The Sunken Sailor

by Patricia Moyes

  “Rosemary,” said Anne, very clearly, “may I sleep on board Ariadne tonight?”

  “Of course,” said Alastair.

  “If you like,” said Rosemary, with less enthusiasm.

  Then Bob called “Time!” and they all clattered downstairs and out into the yard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BY TEN PAST ELEVEN, all the revellers were out of the pub, with the exception of George Riddle, who had stayed behind to give Bob a hand with the dirty glasses. The locals swayed happily homewards, and Sir Simon walked across to his ancient Daimler.

  “Goodnight to you all,” he called. “I’ll just get the old girl warmed up while I wait for Riddle.”

  He climbed into the car as the others made their way down the hard, glad of the assistance of Alastair’s powerful torch in the moonless blackness. The atmosphere was uncomfortably stormy. The Bensons and the Tibbetts walked together, and tried to keep up a semblance of light-hearted chatter. Behind them came David and Anne, arm in arm; Hamish followed, moodily. Colin, somewhat unsteady on his feet, brought up the rear. At the water’s edge, Colin said loudly, “Anne, my beautiful, there’s a complication that may have escaped you. Alastair’s dinghy only takes four people.”

  Anne received this remark in a dangerous silence.

  “By all means refuse to talk to me if it amuses you,” Colin went on. “I am merely making a chivalrous gesture. I am prepared to row you to Mary Jane, pick up your sleeping bag, and return you and it to Ariadne. In the process, you may speak to me or not, as you wish. Personally, I find silence very restful.”

  “You’re drunk,” said Anne, clearly and bitterly. “I wouldn’t be seen dead in your dinghy.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, go with Colin,” said Rosemary irritably. “We can’t possibly take five.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Anne, obstinately.

  Eventually, as always, David came to the rescue, and suggested that he should do the ferrying: demanding as his reward that Anne should take a nightcap with him on Pocahontas, before returning to Mary Jane to get the sleeping bag. He would then, he said, deposit Anne on board Ariadne for the night. This seemed an excellent idea to everybody except Colin, who was rapidly reaching a stage of morbid self-pity. When Anne and David had disappeared into the darkness, and Hamish had said “Goodnight” and made off to his cottage, Colin sat down firmly on the damp hard, and announced his intention of staying there all night. It was with some difficulty that Rosemary and Alastair at last persuaded him to get into his dinghy, and he had still not cast off the painter when Ariadne’s crew were ready to leave.

  “I hope to God Colin’s all right,” said Rosemary anxiously, as Alastair pulled away from the hard.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” said her husband crossly, “leave him alone. He can look after himself... That was a bloody awful evening. I’m sorry you people were let in for it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Emmy, gallantly, but without a great deal of conviction. “It had its moments.”

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with all of us,” said Rosemary. “We never used to be like this. You must think we’re a very odd lot.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Emmy. But she shivered slightly.

  When they reached the boat, Rosemary said to Henry and Emmy, “There’s no need for you two to sit up for Anne. I’m going to turn in myself. If and when she comes, she’s only got to put her sleeping bag on the floor between our bunks and climb into it. She’s done it often enough before.”

  “I’ll wait up for her,” said Alastair.

  “Please yourself,” said Rosemary, with the faintest edge on her voice. “She probably won’t come at all. She’ll make it up with Colin and stay on Mary Jane.”

  So Henry and Emmy climbed into the fo’c’sle, while Rosemary got into her bunk and instantly fell asleep. Alastair sat in the cockpit, smoking.

  As they lay side by side in the darkness, Emmy said to Henry, “You’ve been very quiet all the evening, darling. What’s up?”

  “My nose,” said Henry sombrely.

  This was an expression with which all Henry’s colleagues were familiar. By it, he meant that strange mixture of intuition and deduction which had led him to the solution of many difficult cases. Although he always maintained that he was the most unimaginative of men, Henry undoubtedly possessed a flair. Tiny inconsistencies of fact and more important, of character, mounted up as an investigation proceeded until, taken together, they roused this constantly strengthening certainty of the direction in which truth lay hidden, which Henry had dubbed his “nose.” But this was not an investigation: ever since the previous weekend Henry had known—not the whole truth, but the direction in which to look. No amount of closing his eyes to facts, no amount of drowning his instinct in the pure pleasure of sailing, had been able to quieten the nagging insistence of the truth: and the events of the evening had clinched the matter. He knew now that, promises or no promises, he could not let it drop.

