Once again, he made the effort of speech. “And...and what...did he...?”
“He got away,” said Emmy. “In his boat. When he saw Alastair coming, he panicked and ran for it. Alastair says he was heading out to sea.”
Henry said, “Thank Alastair for me.”
Emmy said, “I’ve already done that.”
Henry smiled at her with difficulty. Then he murmured, “Poor Sir Simon. One can’t help...”
And then he fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT RATED A SMALL paragraph in most of the national dailies the next morning. “Baronet lost at sea. Tragic mishap to motor yacht.” The local press did better, with large photographs of Sir Simon, of Berry Hall, and of the wreck of Priscilla, which had been washed ashore near the mouth of the Orwell. Current gossip maintained that Sir Simon, in an excess of grief at his sister’s death, had deliberately set out in impossible weather conditions, thus virtually committing suicide. The sadness and sympathy of Berrybridge were sincere.
In Hamish’s cottage, the members of the Fleet were solemnly assembled. Henry, recovered but still shaken, held the place of honour in a large armchair near the fire. Emmy sat at his feet, on the hearthrug. Hamish and Anne occupied the sofa, while Alastair shared the other armchair with Rosemary by the simple expedient of sitting her firmly on his knee.
“I suppose I behaved very foolishly,” said Henry, rubbing the back of his neck with a freckled hand.
There was a chorus of dissent.
“Oh, but I did. It was lunacy, and I bloody nearly got killed, and serve me right, too. If it hadn’t been for Alastair—”
“I only did what you asked me to do,” said Alastair, “and pretty inefficiently at that. I didn’t realize how long it would take me to get to you after I heard your whistle. Thank God I was in time. You were out cold, face downwards in the water. That’s why I let him get away. I felt I had to—”
Henry nodded. “It was just as well,” he said. “Heaven knows if I could have proved anything against him, other than assault and battery against me.”
“But Henry, when did you realize that it was Sir Simon who—” Anne began.
“I’d been growing more and more certain all last week,” said Henry. “I should have tumbled to it sooner. But it was an accumulation of small things that led me to it—and I may say that I wasn’t helped by the deliberately confusing attitude of some members of the Fleet.”
Anne blushed. “Well may you blush, young woman,” Henry went on, severely. He looked at Hamish. “I take it that you two are going to get married.”
“Yes,” said Hamish. He took Anne’s hand in his huge one.
“I should have realized sooner,” said Henry to Anne, “that it’s a matter of common human nature that since every man in sight, bar one, was more or less in love with you, you would automatically fall for that one exception. You’ve been in love with Hamish all along, haven’t you?”
Anne nodded mutely. Hamish looked at her with incredulity. “Is that true?” he demanded.
“Of course it is, you big fool,” said Anne.
“So,” Henry went on, “you behaved very badly. You flirted with every man in sight, in a desperate attempt to make Hamish jealous. In fact, I don’t suppose he even noticed.” Hamish grinned. “You even got yourself engaged to poor Colin, though I’m sure you never had the faintest intention of marrying him. As for Pete—you may have been momentarily infatuated with him, but that soon faded. You carried on your affair with him simply because it gave you an entree to this house, so that you could be near—”
“Henry, can’t you spare us this?” Hamish asked.
“Let him say it,” said Anne quietly. “It’s all true, darling. I’m so ashamed.”
“You’re a minx,” said Henry, not unkindly. “You’re not really ashamed at all. You enjoyed it. But you went through a bad time after Pete was killed. You had insisted on David rowing you ashore that day, because you thought you could use your influence with Pete to make him give Hamish the money for his boat. David went off to look for Pete, and came back and said he hadn’t been able to find him. But he forgot that sound carries strangely in fog. While you were sitting there in the dinghy, you heard what David heard—Hamish and Pete quarrelling. Afterwards, you came to the same conclusion that David did—that Hamish had accidentally killed his uncle. That’s why you lied to me and tried to vamp me and all the rest of it.”
Emmy looked up sharply. She caught Rosemary’s eye, and they both smiled.
“That night on Pocahontas,” Henry continued, “the night Colin was killed, I think you finally confessed to David how you felt about Hamish. That’s why David behaved even more oddly than usual after that. Why he went off sailing by himself and—well, never mind. I’m sorry for David, but I’m glad you told him the truth at last. So much for you.
“Then Rosemary was obstructive, too. David had told her that he was ashore the day of Pete’s death. She knew that David hated Pete, and she was afraid he might have had something to do with his death. So, out of...loyalty...she tried to put me off the scent. As for Hamish, he knew how black things would look for him if anyone suspected foul play. You all knew perfectly well that there was something very strange about the way Pete died—but for one reason or another you all decided not to pry into the matter. All of you except Colin, that is.”
“This still doesn’t explain how you cottoned onto Sir Simon,” said Alastair. “The other night in the Bush, you asked me some questions, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what—”
“I asked you,” said Henry, “two things. I asked you if you were certain that the cushions in Priscilla were damp when yo
u brought Pete’s body into the Berry Hall boathouse. And I asked you if you were prepared to swear that Pete was flying his racing burgee that day.”
“Yes, but—”
“That day I went out in Sir Simon’s boat,” said Henry, “it had been pouring with rain and everything was damp and clammy. But Priscilla had a waterproof cover, and the cushions were perfectly dry. Sir Simon swore that the boat hadn’t been out on the day Pete died. But obviously, she had. That was the first thing that made me suspicious. The first lie. Mind you, at that stage I didn’t suspect Sir Simon. He had allegedly been in Ipswich all day. I merely thought that somebody else had used the boat.
“But then a curious thing happened. Sir Simon had told me that he’d left home early that day, and had seen nothing of any of the Fleet boats—or at least, that was the impression he gave: but later on, in The Berry Bush, he went out of his way to remark that he had seen Pete go aground before the fog came down.”
Anne wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t see,” she said. “Had he or hadn’t he? What was the point of—?”
“He hadn’t seen a thing,” said Henry. “His appointment in Ipswich was at nine, so he would have left home before Pete went aground. But, after we’d been to Berry Hall, he was tipped off on the telephone by Bob Calloway that I was a policeman, and he thought he’d better protect himself by pretending that he had seen Pete on the sandbank. You see, he envisaged the possibility that I might find out how he had stolen his sister’s jewels and where they were hidden. That would have been bad enough for him—and it provided him with a strong motive for murder, once we started considering the possibility that Pete might have stumbled on him digging up his hoard in the fog. But supposing he had seen Pete go aground on that very spot. Then nobody would ever believe that Sir Simon would have been fool enough to go out to Steep Hill and start digging so close to a grounded boat. It let him out of any suspicion of murder. Unfortunately for him, he over-embroidered his story. He told me he had been able to pick out Pete’s Royal Harwich burgee through his binoculars. But Pete was flying his white racing flag that day. It seemed such a strange and unnecessary lie that I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. But then there was Priscilla’s cryptic remark to Emmy about something happening before eleven. It suddenly occurred to me that Sir Simon might have come home before eleven that day. Then everything began to fall into place.”