Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Mrs. Spalding will be closely questioned, of course, and so will her husband, as soon as he is well enough. I cannot imagine what explanation they will be able to offer.”

  “Bland, blank ignorance of the goings-on, coupled with stout denial of having had any part in the disposal of the body, I should think. Faced by similar circumstances, that would be my line of country. And, of course, it might be true.”

  “Yes,” said Dame Beatrice, doubtfully. “It might be true, of course, except for the fact that the room was locked. I cannot see,” she added, “what anybody had to gain by hiding the body in the lighthouse. It can lead to only one conclusion.”

  “That Howard Spalding killed Ferrars when he found him making passes at his wife? I can’t see Howard doing any such thing. But who else would want to murder a silly young bloke like Ferrars?” demanded Laura. “Oh!—Oh, Lord!” Her voice broke in dismay.

  “You are thinking of Mr. Colin Spalding,” said Dame Beatrice. “If only,” she added, disapprovingly, “people would learn to leave things alone! More than half the trouble in this world is caused by their apparent inability to do so.”

  “What do you think actually happened, then?”

  “The likeliest thing, from what I saw of the body, is that Mr. Ferrars was attacked and pushed off a cliff on to the rocks below.”

  “That does away with the theory that Howard caught Ferrars sporting with Fiona, then, doesn’t it? I mean, they would hardly have been love-making out of doors at this time of year. Lady Chatterley might have done it, but not Fiona Spalding.”

  “If only Mr. Howard had not picked up that small boy and run away with him!” Dame Beatrice shook her head sadly.

  “Yes, as damn-fool an action as Crippen running off with Ethel le Neve,” agreed Laura. “Bound to cause the dicks to scratch their heads.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Findings

  “This is the black-hearted hound’s account book.”

  “Well, I suppose they’ve got a day or two before the balloon goes up for the Spaldings,” proceeded Laura. “The police will have to get the body identified, there will be a post-mortem and an inquest, and so on, before there’s a formal charge, I imagine. Are you taking any further interest in the proceedings? I mean, granted that it is Ferrars, it seems to me that the job Mr. Eastleigh asked you to do is done, especially as Manoel has appeared among us safe and sound.”

  “Is it possible to establish what Mr. Colin was doing when Mr. Ferrars disappeared?”

  “Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? We don’t know when Ferrars did disappear. We can account for him up to the end of school lunch, but, once he’d gone off, that was the end of him, so far as we know at present. I mean, the fact that he failed to turn up for the rendezvous with Miss Keggs doesn’t necessarily mean that he was dead, does it? He may just have decided to stand her up, or found himself too late to keep the appointment.”

  “What you say is very just. All the same, I shall be interested to find out, if I can, what Mr. Colin Spalding was doing that afternoon and evening.”

  “If he did kill Ferrars, he’ll probably tell you a lot of lies, but you’ll be able to sort those out. Personally, I don’t believe he’s got it in him to kill anybody.”

  “Everyone has it in him to kill somebody, child. Fortunately, in the case of most of us, the temptation to commit murder is not strong enough to cause us to give way to it, but that is all it is safe to say.”

  “There, but for the grace of God, go I, you mean? Something in it, I suppose. But I think I see what you’re after. If we can give Colin a clean bill for that afternoon, and show the Spaldings that he’s completely in the clear, they’ll tell us what really happened, so far as they themselves are concerned. Of course, they may not have been the people who put the body in the tower, you know.”

  “Oh, come, child! Mrs. Spalding’s terror of the police! Mr. Spalding’s flight, taking Manoel with him!”

  “All right, you win. So they put Ferrars in the tower and locked the door on him and chucked away the key because they thought Colin had done him in.”

  “Colin was known to have been in love with his stepmother, was he not? I understood from you that Mr. Howard realised that such was the case.”

  “And Ferrars had been over there more times than Fiona is willing to admit. We don’t know how much Colin knew about that, though, do we? Neither do we know how much of it Howard either knew or guessed.”

