She got up from the table and made her way into a kind of large lounge, where the middle space was cleared for dancing. A select orchestra occupied a platform at one end, and small tables were arranged all round the sides of the room, where visitors could drink coffee or liqueurs and watch the dancing. While she took her place and gave her order, the floor was occupied by a pair of obviously professional dancers, giving an exhibition waltz. The man was tall and fair, with sleek hair plastered closely to his head, and a queer, unhealthy face with a wide, melancholy mouth. The girl, in an exaggerated gown of petunia satin with an enormous bustle and a train, exhibited a mask of Victorian coyness as she revolved languidly in her partner’s arms to the strains of the ‘Blue Danube’. ‘Autres temps, autres moeurs,’ thought Harriet. She looked about the room. Long skirts and costumes of the seventies were in evidence – and even ostrich feathers and fans. Even the coyness had its imitators. But it was so obvious an imitation. The slender-seeming waists were made so, not by savage tight-lacing, but by sheer expensive dressmaking. Tomorrow, on the tennis-court, the short, loose tunic-frock would reveal them as the waists of muscular young women of the day, despising all bonds. And the sidelong glances, the down-cast eyes, the mock-modesty – masks, only. If this was the ‘return to womanliness’ hailed by the fashion-correspondents, it was to a quite different kind of womanliness – set on a basis of economic independence. Were men really stupid enough to believe that the good old days of submissive womanhood could be brought back by milliners’ fashions? ‘Hardly,’ thought Harriet, ‘when they know perfectly well that one has only to remove the train and the bustle, get into a short skirt and walk off, with a job to do and money in one’s pocket. Oh, well, it’s a game, and presumably they all know the rules.’
The dancers twirled to a standstill with the conclusion of the waltz. The instrumentalists tweaked a string and tightened a peg here and there and rearranged their music, under cover of perfunctory applause. Then the male dancer selected a partner from one of the nearer tables, while the petunia-clad girl obeyed a summons from a stout manufacturer in tweeds on the other side of the room. Another girl, a blonde in pale blue, rose from her solitary table near the platform and led out an elderly man. Other visitors rose, accompanied by their own partners, and took the floor to the strains of another waltz. Harriet beckoned to the waiter and asked for more coffee.
Men, she thought, like the illusion that woman is dependent on their approbation and favour for her whole interest in life. But do they like the reality? Not, thought Harriet, bitterly, when one is past one’s first youth. The girl over there, exercising S.A. on a group of rather possessive-looking males, will turn into a predatory hag like the woman at the next table, if she doesn’t find something to occupy her mind, always supposing that she has a mind. Then the men will say she puts the wind up them.
The ‘predatory hag’ was a lean woman, pathetically made-up, dressed in an exaggeration of the fashion which it would have been difficult for a girl of nineteen to carry off successfully. She had caught Harriet’s attention earlier by her look of radiant, almost bridal exaltation. She was alone, but seemed to be expecting somebody, for her gaze roamed incessantly about the room, concentrating itself chiefly on the professionals’ table near the platform. Now she appeared to be getting anxious. Her ringed hands twitched nervously, and she lighted one cigarette after another, only to stub it out, half-smoked, snatch at the mirror in her handbag, readjust her make-up, fidget, and then begin the whole process again with another cigarette.
‘Waiting for her gigolo,’ diagnosed Harriet, with a kind of pitiful disgust. ‘The frog-mouthed gentleman, I suppose. He seems to have better fish to fry.’
The waiter brought the coffee, and the woman at the next table caught him on his way back.
‘Is Mr Alexis not here tonight?’
‘No, madam.’ The waiter looked a little nervous. ‘No. He is unavoidably absent.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘I do not think so, madam. The manager has just said he will not be coming.’
‘Did he send no message?’
‘I could not say, madam.’ The waiter was fidgeting with his feet. ‘Mr Antoine will no doubt be happy . . .’
‘No, never mind. I am accustomed to Mr Alexis. His step suits me. It does not matter.’
‘No, madam, thank you, madam.’
The waiter escaped. Harriet saw him exchange a word and a shrug with the head waiter. Lips and eyebrows were eloquent. Harriet felt annoyed. Did one come to this, then, if one did not marry? Making a public scorn of one’s self before the waiters? She glanced again at the woman, who was rising to leave the lounge. She wore a wedding-ring. Marriage did not save one, apparently. Single, married, widowed, divorced, one came to the same end. She shivered a little, and suddenly felt fed-up with the lounge and the dance-floor. She finished her coffee and retired to the smaller lounge, where three stout women were engaged in an interminable conversation about illness, children and servants. ‘Poor Muriel – quite an invalid since the birth of her last baby. . . . I spoke quite firmly, I said, “Now you quite understand, if you leave before your month you will be liable to me for the money.” . . . Twelve guineas a week, and the surgeon’s fee was a hundred guineas. . . . Beautiful boys, both of them, but with Ronnie at Eton and Wilfred at Oxford. . . . They oughtn’t to let boys run up these bills . . . my dear, pounds thinner, I hardly knew her, but I wouldn’t care to . . . some kind of electric heat treatment, too marvellous . . . and what with rates and taxes and all this terrible unemployment. . . . You can’t argue with nervous dyspepsia, but it makes things very difficult . . . left me high and dry with the house full of people, these girls have no gratitude.’
