“Who fills the tank?”
“The shop we passed. Got a pump in the back garden. Clear spring water. When our supply gets low, the chap comes over with his water-trolley and pumps us a tank full.”
Miss Frayle looked around, the cabin seemed so spacious; everything was painted cream and as well as the large porthole, there was an opening skylight of opaque glass above.
“What do you think of her?” Erica said. “Aunt Edith? I told you she was quite a character.”
“She’s very nice,” Miss Frayle said. “Different from anyone, I’ve ever met. She’s mad about wild birds, isn’t she?”
“Her one interest in life. That and this boat.” She smiled at Miss Frayle, as if thankful that the meeting between her and Aunt Edith had gone off so well. “I’ll leave you to get sorted out.” Erica moved to the door. “I’m sure we’re going to have a wonderful time.”
“I’m sure,” Miss Frayle said.
“That old sun will do its stuff to-morrow, don’t you fret,” Erica went on. “We can go down the creek in the dinghy. There’s a nice sandy strip, fine for swimming when the tide’s up. Or you can just loaf about in your swimsuit.”
“What ought I to wear this evening, Erica?”
“Slacks, of course,” Erica said promptly. “I’m going to. And a shirt, or sweater, if you think you’ll be cold.”
Miss Frayle’s eyelashes fluttered behind the lens of her glasses.
“Mr. Rayner will be coming in for a drink, you said. I was going to put on a dress.”
“Jim,” Erica said, “you won’t need to worry about him. He’ll turn up in the first thing he can lay his hands on. Sou-wester and thigh-boots, or running shorts and bare feet. If he turns up at all, probably forget and be tinkering with that car of his.”
When Miss Frayle made her way back to the saloon-cabin the table was laid for supper. She could hear Miss Travers, or Aunt Edith as she automatically thought of her, singing to herself in the galley, and she guessed that Erica had not yet finished changing. She stood there, contemplating her unusual surroundings, and rather conscious of her dark blue slacks, which together with her swimsuit, she had bought especially for this holiday, and the white turtle-neck sweater she wore.
The cream-painted walls of the saloon was sectioned into panels by thin varnished battens. There were three portholes on either side of the coach roof and a skylight over the centre. Framed photographs of birds were everywhere and several water-colours of marshland scenes. One showed a skein of geese above an estuary, another depicted a small yacht anchored in some lonely creek with a great expanse of marsh and sky its background.
A ship’s clock ticked away on the bulkhead near the sliding-door which opened past the galley to the companion up to the deckhouse. In spite of it being open, the cabin was warm. There were two easy chairs either side the sliding door. There was a sideboard and a drink cabinet which together with a small writing-desk and dining chairs, made up the saloon-cabin’s furniture.
Miss Frayle moved hesitantly to the doorway and looked into the galley. Aunt Edith turned from the stove. “Come in and see my kitchen,” she said.
Miss Frayle stepped into the roomy recess, staring about her with admiration. The modern sink with draining boards flanking it under the porthole. White-painted cupboards and shelves fixed along one side. A large paraffin-stove with an oven and on the asbestos shelf next to it, a pressure-stove with the kettle steaming on it. Above were wide shelves and hooks holding a variety of kitchenware.
“You cook by oil?” Miss Frayle said chattily.
“Safest in a boat,” Aunt Edith said, dexterously transferring the kettle of water to the teapot. “It’s tea with every meal here,” she said. “As well as between meals. No, if you use gas and there happens to be a leak it’s liable to seep into your bilges. Then one day — woof! I shouldn’t like to lose the Moya. I’ve spent a long time shaping the old tub to my tastes.”
“It’s certainly a wonderful boat,” Miss Frayle said. “My cabin’s lovely.”
“It’s comfortable. Don’t mind roughing it outside, but I like my creature comforts when I come back home.”
“Erica told me you were an ornithologist,” Miss Frayle said.
“Nuts about wild birds is the way she put it, I’ll bet. And she couldn’t be more right. Autumn’s one of the best times, of course. But the summer’s interesting, too.”
“It must be a bit lonely in the winter,” Miss Frayle said.
