‘They were asking Tessie to take them to you but I happened to be passing the door. They’ve found a body. Washed up out of the sea. At Dunskey. A female body.’
Miss Shanks and I had both scrambled to our feet and Fleur noticed me for the first time.
‘What brought them here?’ said Miss Shanks. Her voice was high and tremulous. ‘Oh my good Lord, it’s not one of the girls, is it? Was anyone missing at breakfast time?’
‘It’s a woman,’ Fleur said. ‘Not a girl. They came here because they thought it might be one of us. One of the mistresses. From the way she was dressed, I suppose.’
‘How long—’ Miss Shanks had to clear her throat and start again. ‘How long has it been in the water, did they say? Which one did they think it might be?’
The room swirled just a little around me then and I put my hand out to steady myself, finding Fleur’s icy fingers under my own. She flinched and then grabbed my wrist.
‘Dandy,’ she said. ‘They – the policemen – want someone to go and look at it – her. I’ll go but only if you come with me.’
Miss Shanks pattered around the side of her desk and came to stand, shifting from foot to foot, between us.
‘It should be me,’ she said, but plaintively with not a shred of determination. ‘As headmistress it falls to me. Oh, how I wish Miss Fielding were here! Perhaps Mrs Brown would . . . I can’t!’ she said. ‘I can’t do it. The sight and the smell of it. I’ll faint or be sick. I feel ill just thinking about it. How long did they say?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Fleur. ‘Mrs Gilver will come with me.’
It seemed that I was not to have a say and I was feeling rather green myself at the prospect, especially since Miss Shanks had brought the rude facts of the matter right out into the open that way.
‘I shan’t forget this, Miss Lipscott,’ said the headmistress. ‘I shall never forget that you did this for me.’
Fleur gave her a long cool look which I could not decipher before she turned back to me.
‘Dandy? No time like the present. The policemen have a motorcar with them. They can take us there right away.’
There turned out to be a small cove a mile or two north of Portpatrick. Four of us – Fleur, me, a sergeant and a constable – trundled up out of the village on the road I had taken from the station the evening before and onto a little farm lane before turning to the sea again and following an even smaller lane down through the woods to a headland. The constable pulled off onto a patch of ash beside a cottage and stopped the engine.
‘This is as far as the road goes,’ he said. ‘There’s a wee path’ll take us down from here.’
‘Where is she?’ I asked, horrified to think, no matter how long the body had been in the water, that they had simply hauled her up the beach, covered her with a tarpaulin and left her there.
‘Dinnae worry, miss,’ he replied. ‘She’s inside, decent as decent can be.’
The cottage wife looked with wary interest out of her kitchen window at us all alighting from the motorcar, and a clutch of her children peeped around the side of the house wall, going so far as to follow behind us as we set off two by two towards the track we were to take to the shoreline.
‘Scat!’ said the constable, turning round and stamping his foot at them. ‘Gah!’ The children scattered, giggling. ‘They’d no’ be laughin’ if we let them come with us and they saw her,’ he said. ‘Or smell—’
‘Tsst!’ said the sergeant and his man fell silent, but not soon enough for me. The succession of sugary little pastries and the two cups of coffee-flavoured tar were lurching around inside me. I stole a look over at Fleur but nothing could be gleaned from her pale, set face and her timid posture. She had looked terrified since the first moment I had laid eyes upon her, last night in the staffroom.
The path was not long and within minutes we had come out onto a pebbly cove between rocks, where there was a curious little wooden building like two hexagonal beach huts stuck together, their pointed roofs and arched windows looking straight out of a fairy tale.
‘What is that?’ I said, thinking that if it were my little summerhouse I would not have been best pleased to have had the police commandeer it to lay out a body, new-plucked from its fishy grave.
‘Cable station,’ said the constable. ‘It was built to house the machinery for the telegraph cable. Quite interest—’
‘Tsst,’ said the sergeant again. He had taken off his cap and nodded at the constable to do the same. Then he drew a deep breath and turned to Fleur and me.
