was that?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Keene answered, ‘things are pretty bad in our line... dad made pots of money; but ever since the slump, trying to sell a picture is like trying to get a man to back a horse he knows won’t run. If you do try, people just look at you and then start to talk about the weather.’

  ‘Things pretty bad everywhere, I suppose,’ agreed Mitchell, thinking sadly of certain pay cuts he knew of, while Ferris heaved a sigh so deep it seemed like a young gale.

  ‘That’s what Jo didn’t understand,’ Keene explained eagerly. ‘She was doing jolly well herself and she thought everyone else ought to be – Curtis wasn’t all the same. And then she didn’t like the idea of our leaving England.’

  ‘You were thinking of that?’

  ‘Well, I have some relatives out in Kenya – you can pick up a good farm there almost for the asking just now, and if you’ve a bit of money coming in to keep going you can live on it for nothing nearly and just wait till things get better.’

  ‘It wasn’t so much that Jo minded our going,’ Sybil interposed. ‘She wouldn’t believe Maurice could sell the business for enough to give us a start there.’

  ‘Oh, you never know your luck,’ Keene observed.

  That there had been some friction between Keene and the dead woman seemed plain, and yet Mitchell felt it was impossible to attach much importance to the fact. No reasonable motive for murder lay there; one does not murder a prospective sister-in-law for advising a more prudent course than one feels altogether inclined to follow. All the same, the point was one to remember, and Mitchell went on,

  ‘You said Mr Curtis wasn’t doing very well in business?’

  ‘Hit like everyone else,’ Keene asserted. ‘Not that that mattered with Jo earning what she did – well up to four figures, I suppose. He has a bottle factory in Shoreditch somewhere, he bought when he left the Navy two or three years ago.’

  ‘There was a small profit last year,’ Sybil put in. ‘Not much, but it was a profit, Jo told me.’

  Mitchell asked for the address, and Ferris duly noted it down, thinking to himself that the financial position of that factory would have to be carefully investigated. He could remember more cases than one in which a harassed business man’s mind had given way and he had sought refuge in murder and suicide. Was that what had happened here? Ferris asked himself.

  Something of the same idea had entered Mitchell’s mind, and he asked,

  ‘You have no idea where Mr Curtis can be? It seems strange we can get no word of him.’

  ‘I’ll ring up their flat again,’ Sybil said, and once more she got no reply. ‘It’s very strange,’ she said, coming back into the room with the news of her failure.

  ‘Do you remember ever hearing Mrs Curtis say anything about the Leadeane sun bathing place?’ Mitchell asked her. ‘Have you any idea why she should think of writing about it?’

  ‘Oh, she was always writing about anything,’ Keene interposed. ‘Her job,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘I told her,’ Sybil added, as Mitchell still looked at her as if awaiting her own reply, ‘that Mr Keene went there sometimes and she was rather interested. I don’t know if that’s what made her think of writing about it.’

  ‘You go in for sun-bathing then, Mr Keene?’ Mitchell observed, and Keene nodded a somewhat sulky response.

  But it was not a subject he seemed to want to say much about. He had been there. It was a very well-conducted place. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. In the first place he went there because Mr Esmond Bryan, who ran it, had become a client of his, and had interested him in it. Personally he was sure it was good for him; Horry Hunter thought the same. He and Horry both felt all the better for their visits to Leadeane.

  ‘Horry Hunter’s a chap I know,’ he explained to Mitchell.

  Mitchell saw that Ferris, always busy with his note-book, had looked up quickly, and guessed that he, too, had noticed this fresh coincidence of names. Mitchell said,

  ‘Is it the Mr Hunter who has a wholesale fur business in Howland Yard?’

  Keene looked rather startled, even uneasy, as he answered in the affirmative.

  ‘Mrs Curtis know him, or Mr Curtis?’ Mitchell inquired.

  ‘No, not that I know of. Why?’

  ‘We have information Mrs Curtis was seen in Howland Yard this morning,’ answered Mitchell.

  But both the two young people looked blank at this, and thought there must be some mistake. It was possible Mr Hunter’s name might have been mentioned before her, but that was all. They were fairly certain she had never met him; there was no conceivable reason why she should wish to see him, or why she should go to his place of business.

  ‘The only time I ever mentioned Mr Hunter that I remember,’ Sybil said, ‘was once when something was being said about our going to Kenya. Jo always said we should never be able to sell the business for enough to give us a start there, and I told her we knew Mr Hunter was thinking of doing exactly the same thing – getting rid of his business here, I mean, and starting fresh somewhere else.’

  ‘Had the same idea as you, Mr Keene?’ Mitchell remarked, while Ferris’s pencil wrote steadily on.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ mumbled Keene. ‘We talked about it sometimes when we met a
t Leadeane.’

  They were interrupted by a sound of someone calling, and Sybil said quickly,

  ‘That’s mother, I must see what she wants.’

  She left the room quickly and Mitchell asked Keene again – he had put the same question to him before – ‘You are sure you can’t think of anything to throw light on this affair? If we could get a hint of any motive...’

  ‘I wish I could,’ declared Keene emphatically, ‘it’s an awful business... I can hardly realize it yet... it’ll pretty nearly kill old Mrs Frankland... Sybil, too, awful for her... I can’t imagine why anyone... most people liked Jo, one of the jolly sort, got on with people... of course she hated me, but that was only because she thought I wasn’t good enough for Sybil and didn’t believe in the Kenya idea... thought it wasn’t possible. It was though, and so she would have found out before long.’

  ‘Do you mean you were openly on bad terms?’ Mitchell asked. ‘Had there been any serious quarrel between you?’

  ‘Oh, no, we were always civil enough when we met... of course, we weren’t pals exactly, because I knew she wanted Sybil to break it off, but I didn’t care because I knew Sybil wouldn’t... besides I knew it was only because of the money and she thought I wouldn’t have enough to make a start in Kenya and so it was cracked to go there. As a matter of fact I have a purchaser at a good price in view, and if it comes off we shall be all right.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Mitchell heartily, just as Sybil came back into the room, looking flushed and excited.