‘Thank you,’ said Mr Perkins. ‘But really – I mean – it’s the lady’s business really. I mean to say – if there’s any sort of hotel hereabouts, I think I’d better – that is to say – er – good-evening.’
He melted unobtrusively out of the shop. Harriet, who had already forgotten his existence, followed the grocer into the back room and watched him with impatience as he put on his spectacles and struggled with the telephone directory.
III
THE EVIDENCE OF THE HOTEL
‘Little and grisly, or bony and big,
White, and clattering, grassy and yellow;
The partners are waiting, so strike up a jig,
Dance and be merry, for Death’s a droll fellow.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Where’s Death and his sweetheart? We want to begin.’
Death’s Jest-Book
Thursday, 18 June
It was a quarter-past five when the grocer announced that Harriet’s call was through. Allowing for stoppages and for going out of her way to the Brennerton Farm, she had covered rather more than four miles of the distance between the Grinders and Wilvercombe in very nearly three hours. True, she had actually walked six miles or more, but she felt that a shocking amount of time had been wasted. Well, she had done her best, but fate had been against her.
‘Hullo!’ she said, wearily.
‘Hullo!’ said an official voice.
‘Is that the Wilvercombe police?’
‘Speaking. Who are you?’
‘I’m speaking from Mr Hearn’s shop at Darley. I want to tell you that this afternoon at about two o’clock I found the dead body of a man lying on the beach near the Grinders.’
‘Oh!’ said the voice. ‘One moment, please. Yes. The dead body of a man at the Grinders. Yes?’
‘He’d got his throat cut,’ said Harriet.
‘Throat cut,’ said the official voice. ‘Yes?’
‘I also found a razor,’ said Harriet.
‘A razor?’ The voice seemed rather pleased, she thought, by this detail. ‘Who is it speaking?’ it went on.
‘My name is Vane, Miss Harriet Vane. I am on a walking-tour, and happened to find him. Can you send someone out to fetch me, or shall I—?’
‘Just a moment. Name of Vane – V-A-N-E – yes. Found at two o’clock, you say. You’re a bit late letting us know, aren’t you?’
Harriet explained that she had had difficulty in getting through to them.
‘I see,’ said the voice. ‘All right, miss, we’ll be sending a car along. You just stay where you are till we come. You’ll have to go along with us and show us the body.’
‘I’m afraid there won’t be any body by now,’ said Harriet. ‘You see, it was down quite close to the sea, on that big rock, you know, and the tide—’
‘We’ll see to that, miss,’ replied the voice, confidently, as though the Nautical Almanack might be expected to conform to police regulations. ‘The car’ll be along in about ten minutes or so.’
The receiver clicked and was silent. Harriet replaced her end of the instrument and stood for a few minutes, hesitating. Then she took the receiver off again.
‘Give me Ludgate 6000 – quick as ever you can. Urgent press call. I must have it within five minutes.’
The operator began to make objections.
‘Listen – that’s the number of the Morning Star. It’s a priority call.’
‘Well,’ said the operator, dubiously, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Harriet waited.
Three minutes passed – four – five – six. Then the bell rang. Harriet snatched the receiver down.
‘Morning Star.’
‘Give me the news-room – quick.’
Buzz – click.
‘Morning Star news-editor.’
Harriet gathered herself together to cram her story into the fewest and most telling words.
‘I am speaking from Darley near Wilvercombe. The dead body of a man was found at two o’clock this afternoon – all right. Ready? – on the coast this afternoon with his throat cut from ear to ear. The discovery was made by Miss Harriet Vane, the well-known detective novelist. . . . Yes, that’s right – the Harriet Vane who was tried for murder two years ago. . . . Yes. . . . The dead man appears to be about twenty years of age – blue eyes – short dark beard – dressed in a dark-blue lounge suit with brown shoes and chamois-leather gloves. . . . A razor was found near the body. . . . Probably suicide. . . . Oh, yes, it might be murder; or call it mysterious circumstances. . . . Yes. . . . Miss Vane, who is on a walking-tour, gathering material for her forthcoming book, The Fountain-Pen Mystery, was obliged to walk for several miles before getting help. . . . No, the police haven’t seen the body yet . . . it’s probably under water by now, but I suppose they’ll get it at low tide. . . . I’ll ring you later. . . . Yes. . . . What? . . . Oh, this is Miss Vane speaking. . . . Yes. . . . No, I’m giving you this exclusively. . . . Well, I suppose it will be all over the place presently, but I’m giving you my story exclusively . . . provided, of course, you give me a good show. . . . Yes, of course. . . . Oh! well, I suppose I shall be staying in Wilvercombe. . . . I don’t know; I’ll ring you up when I know where I’m staying. . . . Right . . . right. . . . Good-bye.’