‘If you’ve a handkerchief, ladies,’ he said, ‘you might want to . . .’ He demonstrated with his own large cotton square, clamping it hard over his nose and mouth. I fished my little bit of lace out from my pocket and did the same. Fleur shook her head slightly. The sergeant opened the door and we stepped inside.
On a table against the far side of the room – only seven or eight feet away at that – a humped shape under a sheet lay as still as a stone. I concentrated hard on breathing through my mouth, after hearing a soft groan from Fleur.
I had seen corpses before now. I had watched men become corpses once or twice in the convalescent home during the war, where convalescing was predominant but not guaranteed. And in latter years I had been forced to look at and sometimes touch no fewer than seven dead people, some of them dead by the most violent means that wickedness could bring. But all of these corpses had been newly departed this life, a few hours gone at most since they had been breathing. What awaited me under the sheeting in the cable station that bright May morning was something else again.
The sergeant took another of his enormous breaths and swept back the cover from the remains it had been shrouding.
Fleur let out a shuddering kind of moan and put her hand up to her mouth at last. I stared straight ahead out of the window, attempting to bring my panicky breaths back to something near normal before I tried to look at the thing.
‘Well?’ said the sergeant. I glanced at him. He was talking to Fleur, but as he looked from her face down at the table my eyes, without my bidding, followed his gaze.
‘Oh God,’ I said and then the most surprising thing happened. I was not sickened nor frightened by what was lying there. Instead, I felt a tear bulge up in each of my staring eyes and drop down my cheeks.
Her hair was matted and stiff with salt, straggling over one shoulder and lying in a clump on her breast. Her clothes were dark with the water and twisted around her body from where she had been roughly humped onto the table. Her shoes were gone, her stockings tattered and her feet, puffed up like monstrous toadstools, were mottled with wounds and sores. Her hands were half-hidden in her clothes, but I could see that they looked just like her feet, swollen and nibbled. Terrible to think they had put on those clothes and brushed that sodden hair.
I wiped the tears away from my eyes and looked at her face, or at the dreadful, pitiable sight where her face should be. And finally I felt the floor begin to tilt.
‘Steady there,’ said the constable and put his good strong arm across my back. The sergeant was already holding Fleur by her elbows and I could tell from the grim look upon his face that she was buckling.
‘Is that one of your colleagues, miss?’ he asked her. She shook her head and the movement seemed to strengthen her. The sergeant took his hands away.
‘Do you know who it is?’ said the constable gently. Fleur took a step forward and bent over the body, looking at the buttons on the high-necked dress, staring at the lace around the collar. I could not have put my face so close to that grey skin with the ragged edge where her face should have begun if all our lives had depended upon me.
‘Miss?’ said the constable.
‘It’s not Jeanne Beauclerc,’ said Fleur.
The constable swallowed audibly.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘I – I don’t know her,’ said Fleur.
‘Madam?’ said the sergeant, looking back at me.
‘Nor I.’ My vo
ice sounded thin and high, like a child’s.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s that then.’ He must have been struggling, poor man, because he turned very sharply and almost ran out of the little room back to the open air.
‘You can go now,’ said the constable. He was staring at Fleur, with his face twisted up, staring at the way she was crouched over the body, six inches away from the soaking cloth and the flesh. He was horrified and I was not far behind him.
‘Fleur,’ I said. ‘Darling, let’s go.’
She spoke, just one muttered word, and then straightened and turned away.
‘What was that, miss?’ the constable said. ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing,’ said Fleur, and walked out onto the beach. But she had not said nothing. I did not repeat it, but I had heard it.
She had said, ‘Five.’
4
The word seemed to echo throughout the dank dimness of the cable station, until it and the walls around me and the low ceiling above my head were all pressing closer than I could bear and I stumbled out into the sunshine.
Fleur had walked down to the water’s edge – even though the tide was low and the going must have been unpleasant with such a great deal of seaweed lying in bands across the beach – whither the constable looked on the point of following her. At least he was standing shifting from enormous foot to enormous foot, working himself into a little hollow in the shingle, and was twisting his cap in his hands with a rhythmic efficiency which promised to ruin it for ever.
