by Carola Dunn
“Sid’s as tough as boot leather from tramping the hills in all weathers. But Dr. Vernon has him under observation.”
“He must be so frightened!”
“He’s not keen on the doctor but he seems to trust Andrew Vernon, oddly enough. Apparently he’s once or twice presented young Vernon with tennis balls he found on the beach. Soggy and quite useless, of course, but Vernon paid him a few pennies for them.”
“Where is he?”
“At the doctor’s house. With a constable at the door. Daisy, Sid was seen right where and when Enderby went over.”
“By whom?” Daisy demanded.
“By Olive Coleman.”
“Did she say she saw Sid push Georgie Porgie over? She probably did it herself!”
“It’s possible, but I think she’s telling the truth. She says she ran away. She doesn’t claim to have seen Sid attack Enderby, which she might have done if she had wanted to shift the blame from herself.”
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“In that case, he probably saw whoever did, and the constable is there to protect him. Though if that’s the case, I don’t see how he’ll ever manage to tell us whom he saw.”
“Darling, let me talk to him. If you try to question him, he’ll just be too scared to attempt to explain what happened. Besides, you’d be limited to yes or no questions. You couldn’t count it as evidence if he did try to show you with gestures and actions, could you?”
“It’s debatable, certainly. That’s why I’ve asked Baskin to give me a hand.”
“Is he in the clear?”
“Yes, the hiker he gave the Anstruthers’ address to actually turned up on the doorstep this afternoon asking for a bed.”
“Good. I can’t help liking him, and he’s been so good to the girls.”
“Yes, I was happy to cross him off my list. He’s sent a wire to his friend in London, the one who’s an expert in teaching the deaf and dumb. The man’s coming down tomorrow to help us question Sid, but I want to get a preliminary interview this evening.”
Daisy threw back the bedclothes. “It’ll be much better if Mr. Baskin and I do that, honestly.”
“Baskin, yes. He seems to have established some rapport with Sid. He was very helpful in getting him from the lifeboat to the doctor’s, and he’s offered to give us a hand.”
“Only he and I. You’re a stranger and a policeman. You won’t get anything out of poor Sid. Just your being there would be enough to stop him trying to communicate. Baskin can ask the questions and I’ll take notes in shorthand, on what he says and what Sid does.”
“Since neither of you is a police officer, that won’t do me much good.”
“But, darling, once he’s told us, he may not be nearly so shy of telling you. And at least you’ll know what happened, even if it doesn’t count as evidence.”
It took all her persuasive talents, and a good deal of time, but in the end she talked Alec round. If Baskin agreed, if she was good and stayed in bed till dinnertime, if Dr. Vernon said Sid was well enough, after dinner she and Baskin could tackle him.
27
“Uncle Ben is not at all pleased to have his house turned into a cross between a nursing home and a prison,” Andrew Vernon said cheerfully,” but he even lent Sid one of the old-fashioned nightshirts he insists on wearing. Your husband can be very persuasive, Mrs. Fletcher. Sid’s up here.”
He led Daisy and Baskin up a narrow staircase to the second floor. Servants’ garrets, thought Daisy, from the days when a country GP’s income ran to more than a housekeeper and a house parlour-maid.
At the end of the corridor, a large policeman in uniform was sitting on a hard chair by a door. Seeing them, he stood up.
“This is Constable Smith,” said Vernon. “Smith, I’ve brought Mrs. Fletcher and Mr. Baskin. Chief Inspector Fletcher warned you they’d be coming.”
“That’s right, sir.” The constable knocked, listened, shrugged. “There’s not been a sound from him … well, not that you’d zackly expect much.” He opened the door, peered in, then stood aside.
Daisy followed Vernon into a small, white room with a partly sloping ceiling and a dormer window, dimly lit by an oil-lamp. It was simply furnished with coir matting, a deal wardrobe, a washstand, a single wooden chair, and an iron bedstead against the far wall. On the bed, squeezed into the corner of the walls, Sid lay curled with his back to the door, wrapped in a blanket, a ball of silent misery.