‘And these,’ thought Harriet, ‘are the happy ones, I suppose. Well, dash it! How about that town-clock?’
IV
THE EVIDENCE OF THE RAZOR
‘Well, thou art
A useful tool sometimes, thy tooth works quickly,
And if thou gnawest a secret from the heart
Thou tellest it not again.’
Death’s Jest-Book
Friday, 19 June
In spite of the horrors she had witnessed, which ought to have driven all sleep away from the eyelids of any self-respecting female, Harriet slept profoundly in her first-floor bedroom (with bathroom, balcony and view over Esplanade) and came down to breakfast with a hearty appetite.
She secured a copy of the Morning Star, and was deep in the perusal of her own interview (with photograph) on the front page, when a familiar voice addressed her:
‘Good morning, Sherlock. Where is the dressing-gown? How many pipes of shag have you consumed? The hypodermic is on the dressing-room table.’
‘How in the world,’ demanded Harriet, ‘did you get here?’
‘Car,’ said Lord Peter, briefly. ‘Have they produced the body?’
‘Who told you about the body?’
‘I nosed it from afar. Where the carcase is, there shall be eagles gathered together. May I join you over the bacon-and-eggs?’
‘By all means,’ said Harriet. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘From London – like a bird that hears the call of its mate.’
‘I didn’t—’ began Harriet.
‘I didn’t mean you. I meant the corpse. But still, talking of mates, will you marry me?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘I thought not, but I felt I might as well ask the question. Did you say they had found the body?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘I don’t expect they will, then, for a bit. There’s a regular sou’wester blowing great guns. Tiresome for them. Can’t have an inquest without a body. You must produce the body, as it says in the Have-His-Carcase Act.’
‘No, but really,’ protested Harriet, ‘how did you hear about it?’
‘Salcombe Hardy rang me up from the Morning Star. Said “my Miss Vane” had found a corpse, and did I know anything about it. I said I knew nothing
about it and that Miss Vane was unhappily not mine – yet. So I buzzed off, and here I am. I brought Sally Hardy down with me. I expect that’s what he really rang me up for. Smart old bird, Sally – always on the spot.’
‘He told you where to find me, I suppose.’
‘Yes – he seemed to know all about it. I was rather hurt. Fancy having to ask the Morning Star where the pole-star of one’s own heaven has gone to. Hardy seemed to know all about it. How do these things get into the papers?’
‘I rang them up myself,’ replied Harriet. ‘First-class publicity, you know, and all that.’
‘So it is,’ agreed Wimsey, helping himself lavishly to butter. ‘Rang ’em up, did you, with all the gory details?’
‘Naturally; that was the first thing I thought of.’
‘You’re a woman of business. But does it not, pardon me, indicate a certain coarsening of the fibres?’
‘Obviously,’ said Harriet. ‘My fibres at this moment resemble coconut matting.’
‘Without even “Welcome” written across them. But, look here, beloved, bearing in mind that I’m a corpse-fan, don’t you think you might, as man to man, have let me in on the ground-floor?’
‘If you put it that way,’ admitted Harriet, rather ashamed of herself, ‘I certainly might. But I thought—’
‘Women will let the personal element creep in,’ said Wimsey, acutely. ‘Well, all I can say is, you owe it to me to make up for it now. All the details, please.’
‘I’m tired of giving details,’ grumbled Harriet, perversely.
‘You’ll be tireder before the police and the newspaper lads have finished with you. I have been staving off Salcombe Hardy with the greatest difficulty. He is in the lounge. The Banner and the Clarion are in the smoking room. They had a fast car. The Courier is coming by train (it’s a nice, respectable, old-fashioned paper), and the Thunderer and the Comet are hanging about outside the bar, hoping you may be persuaded to offer them something. The three people arguing with the commissionaire are, I fancy, local men. The photographic contingent have gone down en masse, packed in a single Morris, to record the place where the body was found, which, as the tide is well up, they will not see. Tell me all, here and now, and I will organise your publicity for you.’
‘Very well,’ said Harriet, ‘I tell thee all, I can no more.’
She pushed her plate aside and took up a clean knife.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is the coast-road from Lesston Hoe to Wilvercombe. The shore bends about like this—’ She took up the pepper-pot.