As she rang off, she heard a car draw up to the door, and emerged through the little shop to encounter a large man in a grey suit, who began impatiently: ‘I am Inspector Umpelty. What’s all this about?’
‘Oh, Inspector! I’m so glad to see you. I began to think I never should get hold of anybody with any common-sense about them. I’ve had a trunk-call, Mr Hearn. I don’t know what it costs, but here’s a ten-bob note. I’ll call for the change another time. I’ve told my friends I shall be stuck in Wilvercombe for a few days, Inspector. I suppose that’s right, isn’t it?’
This was disingenuous, but novelists and police-inspectors do not always see eye to eye as regards publicity.
‘That’s right, miss. Have to ask you to stay on a bit while we look into this. Better jump into the car and we’ll run out to where you say you saw this body. This gentleman is Dr Fenchurch. This is Sergeant Saunders.’
Harriet acknowledged the introduction.
‘Why I’ve been brought along I don’t know,’ said the police-surgeon in an aggrieved voice. ‘If this man was down near low-water mark at two o’clock, we shan’t see much of him tonight. Tide’s more than half-full now, and a strong wind blowing.’
‘That’s the devil of it,’ agreed the Inspector.
‘I know,’ said Harriet, mournfully, ‘but really I did my best.’ She recounted the details of her odyssey, mentioning everything she had done at the rock and producing the shoe, the cigarette-case, the hat, the handkerchief and the razor.
‘Well, there,’ said the Inspector, ‘you seem to have done a pretty tidy job, miss. Anybody’d think you’d made a study of it. Taking photographs and all. Not but what,’ he added, sternly, ‘if you’d started sooner you’d have been here before.’
‘I didn’t waste much time,’ pleaded Harriet, ‘and I thought, supposing the body got washed away, or anything, it would be better to have some record of it.’
‘That’s very true, miss, and I shouldn’t wonder but what you did the right thing. Looks like a big wind rising, and that’ll hold the tide up.’
‘Due south-west it is’ put in the policeman who was driving the car. ‘That there rock will be awash next low tide if it goes on like this, and with the sea running it’ll be a bit of a job to get out there.’
‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘The current sets very strong round the bay, and you can’t get a boat in past the Grinders – not without you want her bottom stove in.’
Indeed, when they arrived at ‘Murder Bay’, as Harriet had mentally christened it, there were no signs of the rock, still less of the body. The sea was half-way up the sand, rolling in heavily. The little line of breakers that had shown the hidden tops of the Grinders reef had di
sappeared. The wind was freshening still more, and the sun gleamed in spasms of brilliance between thickening banks of cloud.
‘That’s the place, miss, is it?’ asked the Inspector.
‘Oh, yes, that’s the place,’ replied Harriet, confidently.
The Inspector shook his head.
‘There’s seventeen feet of water over that rock by now,’ he said. ‘Tide’ll be full in another hour. Can’t do anything about it now. Have to wait for low tide. That’ll be two ack emma, or thereabouts, Have to see if there’s any chance of getting out to it then, but if you ask me, it’s working up for roughish weather. There’s the chance, of course, that the body may get washed off and come ashore somewhere. I’ll run you up to Brennerton, Saunders; try and get some of the men there to keep a look-out up and down the shore, and I’ll cut along back to Wilvercombe and see what I can arrange about getting a boat out. You’ll have to come along with me, miss, and make a statement.’
‘By all means,’ said Harriet, rather faintly.
The Inspector turned round and took a look at her.
‘I expect you’re feeling a bit upset, miss,’ he said, kindly, ‘and no wonder. It’s not a pleasant thing for a young lady to have to deal with. It’s a miracle to me, the way you handled it. Why, most young ladies would have run away, let alone taking away all these boots and things.’
‘Well, you see,’ explained Harriet, ‘I know what ought to be done. I write detective stories, you know,’ she added, feeling as she spoke that this must appear to the Inspector an idle and foolish occupation.
‘There now,’ said the Inspector. ‘It isn’t often, I daresay, you get a chance of putting your own stories into practice, as you might say. What did you say your name was, miss? Not that I read those sort of books much, except it might be Edgar Wallace now and again, but I’ll have to know your name, of course, in any case.’
Harriet gave her name and her London address. The Inspector seemed to come to attention rather suddenly.