  “A jealous lover is a suspicious man, do not forget, and Mrs. Spalding, if I read her aright, is not the most discreet and careful of women.”

  “A bit idiotic, you mean, to entertain young men in the bedroom while her husband was on the premises, albeit on top of his ivory tower? Yes, I must say I agree. So we sift Colin. The trouble about doing that is that I don’t suppose for a second he’ll remember anything about it, if he’s innocent. I speak from my own experience. I couldn’t possibly tell you what I was doing on any particular day at any particular time.”

  “If he is guilty, I have methods to ensure that he gives himself away. But I am proceeding first on the assumption that he is innocent.”

  “But I suppose that means he doesn’t remember the afternoon in question, and what he did on it?”

  “We have one strong card to play, you know. Whatever he does not remember, he is certain to remember the game of Smugglers and Excisemen, after which Manoel was not to be found. We shall work back from there. I have no doubt that we shall be able to pick up the threads.”

  “And then, I suppose, you’ll check them against what the rest of the Staff can tell you. Fair enough. How will you break it to Colin that the body has been found at the lighthouse?”

  Soothed by Dame Beatrice’s presentation of the news, Colin took the information better than Laura would have expected.

  “Of course, they won’t agree they did hide the body,” he concluded, “but nobody will believe them except me.”

  “You will believe them, then? Why?” demanded Dame Beatrice. Colin stared at her.

  “They’re—they’re not those sort of people,” he said. “The police must be mad! It’s plain enough what happened. That convict fellow pushed Ferrars over the cliff, robbed the body of the clothes and things, and dumped it in the lowest room of the tower.”

  “To which he had the key?”

  “Those junk-rooms were never kept locked.”

  “Yet the room in which the body was found was locked,” Dame Beatrice pointed out.

  Colin gave something between a snort and a groan.

  “It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense,” he said. “I mean, suppose my father and Fiona did find Ferrars’ body. Suppose it was accidental death, as the coroner’s jury are bound to find. Why should they hide it up? The whole thing’s crazy, and my father isn’t crazy except about his beastly birds. What should he have made him act against his whole nature? We’ve had our differences, and plenty of them, but I know him and I know the sort of things he would and he wouldn’t do. His first thought, if he came across the dead body, would be to go straight to the police. Why on earth should he do anything else? He’s about the most meek and mild citizen I know. It’s one of the things that’s always riled me about him. He conforms to everything, and in every possible respect.”

  “There are three very good reasons why he would not have gone to the police,” said Dame Beatrice mildly.

  Colin stared at her, horrified and incredulous.

  “Three? Do you mean—but you don’t think one of the three of us killed Ferrars, do you?”

  “Suppose your father thought that you had killed Mr. Ferrars? Do you believe that, in such a case, he would still have gone to the police?”

  Colin could do nothing but gape at her. She waited while he assimilated her words.

  “But I didn’t kill him!” he said at last. “It’s obvious that his death was an accident. They must think he fell down the cliff. There isn’t any other explanation.”

  “Was
he the sort of young man who would be likely to fall down the cliff?”

  “How on earth should I know?”

  “Well,” said Dame Beatrice briskly, “I am proceeding, for the present, on the assumption that neither you nor your father is guilty, and that the death was accidental, as you say. I am arguing, therefore, that your father hid the body, believing that Mr. Ferrars’ death was not an accidental one, but that you yourself occasioned it. If you will search your memory and, perhaps, your conscience, you may realise why he may have come to such a conclusion.”

  Colin flushed, and was silent.

  “So what we’ve got to establish, old lad,” said Laura, “is where you were, and what you were up to, on the afternoon when it seems that Ferrars must have died. If we can put you in the clear, you see, with an unshakable, unbreakable alibi, your parents will no doubt give us the low-down on their part in the affair, if any—and it really does seem as though they had a part, so toil your unbreathed memory, and, if you never laboured in your mind ’til now, go to it, and that with a will.”

  Colin groaned again and looked at her with troubled eyes.

