The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

The old house was very quiet. This consulting-room, with its green-painted walls and vague antiseptic smell, had a bright, bleak look of unreality. Across the room towards Garth’s left, the ledge of a white marble mantelpiece held a bronze clock flanked by a framed photograph of Betty Calder at one side and a framed photograph of his parents at the other. Fern-and-flower designs had been painted on the mirror above the mantelpiece.

  Colonel Selby, whose gaze never wavered from Garth’s because the latter kept it there, bent forward with his hands gripping the arms of the chair.

  “Straight! What do they do to mad people?”

  “That depends on your definition of the word ‘mad.’ It’s a very misleading term. Not all people are ‘mad’ in the old Bedlamite sense, you know. Many of them only think they are; they’ve been frightened by a word; they can be helped.”

  “You mean that?”

  “We may be able to prove it. To whose case are you referring? Your own?”

  “Me?” After a pause, staring back at him, Colonel Selby let out a gasp. “God’s thundering guns! You don’t think I’m talking about myself?”

  Garth waited.

  “Let’s say it’s a hypothetical case. No! Let’s say it’s somebody I know. Mind you, this whole business is my own fault. Always tried to be decent and hoped I was. Still! There’s no denying it’s my fault. If Blanche ever suspected—”

  “Blanche?”

  “Mrs. Montague. Friend. Housekeeper. Religious principles.”

  “Yes, I think I met the lady. Go on, please.”

  A big hand hovered above the chair-arm.

  “I wish I’d come here before, Doctor. You’re easy to talk to. I don’t mind admitting I’ve been through a bad patch in the past couple of years. Funny thing: the last straw was tonight sitting in that waiting-room of yours. Especially with the kind of books you keep there for people to look at.”

  “Books?”

  “Yes. The one where a witch or a devil-spirit takes possession of a woman’s body. Or they think it does; it’s a story about a mystery; daresay there’s a natural explanation at the end. But I saw a bit of that in India. I don’t think it’s funny; I don’t laugh.”

  Garth spoke sharply.

  “Colonel Selby, there must be some mistake. I shouldn’t be likely to put a book of that kind in the waiting-room.”

  “Well, it’s there now. Book with a red cover, by somebody called ‘Phantom,’ open at the illustration at the front. The illustration’s of a woman—well! mostly undressed, you know, bending over a chap who’s asleep. I don’t suppose it was put there for my benefit, but I didn’t like it.”

  “I tell you, my dear sir, you must be mistaken!”

  “And I tell you…!”

  Out in the hall, making them both jump, began the strident ringing of the telephone.

  The spell was broken, the thread of confidences snapped off. Colonel Selby, white-faced, dragged his gaze away from Garth’s, craning round to look towards the fireplace. Again his hands tightened round the chair-arms.

  Many footsteps seemed to be stirring in the hall. The ringing of the telephone ceased. Ordinarily, with so thick a door between, you could have heard no distinct voice from there. It was only that Michael Fielding, like so many people who used the telephone nowadays, felt compelled to shout at it.

  “Mrs. Bostwick?” he was saying. “Yes, the doctor’s here. But I’m afraid I can’t disturb him. No, I can’t. If it’s as urgent as all that, Mrs. Bostwick, can’t you leave a message?”

  Another voice had joined that of Michael, who made shushing noises, after which both were obscured in a shattering din as somebody started up the engine of a car out in the street. Garth turned back to his visitor.

  “You see, Colonel Selby—”

  But Colonel Selby had risen to his feet

  “Sorry,” he blurted out.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Afraid I can’t go through with this. Afraid I’ve wasted your time. Damned shame, but there it is. You’ll excuse me, Doctor?”

  The car-engine was still exploding like a lively Bonfire Night. Colonel Selby’s mood, Garth sensed, had changed from any he felt before that moment. Suddenly he lifted both hands, pressed them hard over his eyes, and dropped them as though in an appeal Garth was powerless to answer.

  “You’ll excuse me, Doctor? You won’t try to stop me?”

  “Stop you? No; hardly. At the same time, if I can be of any service, I hope you’ll think this matter over.”

