The Mudflats of the Dead (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The bird, suddenly aware of her presence, although not of being addressed, uttered a shrill, protesting klee-eep, klee-eep, ran rapidly across the mud and then, tucking away its long red legs, it took off with low flight and shallow wingbeats, changed its note to a slightly trilling and a shorter call and put distance between itself and the intruder.

  Dame Beatrice, with a suspicious look at the distant sea, then focused her attention upon a dark mass on the edge of the deceptively mild-mannered water. She said to the sea: “My name is King Canute. Stay where you are!”

  The sands (so called in the brochures) were firmer than she had expected. At a surprising pace for so extremely elderly a lady, she crossed them and then knelt at the sodden sea-verge to examine the body. A very brief inspection was enough. It was a dead body and one which she recognised. She made all speed back to the hotel and telephoned the police. They rang back within the hour.

  “Papers of identification on the body confirm your theory, Dame Beatrice, ma’am. There was a suicide note. Took prussic acid, it says, only it calls it hydrocyanic acid. Quick, that’s one thing. Good on you, ma’am, for recognising the body, if you’d only seen him once before, and some time ago and alive, at that. We’ll need you for the inquest, ma’am, I’m afraid.”

  “Come in,” said Morag. “You said something about a book.”

  “Colin Palgrave’s novel. I believe you have a copy of it,” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, that!”

  “I also have a copy. From the dedication to M., I deduced that the book was written especially for you.”

  “Good gracious, no! Through here, Dame Beatrice, and then we can look out on to the garden. I don’t suppose the dedication was meant for me at all, although, of course, at one time—”

  “Yes, so I have been told. He wanted me to write a preface to the book. You can help me. The work appears to be autobiographical. Would that be so?”

  “Goodness knows!”

  “And I thought perhaps you could tell me whether it throws any light upon the manner of his death.”

  “But we know the manner of his death. Miranda Kirby sent me a cutting from the local paper. He died of arsenical poisoning, didn’t he? I think poor Colin committed suicide. Arsenic is easy enough to come by. There are weed-killers, flypapers, all sorts of things.”

  “So that is why arsenic was chosen, because it is easy to come by. It is also easily administered. The powdered form can be disguised in a cup of black coffee, especially to a man already under the influence of narcotics, perhaps, or drink.”

  Morag had been standing at the window overlooking the garden. She turned round and went across the room to a bookcase from which she took a brown paper parcel.

  “Here is my copy of the book, if that is what you came for,” she said. “Are they going to publish it after all?”

  “Not unless you are willing to admit to a forged letter.”

  Morag put the parcel down on to a small table, went unsteadily to an armchair and sat down.

  “So you know,” she said. “How much do you know?”

  “Everything, I think, but I like to check my findings. The signature on the letter is known to have been forged. Mr. Palgrave was murdered before he could repudiate the letter and ask that publication should go ahead as planned. Where did you stay on the night of his death? You may, I think, have been somewhere in London. The police are still trying to trace his movements on that night.”

  “They can go on trying. Why should I tell you anything?”

  “There is no reason why you should. If you choose to keep your own counsel, the law must take its course, that is all.”

  “You mean I’ll be charged with forgery? Oh, but it was such a little thing I did! It isn’t like forging a cheque or a will, is it?”

  “I think perhaps it is worse. No doubt Mr. Palgrave was proud of his book and was looking forward to seeing it in print and perhaps reading favourable notices about it in the press.”

  “It’s a dangerous book; a harmful book. I had to do what I did. I don’t know how Colin found out, but apparently he did. I suppose that girl told him things.”

  “I think, you know,” said Dame Beatrice, taking the armchair opposite Morag, “that you had better do as I say, and tell me the whole story.”

  “In my own words, leaving out no detail, however slight?” said Morag, with an attempt at a lightheartedness which obviously she did not feel. “Oh, well, if you know I forged the letter, I suppose I can expect trouble.”

