“Miss Priscilla, I—”
“And the views are so fine,” Priscilla went on relentlessly. “From my windows here, I can see everything—the front door, the drive, everything. It’s most interesting. And then, from the Blue Drawing Room, one can see Steep Hill Sands—on a clear day.”
Emmy’s mood of despair turned abruptly to intense excitement. She sat quite still, hardly daring to breathe, lest the stream of chatter should dry up.
“So much coming and going,” Priscilla went on with a little laugh. “Boats and cars and people. Day and night. You’d be surprised the people I’ve seen. Herbert and Sam and Hamish, and that nice Mr. Benson and his wife...there’s a pretty girl who comes sometimes, too, and a tall, fair young man. And then the boats. Priscilla and Mary Jane and Ariadne...Pocahontas and Tideway and Blue Gull... No, not any more. That was when it started. No, not then. Earlier. Much earlier, it started.”
There was a silence. Then, suddenly, Priscilla turned to Emmy. Her eyes were bright, and she clasped her stubby hands together, like a delighted child.
“Mrs. Tibbett,” she said, “I have made up my mind. I like you. I trust you. I am going to tell you.” Emmy waited, breathless. Priscilla leant forward. “You see,” she said, “it was before eleven.”
“What was?”
“Why—”
A light footstep sounded outside in the white marble gallery, and a door opened quietly. Neither Emmy nor Priscilla heard it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARY JANE WAS as trim and tidy as ever when Henry and Proudie climbed aboard her. Henry went straight to the bookshelf, ran his finger along the row of volumes, and said, “I thought so. It’s not here.”
“What isn’t?”
“The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss. I,” he added, “am a bloody fool.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir.”
“Colin as good as told me twice that that book was the key to the whole thing,” said Henry moodily. “Voss on Sea Anchors.”
“Sea anchors?” Proudie repeated, bewildered: and added, apologetically, “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir. I’m a fishing man myself. What have sea anchors got to do with it?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Henry helpfully. “Thank goodness, Alastair has a copy aboard Ariadne. Would you like to row over and get it, Inspector, while I have a look around here?”
“Anything you say, sir,” said Proudie, in the tone of one who has given up trying to make sense of the situation. He clambered laboriously out into the cockpit, as Henry turned his attention to Colin’s bunk.
When Proudie got back to Mary Jane, with the little book tucked firmly into his pocket, he found Henry in a state of some excitement.
“I’m prepared to take a bet with you, Inspector Proudie,” he said, “that Colin Street did come back to his boat last
night.”
“How do you work that out?”
“Little things,” said Henry, with satisfaction. “We’ll be able to check them with Miss Petrie later on—but for once, this is classic, story-book detection. Exhibit one: an unwashed mug in the galley, which has clearly contained Alka-Seltzer. Colin was pretty drunk, and he’d almost certainly have taken something for it.”
“He might have taken it earlier on,” objected Proudie.
“No,” said Henry. “I’ve been on a boat long enough to know that one doesn’t leave loose, unwashed crockery about. Everything is washed and stowed away as soon as it’s been used. Then there’s exhibit two—Colin’s bunk. You see that mattress isn’t rectangular; it tapers slightly towards the bows to fit the shape of the bunk, and the daytime cover is tailored to the same shape. Well, it’s been put on the wrong way round. That’s a thing Anne would never do. Then there’s another thing. Anne’s sleeping bag is stowed up in the forepeak, with the sails, while Colin’s is under his bunk. We’ll check with Miss Petrie, but it seems likely to me that they were both normally stowed in the forepeak. It’s drier there. My guess is that Colin came back here, took an Alka-Seltzer, removed his bunk cover, laid out his sleeping bag, and probably climbed into it fully clothed, except for his shoes. In the state he was in, he must have gone out like a light, and almost certainly he wouldn’t have woken up if anyone came aboard—especially as he was expecting Anne to come and get her sleeping bag, so that the sound of a dinghy alongside wouldn’t have worried him. His murderer got aboard, knocked Colin out, probably with the dinghy oar, and heaved him into the water. Then he—or even possibly she—cast off Mary Jane’s dinghy, capsized it, and left it to drift upriver on the tide, meanwhile hastily tidying the cabin to make it look as though Colin had never been back aboard. It was obviously somebody who doesn’t know the boat too well, or they wouldn’t have made those mistakes about the bunk cover and the sleeping bag: but that doesn’t get us far because I don’t suppose anybody here except Anne has actually slept aboard.”
Henry paused for breath, and ran a hand through his sandy hair, so that it stood spikily on end. “Let’s see that book,” he went on. “And by the way, can you read Tide Tables?”
“I can, sir,” said Proudie. “Most people can, in these parts.”
“Then look up the tides for next weekend,” said Henry, “while I wade through this.”
For a few minutes there was silence in the small cabin. Proudie ruffled the pages of the Nautical Almanack, muttering to himself about Summer Time and variations on High Water Dover. Henry immersed himself in the chronicles of Captain Voss. Then Proudie said, “Next Saturday, high water Berrybridge eight four A.M. and eight sixteen P.M. Any use?”
“Not at the moment, but it will be,” said Henry. “Write those times down, like a good chap.”
He went on reading, flipping through the pages, devouring paragraphs whole. Proudie sat on the opposite bunk in silence. Suddenly Henry gave a shout. “We’re getting hot,” he said. “What about this for a chapter heading? ‘History of the Great Treasure—Where is it Hidden?—Prospecting and its Difficulties.’ This is all about how Voss and a friend went hunting hidden treasure in the Cocos Islands.”
“Blimey.” said Proudie, but without emphasis. He was beyond surprise. “Did they find it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got that far.” Henry read on, absorbed. Voss’s simple, graphic prose had caught his imagination, and he felt the liberating exhilaration of following the great nineteenth-century seaman, with all his paradoxical romanticism and tough expertise, on the quest of pirate gold. He turned the page: read a paragraph: reread it with mounting excitement: then said quietly, “Inspector, I’m an even bloodier fool than I thought. It’s so obvious. Listen to this.
“The island was then searched high and low by the crew of the cutter, but nothing was found. Not even traces in the vegetation.
“That no traces could be discovered in the vegetation so soon after the crew of the ‘Mary Dyer’ had left the island is almost impossible to believe... After looking carefully over the foot of the hills and sandspit I came to the conclusion that if I had been the captain of the ‘Mary Dyer’ I should certainly have buried the treasure in the sandspit, for the following reason. The spit is solid sand, and at low water is dry. At high tide, it is submerged to a depth of three feet, and it would have been very little trouble to take a boat-load of the treasure over the spit at high water, dump it overboard and bury it when the tide was out. Then, in about six hours time, when the first tide washed over the spit, the traces would have been entirely obliterated...”
Henry shut the book slowly, and he and Proudie looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Proudie said, “So that’s where the Trigg-Willoughby jewels are. Buried in Steep Hill Sands.”