“Mrs Wells was inclined to think that the dagger Detective-Inspector Conway showed her at the police station had been cut down from the rapier she sold several weeks ago. The hilt had been slightly altered, it is true, but I think only a strong inclination towards caution made her unwilling to commit herself and declare that the dagger had been made from her rapier.”
“Would it help if the rest of the rapier was found? The lower part of the blade must be somewhere. Matter, they say, is indestructible, and I should think that steel is even more indestructible than most things.”
“The discovery of the rest of the blade would help, I daresay, if we could trace the possessor of it or, if it has been discarded, who threw it away. The next thing will be the inquest. I wonder whether it will disclose the identity of the dead boy? Until that is known, the police cannot get much further.”
“We’re doing our best, ma’am,” said Conway, when she put the point to him. “Nobody has come forward to say that a youth of about that age is missing. We’re treating this as a case of murder, but suicide can’t be ruled out, although I’d say he was a bit past the age when teenagers usually go in for it. We’ve rounded up the town gangs, but got nowhere, and we’ve tried remand homes and Borstals for anybody who has absconded and not been traced, but we haven’t turned up a thing. We shall have to get the inquest adjourned, although not for the same reason as the last one.”
“What was he wearing?”
“The usual casual outfit, jeans and a T-shirt, Y-front briefs, no socks, but what had been very expensive shoes until the sea-water ruined ’em. We are convinced he was murdered, though, because the left shoe was on the wrong foot and vice versa.”
“ ‘And madly crammed a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe’,” quoted Dame Beatrice sadly. “Yes, indeed, that does appear to indicate murder. Was the stab-wound made through the clothing?”
“No, ma’am. The doctors say he was naked when he was stabbed, so it must be murder and somebody clothed the corpse but forgot to make the necessary holes in the clothing.”
Chapter 15
Identification of a Dead Boy
“What, out of hearing?—gone?—no sound, no word?”
« ^ »
The police had made a very thorough job of rounding up the local skinheads and these, for once, proved only too anxious to cooperate with what they regarded ordinarily as the enemy.
The leaders of the Side Kicks, the Diamonds and the Saints having been winkled out and taken to the police station to ‘help with enquiries’, it fell to the leader of the Saints to make a pertinent observation. He began by removing a T-shirt ornamented with a skull and crossbones and displaying a meagre torso which was also decorated after a fashion.
“Look,” he said, “we don’t own the guy without he’s got our mark on him.” He pointed to the tattooed design of a star inside a circle on his left breast. “Our members has to cross their hearts and swear on that,” he said, “so if he ain’t got the Lucky Star on his chest, he ain’t one of our members. See what I mean?”
It turned out that there were marks on the dead boy’s body, but they were small wounds, three in all, one on the left breast, one lower down on the ribs, the third on the abdomen near the navel. None resembled the initiation marks of the gangs. The Side Kicks had theirs in the form of a letter K on the right buttock, the Diamonds were branded on the back of the left hand with the emblem of that suit of cards, and subsequent checking of the gang members confirmed the asseverations of the three leaders. The dead youth did not figure among their initiates.
Dame Beatrice bided her time while all this was going on and then produced Mrs Wells once more. Shown a copy of the photograph which, after the failure of the inquisition on the street gangs, the police were proposing to exhibit, Mrs Wells shook her head.
“It could be,” she said. “There’s something about the mouth reminds me, but the boy I saw had hair and without the hair I couldn’t possibly say.”
“Almost to his collar, I think you told us,” said Dame Beatrice. She took out a soft black pencil and gave the photograph a slightly ragged fringe on the forehead and a hairstyle of the required length. The result was gratifying.
“Ah, yes, that’s him,” said Mrs Wells. “I’m positive.”
“Doesn’t get us much further, ma’am,” said the inspector, “except that with the hair he looks rather different class from what he did without it. The bureau of missing persons doesn’t help, either. We’ve had two additions since we looked at it the other day, but one of them is a schoolgirl thought to have run off with her boyfriend and the other is an infant aged two believed to have been kidnapped from his mother by his father, who had already made two attempts to get him out of the country.”
The next tedious task which confronted the police was to find out, if they could, where the body had been put into the water. They thought it more than likely that the secretary of the yacht club was right and that the youth had been thrown overboard from a boat. On the other hand, as Dame Beatrice insisted, there were the other possibilities. It was true that the road to the ferry was a busy one by day and well-lighted by night, but it was also true that after the places of entertainment closed down and the pubs and hotel bars emptied, there was very little traffic either going or coming. Anybody who was prepared to take a chance could have brought the body in a car, pulled up on the rough grass which separated the road from the strand and carried the corpse far enough out to sea for the high tide to eliminate any footprints.
Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when a new problem presented itself. Emma Lynn came round to see Deborah. She brought news of two kinds, joyous for her on the one hand, worrying on the other. Deborah listened sympathetically to both stories, expressed delight at the first and then offered comfort and reassurance respecting the second.
“I wanted you to be the first to know after I’d told Marcus,” said Emma, at first glowing with pride and joy. “Oh, Deborah, after all this time to know I’m going to have a baby! Yes, it’s been checked and there’s no doubt about it and it’s all due to you.”
“Perhaps Marcus had something to do with it,” said Deborah, laughing and giving Emma a kiss.
“Well, we’ve tried hard enough, goodness knows! But, you know, I believe The Dream relaxed both of us and all the tension went out of us and Nature sort of rushed in, if you know what I mean. We hoped this would happen when we adopted Jasper seven years ago—well, nearly eight years ago. I had read true stories about childless couples who adopted and then found they could have one of their own, another case of a relief from tension, I suppose. However, it didn’t work for us, but what our adopting Jasper couldn’t do, I’m sure the play has done. I was never so happy as when I realised I could play Helena, and Marcus, until that dreadful accident to Donald Bourton, was delighted with me and the costumes and your garden for the setting and everything.”
“It’s lovely news, Emma. Does Jasper know? What is he going to think about having a baby in the house?”
“He won’t have much to do with it for the next four years because he will be at University. Anyway, Marcus has made up his mind that the baby, even if it’s a boy, will make no difference to Jasper’s prospects. Jasper has been brought up to be self-supporting, anyway. All Marcus’s money will come to me. It’s only proper that it should, he says, because he would never have got his start but for the money my father left me. All the same, Deborah, I’m rather worried about Jasper, although Marcus says it’s very silly of me because boys are very thoughtless and forgetful and never bother to let you know what they’re doing. Still, I can’t help feeling worried and a little hurt.”