  “Not for forging the letter. That can be hushed up, no doubt. Murder, however, cannot be hushed up, and I have come here to talk about two murders. You have admitted to forgery—”

  “What I admit to you in this room is not evidence. I understand why Catholics go to Confession, though, so I will clear my conscience. I’m sorry about Colin, but he shouldn’t have written that book. It had to be suppressed. He knew far too much. The book opened my eyes to all sorts of things I had half wondered about, but had never dared to face. Anyway, I am not sorry about that little blackmailer. I had no idea that blackmail was her game until I read Colin’s book, but, once I’d read it, all sorts of things dropped into place.”

  “I think you give too much credit to Mr. Palgrave’s knowledge. You mean knowledge about your own affairs and those of your husband, don’t you? Mr. Palgrave thought of blackmail only because the girl had made a threat to blackmail him. I am certain that the story he wrote was based on his knowledge of the girl’s character and not on anything he knew of your affairs.”

  “But the girl and I are both in the book. I asked Cupar what he thought and he agreed with me and we arranged that I should practise Colin’s signature—I had kept his letters to me; they were not, strictly speaking, love-letters, but were all about his first book and the publishers’ contract and what he hoped his agents, the Peterheads, might be able to do for him, so there was nothing much in them that I didn’t want Cupar to see—”

  “Your husband had read the book, then?”

  “Well, I could hardly keep it from him. He was appalled by it. He said it could ruin his career if it were published because there were plenty of people able and willing to put two and two together and make five instead of four.”

  “I hope I have not done the same thing.”

  “Oh, no. You wouldn’t be here if you had. I suppose the fact that I was out walking that night, and that the fact the girl was drowned, pointed to me as her murderer.”

  “Not necessarily. The facts, so far as they were known, pointed even more clearly to Colin Palgrave. Will you tell me about yourself and him?—and why you think you were the chief suspect for causing Miss St. John’s death?”

  “Why not? I said I wanted to confess. It all began a long time ago. Well, it seems a long time ago now. Colin and I were engaged. He broke it off. He said it was because he wanted to give up teaching and become a writer. He said that he wouldn’t be able to keep a wife and possible children for years and years, and that nobody ought to marry a writer, anyway. They were impossible to live with, he said. He said a lot more along the same lines, but I thought he was tired of me and did not want to say so, and made all these excuses to be rid of me.”

  “You may have been right, of course.”

  “It did something to me. I had been very fond of him. I could have managed to support both of us until he got established as a writer. I am a trained nurse and I knew I could get a well-paid private job, either with a wealthy invalid or as a doctor’s receptionist and dispenser, but I was too proud and too badly hurt to plead or argue. Eventually I met Cupar and we were married.

  “Cupar was honest with me up to a point. He told me that a patient of his had had a baby by him. I didn’t much mind. I’d had affairs myself before I became engaged to Colin, but I had no idea that Cupar was being blackmailed by the girl. I thought the money he paid out went to support the baby. It wasn’t until I read Colin’s book that the truth dawned on me, although I suppose I had always had a se
cret fear that, if the girl ever decided to turn nasty, Cupar’s career would be finished. When I had read the book and Cupar had seen it, he had another confession to make. He said his baby had been born, the girl had killed it, and he had written a false death certificate to cover up for her.”

  “That, at any rate, was not in Mr. Palgrave’s book.”

  “No, but I was terribly frightened. If people read the book and anybody who had known the wretched girl began to probe, there was no knowing what might come out. We agreed that the book must never be published.”

  “Well, the forged letter to the agents could hardly have solved that problem for very long. In other words, the author had to die. I am more interested, at the moment, in the death of Camilla St. John. Will you tell me exactly what happened that evening?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “It didn’t really begin with the evening. It began when Cupar and I arrived at the cottage to discover that it had been double-booked for the rest of that week.”

  “Such a coincidence that you should have fixed upon the very cottage of which Miss S. John was already an inmate.”