  After a pause, Emmy whispered, “Oh dear. Is it that bad?”

  “It’s all wrong,” said Henry. “I don’t pretend to know everything that’s going on, and I don’t know what Colin’s up to: but I do know that there’s something very wrong, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s going to blow up soon.”

  “Not tonight, I hope,” said Emmy sleepily.

  “I hope not,” said Henry.

  Some unidentifiable time later, they were both dragged back to the brink of consciousness by the bumping of a dinghy alongside. David’s voice called “Goodnight,” and a peace descended on the river again, hardly broken by the murmuring voices of Anne and Alastair.

  Henry drifted back into sleep. In a strangely vivid dream, he found himself in Priscilla, roaring downstream with Colin at the wheel.

  “It’ll be rather fun,” Colin was shouting, and, in his dream, Henry knew that Colin was mad.

  “Don’t do it!” he heard himself repeating urgently, although he had no idea of what Colin was proposing to do.

  “Hole for Mayor!” replied Colin, spinning the wheel. “Who painted the notices new?”

  Another boat loomed up ahead of them. It became desperately important that Henry should read the name of it, but Colin would not keep the wheel still. All that Henry could see was that Anne was at the helm of the other boat, and that Priscilla was going to ram her. Anne waved gaily, and shouted, “Darling Henry!”

  “Stop the motor!” Henry yelled, “There’s going to be a collision!”

  But the figure at the wheel had unaccountably turned into Hamish, who merely remarked, “A man has a right to do what he likes with his own money.”

  For some reason, Sir Simon suddenly appeared in the cockpit beside Henry. “Unfortunately,” he said pompously, “I was in Ipswich at the time.”

  Henry threw himself at Hamish, and tried to wrench the wheel from his hands, but Priscilla kept relentlessly on course. As the two boats collided, there was a deafening crash. And another...and another... Henry opened his eyes, and identified the sound. It was Rosemary, banging a mug of tea on the floor boards beside his face.

  ***

  “Eight o’clock,” she said. “Time to get up.”

  It was a glorious morning, sunny and windless. They breakfasted in the cockpit. Ahead of Ariadne, a vacant mooring buoy bobbed in the water.

  “Good lord,” said Alastair. “David’s out already.” He looked sharply at Anne, but she turned her head away and gazed astern to where, some way downriver, Mary Jane rode quietly at her mooring.

  Suddenly Anne said, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” asked Alastair lazily.

  Anne stood up and looked upriver. “It’s a stray dinghy,” she said. “Capsized.”

  They all stood up to look. Sure enough, a tiny shell of a boat was drifting slowly toward them on the tide, upside down.

  “It looks—” Anne began, and then stopped.

  Alastair dived down into the cabin, and came up with a pair of binoculars. He focus
ed them on the little boat for a moment, and then said, “I’m going to have a look.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Anne.

  “No,” said Alastair, with unexpected firmness. “Finish your breakfast.”

  He climbed into Ariadne’s dinghy, and they all watched as he pulled strongly upriver. Soon he had the dinghy in tow, and it was not many minutes before he was once again alongside Ariadne. His face was very grave and troubled.

  “Is it...?” said Anne, quietly.

  “Yes,” said Alastair. “It’s Mary Jane’s dinghy.”

  “Oh God,” said Anne. “I thought it was.”

  “I’m going down to see if Colin’s all right,” said Alastair.

  “May I come with you?” Henry asked.

  “Of course.”

  Neither of them questioned the fact that Anne, too, got into the dinghy. Still towing the deadweight of the capsized boat behind them, they rowed downriver to Mary Jane, and pulled alongside.

  “Colin!” shouted Alastair.

  There was no reply. “Colin, wake up!” Anne cried, a little desperately. There was no answer.

