The Floating Admiral (Detection Club)

by Christie, Agatha; Detection Club, by Members of the

  12. If it was the Admiral, did he travel by road or by river? According to the Vicar’s evidence, which must be genuine since it could be checked, the Admiral had a game leg, and did not walk if he could help it. It seemed unlikely that he could have taken out the car without waking some of the household. The boat remained as a possibility; and if the Admiral went secretly down the river in a boat, where was he going to put it when he took the London train? Abandoned, it would invite theft; moored among other boats it would bear testimony to his movements. It was hardly to be supposed that he meant to leave Whynmouth for ever. The suggestion seemed to be that all this talk about the train was a blind. Once again, for what purpose? The only thing which seemed certain was that the Admiral’s boat had been taken from its moorings that night, and had been restored to the boat-house by somebody who was not the Admiral.

  13. Why did the visitor, whoever it was, ask for Holland and then refuse to see him? If it was a bogus Admiral, the answer was not in doubt; the man had asked for Holland so as to get an excuse for mentioning the Admiral’s name; possibly also to implicate Holland in the trouble which was to follow. He did not actually meet Holland, for fear of detection. If it was the real Admiral, a motive was harder to assign. His behaviour seemed that of a man who wants to make sure that a hotel guest has really arrived, or that he is really in the hotel, and yet does not trouble to conceal those inquisitorial methods from the person against whom they are directed. If Holland’s story were true, the Admiral might have contemplated a real visit, so as to reassure him about the consent. But why, after taking so much trouble, should he go away without leaving any significant message?

  14. Did Holland really see anybody in the street? Answer: Yes, and it means that Holland’s story is true up to a point; he really was in the Lord Marshall, or near it, as late as closing time. But there was that hesitation about the great-coat; was that genuine? Or was the ignorance affected, to avoid possible traps? Answer: No, and it means that Holland still possesses knowledge which he is concealing. Either he knew that the Admiral intended to make that visit, or he was privy to the plans of the fellow who impersonated the Admiral. In either case, his mention of the visitor would be an attempt to prove that he was really in the hotel at closing time; this smelt of an alibi.

  15. Did Holland really go to Rundel Croft that night? Against the story was its extreme vagueness; the absence of clear motive, the care he took to explain why no witnesses of his journey were likely to be forthcoming, his selection of a fresh pair of shoes, the alleged secrecy of his exits and entrances. On the other hand, if Holland was lying, it was hard to suppose that he was lying to screen himself; bed was his best alibi. The evidence of the Boots and Mrs. Davis would be a difficult defence for the police to get over, without some positive clue to implicate Holland—and no such clue existed. Instead of sticking to his first story, that he had slept soundly in his bed, he had gone out of his way to confess himself a liar, had told a story, fantastic in many points, about a visit to Rundel Croft which no witness could attest, and in doing so had deliberately claimed the position of the last man who had seen Penistone alive. He seemed to be running his head deliberately into a noose; why should he do that, unless to divert suspicion from the real criminal? And that meant … yes, it would hang together. He had told the truth this morning; since then, fresh knowledge had come to him which induced him to put a halter round his own neck. But then, was Holland lying? Would he not, by now, have contrived to make up a more plausible story, accounting for his presence at Rundel Croft?

  16. If he went, did he go by appointment? Such an appointment might have been made either with the Admiral himself or, more probably, with Elma. If the former were true, nothing could bring the charge home except some record of a message; if it was brought by note, somebody had brought the note; if it was sent by telephone, the call could probably be traced. Also, to be sure, a message sent by telephone to an hotel meant that the receiver would be lifted off by an hotel servant, and the circumstance, at that hour of the night, would probably be remembered. When you came to think of it, the message (if there was one) must have come from Elma, or Holland must have supposed that it came from Elma. Otherwise, he would have had no reason to conceal it; and he could have made his own story much more plausible by admitting it. Mem.—See Mrs. Davis about the message: enquire if necessary at the telephone exchange.