  “Thanks. I will. Here’s my card. Send your account round, eh? Wouldn’t have troubled you for the world, except…My hat and stick: in the waiting-room. May I?”

  “Colonel Selby, there are reasons why I ask you to reconsider!”

  “Doctor, I can’t reconsider. What’s done is done now.”

  Suppressed violence and all, he bowed with a good deal of dignity. Garth bowed in reply. At the same moment, a thing unprecedented, Michael Fielding threw open the door of the consulting-room without being summoned and without waiting to knock.

  “Sir,” he began, “there’s a Scotland Yard man here who won’t go away and won’t take no for an answer. But that’s not all.”

  “Mr. Fielding,” Garth interrupted with cold savagery, “will you be good enough to escort Colonel Selby to the door?”

  “I can’t help it, sir! There’s just been a telephone-message we can’t ignore.”

  “Mr. Fielding.” Garth counted to three. “Will you be good enough to escort Colonel Selby to the door? His hat and stick are in the waiting-room. Will you do this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The explosions of the car-engine thickened to a roar, altered their tempo, and rolled away down Harley Street. A hollow of silence filled the consulting-room when Michael and Colonel Selby had gone. Garth stood behind his desk, staring down at the blotter without seeing it.

  Then someone coughed. Garth looked up. Inspector George Alfred Twigg, non-committal under the curly-brimmed bowler hat, was watching him from the doorway.

  “Ah, Doctor! Seems like we’re fated to meet this evening.”

  “If you have been following me, it was more or less inevitable that we should. I hope you weren’t waiting too long outside?”

  “Ah! That’s as may be. Mind if I come in?”

  “A consulting-room is usually supposed to be private. But by all means come in. We shall be rid of you the sooner. You must excuse me for a moment, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “For a moment,” I said. I must see to something in the waiting-room.” Garth gestured politely towards the black leather chair. “Make yourself comfortable, Inspector.”

  And he strode out into the hall.

  Betty, he supposed, must still be in the little library; its door was closed. The big front door stood partly open to a haze of gaslamps in the street. Going to the waiting-room, Garth threw open that door and looked round from the threshold.

  Two lace-curtained windows fronted the street Colonel Selby had been given time to smoke at least one cigar here; its stub was ground out in a china dish on the centre table, and the scent hung in close air. A dreary room, full of past emotions from those who waited, it had a lamp of mosaic glass burning on the table above scattered magazines. A novel, called By Whose Hand? and recently published at six shillings, lay open at its frontispiece.

  Though Garth could not see Colonel Selby or Michael Fielding in the street, he heard Colonel Selby say some indistinct words. He heard Michael with a cab-whistle repeatedly blowing the one blast that was the signal to summon a four-wheeler.

  “Mrs. Blanche Montague,” Garth was thinking.

  One blast for a four-wheeler, two for a hansom, three for a motor taxicab. As the single shrill note continued, he did not go near the open book on the waiting-room table. He had seen it before. Instead he was reconstructing memories of the night when he and Vincent Bostwick, also in a four-wheeler, drove up the steep streets of Hampstead to the house at Nag’s Corner.
r />   They took the route by way of Swiss Cottage and Fitz-john’s Avenue, the latter hill a hard pull for a cab even when there was no mud. In Church Row they turned to the right, past St. John’s Churchyard, up a narrow and even steeper track like a country lane.

  Colonel Selby’s house was surrounded by a high stone wall pierced with two iron-grilled gates. Though he was not wealthy, Vince said, you might judge he had some private means beyond his retirement half-pay. Mrs. Montague, a dumpy figure with grey-streaked black hair, sat in one corner. Marion laughed. Three persons had committed suicide in the house.

  “Stop this!” Garth said to himself.

  Turning round, he hurried back to the consulting-room and stopped with something of a shock at his heart.

  Inspector Twigg sat serenely in the big chair. Twigg’s hat lay beside him on the floor. He was holding the black briefcase, stamped above its clasp with the gilt letters D.G., which Garth had left on the telephone-table in the hall. Twigg held it up and tapped it.

