“To name but a few, as my secretary would say,” said Dame Beatrice, cackling.
“It does seem a shame to have cut this one down to this miserable sliver,” went on the dealer in antiques. “They’ve only left six inches of the blade and they’ve polished out the ricasso, although you can make out the different colour of the metal.”
“This weapon had to go in up to the hilt. It has killed a man, as I suppose you have heard,” said Dame Beatrice.
“You wouldn’t be bothering me otherwise, would you?”
“When we were in your shop you indicated, I think, that you thought the boy was wasting his money.”
“Well, if he only wanted the rapier for theatricals, I don’t see why he couldn’t have got a carpenter to make him a nice wooden one and painted it silver.”
“The hilt might have posed a problem.” Dame Beatrice signed to the inspector, who produced the dagger which had the retractable blade. “Tell me, Mrs Wells, if you do not think these hilts look very much alike.”
“Well, yes, to an untrained eye, I would agree they do. I’m sorry I can’t be positive about my rapier being cut down to this little dagger, but without the rest of the blade I couldn’t be sure.”
“What would you say if I suggested to you that the lad to whom you sold the rapier was not making the purchase on his own behalf, but was acting for somebody else?”
“For somebody else? But why?”
“Because, perhaps, the interested party did not want to appear in the transaction.”
“That boy in my shop seemed a good boy, but could have been got at, I suppose. They’ll do anything for money these days.”
“You did not recognise him as a local boy?”
“No, but I thought he might have come from a public school and that he was in the school play and wanted to show off a bit with a real rapier.”
“There is a public school just outside her town,” said the inspector to Dame Beatrice after they had taken Mrs Wells home, “so her idea would be valid enough.”
“Could the cutting down have been done in the school metalwork department?”
“It’s a line I can follow up. We know the date when the lad bought the rapier. Mrs Wells keeps good records.”
“One thing about the purchase surprised me and that is why I suggested that the boy was only an agent in the affair. I was surprised that he appears to have been alone when he bought the rapier. One would have supposed he would have had friends— possibly envious ones—with him when he made such an ostentatious and costly purchase.”
Enquiries at the school produced nothing. The school provided for boys whose hobby was woodwork, but there was no metalwork centre, neither had a school play been under contemplation. “You will appreciate, Inspector, that this is our examination term.”
“So, unless something turns up out of the blue,” said the Chief Constable to Dame Beatrice, “and, as I see it, that means getting our hands on the blacksmith, or whatever, who cut down that rapier, we’re stymied.‘”
“The antiques dealer came forward; why should the metalworker not decide to do the same?”
“I reckon there’s an answer to that one, ma’am,” said the inspector, who was present at the conference. “While the weapon was sold as a rapier, the dealer could afford to come forward, but whoever cut it down to dagger length might be asked some very awkward questions, don’t you think? Nobody likes getting mixed up with the police, however innocent they are.”
“No doubt you are right, but we need that man.”
“What, ma’am, is a ricasso?” asked Conway.
“Oh, a practice begun in the fourteenth century, and extensively used in the sixteenth century, of leaving a few inches at the top of the blade unsharpened, rough and unpolished as a protection to the fingers of the swordsman. The amount of protection was increased in some cases by the provision of a hook or a bar below the quillons, which are these side-pieces which form the cross-hilt of the weapon. In this case, as Mrs Wells saw, the original ricasso had been polished and sharpened because in order to sustain the resemblance to the retractable dagger, it was essential that when the actor used it, it should go in right up to the quillons, as the harmless dagger would be expected to do if it were to remain in place after the actor had struck himself with it.”
“You say we need this blacksmith, Dame Beatrice,” said the Chief Constable, “and we most certainly do. One thing, there are not so many independent blacksmiths nowadays.”
“Oh, now we’ve got this far, we shall turn him up sooner or later. It’s just a question of time, sir, and the usual spadework,” said Conway.
“I am hoping that he will not turn himself up,” said Dame Beatrice.
“I thought that’s just what we could do with,” said the Chief Constable. “You said so yourself, didn’t you?”
“I mean that I hope he will not present himself to us in the form of a corpse. I have a feeling that Mrs Wells may have started a landslide by coming to the police with her information about the rapier and I am sure no time should be lost in locating this man who turned it into a dagger. I hope he has sense enough to realise that his own safety may depend upon getting in touch with the authorities as soon as possible.”
“Depends whether he knows what the dagger was to be used for, ma’am,” said Conway. “I wish we could find the rest of the blade. There must be quite a length of it somewhere, if the rapier was the length the lady specified.”
“She refused to identify the dagger as having been part of the rapier she sold,” said Dame Beatrice, “but the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was.”
Chapter 14
Body on the Foreshore
“… and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard.”
« ^ »
Some few miles eastward along the coast there was a resort which served as a place of retirement for the moderately affluent elderly. It had built up a reputation for great respectability and a certain exclusiveness. Bath-chairs had been a feature on the broad promenade and the hotels often had permanent residents who established little cliques among themselves and looked with jaundiced eye on any interlopers who commandeered their favourite armchairs in the lounges.
Both residents and visitors were proud of the town, its health-giving properties, its broad sands, its denes and public gardens, the good taste, range and scope of its entertainments, its balmy air and its interesting hinterland.
Times change, however. Because it was prosperous the town grew, shops and restaurants were added, a sprawl of back streets spread out around the railway station, a large bus station and then a coach station came into being and gradually but inexorably the character of the town altered. With the advent of the motor-coaches came the day trippers; when the motor-car became ubiquitous visitors came who no longer booked in for a week, a fortnight, or a month at the hotels and boarding houses, but required only an overnight stop with breakfast before going their way to the next overnight stop.
The next development was more serious still. The formerly insular, prejudiced, stay-at-home English began to seek holidays abroad. The resort’s hotels began to depend more and more on letting their accommodation for political and other conferences, the annual meetings of learned societies, coach parties who would move off on the following morning and who were bitterly resented by even the equally transient birds of passage who had booked privately instead of en bloc, and the occasional wedding reception.