In such a case, her movements between the time Palgrave had left her, and the time of her death, would have to be traced and accounted for. Dame Beatrice went to the police, produced her credentials and asked for their help.
They were courteous, acknowledged the difficulty and agreed that there was much in what she said. They gave her an account of their own so far unavailing efforts to find the suitcase, and admitted that they themselves were no longer completely satisfied by the findings of the coroner and his jury.
‘We’re keeping the case open, of course, madam, and shall continue to prosecute our enquiries into the whereabouts of the missing suitcase, but that’s about all we can do. If this Mr Palgrave, or the married couple he was staying with, know anything about it, they are not telling us. If she did go off with somebody, well, so far he hasn’t come forward, and, if there is any suspicion of foul play, he isn’t likely to. The chances are that the drowning happened just as the coroner indicated and that the girl herself deposited the suitcase earlier, intending to leave the cottage anyway when she knew that Mr Palgrave was determined to do so. In that case, the piece of luggage may be in some lock-up cubbyhole at the bus depot, or in a railway station left-luggage office. Without the ticket it’s going to be a long job finding it. If she was going off with a yachtsman – quite a likely thing in these parts – the suitcase could be on somebody’s boat unless the owner got wind-up when he heard of the girl’s death. In that case he may have dumped her bag in the sea and it could be halfway to Holland by now, if it hasn’t disintegrated.’
‘So much for that!’ said Dame Beatrice, and thanked them. She telephoned Laura.
‘Bathed in brilliant moonlight and knew about the tides?’ said that accomplished swimmer. ‘She wouldn’t have risked it. She could have seen whether the sea was coming in or going out, if there was bright moonlight. No marks of violence? You wouldn’t need to inflict any to drown a person in deep water. The kid was murdered. Wish I were with you!’
CHAPTER 8
TWO INTERVIEWS
‘To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the influence of mild-minded melancholy.’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
« ^ »
More to the point was the local press in the form of a young reporter from the Stack Ferry Gazette and Advertiser. It was this youth’s practice during the summer season to make a weekly round of the hotels in the town in search of possible celebrities who might grant him an interview.
Visiting yachtsmen were his daily prey, so that his chief haunts were the saloon bars of the Stack Ferry pubs and hotels, as well as the bars down by the harbour. He was also not averse to glancing through the current entries in hotel registers when he could cajole the desk clerk (female, of course, and young) to let him take a weekly look at them.
When he saw Dame Beatrice’s signature he lost no time in getting in touch with her. There came a polite tap on her door just as she was ready to go down to lunch on the third morning of her stay and a voice said:
‘The Gazette on the telephone, Dame Beatrice.’
‘And who or what is the Gazette?’
‘The local paper, madam.’
‘Ask him, her or them to call again when I’ve had my lunch. Two-thirty would be a convenient time.’
‘Very good, madam. I’ll let you know when they ring through.’
However, Dame Beatrice did not receive a telephone call, but a visit from the enterprising young man in person. They met in the lounge, which was otherwise deserted at that hour on a fine summer afternoon. He introduced himself, a self-confident but disarming, friendly youth, as Keith Dunlop.
He was accompanied by an older man who carried a camera.
‘I wonder, Dame Beatrice, whether you will be kind enough to grant me an interview for my paper? I expect you get pretty bored with this kind of thing, but we’d be most awfully grateful. We don’t often get people of your eminence staying in the town.’
‘I always beware of flatterers, Mr Dunlop.’
‘But you will let me talk to you, won’t you?’
‘There are conditions attached.’
‘Don’t say I mustn’t quote you.’
‘That was not what I meant. If I do as you wish, will you, in return, do something for me?’
‘Honoured, Dame Beatrice.’
‘Good. I regard that as a promise. Well, what do you want to know?’
‘I’ve dotted down a list of questions. First, would you mind if we took a few photographs?’
‘Warts and all? Oh, very well. I have seen your paper. The photography is excellent and, I hope, reliable.’
‘Reliable?’
‘Not so much touched up and embellished as to render the subjects unrecognisable by those who, for want of a better description (and we could well do with one) are known as the men in the street.’
Dunlop beckoned to the photographer, who was standing just inside the doorway of the lounge, and Dame Beatrice permitted herself to be photographed.
Dunlop’s attendant sprite, having secured his picture, or, rather, his half-dozen pictures taken from several angles and at varying distances, then took himself and his camera away, since the interview itself held no interest for him. His last sitters had been a well-known pop group, and, after them, a psychiatrist, however eminent, was very small beer. Less well-informed than Keith Dunlop, he did not know that she was also a famous criminologist, or his views about her importance might have been different. However, he was not to be blamed. Her name seldom appeared in the newspapers as a solver of murder mysteries. Like some other famous sleuths, she preferred to leave all the credit to the police, partly, of course, for her own safety. ‘Are you making a long stay, Dame Beatrice?‘ asked Dunlop, creasing back a fresh page in his shorthand notebook.
‘I hardly think so. I shall be here today and tomorrow. After that I may return to London for a time.’
‘I thought – I looked you up, of course – I thought there was an address in Hampshire.’
‘Mr Dunlop, I said I thought you could help me. I know the press are discreet. I have had reason many times to put my faith in their promises. If I tell you the reason I am here, will you undertake that not a word of it will appear openly, or by inference, innuendo, speculation or veiled suggestion, in your paper until I say the word?’
‘That drowning fatality at Saltacres? I covered that, you know.’
‘You are an extremely astute young man. Will you give me your promise?’
‘Of course. It sounds as though you don’t believe it was an accident.’
‘So far, I have no idea whether it was an accident or not. I have merely been asked to make some enquiries. But, first, your questions.’
The interview followed the usual course and Dame Beatrice answered in the usual stereotyped fashion until Dunlop had worked through his list of basic questions and dotted down his last few shorthand notes.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said, ‘that should work up into something worth while. We’ll Special Feature it, with photograph, so it won’t be out until next week, I’m afraid, and you may not still be here.’
‘I am not sure. As I told you, it is very doubtful. My plans depend upon circumstances which are not under my control and the importance or otherwise of which I cannot, at the moment, estimate.’
‘May I send a copy of the Gazette to your home address, then, when my article comes out?’
‘It would be most kind of you.’
‘The Stone House, Wandles Parva, Hampshire, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that is the address, although, again as I told you, when I leave here I may be in London for a bit. But the Stone House will always find me.’