“You’re never lonely when you’ve plenty to do. And the folk around here may be few and far between, but they’re good company when you get to know them, and they get to know you. Took them a long time to accept me.”
After supper of ham and eggs, Miss Frayle insisted on helping Erica wash up while Aunt Edith lit up a cheroot and made copious notes about her afternoon excursion in a leather-bound exercise book. Erica then took Miss Frayle on a further inspection of the Moya, while at the same time adding to her description of her holiday in Paris which she had omitted during the journey down from Liverpool Street.
It was about half-past eight when they sat in the deckhouse and Aunt Edith appeared with a tray of drinks. Gin, rum, whisky and a decanter of red wine. Miss Frayle settled for a glass of wine, Erica a little gin; and Aunt Edith took a glass of rum and returned to her notes. Presently Erica went off to the galley to iron out some creases in her tapering slacks. Miss Frayle went out on deck.
The rain had completely stopped, the clouds dispersed, the oncoming night was still. The sky was like shot-silk in the west where the sun sunk beneath a few last ragged banners of cloud. The tide was slowly filling the creek, gently lifting the Moya off the soft mud. The dinghy was floating astern, its painter outstretched, and the flood stream made the faintest whisper as it trickled past its planks.
Miss Frayle’s gaze wandered up the creek. There were the two other houseboats Erica had mentioned, each some distance away from each other. A yacht rode midstream, and a couple of sailing dinghies were moored to the bank, just about opposite Jim Rayner’s cottage. Further along, past the little white house between the trees, she could see the white tops of two trailer caravans. Beyond them was a farm, and between the farm and the creek were two pairs of cottages. These and the inn and the shop, it seemed, added up to Dormouse Creek.
Miss Frayle turned to look down the creek again, lost in the strange fascination of the great marsh. Here and there a light twinkled, a boat on the distant river perhaps or a lonely farmhouse. A blue haze began to form on the horizon and turned slowly to a white mist out of which rose the plaintive cries of wildfowl.
Miss Frayle was startled by a voice suddenly in her ear.
“Fallen under its spell, eh?” She turned to find Jim Rayner at her side. “Knew you would, anyone with a spark of romance in them is sold on the place the first night.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Miss Frayle said.
“Sorry if I made you jump. It’s these shoes.” He was Wearing old canvas shoes, once white, but now a dirty-grey. Miss Frayle crossed to the deckhouse. She found his sudden appearance against the stillness which seemed to vibrate the air about her almost overpowering. “Erica and Aunt Edith are below,” she said uncertainly. “Perhaps we’d better go down.”
She reached the companion and then felt his hand on her arm. She gave a nervous little gasp. But he was only grinning at her.
“On boats a man precedes a girl,” he said. “Just in case you slip. I mean it would be a worse fate for you to break your neck than for me to break your fall. Or wouldn’t it?”
He went down the companion and waited for her at the bottom. Miss Frayle found herself blushing a little as he looked up at her. “Okay,” he said. “Let yourself go.”
Chapter Eleven
IT WAS A little while before Miss Frayle could sleep.
She lay there in her comfortable berth, listening to the sounds that crept in through the open porthole. The gentle lap of water, a strange spongy sound, as if the mudbanks were
breathing again as the receding tide exposed them to the moonlit air; the intermittent calls of the wildfowl, the faint hoot of an owl in nearby trees. Mingled with them all the pungent scent of the marsh.
But what kept sleep from her was the insistent picture on her mind of the limping man in the old churchyard. Despite the excitement of getting acquainted with the boat and Aunt Edith, the memory of the incident which had seemed to her at the time odd and macabre, had not been dispelled. She tried to recall it with a calm detachment. She had no doubt that Erica was right; and yet had the man been no more than some tramp, sheltering from the storm?
Miss Frayle made a resolute effort to shift her thoughts. Aunt Edith had been wonderful company, talking racily over her rum and cheroot about the experiences she’d met on her bird-watching expeditions. Jim Rayner, too, had provided quite considerable amusement recounting some of his adventures in sailing dinghies and motor-boats. The evening had passed so quickly, Miss Frayle had been surprised to find it was midnight when she had gone to her cabin.