  “This thing is locked.”

  “That’s right.”

  “This thing is locked. Mind opening it up for me?”

  “Yes. I do mind.” With an effort Garth controlled himself. “You know, Inspector, I’ve seldom found your equal for sheer unadulterated cheek. It’s a new experience to meet you. By Jove, it’s almost a pleasure! Have you got a search-warrant?”

  “Not yet I haven’t.”

  “Then the case stays locked.”

  A red bar showed across Twigg’s forehead. His ruminating gaze moved across to one corner of the consulting-room, where a screen hid a wash-basin as well as Garth’s cloak and top-hat. In sudden wrath the eyes returned and fastened on Garth’s evening-clothes.

  “You gentlemen are all alike. You think the world’s yours. You think you can do what you like and how you like and as you like. Maybe, before long, you’ll wish you’d been a bit more helpful when you were given the chance.”

  “Are we getting back to this question of someone who’s been leading a double life?”

  “By jing, we are!”

  “What do you want here? Out with it!”

  “Now there’s no call to lose your temper, sir,” urged Inspector Twigg, raising his hand in a massive gesture like a bishop. “There’s not the least little call in the world. But I’ll tell you. It’s about a friend of yours who’s got very peculiar tastes. Some people might claim, maybe, the lady’s just a wee bit touched in the head—”

  The lady?”

  “That’s what I said. And that’s what Mr. Cullingford Abbot claims, though I’m a chapel-goer and I’ve always had a different word for it. Still, that’s not the point. It’s no business of ours how the lady carries on, or what kind of a reputation she’s got, just as long as she keeps away from the law. But she won’t, Doctor. She hasn’t. I’m just warning you.”

  “Oh? Of what? If there has been some nonsensical charge against Mrs. Bostwick—”

  “Mrs. Bostwick?” echoed the other.

  Twigg rose to his feet, slowly, looming large under the bleak light

  “Now who said anything about Mrs. Bostwick?” he asked. “Who mentioned Mrs. Bostwick? I’m not talking about Mrs. Bostwick, in case you hadn’t guessed it I’m talking about your good friend Lady Calder.”

  3

  “INSPECTOR, WHAT’S THE JOKE?”

  “There’s no joke. Except maybe (just excuse me for saying this, will you?), except maybe the fool you’ve been making of yourself when you thought nobody noticed. This Lady Calder, now: do you know who she is?”

  “She is the widow of a man named Sir Horace Calder, who was Governor of Jamaica between 1900 and 1905. He died in ’05.”

  “Oh, ah!” Twigg opened his eyes wide. “She’s that, right enough. Well give her credit for brains. Do you know what else she is?”

  “What else she is?”

  “You’ve got ears, sir. I’m using the English language. You met her at Ostend, now didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Last summer, that was?”

  “If it’s any of your business, yes.”

  “She’d gone there after spending six months in Paris. What had she been doing in Paris?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I can,” said Twigg. He threw the brief-case on the desk, where its silvered catch flashed and dazzled. “Before she married old Sir Horace, she was one of four good-looking sisters born out Hoxton way and brought up as dancers for the stage. The Moulin Rouge in Paris is quite a place. But the old gentleman left her well off. So there must be a reason why she went back there last year, when she didn’t need to for a display we’ll not discuss. I don’t know the reason; I don’t care. About what she is, I can tell you short and sweet. She’s a blackmailer and a professional prostitute.”

  “Is that what you say? Then you’d better retract it.”

  “‘Retract?’ ‘Retract?’” Twigg mimicked heavily. “That’s a fine word, that is! That’s a fine fancy word for a gentleman who knows all about people’s minds, and thinks he sees dewy-eyed innocence, and then finds he’s been had for a mug.”

  “God damn your soul,” said Garth—and took a sudden step forward.

  “I wouldn’t try any games, Doctor. Maybe you can pat me out of here; maybe you can’t. But you’ll see trouble if you try that with a police-officer. And it’ll look fine in the newspapers, won’t it, for a grand Harley Street specialist like you?”

  Garth stopped.