Vernon turned up the lamp. “Come along, old chap,” he said, with a gentleness remarkable in so jaunty a youth. “Here are friends come to see you, Mrs. Fletcher and Mr. Baskin. Turn yourself around, there’s a good fellow.”
With a sound like the mew of a cat, in one convulsive movement Sid rolled over, sat up, and reached out both hands to Daisy. She took them in hers, conscious of relief that he didn’t blame her for luring him from the cave to his present predicament. How little kindness he must have met in his life if her small civilities had touched him so deeply!
“I’m glad to see you looking so much better, Sid,” she said. “I can see Dr. Vernon and Mr. Vernon have taken good care of you.”
He flinched at the doctor’s name but gave the young man an uncertain nod and his shy smile. Vernon, lounging against the washstand, smiled and nodded back.
Daisy continued, “Mr. Baskin wants to ask you a few questions.”
“About the day I met you at your cabin,” said Baskin. “You remember? You showed me the shed you were building and we … talked for a while.”
Sid nodded eagerly, and with gestures he painted a picture of raising a beam and banging in nails. Daisy sat down on the corner of his bed and from her bag took notebook and pencil to try to paint a word-picture of his actions in her idiosyncratic version of Pitman’s shorthand.
Baskin turned the chair and sat with his arms folded on its back. “I want you to remember what happened earlier that same afternoon, when you were walking on the cliffs.”
With a frightened look, Sid shook his head violently.
“It was something bad, wasn’t it? Something dreadful. We need to know exactly what happened, and you’re the only person who can tell us. You’re very important, you see. You saw a man there, and a girl. Did you recognize him?”
A half nod.
“He was Mr. Enderby, from the Schooner.”
Sid nodded.
“And the girl? She was Olive Coleman, your brother’s daughter.”
Sid glanced nervously around the crowded room as if he half expected his terrible brother to materialize. Reassured, he nodded again. As Daisy had seen with many witnesses and suspects in her various unauthorized experiences of murder investigations, he was quickly becoming accustomed to the rapid fire of questions.
“Was anyone else there?”
Sid placed his hand on his own chest.
“You were, yes. You saw no one else?”
The negative shake of his head dismayed Daisy. She had hoped he would at least claim to have seen someone else, someone to divert suspicion from his own head. Was he simply too naive to realize where Baskin’s questions were leading?
“What happened?” Baskin asked. “What did you see? Uh, Mrs. Fletcher, perhaps you’d better close your eyes or turn your back or something. Vernon can witness this part.”
Momentarily indignant, Daisy recalled Alec’s warning that part of Sid’s testimony was likely to put her to the blush. She duly blushed and, before she shut her eyes, noted that both Baskin and Vernon were decidedly pink-faced. Enderby and Olive had met for one purpose. Curious as she was as to how Sid would go about describing what he had seen, his performance wasn’t something a lady—even a married lady—could decently watch.
Hand gestures must have sufficed, since Daisy didn’t feel the bed bouncing.
“Uh, thank you, Sid, that’ll do for the moment,” Baskin said after a couple of minutes. “Vernon, you’d agree that what he showed us was a man and woman … uh … engaged in … in intimate relations
?”
“Absolutely.”
“Uh, Mrs. Fletcher, would you mind noting down our joint conclusion?”
“With my eyes shut?”
“No, no, it’s all right to open them now.”
Baskin’s face was now bright red, whereas Vernon appeared to be suppressing a grin. The difference between a schoolmaster and a medical student, Daisy supposed, scribbling down the syllabic symbols for the euphemistic statement of Enderby and Olive’s mutual misbehaviour.
“What happened next, Sid?”
The beachcomber’s rough brown hands moved delicately to shape a woman’s body, then went to his eyes like binoculars. He pointed to himself. Olive had seen him.
His mouth opened and closed. She had told Enderby.
Sid jumped up from the bed, shook his fist, fumbled at his borrowed night-shirt where his flies would have been had he been wearing trousers, doing up Enderby’s buttons. Sitting down on the bed, he hastily fastened Olive’s bodice over her generous bosom, smoothed the night-shirt over Olive’s knees, jumped up again, and ran the two paces possible in the tiny room. Two fingers continued running, along his arm, as Olive fled.