‘Where’s Sergeant . . .?’ I said, looking around.
‘Turner,’ said the constable. ‘Away to get a wee drink from the burn. His wame’s no’ fit for thon.’ He jerked his head back towards the cable station.
‘It didn’t do my tummy much good either,’ I said, swallowing hard. (I am a past master at Scotch after all my years immersed in it.) ‘She, I mean. Not it. She.’
‘Aye, well,’ said the constable, and he gave me a kindly look. ‘She’s long gone and past carin’, missus.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘How long would you say, Constable . . .?’
‘Reid,’ he replied. ‘A wee while, anyway.’
I sighed. Even a past master cannot distinguish the Scotch whiles – a wee while, a fair while and a good while – without some reference point at which to start.
‘Not today then?’ I said, employing imbecility to shake him into further detail.
‘The day?’ he said, with ready scorn. ‘Naw, never. Three, four days easy. No’ a week. I’m sayin’ three days, missus.’
‘You can really be that precise?’ I said, wondering at how much practice a village constable could have had in this grisly specialism. Reid swept his arm across the view before us.
‘Fishin’,’ he said and did not need to say more.
‘Right,’ I replied, and then we both stood and watched Fleur in silence.
‘I tell you what else, missus,’ Reid said at last, when the three of us had held our tableau long enough for seagulls to alight on the bands of seaweed and start their scavenging, ‘I bet I can tell you where she went in too. If she went in off the cliffs and no’ out a boat, anyway.’
‘That would be handy,’ I said.
‘Likes of if she left anythin’ behind with her name on,’ said Reid. ‘Find out who she was.’
‘Hm,’ I said. I was thinking how best to suggest that they should ask someone else from the school to confirm it was not Miss Beauclerc lying there (without absolutely dropping Fleur in it) since clearly if Fleur had added this latest body to her growing collection she would not be above lying. I stole a glance at Reid wondering how to broach it.
As a rule I am beyond scrupulous. I break no laws and I do not collude to help others break them, and if I had known there was a body in the offing I would have made sure and said all that to Pearl on the telephone. As matters stood, however, I was hogtied. I had promised Pearl to help her sister; telling a police constable she was a self-confessed murderer did not fall comfortably within the bounds of helpfulness as Pearl would understand it, I was sure. On the other hand, how could I get a second opinion organised without explaining my doubts about the first?
All in all then, Reid’s hope for a tidy parcel of belongings left on a cliff top was mine too.
‘So where would that be?’ I said.
‘Down Dunskey Castle way,’ said Reid.
‘Isn’t this Dunskey Castle?’ I asked him. He gave me a pitying look.
‘This is Dunskey House,’ he said. ‘The castle’s away the other side o’ the town. And I’m thinking maybe if we go and have a wee scout round down there, we’ll find a clue. Otherwise . . .’
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I suppose there aren’t name tags sewn into her clothes, are there? Her underclothes?’
‘No’ checked yet,’ said Reid, and who could blame him? ‘The police surgeon’s the man for that.’ He paused. ‘Or a mutch-wife.’ He sighed. ‘Or maybe somebody’ll report a woman missin’, and we can leave the poor soul be.’
How to explain that it took so long for the notion to strike me? Rosa Aldo had disappeared and here was a body, yet I had made no connection between the two. I put a hand to my mouth, picturing Giuseppe’s grief if that was his adored and beloved wife lying in there.
‘Missus?’ said Reid.
But why would Fleur Lipscott kill a washerwoman?
‘You all right?’
But might not the killer of five people be indiscriminate in exactly that way?
‘You feelin’ sick?’
I took my hand away from my mouth again.
‘I think I know who it is,’ I said.
‘Good grief!’ said the harsh voice of the sergeant behind me. ‘You might have spoken up before now, madam.’ I turned to see him glaring at me out of a pale face. ‘This is a serious business, you know.’