‘I fancy I’ve heard that name before,’ he remarked.
‘Yes,’ said Harriet, a little grimly; ‘I expect you have. I am—’ she laughed rather uncomfortably – ‘I’m the notorious Harriet Vane, who was tried for poisoning Philip Boyes two years ago.’
‘Ah, just so!’ replied the Inspector. ‘Yes. They got the fellow who did it, too, didn’t they? Arsenic case. Yes, of course. There was some very pretty medical evidence at the trial, if I remember rightly. Smart piece of work. Lord Peter Wimsey had something to do with it, didn’t he?’
‘Quite a lot,’ said Harriet.
‘He seems to be a clever gentleman,’ observed the Inspector. ‘One’s always hearing of him doing something or other.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Harriet; ‘he’s – full of activities.’
‘You’ll know him very well, I expect?’ pursued the Inspector, filled with what Harriet felt to be unnecessary curiosity.
‘Oh, yes, quite well. Yes, of course.’ It struck her that this sounded ungracious, seeing that Wimsey had undoubtedly saved her from a very disagreeable position, if not from an ignominious death, and she went on, hastily and stiltedly, ‘I have a great deal to thank him for.’
‘Naturally,’ replied the Inspector. ‘Not but what’ (loyally) ‘Scotland Yard would probably have got the right man in the end. Still’ (here local patriotism seemed to take the upper hand), ‘they haven’t the advantages in some ways that we have. They can’t know all the people in London same as we know everybody hereabouts. Stands to reason they couldn’t. Now, in a case like this one here, ten to one we shall be able to find all about the young man in a turn of the hand, as you might say.’
‘He may be a visitor,’ said Harriet.
‘Very likely,’ said the Inspector, ‘but I expect there’ll be somebody that knows about him, all the same. This is where you get off, Saunders. Raise all the help you can, and get Mr Coffin to run you over to Wilvercombe when you’re through. Now then, miss. What did you say this young chap was like?’
Harriet again described the corpse.
‘Beard, eh?’ said the Inspector. ‘Sounds like a foreigner, doesn’t it? I can’t just place him for the moment, but there’s not much doubt he’ll be pretty easily traced. Now, here we are at the police-station, miss. If you’ll just step in here a minute, the Superintendent would like to see you.’
Harriet accordingly stepped in and told her story once again, this time in minute detail, to Superintendent Glaisher, who received it with flattering interest. She handed over the various things taken from the body and her roll of film, and was then questioned exhaustively as to how she had spent the day, both before and after finding the body.
‘By the way,’ said the Superintendent, ‘this young fellow you met on the road – what’s become of him?’
Harriet stared about her as though she expected to find Mr Perkins still at her elbow.
‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d forgotten all about him. He must have gone off while I was ringing you up.’
‘Odd,’ said Glaisher, making a note to inquire after Mr Perkins.
‘But he can’t possibly know anything about it,’ said Harriet. ‘He was fearfully surprised – and frightened. That’s why he came back with me.’
‘We’ll have to check up on him, though, as a matter of routine,’ said the Superintendent. Harriet was about to protest that this was a waste of time, when she suddenly realised that in all probability it was her own story that was due to be ‘checked up on’. She was silent, and the Superintendent went on:
‘Well, now, Miss Vane. I’m afraid we shall have to ask you to stay within reach for a few days. What were you thinking of doing?’
‘Oh, I quite understand that. I suppose I’d better put up somewhere in Wilvercombe. You needn’t be afraid of my running away. I want to be in on this thing.’
The policeman looked a little disapproving. Everybody is, of course, only too delighted to take the limelight in a gruesome tragedy, but a lady ought, surely, to pretend the contrary. Inspector Umpelty, however, merely replied with the modest suggestion that Clegg’s Temperance Hostel was generally reckoned to be as cheap and comfortable as you could require.
Harriet laughed, remembering suddenly that a novelist owes a duty to her newspaper reporters. ‘Miss Harriet Vane, when interviewed by our correspondent at Clegg’s Temperance Hostel—’ That would never do.
‘I don’t care for Temperance Hostels,’ she said, firmly. ‘What’s the best hotel in the town?’
‘The Resplendent is the largest,’ said Glaisher.
‘Then you will find me at the Resplendent,’ said Harriet, picking up her dusty knapsack and preparing for action.
‘Inspector Umpelty will run you down there in the car,’ said the Superintendent, with a little nod to Umpelty.
‘Very good of him,’ answered Harriet, amused.