  They all clambered on board. The hatchway leading to the cabin was swinging open. Mary Jane was in apple-pie order. Everything was neatly stowed, and the bunks made up in their daytime covers. There was nobody aboard.

  In fact, it was Herbert Hole in his old grey launch who, two hours later, found Colin floating face downwards in the mud at the edge of the river, slightly upstream from Ariadne. He was quite dead, and there was no doubt at all that the cause of death was drowning.

  ***

  The rest of the morning was spent in a nightmare of formalities. There would, of course, have to be an inquest. Alastair drove Henry into Ipswich, where the latter spent an hour talking to Inspector Proudie: Rosemary gallantly undertook to telephone Colin’s parents and break the news to them. Anne, who had maintained a dry-eyed calm during the anxious hours of searching, collapsed in a dead faint when Colin’s body was discovered. Hamish carried her up to his cottage, telephoned the doctor, and opened a bottle of whisky. In The Berry Bush, Herbert recounted the grim story of his find with much relish.

  At midday, Henry and Alastair arrived back from Ipswich, bringing Inspector Proudie with them. Alastair parked the car outside The Berry Bush and walked across to Hamish’s whitewashed cottage, which stood at the water’s edge some hundred yards upriver. He came back with the news that Hamish was perfectly agreeable to lending his drawing room to Henry and Proudie for their interviews.

  “Berry View” was a charming little house. Three years before, it had been nothing more than a pair of derelict cottages, once occupied by fishermen. Hamish had converted them without in any way destroying the charm and simplicity of the original. No wrought-iron whimsies or refurbished carriage lamps marred its clean, well-proportioned exterior, no lattice-work discouraged the sunlight from penetrating its neat, rectangular windows: instead of a phony and insanitary thatch, Hamish had re-roofed the house with large grey slates of pleasing irregularity. The solid front door of unvarnished oak opened directly into the main living room, which, with the kitchen and bathroom, occupied the entire ground floor. Here, black and white handwoven mats made a cool contrast to the warm glow of the ancient red tiles which still paved the floor. The furniture was sparse, good-looking and comfortable. At one end of the long room, a huge sofa and two armchairs, upholstered in dark blue whipcord, faced a simple, square fireplace: at the other end stood a plain oak dining table and four ladder-back chairs. On either side of the front door, the whitewashed wall was almost entirely covered with well-filled bookcases. A small oak coffee table, several early Picasso and Lautrec lithographs, two brass oil lamps and an assortment of ashtrays completed the furniture. Henry’s first impression, as he stepped inside and looked around him, was of uncompromising masculinity.

  Hamish was sitting in one of the armchairs, staring moodily at the empty fireplace, with a glass in his hand and a decanter on the table at his elbow. He looked somewhat taken aback to see Proudie, but greeted him civilly enough, reminding the Inspector that they had met before during the investigations into the Trigg-Willoughby robbery: he then proffered the decanter all round. Proudie looked shocked, and everybody declined politely, if with some regret.

  “Now,” said Henry, “where is everyone and how is Anne?”

  “She’s upstairs asleep,” said Hamish. “Rosemary’s with her. The doctor came and gave her some sort of dope. He says she’s suffering from shock. David’s still out in his boat. Nobody’s seen him all day. Since it’s after twelve, I imagine that Herbert and Sam and the rest of the locals are in the pub. I haven’t seen Emmy.”

  “That’s all right,” said Henry. “She’s over at Berry Hall. Well, I suppose we’d better make a start. Would you like to come first and get it over with, Hamish? It’s just a question of getting some facts for the coroner. Inspector Proudie is in charge of the investigations, of course, but since I was involved, the Chief Constable agreed—”

  “Of course,” said Hamish, sourly and somewhat enigmatically.

  So Alastair wandered out onto the flagged terrace that overlooked the muddy, reedy bank where Colin had been found. He watched a fleet of sailing dinghies drifting idly, their white racing burgees flapping sadly in the windless air, and reflected bitterly on the general bloodiness of life: in the drawing room, the police shorthand writer who had been brought from Ipswich settled himself at the dining table: Henry sat morosely in an armchair, while Inspector Proudie took Hamish quickly and accurately through the events of the preceding evening.