  17. Who was the woman who went through Lingham at a quarter to eleven? At least, that was really the wrong way to put it; you could hardly hope to know who she was, at this stage. But it was worth considering whether her arrival could have had any influence on the situation. Her car, which might or might not have contained another occupant, would reach Whynmouth in time to deposit the mysterious visitor at the Lord Marshall. Alternatively, it would have been possible for the occupants of such a car to be at Rundel Croft in time for the murder, even if you dated the murder early. They might have gone round by Fernton Bridge, the enquiry for the Vicarage being merely a blind; or they might have stopped close to the Vicarage, and ferried themselves across by making free with Mr. Mount’s boat. This last plan would have the effect of bringing the Vicarage boat on to the scene of action; a point deserving to be considered, from the detective’s point of view. But Rudge found himself instinctively recoiling from such an explanation. For it would mean that the criminal or criminals came and went by car, their base presumably London. It was not possible for the Whynmouth police to search for suspicious characters in London; Scotland Yard might have to be invoked, and that always meant that the credit went to Scotland Yard.

  At this point the Inspector drew a fresh line across his page. He had reached the end of the enquiries which were antecedent, or seemed at first sight antecedent, to the murder itself. It was time now to come on to a fresh set of problems: those created by the circumstances in which the corpse was discovered. The pipe needed to be re-lit; and, for that matter, another tot seemed indicated; the indication was allowed to have full weight. Now for the facts. Human testimony was a slippery and uncertain thing to deal with; what you were told was a photograph fogged, as it were, by the shadow of the man who told it you. But Nature did not lie; tides ran, dew formed, blood flowed, doors opened and shut, on uniform and ascertainable principles. The clues pointed you on to the actions which had produced them, and then hinted entrancingly at the motives which lay behind the actions. Well, then …

  18. Here is a man murdered; who had a motive, and what motive, for murdering him? Ordinarily, one would expect a local quarrel; though the knife, as Mrs. Davis acutely noticed, is not the English criminal’s weapon. But a month’s residence hardly gave time for any supposition of the kind here. A Cornish enemy would have found it difficult to track his man down, would have delayed longer to ascertain the lie of the land. The quarrel, then, which found its satisfaction in that grisly wound, must be a quarrel dating from past history in the Admiral’s life. Further, you could assume with some certainty that the murderer either knew the habits, or possessed the confidence, of his victim. A man is found murdered in the Vicar’s boat on the very night when he has been dining at the Vicarage; in his pocket is a copy of that very newspaper to which he is in fact a subscriber; the murder is somehow connected with a visit, alleged or real, to a neighbouring hotel where an acquaintance of the victim is in fact staying. All this betrays a knowledge of relevant circumstances; the mysterious Chinaman of the story-books can be ruled out of the list of suspects; he would not have committed the murder just so. That narrowed down the search to people who knew something about the Admiral. Who did? His neighbours: Neddy Ware (not much), the Vicar, the Vicar’s sons, Sir Wilfrid Denny, still an unknown quantity. His servants: but they had given, so far, no ground for suspicion. His family and those concerned with its fortunes: Elma, the problematical Walter, Holland, Mr. Dakers. Of these, which had a motive—a strong one? Elma had a weak one, the desire to get her money absolutely. Holland had a stronger one, to overcome an obstacle to his marriage; but was it st
rong enough? Not unless and until it could be proved that the typewritten consent was a forgery. Mr. Dakers hardly came into the picture at all; Walter, if he was alive, was a tough customer no doubt; but how exactly did he stand to gain by his uncle’s disappearance? This absence of motive was a puzzling feature; was it possible that some guest of Sir Wilfrid Denny’s was implicated? Mem.—Trace Denny as soon as possible.