Within a very few minutes the car deposited her at one of those monster seaside palaces which look as though they had been designed by a German manufacturer of children’s cardboard toys. Its glass porch was crowded with hothouse plants, and the lofty dome of its reception-hall was supported on gilt pilasters rising out of an ocean of blue plush. Harriet tramped heedlessly through its spacious splendours and demanded a large single bedroom with private bath, on the first floor, and overlooking the sea.
‘Ai’m afraid,’ said the receptionist, casting a languid glance of disfavour at Harriet’s knapsack and shoes, ‘that all our rooms are engaged.’
‘Surely not,’ said Harriet, ‘so early in the season. Just ask the manager to come and speak to me for a moment.’ She sat down with a determined air in the nearest well-stuffed armchair and, hailing a waiter, demanded a cocktail.
‘Will you join me, Inspector?’
The Inspector thanked her, but explained that a certain discretion was due to his position.
‘Another time, then,’ said Harriet, smiling, and dropping a pound-note on the waiter’s tray, with a somewhat ostentatio
us display of a well-filled note-case.
Inspector Umpelty grinned faintly as he saw the receptionist beckon to the water. Then he moved gently across to the desk and spoke a few words. Presently the assistant-receptionist approached Harriet with a deprecating smile.
‘We find, madam, that we can efter all accommodate you. An American gentleman has informed us thet he is vacating his room on the first floor. It overlooks the Esplanade. Ai think you will find it quaite satisfactory.’
‘Has it a private bath?’ demanded Harriet, without enthusiasm.
‘Oh, yes, madam. And a belcony.’
‘All right,’ said Harriet, ‘What number? Twenty-three. It has a telephone, I suppose? Well, Inspector, you’ll know where to find me, won’t you?’
She grinned a friendly grin at him.
‘Yes, miss,’ said Inspector Umpelty, grinning also. He had his private cause for amusement. If Harriet’s note-case had ensured her reception at the Resplendent, it was his own private whisper of ‘friend of Lord Peter Wimsey’ that had produced the view over the sea, the bath and the balcony. It was just as well that Harriet did not know this. It would have annoyed her.
Curiously enough, however, the image of Lord Peter kept intruding upon her mind while she was telephoning her address to the Morning Star, and even while she was working her way through the Resplendent’s expensive and admirable dinner. If the relations between them had not been what they were, it would have been only fair to ring him up and tell him about the corpse with the cut throat. But under the circumstances, the action might be misinterpreted. And, in any case, the thing was probably only the dullest kind of suicide, not worth bringing to his attention. Not nearly so complicated and interesting a problem, for instance, as the central situation in The Fountain-Pen Mystery. In that absorbing mystery, the villain was at the moment engaged in committing a crime in Edinburgh, while constructing an ingenious alibi involving a steam-yacht, a wireless time-signal, five clocks and the change from summer to winter time. (Apparently the cut-throat gentleman had come from the Wilvercombe direction. By road? by train? Had he walked from Darley Halt? If not, who had brought him?) Really, she must try and concentrate on this alibi. The town-clock was the great difficulty. How could that be altered? And altered it must be, for the whole alibi depended on its being heard to strike midnight at the appropriate moment. Could the man who looked after it be made into an accomplice? Who did look after town-hall clocks? (Why gloves? And had she left her own finger-prints on the razor?) Was it, after all, going to be necessary to go to Edinburgh? Perhaps there was no town-hall and no clock. A church-clock would do, of course. But church-clocks and bodies in belfries had been rather overdone lately. (It was odd about Mr Perkins. If the solution was murder after all, could not the murderer have walked through the water to some point? Perhaps she ought to have followed the shore and not the coast-road. Too late now, in any case.) And she had not properly worked out the speed of the steam-yacht. One ought to know about these things. Lord Peter would know, of course; he must have sailed in plenty of steam-yachts. It must be nice to be really rich. Anybody who married Lord Peter would be rich, of course. And he was amusing. Nobody could say he would be dull to live with. But the trouble was that you never knew what anybody was like to live with except by living with them. It wasn’t worth it. Not even to know all about steam-yachts. A novelist couldn’t possibly marry all the people from whom she wanted specialised information. Harriet pleased herself over the coffee with sketching out the career of an American detective-novelist who contracted a fresh marriage for each new book. For a book about poisons, she would marry an analytical chemist; for a book about somebody’s will, a solicitor; for a book about strangling, a – a hangman, of course. There might be something in it. A spoof book, of course. And the villainess might do away with each husband by the method described in the book she was working on at the time. Too obvious? Well, perhaps.