‘Try salt,’ suggested Wimsey. ‘Less irritatin’ to the nasal tissues.’
‘Thank you. This line of salt is the beach. And this piece of bread is a rock at low-water level.’
Wimsey twitched his chair closer to the table.
‘And this salt-spoon,’ he said, with childlike enjoyment, ‘can be the body.’
He made no comment while Harriet told her story, only interrupting once or twice with a question about times and distances. He sat drooping above the sketch-map she was laying out among the breakfast-things, his eyes invisible, his long nose seeming to twitch like a rabbit’s with concentration. When she had finished, he sat silent for a moment and then said:
‘Let’s get this clear. You got to the place where you had lunch – when, exactly?’
‘Just one o’clock. I looked at my watch.’
‘As you came along the cliffs, you could see the whole shore, including the rock where you found the body.’
‘Yes; I suppose I could.’
‘Was anybody on the rock then?’
‘I really don’t know. I don’t even specially remember noticing the rock. I was thinking about my grub, you see, and I was really looking about at the side of the road for a suitable spot to scramble down the cliff. My eyes weren’t focused for distance.’
‘I see. That’s rather a pity, in a way.’
‘Yes, it is; but I can tell you one thing. I’m quite sure there was nothing moving on the shore. I did give one glance round just before I decided to climb down. I distinctly remember thinking that the beach seemed absolutely and gloriously deserted – a perfect spot for a picnic. I hate picnicking in a crowd.’
‘And a single person on a lonely beach would be a crowd?’
‘For picnicking purposes, yes. You know what people are. The minute they see anyone having a peaceful feed they gather in from the four points of the compass and sit down beside one, and the place is like the Corner House in the rush hour.’
‘So they do. That must be the symbolism of the Miss Muffet legend.’
‘I’m positive there wasn’t a living soul walking or standing or sitting anywhere within eyeshot. But as to the body’s being already on the rock, I wouldn’t swear one way or the other. It was a goodish way out, you know, and when I saw it from the beach I took the body for seaweed just at first. I shouldn’t make a mental note of seaweed.’
‘Good. Then at one o’clock the beach was deserted, except possibly for the body, which may have been there making a noise like seaweed. Then you got down the side of the cliff. Was the rock visible from where you had lunch?’
‘No, not at all. There is a sort of little bay there – well, scarcely that. The cliff juts out a bit, and I was sitting close up against the foot of the rocks, so as to have something to lean against. I had my lunch – it took about half an hour altogether.’
‘You heard nothing then? No footsteps or anything? No car?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘And then?’
‘Then I’m afraid I dozed off.’
‘What could be more natural? For how long?’
‘About half an hour. When I woke I looked at my watch again.’
‘What woke you?’
‘A sea-gull squawking round after bits of my sandwich.’
‘That makes it two o’clock.’
‘Yes.’
‘Just a minute. When I arrived here this morning it was a bit early for calling on one’s lady friends, so I toddled down to the beach and made friends with one of the fishermen. He happened to mention that it was low tide off the Grinders yesterday afternoon at 1.15. Therefore when you arrived, the tide was practically out. When you woke, it had turned and had been coming in for about forty-five minutes. The foot of your rock – which, by the way, is locally named The Devil’s Flat-Iron – is only uncovered for about half an hour between tide and tide, and that only at the top of springs, if you understand that expression.’
‘I understand perfectly, but I don’t see what that has to do with it.’
‘Well, this – that if anybody had come walking along the edge of the water to the rock, he could have got there without leaving any footprints.’
‘But he did leave footprints. Oh, I see. You’re thinking of a possible murderer.’
‘I should prefer it to be murder, naturally. Shouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. Well, that’s a fact. A murderer might have walked along from either direction, if he did it that way. If he came from Lesston Hoe he must have arrived after me, because I could see the shore as I walked along, and there was no one walking there then. But he could have come at any time from the Wilvercombe side.’
‘No, he couldn’t,’ said Wimsey. ‘He wasn’t there, you said, at one o’clock.’
‘He might have been standing on the seaward side of the Flat-Iron.’
‘So he might. Now, how about the corpse? We can tell pretty close when he came.’
‘How?’
‘You said there were no wet stains on his shoes. Therefore he went dry-shod to the rock. We only have to find out exactly when the sand on the landward side of the rock is uncovered.’
‘Of course. How stupid of me. Well, we can easily find that out. Where had I got to?’
‘You had been awakened by the cry of a sea-gull.’
‘Yes. Well, then, I walked round the point of the cliff and out to the rock, and there he was.’
‘And at that mo
ment there was nobody within sight?’
‘Not a single soul, except a man in a boat.’
‘Yes – the boat. Now, supposing the boat had come in when the tide was out, and the occupant had walked or waded up to the rock—’
‘That’s possible, of course. The boat was some way out.’