  19. Why was a knife chosen as the weapon? Stabbing usually meant murder in hot blood, or as the result of panic; a thought-out crime would ordinarily depend on safer weapons. Its use suggested that the murder took place at some spot where the report of fire-arms would have been heard, and would have brought rescue; near the house, for instance. Grice had been away all day, and had as yet made no investigation of the wound since the loss of the Norwegian knife had been discovered. If that knife seemed likely to be the weapon, it would look as if the criminal’s first plans had not involved murder, or, at least, murder done in that way.

  20. Why was the body found in a boat? No use to suggest that the murder had been done in the boat, and the body, from fear or disgust, left where it lay. In the first place, it is very hard to murder a man in a boat; you must be in it yourself, and that means looking at one another all the time—no chance for a sudden attack. And in this case the blood must have flowed, yet there were no marks on the white paint. The body, then, had been deliberately put into the boat; why? For convenience of colportage? That was possible; but granted that your corpse has got to make a journey by boat, it does not follow that it is best left there. Suppose it had been thrown overboard, with a couple of stones tied to it? The Admiral’s disappearance would have caused alarm at first; but a report from the Lord Marshall that he had been seen in Whynmouth that night, just en route for the late train would have dissipated the rumour of murder until the river gave up its dead; and by that time the murderer might be anywhere—China, for example. The murderer’s instinct is always to hide his victim, at least for the moment; this murderer had deliberately put the corpse on show, with the certainty of its discovery next morning. What did that mean? It suggested, at least, that the whole circumstances in which the corpse was found were a deliberate frame-up; the criminal felt certain that suspicion would not fall on him, so long as he left evidence which would fasten the suspicion on other people. Granted that frame of mind, you could just account for the boat. A boat travels with the stream or with the tide at a more or less uniform pace; a floating body, by itself, might get held up by any overhanging branch, any patch of shallows. It might be that the criminal wanted to suggest, by the position in which the body was found, that the murder had taken place at a different hour or at a different spot from the actual hour, the actual spot. Best to ask Neddy Ware to say exactly what combinations of times and places would have brought the boat to the spot at which he found it, e.g., Whynmouth, Fernton Bridge, the Vicarage, as alternative sites; 10.30, 11.30, 12.30 as alternative times. Mem.—Look up Neddy Ware again.

  21. Why was the body found in that particular boat? An easy answer suggested itself, “To throw suspicion on the Vicar” for which reason, too, the hat was doubtless thrown in. To suppose that the Vicar, if he were really privy to the murder, would allow his connection with it to be thus blatantly advertised was ridiculous. But then, was it not almost equally ridiculous to suppose that the criminal had chosen the Vicar as his scapegoat? The frame-up, in that case, was inconceivably clumsy work. The simple bluff of pretending that the Vicar was the criminal seemed too simple; the double bluff of pretending to have pretended that the Vicar was the criminal seemed too complicated. Yet, for what other purpose could the Vicarage boat have been dragged into the story at all? It might indicate that the murderer had started from the other side of the river, and had found that a borrowed boat saved the trouble of going round by the bridge. On the other hand, it might indicate that the murderer had wanted the police to think just that, having in fact started his operations from the Rundel Croft bank. There was not much to be made of this clue, and yet it haunted the imagination.

  22. Why was the Vicar’s hat left behind? Assuming for the moment that Mount was the criminal, the question admitted of no ready answer. On the whole, people are hat-wearers or bare-headers; the former class will notice the absence of the familiar feeling as a kind of discomfort. You would expect the murderer, passing his hand over his forehead, to cry out instinctively, “Good heavens, where is my hat?” An unconscious exchange of hats between the murderer and his victim seemed just possible; Holland had fancied a clerical appearance about the hat which the Admiral, if it was the Admiral, had worn that night. Again, assuming that the murderer came from the direction of the Vicarage, it was possible that he had found the hat lying derelict in the summer-house, and had borrowed it for his own purpose—to hide his face, for example. Mem.—Examine the hat on the off-chance of finding lay hairs adhering to it.