  Emmy had been surprised and not a little dismayed when, immediately after the discovery of the body, Henry had told her to call for Berrybridge’s only taxi, and drive over to Berry Hall to break the news to Sir Simon.

  “Why not telephone him?” she demanded. “Then he can drive over here.”

  “Two reasons,” said Henry. “One, I want you to observe very carefully the effect of the news on the various members of the Berry Hall ménage. And secondly, I think you may find that there’s something wrong with Sir Simon’s car.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I heard him trying to start her when we were walking down the hard last night,” said Henry. “He didn’t seem to be succeeding. I thought nothing of it then, but now it occurs to me that a man without a car is immobilized and therefore can’t be in places where he shouldn’t be or see things that he shouldn’t see.”

  Emmy looked more and more mystified. “You think somebody deliberately put the car out of action?”

  “I don’t know,” said Henry, “but somebody might have found it useful. In any case, I want you to bring Sir Simon and George Riddle back here, either in Sir Simon’s own car or in the taxi, by about half past twelve.”

  In view of this conversation, Emmy was considerably impressed when, as she clambered into the venerable Lanchester which served as a taxi, the driver—a grizzled character referred to in the pub as Old George—remarked acidly, “Berry ’All. Berry ’All. Nothin’ but Berry Bloody ’All.”

  “Why do you say that?” Emmy asked.

  “Larst night,” said Old George, “arter the binge. Drove Sir Simon ’ome. Ar parst eleven. Didn’t get back till midnight.”

  “What happened to his own car, then?”

  “Broke,” said Old George succinctly. “Left Young George tinkerin’ with ’er insides. No good. Garage towed ’er away first thing this morning.”

  “When you say Young George, you mean George Riddle?”

  “That’s right,” admitted Old George grudgingly.

  “So he didn’t go back to Berry Hall last night?”

  “No. Kipped at ’is Dad’s place, I reckon.”

  “I see,” said Emmy, in a small, thoughtful voice. She spent the rest of the drive trying to avoid discussing the subject of Colin’s death with Old George, and finally left him in the drive of Berry Hall, sitting on the step of the Lanchester smoking a small, noiso
me cigar, with instructions to wait for her.

  With some trepidation, Emmy walked up to the imposing, pedimented front door. Before she had mustered enough courage to pull the graceful iron doorbell, however, she was startled to hear the sharp rattle of a window sash being thrown up, and a shrill voice above her head cried, “Who is it? What do you want?”

  Emmy took a step backwards and looked up. A first-floor window to the left of the front door was open, and from it, like a snail emerging from its shell, protruded the stout torso of Miss Priscilla Trigg-Willoughby. Her head bristled with chromium hair curlers, which glinted like a helmet in the sunshine.

  “Who is it?” Priscilla demanded again, and added, “Why don’t you ring the bell?”

  “I was just going to,” said Emmy, hastily.

  “What’s that? Speak up!”

  “I was just going to,” Emmy shouted. “It’s Mrs. Tibbett. I wanted to—”

  Priscilla’s attention had suddenly focused itself on the Lanchester. “George!” she remarked, majestically. Old George jumped guiltily to his feet and stamped out his cigar. “Why are you still here, George? You were engaged to drive my brother home. That gives you no right to prowl around the house all night and smoke your horrible cigars in my garden. Go home at once!”

  “I think I can explain, Miss Trigg-Willoughby,” Emmy yelled hastily. “George hasn’t been here all night. He’s just driven me over from Berrybridge.”

  Priscilla’s domineering mood crumbled suddenly into pathos. “Thank you, Mrs. Hibbert,” she said humbly, with a trace of tears. “You explain things so clearly. Nobody else explains things to me. That’s why I imagine things, you see. It’s very difficult when nobody will explain.”

  Emmy felt a sudden surge of excitement—an instinctive feeling that she was about to learn something important, if only she played her cards right. Cursing the fact that this most delicate conversation had to take place at the top of her voice, she shouted, “What won’t they explain to you? Perhaps I could help?”