  “How on earth can I remember all that time back?” he asked. “You know the school routine as well as I do. I suppose I just simply followed it, that’s all. As for proving that I did—well, other people would have to do that, and I don’t suppose they’ll remember details any more than I do.”

  “I propose to begin at the end of that particular day and work back,” said Dame Beatrice. “Let us repair to the room in which you instituted the game of Smugglers and Excisemen.”

  “Oh, that was in my own form-room.” He led the way to it. It was a first-floor apartment converted from a large and handsome bedroom to its present use. Traces of its original purpose were still present in the form of a washbowl and an electric point for a razor in the south-east corner of the room, together with a fixed wall-mirror above the bowl and a towel-rail to the side of it. “Here we are. I take the Nines, you know, but I chuck them out as per time-table so that the chaps taking Russian can come along here to get their lessons from me, and my own mob go along to the form-room of whoever’s taking them on. Sit down, won’t you?” He dragged two chairs out from behind school lockers and placed them for the visitors, and then seated himself on his table. Dame Beatrice took out a small notebook and poised the ball-point to which Laura, with some difficulty, had converted her.

  “Now,” she said, “at what time did you call your boys in here to arrange this game?”

  “Oh, pretty well as soon as tea was over. We played it between tea and prep.”

  “What does ‘pretty well’ mean?”

  “The chaps are supposed to rest for a quarter of an hour after tea. Not that they do, of course, but the Man has theories about violent activity immediately after meals.”

  “You were present at tea, I believe?”

  “Oh, yes. It was at table, if you know what I mean, that the game really started. I was yarning to them about smugglers and so forth, in preparation for a book I was going to read them.”

  As Dame Beatrice had already learned this from Laura, she passed on to her next point.

  “Tea begins at…?”

  “Five o’clock, as soon as they’ve cleaned up after games, you know.”

  “Do you assist with the games?”

  “Well, actually, no. When Mr. Eastleigh heard I’d been ill, he excused me from them. All I have to do is to stick my boys under the showers before they have their tea.”

  “So now we have to account for your movements between lunch, and showers, and tea.”

  “That means most of the afternoon. Oh, yes, of course! I know! I wrote a letter.”

  “Yes? Where would you have been when you did that?”

  “Up in my room.”

  “Have you any idea of the time?”

  “When I went up there, you mean? No, not really. All I remember is that I chucked the last draft of the letter away when I heard the chaps coming in from games.”

  “The last draft?”

  “Well, yes. You see, I decided not to send the letter, after all. I couldn’t seem to word it properly. I couldn’t seem to say what I wanted to say.”

  “Would it be seemly to ask…?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter telling you that, now she’s in such an awful mess. The letter was to Fiona to tell her…well, to tell her I shouldn’t be pestering her any more.”

  “Thank you for telling me that. If I may presume further, could you recount to me your reason for writing such a letter?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I found out she was seeing rather a lot of Ferrars.”

  “I wonder whether you put that in the letter?”

  “No, of course I didn’t. That’s what made the letter so hard to write. I could hardly call her a whore on paper, could I?”

  “Is that how you thought of her?”

  “At times, yes,” said Colin, sullenly. “All the same, I don’t want her had up for murder.”

  “She was fond of Mr. Ferrars, you think?”

  “I begin to wonder whether she was fond of anyone,” said Colin, bitterly. “Anyway, I found I couldn’t write the letter, after all. She’d…well…I mean…”

  “You’ve been a fool where she’s concerned,” said Laura sternly. (“It’s all right. I had a Presbyterian upbringing,” she added, for the information of her startled employer.) “I’m glad you’ve stopped being a baby, Colin, always wanting the moon,” she went on, swinging round again on him. “You wouldn’t be at all a bad kid if you’d only show a bit of independence. Fancy letting your father choose your woman for you!”

  Colin was seldom dumbfounded. He gurgled. His eyes bulged. Then he capitulated.

  “Just as you say,” he gloomily agreed. His immature but pleasing countenance brightened. “Actually,” he added, “I must say you look rather beautiful when you’re angry, Laura. You don’t mind if I call you Laura, do you? After all, you did compromise me down on the beach.”