  “Oh, well, coincidences do occur and the girl was our bad angel, anyway, so I suppose some supernatural force of gravity was at work and pulled us towards her.”

  “By the way, had you ever met her before?”

  “No, never. Cupar told me who she was as soon as we were alone in the cottage.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Is there really any need?”

  “You said there was virtue in confessing. That is not the reason for my encouraging you to tell me your story. A little later on you will understand why I must hear it. Please trust me. You are not likely to regret it.”

  “Adrian and Miranda Kirby think very highly of you. Very well, then. I forged the letter. Do you want to know how I killed the girl?”

  “And Colin Palgrave, of course.”

  “Colin? Oh, but—”

  “Yes, I know you said it was suicide. The police have proof that it was murder.”

  “Proof?” Morag at last looked desperately alarmed. “But they can’t have proof!”

  “I have talked to them on the telephone. I was in contact with them just before I came here.”

  “I see.” She got up and walked unsteadily towards the window again. Dame Beatrice’s sharp black eyes followed her. She remained staring out into the garden, but the watcher said nothing. “Oh, well,” said Morag, turning round and resting one tense hand on the wooden ledge, “here goes, then, if I must. Better the blame should rest on the right shoulders, I suppose.”

  “Of course it is. You would not want a smear to remain on Colin Palgrave’s memory.”

  “But there isn’t one, in your opinion, is there?” As though it was difficult to do so, Morag removed her fingers from their grip on the window-ledge and returned to her chair. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Dame Beatrice noted the anxious shadows under them, but felt no compunction in forcing her to talk.

  “Go on,” she said. Morag opened her eyes and brushed a hand across them.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll feel better when I’ve told you all about it. Well, as soon as Cupar had told me that Camilla was the girl who had had his baby, I saw how impossible the situation was. There was that, and there were Colin and I. It was all such a mix-up that when Colin took us down to the pub that night I thought that a few drinks would help me to decide what to do.”

  “But you did not know, at that point, that Miss St. John had been blackmailing your husband. You did not know that until you read Mr. Palgrave’s book and tackled your husband about it.”

  “Oh, well, perhaps I had guessed. The drinks didn’t really help, so when we went back to the cottage I wrote a note to Camilla telling her to get out or it would be the worse for her. I took it up to her room and pinned it to the pillow. Then I saw her suitcase, so I packed it with everything of hers I could find, waited until Adrian and Miranda were in their room, and then took the suitcase down to the sand-dunes and buried it.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Just to be thoroughly bitchy to her, I suppose, and to add a little bit to the warning I’d given her in my note.”

  “Ah, yes. Perhaps you had had enough to drink, after all. Where was your husband while all this was going on?”

  “In bed and asleep. He had been putting away double whiskies. Whisky always makes him sleepy.”

  “Double whiskies? Poor Mr. Palgrave!”

  “Oh, Colin didn’t pay for them after the first round, and Cupar wouldn’t have gone on drinking like that if he hadn’t been so worried about Camilla’s being at the cottage.”

  “But she did not accompany the party to the public house?”

  “No. She wasn’t with us that evening. I was coming back from planting the suitcase when I saw her go up to Colin’s car. Then they went off over the marshes and I followed them. I didn’t suppose they would hear me, and I took a chance that they wouldn’t turn round and see me. I didn’t really care, though, whether they did or not. I had as much right on the marshes by moonlight as they had.”

  “Surely. Up to that point, then, you did not have murder in mind?”

  “No, not until Colin had come out of the water and left her there alone. Then something came over me. I undressed behind a breakwater and swam out to her. She was floating on her back, being rocked very gently by the waves.”

  “The tide was still coming in, then?”

  “I suppose so. I didn’t notice. Then after I had pushed her under and kept her there, I dressed and went back to the cottage.”

  “And found your husband still asleep?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right. Cupar was still asleep.”

  “Do you remember noticing whether Mr. Palgrave’s car was still there?”

  “I can’t remember anything except that the front door was unlatched, so I didn’t have to use my key.”