“Sorry, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Baskin, redder than ever. “It was a bit early to let you open your eyes.”
“Never mind. Isn’t he clever? You’re doing a very good job of explaining, Sid.”
He flashed her his shy smile, then turned back to Baskin, who said, “Miss Coleman ran away? And Mr. Enderby was angry?”
Daisy remembered her first encounter with the beachcomber and the innkeeper as Sid shook his fist again, with a frightful scowl. He opened his mouth and a sort of roaring noise emerged.
“He shouted at you. What did you do?”
Daisy held her breath. It was safe to assume that Sid had had his cart with him, with its collection of odds and ends. Had he taken a piece of wood from it and whacked Enderby on the back of the neck? Surely not! Not only was it not in character but Enderby, threatening, must have been facing him. Or had Enderby, in disgust and frustration, stalked away as he had that day on the beach when Sid …
Sid turned his back, bent down, and looked backwards through his legs.
“That’s what he does when he’s frightened!” Daisy exclaimed. “That’s exactly what he would have done.”
Sid straighted, turned, became Enderby again, shaking his fist and producing that painful, wordless shout. He ran a couple of steps, then raised his foot to kick.
And Sid was himself again, flinging himself sideways to dodge the kick, one leg bent under him, the other stretched out.
Enderby kicked, missed, tripped over the outstretched leg, staggered a few steps, tumbled.
Fingers circling his eyes, Sid stared down an imaginary cliff at the falling body.
“Accident, by George!” Vernon exclaimed.
“Darling, I’m quite sure that’s exactly how it really happened,” said Daisy. “It’s a repeat of what happened on the beach a week ago, only that time Enderby didn’t carry through with the kick. I believe every word … that is, I believe Sid’s story absolutely.”
She and Baskin and Vernon had joined Alec, Mallow and DS Horrocks in the parish hall. As she read through her notes, Baskin and Vernon had added their comments. Horrocks had taken it all down in shorthand which was surely more orthodox than Daisy’s.
“It all hangs together, sir,” young Vernon seconded her enthusiastically. “The next bit explains the splinters and the marks I saw on the path—”
“You did find marks on the path, did you?” said Alec. “You didn’t tell me about them.”
“They didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. I told Julia—Miss Bellamy—though, so you can ask her what I said. I’m not making it up now to fit in. It looked as if something had been dragged up the path. Mostly it was too rocky or smudged with footprints, but in one place … I sketched it. I can show you.”
“Later. Go on, Daisy.”
Sid had left his cart at the top and gone down the path. From some distance above, he could tell that Enderby was beyond help. He was turning back when he noticed a sturdy plank, rough-sawn, tossed by the waves up the cliffside some distance above the body.
“I suppose the theory is that Enderby hit the plank on his way down?” Alec interjected. “Possible, I suppose, but where did it disappear to?”
“It was just what he needed to complete the shed he was building,” Baskin explained.
Clambering across the rocks, Sid had retrieved the plank. He could show them where it had been and how he had reached it. Then he had dragged it up the path and wheeled it home on his cart. When Baskin happened upon his shack he was knocking in the last nail.
“Calmly building his shed?” Alec demanded incredulously. “And it never dawned upon him to notify anyone of Enderby’s death?”
“I doubt it,” said Baskin. “He’s far from stupid, but he’s completely—I don’t know what you’d call it—unsophisticated, ingenuous, untutored in the ways of the world. Any ten-year-old boy in my form, or Belinda or Deva, understands better how the world works.”
“Even if he thought of it, darling, as I keep telling you, he’s scared to death of the police since Puckle locked him up. And now you have him locked up again—”
“He’ll have to stay where he is tonight,” said Alec. He sighed. “In the morning, I’ll take him home. Baskin, Vernon, you’ll come with us. He can show us where he found the damn’ plank. Baskin can identify it, and you, Vernon, will take a sample to be compared with the splinters. But I must say, the whole thing sounds to me far too unlikely not to be true.”