  So, in a sense, did Inspector Twigg. It was that maddening word “retract” which made the little eyes grow congested in the big face. Now, evidently conscious he had gone too far, he altered his tone and spoke cajolingly.

  “I wish you’d get it out of your head, sir, that we’re trying to trap you or do you down. We’re not. That’s straight. If you’d come along to the Yard when I asked you to, you could have heard all this from Mr. Abbot. He’s the Commissioner’s secretary. He’s your friend.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, thank you.”

  “Well! He could have broken it gentle-like.” Then Twigg stared. “God’s truth, Doctor, you haven’t asked this woman to marry you?”

  Garth said nothing.

  “Yes, I believe you have! Now you’re wondering if she’s serious. Oh, she’ll be serious enough as far as you’re concerned! The lady’s pushing thirty, as I understand it. If she wants to catch somebody near enough her own age, she won’t get many more offers. This is a last chance. But you’re not having any more of it, I hope?”

  “This concern for my welfare is very touching. What exactly, is Lady Calder supposed to have done?”

  “God’s truth, do you believe one word I’ve been telling you?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “There’s a telephone in the passage,” said Twigg, stabbing out his forefinger, “and Mr. Abbot’s still at the Yard. Talk to him! Ask him! If you won’t believe me, will you believe him?”

  Garth felt a trifle light-headed.

  “We can do better than that, I think. We’ll put the matter up to Lady Calder herself. Stay where you are, Inspector.”

  Anger, no doubt, is a sign of weakness or uncertainty; it is an emotional luxury which ought not to be indulged. And he must be very careful with George Alfred Twigg, Garth reflected. Twigg’s serene and fishy superiority towered above your wits, less outmatching them than ignoring them. Yet there were times when giving way to one’s anger was the only way to keep any kind of mental balance.

  Though Twigg said something behind him, Garth paid no attention. He went to the little library, rapped his knuckles on the door, and opened it.

  That room was empty.

  The street-door remained ajar, creaking in a faint draught. Footsteps sounded on the pavement outside. Michael Fielding, rather out of breath, bounded up the front steps and let the front door close behind him with a hollow slam.

  “Sorry to take so long,” he said. “We had to walk as far as Devonshire Place before we could find a
cab for Colonel Selby.” Then Michael woke up. “If you’re looking for Lady Calder, Doctor, she’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “In the motor-car. I thought you knew. That car of yours makes as much noise as a couple of Maxim-guns.”

  “Why did Lady Calder go?”

  “Doctor, that’s not important! I’ve been trying to tell you about the message from Mrs. Bostwick. It seems—”

  “Mr. Fielding, will you be good enough to explain what happened here?”

  Through the dusky hall, past ornamental palms, Michael approached with the look of a young man now growing as puzzled as he had been ruffled.

  “Well, sir, it was a minute or two before Colonel Selby left. It did seem a bit odd, now you mention it; but I had too many things to think about the same time. Lady Calder and I were sitting in the little library, there,” he gestured towards it, “when that police-officer knocked at the front door. He said he was from Scotland Yard and the rest of it. I told him you were engaged, but he brushed past into the waiting-room without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  “Yes?”

  “The next thing I knew, Lady Calder ran straight out to the car. She threw her motoring-wraps into the tonneau, and took the starting-handle out of that box beside the front I thought, ‘Here, hullo! She can’t drive a motor-car, can she? And she’s not strong enough to turn over a starting-handle, surely? It’ll break her wrist if she tries.’”

  “Lady Calder,” Garth retorted, “is not especially strong. But she’s sturdy enough, as you seem to have observed. After all, she belongs to the Royal Life-Saving Society.”

  “Sir?”

  “The Royal Life-Saving Society. Bayley Street, Bedford Square. There are ways to rescue a person in danger of drowning, and carry the victim out of the water for artificial respiration.”

  “Sir, what are you talking about?”

  It would not be true to say that waters were closing over David Garth’s own head. Yet he retained all too vivid a memory of just such an exercise on the beach near Fairfield, and of Betty’s face and body outlined against hard-packed white sand.

  “I am telling you, Mr. Fielding, this lady did not run away.”