  23. Why was the key to the french window found in the bottom of the Admiral’s boat? This key business was less puzzling. Presumably, when Elma left her uncle to lock up the boat, she took the key up with her, and left it in the french window, on the outside, so that he could let himself in later. Did he so let himself in? It looked as if he must have, to find his great-coat. Then, if he ever went out again alive, he would lock the window from the outside and slip the key into his pocket. It might fall out of his pocket, easily enough, when his dead body was put into the boat. Alternatively, if the Admiral was in fact killed in his garden before he had time to re-enter the house, the criminal would no doubt use the key to let himself in, when he was in search of the hidden papers. Once he had got those papers, and the Admiral was dead, it did not matter what he did with the key; indeed, it was necessary to get rid of it somehow.

  24. Why was the Admiral’s boat moored, contrary to custom, by the bows? Here was a point of genuine significance. It meant that this boat, too, had figured somehow in the movements of that August night. Either the Admiral had been abroad on her, and had been caught in the middle of his travels; or else the criminal, having despatched him in his own garden, had made use of two boats in disposing of the body, or possibly in securing his own escape. And for some reason, a baffling one, surely, he had thought it more important to leave the Admiral’s boat moored than the Vicar’s. Inexplicably, he must have thought that things looked more natural this way. Another pertinent consideration arose: Elma must surely have known her uncle’s little fad about the mooring of boats; and therefore if she or anybody acting under her immediate direction had been guilty of the murder, it was hard to believe that the boat would not have been found in the morning moored as usual.

  25. Why is a whole length of the painter missing? And such a small length; not as much as you would naturally cut off if you needed the rope for some unusual purpose; to tie a man’s hands, for example. No, the Vicar’s boat had first been cut loose from its moorings, and then it had been tied up again, either to some other post or to some other boat, and once more it had been necessary to cut it with a knife instead of untying it. This was puzzling, because ordinarily what man has done man can undo, if it is the same man. You had to allow for accident; e.g., two ropes might have been tied together, and then swelled through being left in the water; or some sudden need for haste might have arisen, so that there was no leisure for untying knots. But following out the indications of the painter for what they were worth, you were led to the conclusion that the painter had been twice cut; that a different person had been responsible for the second cut, and that this new person was shorter than the other. The Vicar, for example, who was tallish, might have cut the rope in the first instance; but if it was he who re-tied the boat, he would naturally do so at a height which would make it possible for him to untie it again without difficulty. This new figure in the story might be called x-n, the original painter cutter being labelled x. Now, it was possible that x-n was simply the Admiral. But the question arose whether you had not to allow for two people besides the Admiral, both concerned in the doings
of that night, x and x-n. Holland might be x, but such was his height that he might have been expected to untie the boat even from its first moorings.

  26. Why was the body found in a coat? It was a pity, when you came to think of it, that that question had not been put down immediately after No. 20. It would have been a rhyme. Rudge, in his youth, had tried to fill up the last lines of limericks, but he had never claimed to be a poet, and it was a new experience for him to find himself in the position of the young Ovid, writing verse unconsciously. Yes, to be sure, that great-coat. If the Admiral really went into Whynmouth, and really meant to catch the late train, it was conceivable that he would have taken a coat with him to protect him against the chill of the early morning. But Rudge was altogether inclined to discredit that projected railway journey. If the Admiral really went to Whynmouth, or to any other point along the river, in a boat and with the intention of returning in a boat, he would only have encumbered himself with a fairly substantial overcoat for one reason—he must have anticipated having to hang about somewhere waiting for somebody, talking to somebody, in the open air, and was afraid that he would get a chill after taking exercise without this precaution. On the other hand, the great-coat was a loose one; what they call in the shops “something in the style of a Raglan.” It would have been quite possible, then, for the murderer, unless he were squeamish about handling corpses, to pull the overcoat on to a dead body in a perfectly convincing way. Now, what would that mean? Probably, that the murderer was elaborating a “frame-up” as before; having disseminated the idea that the Admiral meant to go up to London by the late train, he went on to give that idea corroboration by vesting his victim suitably for such a journey.