‘Schoolmastering is what you make of it,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The better the author, the worse the schoolmaster, perhaps.’
‘Then Palgrave wasn’t too bad a schoolmaster,’ said the literary agent. Dame Beatrice clicked her tongue and Peterhead laughed, but they both came back to the matter in hand when she said:
‘Well, perhaps you will mark this letter in some way so that you will know it again when I return it. I will give you a receipt for it, of course. There is one other small matter. The police have found a receipted bill from a typewriting agency for a top copy and two carbon copies of Palgrave’s book. There is also a receipted bill for two photo copies. We think we can account for all of these. Only one item seems to be unaccounted for. We have not found Palgrave’s own manuscript or typescript from which the other copies must have been made.’
‘Wouldn’t he have kept it by him?’
‘Apparently not. We can trace the other copies. He kept one, two of his friends have theirs and one came to me, but of the original copy there is no sign.’
‘In a safe deposit somewhere?’
‘I hope not. If it is, my theories may be useless. One other point, and I daresay it is not of the least importance: Palgrave seems to have typed all his letters to you. Is that not so?’
‘Yes, indeed it is. Like the one in your hand, all his letters to us were in typescript apart from the signature.’
‘But his novel was typed by an agency, yet he himself had a typewriter.’
‘Oh, that’s not unusual. Some of our authors like to send in a professional-looking copy and others shy away from the labour of making a fresh draft of a whole novel when they have finished the book. There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that Palgrave went to an agency. For one thing, a lot of people hate the fiddling business of dealing with carbons. I suppose it is a bit of a nuisance.’
‘Thank you, but that does not clear up my small point. I feel he is unlikely to have destroyed his own typescript. It must be somewhere, but we have not found it. Ah, well, now to get this signature examined.’
The tests took a little time, but the result of them justified her theories. Two handwriting experts who often found themselves on opposite sides in trials for forgery were for once in positive agreement. The evidence afforded by a comparison of the agents’ letter with the other letters supplied to Dame Beatrice was equally satisfactory. The signature on the withdrawal letter was not by the same hand as the signatures on three letters which had been sent to the publishers, neither had this key letter which forbade publication of the novel been typed on the machine the police had found in Palgrave’s lodgings.
‘So now,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura, ‘to the telephone to get the police to track down the missing copy.’
‘As it’s the original draft which is missing,’ said Laura when Dame Beatrice had telephoned, ‘it seems to me it wouldn’t hurt to have me go along to that typing bureau – the police will have found the address among Palgrave’s things – and find out whether perhaps they know what happened to the original script. They must have had it to make the copies he ordered.’
‘Oh, I have told the police that I have no doubt as to who has the original draft. Mrs Lowson has it. There is every reason why she should have been sent that special very personal copy of the novel. I only hope she enjoyed reading it more than we did.’
‘Would she have recognised herself?’
‘There’s the telephone!’ said Dame Beatrice. The call was from Adrian Kirby. The police had just left his flat. They had asked for the Lowsons’ Lancashire address. He had had no option but to disclose it. He hoped he had done right. He had been alone in the flat because Miranda was at the art school.
Dame Beatrice, to whom Laura had handed the receiver, reassured him. She knew why the police wanted to get in touch with the Lowsons, she said. They were trying to trace a copy of Palgrave’s book. Somebody who must have read it had been attempting to suppress it.
‘But that implicates Miranda and me,’ said Adrian.
‘And Laura Gavin and my son and myself, not to mention a fellow teacher to whom Mr Palgrave had lent a copy, and, of course, anybody who may have been shown a first draft of the novel before it was retyped, or even one of the typists at the agency,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘All the same, I shall ring up the Lowsons and warn them to expect a visit from the police.’
‘I cannot prevent your doing that, but I advise against it.’
‘The Lowsons are our friends and there is little Camilla’s death to consider. Miranda and I have talked and talked about that. One of us who was at the cottage that night must have carried Camilla’s suitcase to the dunes and tried to hide it there so that it would appear that she had gone off with somebody else and left us. It must have been taken out of the cottage after her death, not before. There would have been no need to remove it while she was still alive. It was the act of a guilty person.’
‘Do you think Colin Palgrave was that guilty person?’
‘We wondered, but his own death seems to let him out.’
‘I think,’ said Dame Beatrice, rejoining Laura, ‘that I will go and see the Lowsons myself. It will be interesting to find out which of Mr Palgrave’s private readers saw fit to suppress the book, and as the narrator of the story is supposed to be a doctor the Lowsons may be promising material.’
‘I don’t suppose Dr Lowson himself would bother to read the typescript of a third-rate novel,’ said Laura, ‘but I bet Mrs Lowson has read it.’
CHAPTER 18
THE MUDFLATS, AMPLETIDE SANDS
‘Three corpses lay out on the shining sands,
In the morning gleam as the tide went down.’
Charles Kingsley
« ^
Laura Gavin had never lacked valour; under Dame Beatrice’s tutelage she had learned caution and discretion. When a second call came from Adrian Kirby to say that he had conferred with his wife and they had decided to let the Lowsons know that a visit from the police was impending, Laura informed him that Dame Beatrice was out and she did not know when to expect her back, but that she would deliver his message as soon as Dame Beatrice returned. Then she rang up Pinhurst.
‘Dame Beatrice has gone to Lancashire,’ she said, ‘and I don’t trust those Lowsons.’
As she was the wife of an Assistant Commissioner and therefore, in police opinion, an honorary member of the Force, Pinhurst listened patiently and promised that Dame Beatrice’s safety would be taken care of, and that he would make liaison with the Lancashire lads. Comforted, Laura thanked him and rang off, but in less than an hour he rang her.
‘What is Dame Beatrice’s object in going to see the Lowsons?’ he asked. ‘They can’t be implicated, living where they do. Do you think she has got on to something?’
‘I don’t think so, if you’re talking about Palgrave’s death. She is trying to find out who forged that letter to his agents. She thinks it may be a pointer, that’s all. And, of course, she’s on the track of the original copy. She thinks the Lowsons may have it, as the book is dedicated to M, and Mrs Lowson’s name is Morag and she and Palgrave were once engaged to be married.’
‘Well, we’ve had a go at the Kirbys and at that young schoolmaster who seems to have been given a copy, and the Lowsons are next on our list, but there was nothing actionable in the book. I’ve read it myself, and a bigger lot of claptrap and balderdash I’ve never had to wade through. Apart from the forged letter, we’ve still got plenty on our plate down here. We still don’t know where Palgrave got to on that Friday evening. The locals have checked out all the hotels within miles of where his body was found, but there isn’t a thing. We’ve tried all the people at his school and he certainly did not visit any of them. When he was seen leaving his digs by that neighbour, he had nothing with him but a fairly large briefcase.’