“You mean you actually believe the simpleton’s story, sir?” Mallow bleated. “You’re not even going to question him yourself?”
“I can’t see the point, frankly, Inspector. We have three good witnesses. It strikes me as an utter waste of time to make him repeat his … rigmarole, if that’s the word I want. Of course, if you’re not satisfied, I shouldn’t dream of preventing your interviewing him. Mr. Baskin’s friend will have a go at him, too. But in the end, it’s for the coroner and his jury to decide.”
EPILOGUE
“Verdict: accidental death,” Daisy sighed with satisfaction, sinking into the deck-chair Alec had just set up for her on the beach—Friday had turned out to be a gloriously sunny day, already hot by noon. “Thanks to your brilliant explanation to the coroner, darling.”
“And to his direction to the jury. Thank heaven! If he or they had kicked up a dust and insisted on questioning witnesses …” He disentangled his own chair and set it up beside her. “Well, the thought of producing Sid Coleman in court, even just a coroner’s court, boggles the mind.”
“It does rather. I hope he’ll decide to go with Mr. Baskin’s friend and learn to read and write.”
“He seems quite taken with him.” Alec started to sit, then straightened as a large, shaggy black dog bounded towards them.
“Popsy?” said Daisy a trifle nervously.
Popsy it was, her tail wagging in delight as she recognized her name. She laid her heavy head in Daisy’s lap and gazed up at her adoringly.
“Down, Popsy!” Miss Bellamy was not far behind her dog, Andrew Vernon at her heels. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fletcher. Popsy, heel!”
Popsy obeyed to the extent of transferring her affections to Alec.
Vernon seized her collar. “You really must teach the brute some manners, Ju.”
“Her manners are perfectly good!” Julia said indignantly. “She likes the Fletchers. Mr. Fletcher—or should I call you chief inspector?—the verdict means poor Sid is absolutely exonerated, doesn’t it? He didn’t do anything wrong?”
“That’s right,” Alec assured her.
“Good. We’ve been talking to him and to the chap from London, Mr. Baskin’s friend, you know, the teacher? The trouble is, Sid wants to learn to read and write, but he doesn’t want to go to London. So I offered to teach him, but Mummy wouldn’t let me if there was any suspicion still att
ached to him.”
“All the same, Ju, I don’t think you ought to go over to his cabin alone.”
“I shan’t, silly. He can come to the Vicarage.”
“Do you have any idea how to go about teaching him?” Daisy asked.
“Not much, but that’s the best thing—Mummy says I can go up to London and learn how.”
“Baskin’s friend’s offered to give her some tips, Mrs. Fletcher.” Vernon grinned. “But if you ask me, she just wants an excuse to spend a week in town.”
“Beast!”
“Not that I’m complaining. I have to go back this weekend.”
“I shall be far too busy to see you,” said Julia loftily. “Except perhaps just once or twice. Briefly.”
“That’s all right, I’m going to be busy, too. Back to cutting up bodies,” Vernon said with relish. “Oops, sorry, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“I think,” Julia announced, “I shan’t be a nurse after all. I think I’ll be a teacher. Look, Andy, there’s Sid now, with those girls. Let’s go and tell him it’s all settled and leave Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher in peace. Isn’t that your daughter and her friend over there, playing in the sand, Mrs. Fletcher? I used to spend hours building towers and digging tunnels when I was a child.”
“You still are a child, Ju. Come on, if you’re coming.” They said their goodbyes and went off down the beach.
Alec sank into his deck-chair at last, with a groan. “Those two do make me feel old.”
“Nonsense, darling, they’re juvenile and you’re in your prime. Well, that’s Sid settled. What about Olive Coleman?”
“Her father will probably get six months or a sizable fine for assaulting a police officer.”
“Neither of which is going to do the farm or the family any good.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about the family situation, and not much the local chaps can do, unless Mrs. Coleman is willing to bring a charge. They seldom do. No one is going to force the girl to return home, though.”
