‘How do you know that?’
‘She said she couldn’t. Adrian couldn’t, either. They never bathed in the sea.’
‘She said she couldn’t? You are singularly trusting, Mr Palgrave. What did Mrs Kirby think about Miss St John?’
‘Just that she was a thundering little nuisance, that’s all.’
‘You said that you had a difference of opinion with Miss St John when she borrowed your car without permission and went to Stack Ferry in it.’
‘She fully deserved the ticking-off I gave her.’
‘She took Mr Kirby with her on this jaunt?’
‘She took good care to lose him as soon as they got to Stack Ferry, I expect. I bet she only took him with her so that I shouldn’t blow my top about the car. She was mistaken. I did blow my top. Of course, if Adrian had known she had snitched the car without permission, he would never have gone with her. I’m certain of that. Adrian is a very decent chap, one of the best. He can be a bit tedious at times – you know – tiresomely informative and all that, but —’
‘We wander from the point, Mr Palgrave.’
‘Which is, I take it, that I can’t prove I did not drown Camilla before I went back that night and changed my clothes. One person I can definitely swear was in the cottage at the same time as I was, because I actually saw him asleep in the parlour, and that’s Lowson.’
‘Ah, yes. You left Miss St John in the sea —’
‘Yes, and swimming about like a little fish.’
‘I was not suggesting anything else. You returned to the cottage. How did you say you got in?’
‘I had a key, but when I had changed and shaved and gone out again, I remember that I did not close the door behind me for fear of waking Lowson.’
‘So you did not wake him when you entered the cottage?’
‘Apparently not. Surprising, in a way, because I had to hunt around for my suitcase. They’d moved it from where I’d left it. I think I told you that. I had to find it before I could change my clothes, of course.’
‘How long did all this take you?’
‘Half an hour or so. Yes, quite that.’
‘And Miss St John did not return?’
‘Not while I was there.’
‘And Mrs Lowson?’
‘Oh, I see! Now that I remember, she wasn’t there. I expect she was out enjoying the moonlight. She used to say it made her fey. Highland blood, you know.’
‘Miss St John’s suitcase was found half buried in a sand-dune, and I cannot believe that she herself took it there and hid it.’
‘That does seem a bit odd, unless she had hidden it there earlier, before we bathed. She would have had plenty of time while we were all at the pub that evening.’
‘Not a new suggestion, but why should she do such a thing?’
‘Well, if she’d decided to flit when she knew the Lowsons were going to stay, and she had no place to leave a suitcase, I suppose she might have carried it down to the dunes, although it doesn’t seem very likely unless she was expecting somebody to pick her up in a dinghy, but, even so, hardly at night.’
‘I wonder whether Miss St John had a similar reason to your own for vacating the cottage?’
‘How do you mean, Dame Beatrice?’
‘That she had known the Lowsons – or one of them – before, and did not welcome them as house-mates.’
‘I think she was simply planning to go on a toot with some bloke. Ever so much more likely, in my opinion, and I knew her, whereas you did not.’
‘How right you are!’
‘But the suitcase remains a mystery.’
‘The person who buried it (and so inadequately!) remains a mystery.’
‘Is it just because of the suitcase that you talk about a murderer?’
‘Oh, dear me, no! Do you think Miss St John would have bathed in deep water on an outgoing tide?’
‘No, I don’t. What’s more, on that particular evening the tide was pretty high, as I said, but it wasn’t nearly on the turn when I left her. It could have had as much as an hour to run before there was slack water and then the ebb. Even Camilla wouldn’t have stayed in as long as that.’
‘The murderer can hardly have been a local person. He or she thought, no doubt, that the ebb would carry the body right out to sea, not knowing that, at Saltacres, what the sea removes it returns, sooner or later, to very much the same place. Did the Lowsons swim?’
‘Oh, not that day, I’m sure. I don’t know about any other day, but they’d only come down that same afternoon. I found them there when I got back after dining in Stack Ferry.’
‘And you saw nobody on the marshes or the shore that night except your companion, Miss St John?’
‘I thought I had answered that. I saw nobody until I was back in my car and was ready to drive off. Then I thought I saw somebody wearing white, but the thing was quite a long way off.’
‘All the same, by moonlight it is still possible to recognise a figure, if not a face.’
‘I was mistaken in what I thought. The person I thought it might have been was no longer wearing white that evening. All I saw was marsh mist.’
Dame Beatrice did not press the point.
CHAPTER 13
INTERIM
‘Hence! home, you idle creatures,
get you home: Is this a holiday?’
William Shakespeare
« ^ »
When Dame Beatrice returned to her home it was to find her secretary there. She greeted Laura warmly, but added: ‘I did not expect you back so soon.’
‘Oh, Gavin was called upon at short notice to attend an Interpol conference in West Germany. It seemed pointless to stay on without him, so here I am, filled with the London ozone of lead poisoning and petrol fumes, and with a heart for any fate, as the Master of English Prose so often said. You didn’t tell me much about it in your letters, but I gather you’ve been busy on a case of murder.’
‘That it is a case of murder has not been proved. There is every likelihood that it never will be proved.’ She gave Laura a brief but sufficient account of her activities concerning the death of Camilla Hoveton St John.
‘So this Palgrave mentioned blackmail, did he?’ said Laura. ‘He’s a schoolmaster, you say – Caesar’s wife, in other words. Wonder whether the girl had anything to go on?’
‘Before I left him we discussed the matter. He did not believe the girl would have carried out her threat and he assured me that there was nothing in her insinuations and that she withdrew them on the plea that she had been joking. Apparently he threatened her that his union would sue her for defamation of character.’
‘Yes, well, it’s not the sort of joke a man who teaches in a mixed comprehensive, where the kids stay on until they’re seventeen or eighteen, would find very funny. I think, on the face of it, that he’s your murderer.’
‘He may be the chief, but he is not the only suspect. The girl seems to have involved herself with other men while she was living in the cottage. So far as Mr Palgrave is concerned, I gave him every chance to tell me some easy lies, but he did not avail himself of the opportunity.’
‘Oh, yes? Clever enough to see the snares you were laying, perhaps.’
‘Yes, but it must have been a temptation to take an obvious way out. He must know that he is the chief suspect, so I gave him the opportunity of saying that he was not the only member of the cottage party who was out of the house that night. He did not take advantage of this. He agreed that Mrs Lowson was out walking, but he was compelled to admit this as others, of course, can testify to it. Besides, on the face of it, she appears to be the last person to have needed to lay violent hands upon Miss St John, since she had met her for the first time that day.’