‘I didn’t recognise the woman,’ I said, drawing myself up and glaring back, out of a face as pale as his I am sure. ‘I just remembered something. Mrs Aldo from the village is missing.’
‘Who?’ said Reid.
‘Mrs Giuseppe Aldo. I don’t know her address.’
‘The Eye-tie’s wife?’ said Sergeant Turner. He wheeled around and stared at the cable station door. ‘Aye, it could be, it could be. All dressed in black that way. And more like a foreigner to go flinging herself in the water than one of our own.’
Reid’s eyes narrowed and his head shook a little, too small a movement for his boss to see. I noticed it, though, and I knew we were in accord. The man was a fool.
‘So, shall we fetch Mr Aldo?’ I said.
‘We?’ said the sergeant, staring coldly.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘He’s a . . . friend of a friend of mine. In fact, this friend of mine – a Mr Osborne – will probably want to come with him, as I came with Miss Lipscott, don’t you know.’ Which was stating it rather strongly; the truth was I wanted Alec to come along with Joe Aldo. If there was a body in his case he should see it.
‘Are we talking about the same folk?’ said the sergeant. ‘Black-haired Eye-tie that fries fish at the end of the harbour?’
‘Giuseppe Aldo,’ I said. ‘That’s the chap.’
‘Funny friend for you, madam,’ he replied.
‘My acquaintance is wide and varied, Sergeant,’ I assured him. ‘And speaking of friends . . .’ I jerked my head towards the shoreline. ‘I’d better get Miss Lipscott home, hadn’t I?’
‘Where is she?’ the sergeant said.
I wheeled round to look at where Fleur had been. There was no sign of her.
‘Where’s she gone?’ I said, stupidly, and exchanged a glance with Reid.
‘She’ll have walked round the head to the other wee beach there,’ he said, pointing. I set off after her, trying to hurry in the deep shingle which only produced the mired feeling of a nightmare, when one surges and struggles and gets precisely nowhere. At last, however, I gained the hard, wet grit below the tide line and could brea
k into a trot as I rounded the promontory dividing the cable station cove from the next one down. This was a sandy, sheltered spot with a deep swathe of meadow grass at its back stretching up to the lane. There were no rocks; nowhere to hide. And there was no Fleur.
Constable Reid came puffing up behind me.
‘Did she have time to come round here and go up the path?’ I asked him.
‘Must’ve had,’ he replied.
‘But weren’t we more or less watching her the whole time?’
‘Cannae have been,’ said Reid. ‘Else where is she?’
I could not fault his reasoning and so I set off up the path, which meandered back past the cottage with its party of peeping children and on to where the motorcar awaited our return. The sergeant was there, sitting stiffly in the passenger seat, displeased to have been abandoned by his underling, but of Fleur there was not a sign.
‘I’ll ask at the cottage,’ I said, turning back, but the sergeant stopped me with a throat-clearing sound that was almost a growl.
‘You’ll both have to walk home if you don’t come now, madam,’ he said. ‘We’re not a taxi.’
‘Likely we’ll pass her on the road,’ said Reid, stooping to the starter. ‘Maybe she just set off on her own for a wee breath of fresh air after yon.’
I nodded and climbed into the back seat, still craning around, expecting Fleur to appear from amongst the trees. It was not until later that I realised the absurdity of what he had said; one does not leave a seashore in search of fresh air. As it was, the motorcar bore me away while I sat on the edge of my seat, peering into the hedgerows and scanning the road ahead for a figure and ignoring the sick cold feeling inside me.
And since a sick feeling inside is not something one can tell of to a rather stupid police sergeant – or even a tolerably bright constable – I kept my worries to myself as the little motorcar descended to Portpatrick’s harbour and trundled around towards Joe Aldo’s shack there. Also, like a child at the approach of its bedtime, I was hoping that if I kept quiet the men would forget I was there. I wanted to soften the blow of what was sure to be a bald announcement from the horrid sergeant that a body had appeared and would Joe come and see it, please.
Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses Page 8
