‘Camilla was a very foolish girl,’ said Miranda sadly, when the visitor had been admitted to the flat and was settled in an armchair.
‘But her foolishness did not include being foolish enough to bathe on an outgoing tide,’ said Adrian. ‘Our friend Colin Palgrave tried it once and had great difficulty in getting back to the shore and Colin is a powerful swimmer. No, poor little Camilla died because somebody drowned her. According to the medical evidence given at the inquest, she was not a virgin. I think, therefore, that she was raped by one of the men she was in the habit of picking up, and then drowned by him so that she should not tell the tale. My main reason for wanting an enquiry, Dame Beatrice, is so that some other young girl shall not suffer the same fate at the hands of this monster. Such creatures don’t stop at a solitary victim. One has only to read the papers.’
‘As I understand the situation, proof of murder is going to be very difficult to come by,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘unless, also as you say, the person tries again.’
‘The person? You mean the man.’
‘Not necessarily. I admit that if murder has indeed been committed, a man is the more probable suspect, but I prefer to keep an open mind. Murder by a jealous wife or fiancée is by no means unknown. You see, if you are right and murder has been committed, the likeliest thing is that Miss Hoveton St John.was not drowned on an outgoing tide at all, but when the sea, as such, was perfectly safe for a swimmer. I am going on the assumption, at present, that you are right; that murder has been committed. If so, I think the body was left in the sea for the tide to turn and carry it away. If this was so, the murderer must have hoped that it would fetch up at some point on the coast a long way from Saltacres village.’
‘But that,’ said Miranda, ‘could involve Colin Palgrave. There is no doubt he went swimming with Camilla on the night she failed to return to the cottage.’
‘But she did return to the cottage,’ said Adrian. ‘She came back to collect her suitcase.’
‘We don’t know that she did. I think it far more likely that she went back to the cottage while the rest of us were with Colin at the pub and took it away then.’
‘I can’t understand what he was doing to have to go upstairs and downstairs at all. If he came back to collect his things, well, they were all in the parlour, where he had always slept until Morag and Cupar turned up,’ said Adrian.
‘He may have wanted to change his clothes without disturbing Morag.’
‘Morag wasn’t there, and he wouldn’t have bothered about Cupar.’
‘Do we know Morag wasn’t there? – Oh, yes, of course we do. I heard her close the front door when she came back from her stroll, and that was some time after I’d seen Colin leaving.’
‘How long a time?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘I couldn’t say. I’d gone back to bed and I suppose I had gone to sleep. I don’t think there could have been much of an interval, though.’
‘Did Mrs Lowson know you had heard her come in?’
‘I don’t suppose so. I thought it might have been Colin back again – he had a key—’
‘He wouldn’t have needed it,’ said Adrian. ‘He told me, when I went over to Saltacres to see him after – after it happened – that he had not closed the front door behind him for fear of waking us up.’
‘You thought it might have been Mr Palgrave come back,’ said Dame Beatrice to Miranda. ‘What made you conclude that it was Mrs Lowson?’
‘First, because she closed the front door with quite a bang, whereas Colin had been very quiet, and, second, because I went to the top of the stairs and heard them – Morag and Cupar – talking. He said she had been out a long time and she said she had walked to the windmill to see it by moonlight. That was all I heard before I went back to bed.’
‘Where would Mr Palgrave have gone when he went upstairs?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, into Camilla’s room.’
‘Which means that he knew she was not likely to come back, do you mean?’
‘He certainly wouldn’t have gone in if he’d known she was likely to find him there,’ said Adrian. ‘The wretched – sorry! – the girl absolutely haunted the poor chap – pursued him, don’t you know. He was scared to death of her. I can’t think why he went for that bathe.’
‘However, it seems that he did and that they walked towards the sea together that night. The moon is the goddess of maidens. It is also apt to be a powerful aphrodisiac,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Oh, I expect they only went for a swim,’ said Miranda. ‘Colin must have found it very uncomfortable if he tried to sleep in his car.’
‘I think I had better have a word with Mrs Lowson,’ said Dame Beatrice.
From Adrian’s description of its situation, the cottage at Saltacres was easy enough to find and Morag was in. Dame Beatrice produced her official card.
‘Oh, yes, come in,’ said Morag. ‘I think you have met my husband before. He will be back shortly. He has just gone into the village to get some fishing-tackle. Please sit down, Dame Beatrice. Adrian Kirby told us that he would try to get in touch with you. It is good of you to take an interest, but I don’t see that there is anything anybody can do. The verdict at the inquest was quite clear and the police were satisfied with it. I know what the Kirbys think, but, after all, even the most sensible girls do foolish things at times, and I would not have called Camilla St John a sensible girl.’
‘No?’ said Dame Beatrice, stemming the flow of prattle and wondering why Morag was so nervous. ‘Tell me what you know of her. Had you a long acquaintance with her?’
‘No, indeed. She was here when we arrived, but I had never met her before and my husband and I had been here no time at all before she – before it happened.’
‘Women size one another up very quickly. What did you make of her?’
‘Nothing much, though I was told that she was man-mad. That sort always run into trouble sooner or later.’
‘To put it bluntly, Mrs Lowson, I gather that you do not entirely dismiss what I take to be Mr Kirby’s opinion.’
‘That she was murdered? Oh, I can’t believe that! The most I would say is that she met somebody the rest of us did not know, went swimming with him and that he dared her or enticed her into swimming when the tide was going out, a thing which, left to herself, she never would have done.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, obviously she got into difficulties and when the man found that he couldn’t save her, I think he panicked and sheered off.’
‘I see. What I find difficult to understand is why either of them bathed on an outgoing tide at all. Miss Hoveton St John knew the dangers and one would think that she could have convinced the man of them.’
‘Girls are very silly where men are concerned, and Camilla, from what I saw of her, would have risked her life to get hold of one. Oh, here comes Cupar,’ said Morag, obviously relieved.
Cupar Lowson was red-haired, rubicund, the round-faced, cherubic type to which some Lowland Scots belong. He came from Fife, he had told Dame Beatrice when they met after one of her lectures, but she decided that, far back, one of his ancestors had been numbered among the marauding Danes who had harried Northumbria and may have moved over the Border later in history.
He greeted Dame Beatrice with the utmost cordiality and reminded her that they had met in Edinburgh.
‘I remember being particularly impressed by your theories as to the psychological reasons for infanticide,’ he said pleasantly.
‘Including infants of just under twenty-one years of age?’ asked Dame Beatrice.