Forester was born in Egypt, and spent much of his childhood travelling in Europe, before coming to England to study medicine. However, the urge to write caused him to neglect his studies and before long they had been abandoned altogether. The sea featured in his work almost from the start, and in 1926 he described the voyage he and his wife made for their honeymoon in a dinghy called the Annie Marble.
The first Homblower story, The Happy Return appeared in 1937 and with success following success Forester was attracted to Hollywood. There he scored another major hit with the film based on his book, The African Queen, which appeared in 1952 starring the inimitable Humphrey Bogart.
A number of his short stories likewise took their inspiration from the sea, the most notable being 'The Turn of the Tide' (1960). It is a grim little mystery, and like the sea itself there is something almost inevitable about what happens in the dramatic climax. For mystery and the sea have always been inextricably entwined - as this collection has clearly shown. And I have little doubt they always will be.
‘What always beats them in the end,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘is how to dispose of the body. But, of course, you know that as well as I do.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade. He had, in fact, been devoting far more thought to what Dr Matthews believed to be this accidental subject of conversation than Dr Matthews could ever guess.
‘As a matter of fact,’ went on Dr Matthews, warming to the subject to which Slade had so tactfully led him, ‘it’s a terribly knotty problem. It’s so difficult, in fact, that I always wonder why anyone is fool enough to commit murder.’
All very well for you, thought Slade, but he did not allow his thoughts to alter his expression. You smug, self-satisfied old ass! You don't know the sort of difficulties a man can be up against.
‘I’ve often thought the same,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ went on Dr Matthews, ‘it’s the body that does it, every time. To use poison calls for special facilities, which are good enough to hang you as soon as suspicion is roused. And that suspicion - well, of course, part of my job is to detect poisoning.
I don’t think anyone can get away with it, nowadays, even with the most dunderheaded general practitioner.’
‘I quite agree with you,’ said Slade. He had no intention of using poison.
‘Well,’ went on Dr Matthews, developing his logical argument, ‘if you rule out poison, you rule out the chance of getting the body disposed of under the impression that the victim died a natural death. The only other way, if a man cares to, stand the racket of having the body to give evidence against him, is to fake things to look like suicide. But you know, and I know, that it just can’t be done.
The mere fact of suicide calls for a close examination, and no one has ever been able to fix things so well as to get away with it. You’re a lawyer. You’ve probably read a lot of reports on trials where the murderer has tried it on. And you know what’s happened to them.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade.
He certainly had given a great deal of consideration to the matter. It was only after long thought that he had, finally, put aside the notion of disposing of young Spalding and concealing his guilt by a sham suicide.
‘That brings us to where we started, then,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘The only other thing left is to try and conceal the body. And that’s more difficult still.’
‘Yes,’ said Slade. But he had a perfect plan for disposing of the body.
‘A human body,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘is a most difficult thing to get rid of. That chap Oscar Wilde, in that book of his -Dorian Gray, isn’t it? - gets rid of one by the use of chemicals. Well, I’m a chemist as well as a doctor, and I wouldn’t like the job. ’
‘No?’ said Slade, politely.
Dr Matthews was not nearly as clever a man as himself, he thought.
‘There’s altogether too much of it,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘It’s heavy, and it’s bulky, and it’s bound to undergo corruption. Think of all those poor devils who’ve tried it. Bodies in trunks, and bodies in coal-cellars, and bodies in chicken-runs. You can’t hide the thing, try as you will.’
Can't I? That's all you know, thought Slade, but aloud he said: ‘You’re quite right. I’ve never thought about it before.’
‘Of course, you haven’t,’ agreed Dr Matthews. ‘Sensible people don’t, unless it’s an incident of their profession, as in my case.’
‘And yet, you know,’ he went on, meditatively, ‘there’s one decided advantage about getting rid of the body altogether. You’re much safer, then. It’s a point which ought to interest you, as a lawyer, more than me. It’s rather an obscure point of law, but I fancy there are very definite rulings on it. You know what I’m referring to?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Slade, genuinely puzzled.
‘You can’t have a trial for murder unless you can prove there’s a victim,’ said Dr Matthews. ‘There’s got to be a carpus delicti, as you lawyers say in your horrible dog-La tin. A corpse, in other words, even if it’s only a bit of one, like that which hanged Crippen. No corpse, no trial. I think that’s good law, isn’t it?’
‘By Jove, you’re right!’ said Slade. ‘I wonder why that hadn’t occurred to me before?’
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he regretted having said them. He did his best to make his face immobile again; he was afraid lest his expression might have hinted at his pleasure in discovering another very reassuring factor in this problem of killing young Spalding. But Dr Matthews had noticed nothing.
‘Well, as I said, people only think about these things if they’re incidental to their profession,’ he said. ‘And, all the same, it’s only a theoretical piece of law. The entire destruction of a body is practically impossible. But, I suppose, if a man could achieve it, he would be all right. However strong the suspicion was against him, the police couldn’t get him without a corpse. There might be a story in that, Slade, if you or I were writers.’
‘Yes,’ assented Slade, and laughed harshly.
There never would be any story about the killing of young Spalding, the insolent pup.
‘Well,’ said Dr Matthews, ‘we’ve had a pretty gruesome conversation, haven’t we? And I seem to have done all the talking, somehow. That’s the result, I suppose, Slade, of the very excellent dinner you gave me. I’d better push off now. Not that the weather is very inviting.’
Nor was it. As Slade saw Dr Matthews into his car, the rain was driving down in a real winter storm, and there was a bitter wind blowing.
‘Shouldn’t be surprised if this turned to snow before morning,’ were Dr Matthews’s last words before he drove off.
Slade was glad it was such a tempestuous night. It meant that, more certainly than ever, there would be no one out in the lanes, no one out on the sands when he disposed of young Spalding’s body.
Back in his drawing-room Slade looked at the clock. There was still an hour to spare; he could spend it making sure that his plans were all correct.
He looked up the tide tables. Yes, that was right enough. Spring tides. The lowest of low water on the sands. There was not so much luck about that. Young Spalding came back on the midnight train every Wednesday night, and it was not surprising that, sooner or later, the Wednesday night would coincide with a Spring tide. But it was lucky that this particular Wednesday night should be one of tempest; luckier still that low water should be at one-thirty, the best time for him.