  “Well, really!” said Laura, beginning to laugh. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet!”

  “That being settled,” said Dame Beatrice, “perhaps we may be permitted to return to the matter in hand. At what time do you think you settled down to write this letter?”

  “After I’d had the row with Ferrars.”

  “Oh, you quarrelled with Mr. Ferrars, did you?”

  “We exchanged a few rough words.”

  “May one enquire…?”

  “He was a sock and tie sneaker.”

  “Oh, I see. You quarrelled with him, but not on the subject of his paying his attentions to Mrs. Spalding?”

  “No, not exactly, but I didn’t see why he should fascinate her wearing my woven cravat and domino-patterned chaussettes, so I waylaid him and ordered him to divest himself of the trappings.”

  “Good for you,” said Laura. “How did he respond?”

  “Oh, quite decently. He said, ‘Sorry, old man. No idea that you’d object.’”

  “To which you replied?”

  “I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t object so much if you’d had the decency to ask for them.’ So he said, ‘Well, I do ask for them, and I’m in the deuce of a hurry, so do you mind not pressing to have them back at this particular moment?’ I said, ‘You’re a louse and a rotter.’ He said, “Righty-o, old boy. I’ll paste it in my hat and play it on my tambourine. By seeing you.’ And, with that, he buzzed off and, of course, I’ve never seen him again.”

  “How long after lunch did this exchange take place?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “Almost directly. As soon as he’d gone I went to my room and started trying to word this letter. I pretty well guessed he was going straight over to the lighthouse, you see.”

  “What reason had you for guessing anything of the sort?”

  Colin turned to Laura.

  “I wonder whether you remember my inventing an outing to Bournemouth while you were over at the lighthouse that time? Well, of course, there
wasn’t anything planned. It seemed an opportunity to get Fiona to myself and put things to her without wondering all the time whether my father would burst in and catch us. We’d had a row that day you came, you see—about you, actually. Well, I picked her up in the car, but in Bournemouth we ran straight into Ferrars and Miss Beverley, who’d just left the school, and, before I knew what was happening, we’d switched partners and I found myself landed with the Beverley for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The other two slipped us in the Arcade and we met again in the car-park, so that I could run Fiona back to the lighthouse. I didn’t speak to Fiona all the way home, and on Ferrars’ next free afternoon I followed him. He was on foot and so was I. I watched him go into the lighthouse. I spotted my father up on the lighthouse gallery, and I crept to the window of the bungalow. I didn’t have to wait long to see what I expected to see.”

  “How did Miss Beverley view the exchange of partners at Bournemouth?” Dame Beatrice enquired, offering no comment on Colin’s confession of spying.

  “She made a few brief remarks about Ferrars, and told me next time they met she’d make a row. She said she’d finished with him, anyway, and was glad to be quit of his company. I couldn’t very well tell her that I’d be glad to be quit of hers, so I gave her tea, and we went to a film and then had dinner and a spot of dancing. She wasn’t bad fun, and I enjoyed myself after a fashion. She asked me a lot about Fiona and said Ferrars always had preferred mutton to lamb, which was pretty offensive, but I felt so mad with Fiona that I let it go, and…well…that was that.”

  “Yes,” said Dame Beatrice, “I suppose it was, except that you saw Mr. Ferrars set off for the lighthouse on subsequent occasions, you say.”

  “It doesn’t mean I murdered him,” said Colin.

  “So, on the afternoon of his disappearance,” said Dame Beatrice, taking no notice of this, “we have the following catalogue of your movements: at approximately two o’clock you quarrelled with Mr. Ferrars on an unimportant matter. Very shortly afterwards you went to your room to write a letter to Mrs. Spalding, and remained there, making various drafts of this, until, at about half-past four, you supervised your form while they bathed after games. You were at tea with some of your boys and played at hide-and-seek with them from five o’clock until preparation. Did you sit with them during preparation?”