It was Jim Rayner who had come up with the idea of going over to Southend in his ancient car to-morrow. He had suggested the trip to Erica on the spur of the moment, as he was leaving. He was going to Southend, he explained, to see the publicity people at the Kursaal about a poster he was doing for them. Why didn’t Erica and Miss Frayle come along with him?
Miss Frayle admitted she’d never been to Southend, and he had at once assured her it was an opportunity that shouldn’t be passed up lightly. Aunt Edith had agreed that to experience the delights of the pier and the Kursaal was something not to be missed, or the reverse, according to whichever way you looked at it. Then Erica had thought it might be fun. So it was fixed.
Privately, Miss Frayle felt she would much preferred to have explored the locality of Dormouse Creek; but after all, there was the remainder of her stay in which to do that. Jim Rayner arranged to pick them up at half-past nine in the morning, but the arrangement depended on the weather. No point in leaving the snug comfort of the houseboat for a chilly journey to Southend in that excuse for a car, Erica said.
Miss Frayle turned and glanced out of the porthole at the circle of summer night-sky. Calm and full of promise for the coming day, it seemed. With a guilty start she suddenly realized that she hadn’t given a thought to Dr. Morelle, so full had been her mind of her arrival on on board the Moya. She wondered, and now she began to feel more sleepy, how he had managed. He had flatly refused to engage a temporary secretary in her absence, but she had arranged on his behalf for an agency to cope with any recordings of dictation, and to supply a stenographer to deal with his mail, whenever he required it.
Of course, Miss Frayle had planned the holiday carefully so that it would coincide with a relatively inactive stretch in Dr. Morelle’s work. She just hoped nothing arose which might justify Dr. Morelle recalling her from her holiday back to Harley Street. She wouldn’t put it past him, if he really worked himself into the mood.
She began wishing he would plan his life so that he, too, could take a holiday. But he scorned such an idea, and she felt that in a way he was right. She could not picture him relaxing in a deck-chair, or lounging about sun-bathing. At last she fell asleep with a smile of faint amusement at the idea of Dr. Morelle behaving like any ordinary man.
Miss Frayle dreamed not about life aboard the Moya; or about the trip to Southend Pier. What she did dream of was an overcast sky, ominous and sinister, and that she was on her way along a road across the marshes to some destination of which she was uncertain. Some of the time her footsteps dragged, at others she found herself running; and all the time she could not seem to pass the ruined church amidst half-buried gravestones and crumbling vestry. And a dark figure kept appearing and disappearing in and out of the shadowy trees in the churchyard, limping. Only it wasn’t the man in the long raincoat and hat, it was Dr. Morelle.
Miss Frayle awoke to a morning that fulfilled the promise of the night before. The wind was gentle and from the east and the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Soon the decks of the Moya were so warm the heat crept through the soles of Miss Frayle’s shoes.
She and Erica wore light summer frocks, Erica the one she had bought in Paris. A few minutes after nine-thirty they heard a report like the firing of a double-barrelled gun.
“That’ll be it,” Erica said to Miss Frayle.
A minute or two later, Jim Rayner came into their view in the rattletrap car and they watched it as it chugged up the road and swept alongside the Moya in flamboyant style.
Jim Rayner was in an exuberant mood, his rusty hair as tousled as ever, his sunburnt features cracked with a grin. Erica squeezed into the back of the car, Jim warning her to mind the portfolio of drawings that he had thrown there. Miss Frayle climbed in beside him, he let in the clutch carefully and they moved off. As they roared away Aunt Edith appeared, to wave the paraffin-can in farewell.
The drive to Southend was pleasant, much of the way the landscape reminded Miss Frayle of that around Dormouse Creek. Gradually the pattern changed. The dykes and streams and little bridges gave way to farmland. The villages were larger; the country became gently undulating in places and there were more trees.
The car rattled and coughed through the small town of Crayford, and a little later was joining heavier traffic on the outskirts of Westcliff and Southend.
Presently Jim pulled up in a side street off the main thoroughfare.