  “And when morning came, and both Miss St. John and her suitcase had disappeared—?”

  “Oh, the others took it for granted that she had picked up a man and gone off with him.”

  “Ah, yes! It was bad luck that the tide brought the body back almost to the spot where it had drowned. Did you never think that Mr. Palgrave might be suspected of having made away with the girl?”

  “If there had been any trouble for him, I suppose I would have confessed.”

  “Now tell me about his death. Where did you stay in London on the night he was given the arsenic?”

  “It wasn’t in London.”

  “Was your husband with you?”

  “No. I had read Colin’s book—”

  “And done what you could to suppress it.”

  “Yes. Cupar had to go to a conference—”

  “Another one?”

  “Oh, well, yes. Since that terrible girl died, Cupar has been engaged in some most valuable research work, so I telephoned Colin and said I wanted to talk to him about the book and asked him to come to Richmond, where I was staying the night, and he came and I slipped the arsenic into his black coffee and that was that.”

  “How did his body get on to the Thames mudflats?”

  “I tipped it in off the parapet of the bridge.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Your husband knew nothing of this?”

  “How could he? He was at his conference, as I told you.”

  “And the hotel where you stayed?”

  “What does it matter where I stayed?”

  Before Dame Beatrice could say more, the door-bell rang. Morag excused herself, adding that it was the servant’s free afternoon. She came back with a uniformed sergeant of the county police and, to Dame Beatrice’s mild surprise, with Pinhurst.

  “I think, Mrs. Lowson, you had better sit down,” he said. “I’m afraid the sergeant has some very bad news for you.”

  “But how did you know that her confession was all lies?” asked Laura. “And what made you ask for the story, anyway?”

 
“All I wanted was for her to admit that the letter to the literary agents was a forgery. As for her confession to two murders, as soon as the police told her that it was her husband’s body which I had found on Ampletide Sands, she retracted it.”

  “But why did she make it in the first place?”

  “Mistaken idealism plus panic. She was afraid that I had found out the truth, and so I had, of course. She thought that her husband’s medical research was far too important for him to be given a life sentence for murder, so she decided to take the rap, as you would say.”

  “Good gracious! But how did you find out the truth?”

  “I began by believing Colin Palgrave’s story that he had left Miss St. John alive and still enjoying her moonlight bathe and that he had left the cottage that night with his own suitcase and not hers. I was sure that Dr. Lowson was not in the cottage when Palgrave came in, but returned while the young man was shaving in the kitchen. Then I decided to investigate the only real mystery in the whole affair. There is such a thing as coincidence, of course, but, even allowing for all its extraordinary laws, it seemed to me quite outrageous that of all the places there are in which to spend a quiet holiday, the Lowsons should not only have selected the same little village as the Kirbys, whom at that time they had never met, but had even booked the same cottage as that in which Camilla Hoveton St. John was staying.”

  “So you went to the house agent?”

  “And was assured that there had been no mistake over the booking. The holiday cottages are booked only from Saturdays, never mid-week. The Lowsons’ tenancy was to begin when the Kirbys’ tenancy ended. There was one other small point. I was sure that Lowson was not in bed when Palgrave came in that night, otherwise he would have been aware of a man groping for a suitcase and would have made some remark. Well, then, of course the story of blackmail unfolded itself and the death of Colin Palgrave clinched matters, although I had to find out whether Lowson had read his book. That book could not damage Mrs. Lowson directly, but it might—or so Dr. Lowson thought—seriously injure his own medical career. Mrs. Lowson was persuaded by her husband to invite Palgrave to discuss his book with her. The invitation must have come from her—in fact, when she broke down after hearing that her husband was not only dead, but had left a full confession, she admitted that she had invited Palgrave to spend the weekend with them in their Lancashire home. Dr. Lowson was to pick him up in a car near his lodgings and then drive up to Lancashire through the night and return Palgrave to his lodgings on the Sunday evening.”