‘Did your son ever show any sign of intending to meet Miss St John again?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when they were in the car. Mrs Hamilton laughed.
‘I think the bout of sea-sickness would have given romance a mortal blow,’ she said. ‘At any rate, he never did meet her again unless he slipped out after we had gone to bed, but, if he had done that, I should have heard the sound of the car. I am a very indifferent sleeper. He would hardly have walked over to Saltacres, where she informed us she had a holiday cottage. It is over thirty miles from here.’
‘Your yacht?’
‘At night? And without his father to help him? Impossible, I would think. Rounding the Point is a tricky operation, and my son is still a novice at sailing.’ She paused and then said: ‘I am not sure I like your questions very much, Dame Beatrice. Is there something behind them?’
‘I appreciate your feelings. The questions are only to clear the air. You see, Mrs Hamilton, I have been briefed to enquire into what I am now quite convinced was a case not of accident or suicide, but of murder.’
‘So my son has indicated, and I refuse to be associated with anything so dreadful.’
‘I was obliged to ask the questions. You have answered them.’
‘All the same —’
‘Please do not distress yourself. I have met your son, remember. All I have done is to clear him out of the way. To tell you the truth, this is just as likely – I am beginning to think more likely – to have been a jealous woman’s crime. It need not concern a man.’
‘In that case, you might as well suspect me as suspect my son!’
‘Oh, I do, and to exactly the same extent,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her crocodile grin. ‘I do not suspect either of you of having had more than a few hours’ completely innocent acquaintance with Miss St John.’
‘But, Dame Beatrice, you will have to tell me more than that!’
‘Yes, of course I shall. Miss St John’s luggage disappeared from the cottage at which she was staying, and the police have been looking for it. It was found by a beachcomber. He was searching the beach and the sand-dunes at Saltacres, as was his custom, when he came upon the suitcase partly buried in the sand. He impounded it, that is all.’
‘But what was it doing there?’
‘My theory, which, I may add, the police do not wholly accept, is that the murderer hoped to hide it in order to give the impression that the girl herself had taken it out of the cottage and was not intending to return. I think he may have hoped, also, that if the body turned up again, it would have been in the sea and among the sea-creatures so long that it would be unrecognisable.’
‘That sounds to me like someone who had no knowledge of how the tides run in these parts. Such a person is unlikely to have been a yachtsman, so my family is in the clear, I suppose, simply because of that.’
‘Mrs Hamilton, you must not allow me to offend you. The discovery of the girl’s suitcase in the place where it was found convinces me that I am investigating a case of murder. Any help which I can get from anybody who met Camilla St John may turn out to be the pivot on which the whole case turns.’
‘My son tells me that you do a lot of this kind of work.’
‘Sometimes it fits in with my commitments to the Home Office; sometimes, as in this instance, it is simply because of a desire to find out the truth. One more question?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Are you certain you saw the girl meet and go off with a man in a car?’
‘Oh, yes, I am perfectly certain. When we moored after our trip to the bird sanctuary we landed the girl and then I remembered that I had to call for some food I had ordered from the Chinese take-away shop. I had the girl in my sights – she did not look round and, in any case, I had neither the wish nor the intention to follow her. There was a short cut through the public car park. I took it and saw her get into a car in which a man was already sitting.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Except that he was bearded, no.’
A bearded man might as well be Adrian Kirby as anybody else, Dame Beatrice thought. In any case, Camilla had arrived safely back in Saltacres that night. There seemed nothing more to be gained by enquiries at Stack Ferry or from the Hamiltons.
CHAPTER 12
PALGRAVE AGAIN
‘ “Right, as usual,” said the Duchess.
“What a clear way you have of putting things!” ’
Lewis Carroll
« ^ »
Apart from impounding the suitcase and testing it for fingerprints, the police took no action except to point out to the Old Mole that finders were not always entitled to be keepers. They checked the fingerprints against those of the old beachcomber and found, most unsurprisingly, that they tallied. There were other prints, legible enough, but not able to be checked because they were not on record and as Adrian, Miranda, Palgrave and any number of unknown people could have handled the suitcase quite legitimately, there was nothing to be gained from the prints.
Dame Beatrice saw the Inspector again before she left Stack Ferry, but visited no other of the acquaintances she and George had made either there or at Saltacres. The Lowsons, she knew, had concluded their holiday before Dame Beatrice left her hotel for her home and then London. What she felt might be a crucial interview was yet to come, and it was not with them.
She returned to the Stone House in Hampshire, dealt again with correspondence and then put through a telephone call to Adrian’s flat. He gave her Palgrave’s number.
‘I wanted to keep in touch with him,’ he said. ‘Have you made any progress, I wonder, with you know what?’
‘Very little. I am being forced to conclude that we may have to accept the verdict.’
‘But you yourself? What do you think?’
‘The same as you do, but the evidence is not there. When I have visited Mr Palgrave I will come and talk to you and see whether you have any suggestions to offer.’
Palgrave, she realised, was likely to be still on school holiday and might not be at home, but she rang his number hopefully and found that he was in. He was not best pleased at being disturbed.
‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘I’m terribly busy.’
‘I am the Home Office psychiatrist. My name is Bradley.’
‘Oh, yes? Are you one of the bees in Adrian Kirby’s bonnet?’
‘I am the queen bee, Mr Palgrave. Will you see me?’
‘I suppose so, but I’m up to my eyes in work. I’m writing a book. Can you manage half past two any day this week? I generally take a short break after lunch, so that’s my best time.’
‘Half past two on Wednesday, then. Thank you so much. Goodbye.’
‘Uncouth cub!’ said Ferdinand, who was visiting his mother again and who, at her suggestion, had been listening on the extension.
‘No, no. I expect he is very busy if he is writing a book,’ she said. ‘I shall not keep him long. All I want from him is an exact account of how he spent the evening on which the girl appears to have left the cottage for good, either with or without her suitcase.’
Palgrave, who, in spite of the tone he had employed over the telephone, appeared to be well-mannered, greeted her courteously.
‘Adrian told me you were looking into this rotten affair,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re wasting your time. Camilla did a damn’ silly thing and got drowned. There’s nothing else to be found out.’
‘So I am beginning to believe – not that there is nothing else to find out, but that my enquiry has foundered.’