“We made it,” he said, reaching into the back for his portfolio. “All in one piece.” Miss Frayle got out and Erica followed. “Look, I don’t expect to be more than about twenty minutes. There’s a coffee-bar round the corner. Why don’t you nip in there and I’ll join you? I’ll be twenty minutes at the most.”
Erica and Miss Frayle found a vacant table in the corner of the coffee-bar and their coffee had only just arrived when Jim suddenly appeared, minus his portfolio and his smile.
“Damned bore,” he said, “but I’ve got to go into a bit of a conference about the job. Alterations and that, so God knows what time I’ll be free. Terribly sorry, but you’ll have to show yourselves around.”
“I expect we’ll manage,” Erica said. “Where and when do we meet up with you?”
“It’ll be after lunch,” Jim said. “We’d better meet here, say at three.” He pulled a wry face. “Can’t even stop for a coffee.” He turned away. “Be good and don’t speak to any strange men.”
As he went out the man at the table next to Miss Frayle and Erica also got up to leave. He brushed a newspaper off the table-corner; what attracted Erica’s attention to it as it fell to the floor was a headline on the front page, MAN FOUND DEAD ON BOAT TRAIN.
The man didn’t pick it up as he left the shop. Erica grabbed it with wide eyes. It was a London morning paper. Her gaze fastened on the picture in the column next to the story. She gave an exclamation.
“It’s the man I met on the boat.”
“Who?” Miss Frayle said. She had observed Erica’s interest in the newspaper with some curiosity.
Erica pointed to the photograph. “He’s been found dead in the train at Victoria with his head bashed in.”
“Oh?” Miss Frayle took the paper and read the story. “Johnny Destiny,” she said slowly. “Was that his name?”
Erica gave a shrug. “He didn’t tell me his name. But it’s him all right.”
“It says my friend Inspector Hood is on the case,” Miss Frayle said.
“Your friend?” Erica flashed her a quick look.
“He and Dr. Morelle are great pals,” Miss Frayle said. “He’s a dear, I’m very fond of Inspector Hood.”
Erica was eyeing her with an expression of mingled envy and respect which Miss Frayle could not help finding somewhat gratifying. Then she saw the other frown to herself and stir her coffee thoughtfully. She did not attempt to drink it.
“What is it?” she said.
“I told you I met him.”
“I know,” Miss Frayle said, blinking anxiously
behind her glasses. “I’m sorry if it’s upset you —”
Erica interrupted her with a sudden shake of her head. “It wasn’t only that,” she said. “There was another man. A man who seemed to be watching him. He was there in the background. I told him about it,” she indicated the photograph. “But he just laughed it off. Said it was probably another American —” She broke off. “Oh, I expect I’m imagining things, only it didn’t seem like that to me. It was as if this man watching him knew him.”
“And you mean you think he may know something about his death?” Miss Frayle glanced at the story about Johnny Destiny’s untimely end. Accident, it seemed to suggest. That was how it looked from what the newspaper said. Yet, she thought, there was the reference to Inspector Hood. Would he have been on the job if it were merely an accident?
“I was wondering,” she heard Erica say, “that is, do you think I ought to let your Inspector Hood know? About this other man?”
Miss Frayle’s eyes behind her horn-rims widened as they met Erica’s look, troubled and uncertain, over her cup of coffee.
Chapter Twelve
MISS FRAYLE AND Erica Travers headed along the main street towards the sea-front. After discussing it at length over another cup of coffee Erica had agreed with Miss Frayle that there probably wasn’t any real significance to be attached to the fact that she had observed someone watching the man she had met on the boat, whom the newspaper reported to be Johnny Destiny. There was nothing to it that would be worth bringing to the notice of the police, anyway.
“As I say, it was just my imagination,” Erica had said. “It certainly didn’t seem to bother him, when I mentioned it at the time.” And so they had dropped the idea of phoning Inspector Hood, and Erica and Miss Frayle turned their attention to making the most of their visit to Southend, and had hurried from the café to see the sights.
The end of the street fell away into a short, steep incline that led down on to the esplanade. Miss Frayle and Erica paused to fill their lungs with the strong, salty tang that came up off the inshore mudflats which the incoming tide was now covering.
Dr Morelle and Destiny Page 7
