‘I’ll do better than that. I’ll go with you to visit him, if you like.’
‘That would be more than kind.’
The man’s name was Sleach. He lodged with a widow who let rooms down by the Old Quay. This was now a jumble of cottages, most of them derelict. There were also some timber-built, black-tarred warehouses now in use only for storing fishermen’s gear. A rotting duck-punt was pulled up on the stones and mud which formed part of the shore and a decrepit sailing barge, with its mast intact but its timbers beginning to rot away on the starboard side, was moored against the planks which formed a kind of continuous fender against the stonework of the cobbled quay.
‘ “Change and decay in all around I see”,’ murmured Dame Beatrice. Their quarry was not in.
‘That do spend most of his evenings at the pub,’ the landlady informed them.
‘I’m a solicitor,’ said Billington. ‘Have you known him long?’
‘He’s my nephoo.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘That’s not in any money trouble?’
‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s in connection with that body he found on the beach.’
‘I reckon that was a terrible sad thing an’ all. Poor young mawther! But Billy only know what that testify at inquest. That don’t hev further to say.’
‘Surely not, but naturally the relatives are very much upset about the drowning and want as much information as they can get.’
The woman looked with some curiosity at Dame Beatrice. ‘You’ll be grandma, I whoolly think,’ she said. Dame Beatrice inclined a gracious head.
‘She was a wild girl, I’m afraid,’ she observed, but the fish did not rise to this fly.
‘I think,’ said Billington, when they reached the pub, ‘that I’d better go in and winkle him out. By the sound of it, the place is jam-packed. It’s still early in the evening, so he won’t be bottled yet and we may get something out of him which didn’t get said at the inquest.’
The pub was on the New Quay. Here the houses and store places were well built of flint with fairly high-pitched roofs and the pub itself was a pleasant, much altered three-storey building with a low wall around its forecourt and some lath and plaster work around the windows.
Dame Beatrice strolled towards the sea wall. Some tidy little sailing-boats were lying out on the hard, a couple of rowing-boats without their oars lay near them, and a lifebelt hung on a wooden board near by. It was a strangely orderly scene after the decrepitude of the Old Quay and, except for the sociable hubbub from the pub which still came to her ears, exceptionally quiet and deserted.
Billington and his prey soon joined her, each with a pint tankard in his hand.
‘Here’s Mr Sleach, Dame Beatrice. There’s a bench outside the pub. Shall we sit?’ asked Billington, leading the way.
‘Do you live in Saltacres, Mr Sleach?’ Dame Beatrice asked, when they were seated.
‘No. I work in Hull and take my summer fortnight with my auntie. I fare to go home tomorrow.’
‘I am greatly concerned about the death of young Camilla St John. Can you tell me exactly how you came to find her body? I did not know of the inquest until it was too late for me to attend it.’
‘This gentleman tell me he’s a lawyer. No trouble in it for me, is there?’
‘Oh, no. He is merely escorting me and will know all the helpful questions to ask, that’s all.’
‘What I hev to say I said at the inquest.’
‘Yes, I know, but I wasn’t there to hear it. Please begin at the beginning and tell me all you can.’
‘Oh, well, then, I go out early to get the cockles. They make a nice start to a meal with thin bread and butter. The visitors they go for to uncover them with their bare hands, but, being local born, though now I live in Hull, I know a better trick than that, so I take my cockling knife, give one little turn and up come the cockle.’
‘Ah, yes, the expert at work.’
‘Well, I obtain a nice little foo – coupla dozen or more – then I straighten up and shake the cockles – real Creeky Blues – down in my bucket to make more room. Then I spot something lying half in the water and half out. Tide was on the turn, so I say to myself that the last tide brought something in, so I go over and take a look and I find this poor young girl.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘I go on with my cockling as soon as I know there’s nawthen I can do for her. Then when I reckon I get enough for auntie and me with our tea, I go back and tell auntie what I see. Her say to go to pub and ’phone police, so I do that and that’s the lot.’
‘When you had finished your cockling, was the body exactly as you had seen it first?’
‘Well, as to that, how could it be? Tide was on the turn, so I pull the poor thing up above highwater mark soon as I see what it was.’
‘Did you turn your back on it while you went on gathering your cockles?’
‘Times, yes, and times, no. You hev to take the cockles where they fare to be. That don’t grow in rows like turnips or sugar beet.’
‘Did you see any living person on the beach or the dunes?’
‘A fair way off there were other folk getting the cockles.’
‘But they did not come near you or the corpse?’
‘When they go, they go the other way, towards the church.’
‘Was the corpse clothed?’
‘She hev a kind of little bodice that hardly cover her breasts (not that she hev much up there to cover) and a little pair of bathing drawers that hardly cover —’
‘Yes, a bikini. I see. What about the clothes she must have taken off before she bathed?’
‘Oo, I wouldn’ know nawthen about any other garments but those I describe. Now I come to recollect, though, Crowner did ask the gentleman who spoke to knowing the body — ’
‘Mr Kirby?’
‘That’s him.’
‘The coroner asked Mr Kirby about the girl’s clothes?’
‘Yes, that did. The gentleman said the young woman was liable to run straight out of the cottage in her bathers and, when she’d had her dip, that would lie out on the doons and dry off.’
‘What about shoes?’
‘I couldn’t go for to say.’
‘Well, she might have done all that in the sunshine, although I think she would have worn shoes of some sort to cross the marshes,’ said Billington, ‘but at night she surely would have something on over her bikini and have taken a towel with her? It gets chilly at night when there’s no sun to dry you.’
‘I couldn’t speak as to any of that, but if she had any clo’es and a pair of shoes, I reckon she left ’em on the doons out of tide reach and the Old Mole had ’em.’
‘And who is the Old Mole?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.
‘That’s an old mumper live by himself and talk foreign. When he ent mumpin’, that scavenge up and down the place looking for driftwood or empty bottles, or maybe bits of sandwiches and cake left behind by picnickers, or anything else that’s there. Proper old jackdaw. Pick up whatever take his fancy.’
‘Oh, a beachcomber,’ said Billington. ‘And where is he to be found?’
‘That doss down in a shed on the Old Quay.’
‘Oh, a neighbour of yours!’
‘That’s harmless. We pass the time of day.’
‘What, exactly, is a mumper?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘The word is new to me.’
‘Dialect for beggar,’ Billington explained. ‘Why is he called the Old Mole?’ he asked Sleach.
‘On account that purtend to be blind. Carry a white stick, but that’s only to poke about with. Help him in his mumpin’ to let the visitors think he’s blind. Makes them feel sorry for him, if you take my meaning, but that’s an old fraud, that is. Can see as well as you and me, and don’t miss nawthen if there’s anything worth picking up on the beach or among the doons.’