The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  “Are you joking, old boy?”

  “No, I am not. I wish I could convince both you and Marion, each of you in a different way, that it’s as serious as it can be.” Garth’s head ached. The black wallpaper, with its spots or flecks of dull gold, seemed to be moving round him like the vision of Betty’s intent, beloved, concerned face.

  “In any event, Betty,” he added, getting a grip on his wits again, “and forgetting the reason why you went to Hyde Park Gardens…”

  “One of the reasons,” Betty said, “was that I thought you might be going there yourself when you left Harley Street. You had told me you would be having very late dinner with ‘some friends.’ Almost as soon as I had got the engine of the car working, I heard young Mr. Fielding shouting at the telephone. He was speaking to Mrs. Bostwick; he seemed to be distressed. I never knew Mrs. Bostwick wasn’t at home.”

  “And you also thought, ‘Is Glynis up to her games again?’”

  Betty did not comment on this.

  “At Hyde Park Gardens,” she was addressing Marion now, “I spoke to the butler and pretended to be a friend of yours. Will you forgive me, Mrs. Bostwick?”

  “That altogether depends,” retorted Marion, “on what you told him.”

  “Nothing at all! I only said I was a friend of yours, and asked if I could speak to you!”

  “Really?” inquired Marion.

  “All people aren’t trying to hurt you, Mrs. Bostwick. Do believe me: all people in the world aren’t trying to hurt you!”

  “Really,” Marion repeated.

  “Just one moment, old girl,” Vince interrupted with an abrupt change in his whole demeanour. All the strong, easy charm flowed back to him. “Let me speak to the lady!”

  Though Betty made a despairing gesture as she turned back towards Garth, Vince caught her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. Tall and lean, impeccable in grey with a gardenia in his buttonhole, he was no longer Vince the bluff sportsman or Vince the idler who apologetically read too many books. He had become Vince the wise counsellor, ready to press Betty’s fingers in sympathy.

  “My wife means well, Lady Calder. And old David, of course, is the cleverest chap I know. But sometimes he’s a bit too much of a pious St. Anthony and a Spirit of Conscience—”

  (“And now I am a pious St. Anthony, am I? If only you knew!”) Vince could not have heard unspoken words. “—David’s a bit too much of that, I mean, to observe what’s under his nose. That butler (he’s a devil of a stuffed shirt, between ourselves) told you Marion had been called away on an urgent summons to her former guardians, Colonel Selby and Mrs. Montague, at Hampstead. You’d said you were a friend of Marion’s so you couldn’t very well admit you didn’t know where they lived. Is that it?”

  “Yes! That’s it exactly!” Betty gave him a grateful look. “Thank you for understanding.”

  (“God’s teeth, does it require Aristotle or Sherlock Holmes or Prince Ahriman from the ‘Phantom’ stories to make so brilliant a deduction?”)

  Here Vince did take Betty’s hands.

  More fires were being lighted under the bared snarl of the big-game heads round the walls. “What’d you do next, Lady Calder?”

  “I—I hailed a hansom and drove round and round trying to find a post-office or a shop that was open so that I could look at a London Directory. Nothing was open. Then I thought they might have a telephone of their own. There was one telephone in an Underground Station; there usually is; but the Exchange said they hadn’t got any such name.”

  “They’ve got a telephone here, my dear.”

  “Mr. Bostwick, I swear…!”

  “Good old Aunt Blanche hates the devilish instrument and keeps it a secret. That’s all. Next?”

  “Well! I just told the cabby to drive to Hampstead. We were a good way up—Rosslyn Hill, I think—when I saw the blue lamps of a police-station on the other side of the road. They’d know there, I thought; they’ll be certain to know where the house is; but have I the colossal cheek to walk straight into a police-station and ask them?

  “Of course I shouldn’t have had the courage, though I left the cab and crossed the road, if it hadn’t been decided for me. That officer, Inspector Rogers, was standing on the steps of the station. A tired-looking elderly man with a black medical bag was talking to him, and telling him what happened here. They paid no attention to me; they never even saw me.” Betty wrenched away from Vince.

  “David,” she added, “you never met Glynis. You didn’t see her or hear her at the beach less than a fortnight ago. Saying—”

  “Yes? Saying what?”

  “Glynis said, ‘Everything you have is mine, ducky. Your money and your house in London and your jewels and your clothes too. I’ll use this cottage when I like, and swim from the pavilion when I like; and if you’re not very careful, ducky, I’ll take ’em all over.’

  “I said. ‘You’ll keep away from my friends,’ I said, ‘or I’ll kill you or I’ll have you put in prison.’ And Glynis said, ‘You won’t kill me, ducky, because you wouldn’t dare. You won’t put me in prison, because you haven’t the evidence. Anyway, you wouldn’t. Your own sister, ducky? Your own sister?’”

  Marion Bostwick drew back with a little cry.

  For an instant Betty’s mimicry of voice and expression had been almost frightening, as of a woman years older in experience.

  “Well, Glynis is going to learn different,” Betty resumed. “I made up my mind when I heard Dr. Fortescue talking to Inspector Rogers. It’s true, the doctor said, it was too dark for Mrs. Bostwick to see much of this so-called ‘woman sneak-thief who got away through a basement door. But Mrs. Bostwick did tell the woman’s height, and the colour of her eyes and hair, and that she was wearing Navy-blue serge with a straw hat.

  “I knew it was Glynis, right enough. I knew she attacked this Mrs. Montague, just as she once attacked a woman at the Moulin Rouge. And nowadays there are such things as fingerprints, aren’t there? She’ll take over, will she?

  “So I walked up to the Inspector and said, ‘I can tell you who the woman was.’ He said, not taking me very seriously, ‘Well, now, miss, I hope it wasn’t you?” I said, ‘No, I was somewhere else and I can prove it. But if you’ll take me to Colonel Selby’s house—now!—I’ll tell you her name and where she lodges in London.’

  “All of a sudden I could see him wondering if I was the woman. I said, Take me there! Take me! Let me speak to Mrs. Bostwick.’ I didn’t expect to find you here, David my dear. But I’m glad you are. There’s bad blood in me, as there is in her. Now it’s all straight. I’ll go out and tell them where to find Glynis. And I don’t want you ever to see me again.”

  Betty stopped, her eyes brimming over.

  “I’m sorry,” she added. “I don’t want you to look at me even now.”

  And she ran for the door.

  “I really think—” began Marion.

  “Betty,” Garth said in a voice he very seldom used, “stay where you are.”

  It was Vince who seized her arm, gripping it and turning her round. Marion leaped up from the sofa.

  “Unless you have stopped playing detective, Vince,” said Garth, “would you mind asking the question the police are bound to ask? The question we’ve somehow got to meet or land in trouble? If Marion is telling the truth…”

  “If I am telling the truth?”

  “Yes. I’m not convinced you are. But if Marion is telling the truth, and we all agree on it, how did Glynis Stukeley or any other person leave this house through a door double-bolted on the inside?”

  Vince released Betty’s arm.

  “Yes, old boy, I see what you mean. It’d be a fine question, I agree, to throw at us in a puzzle. But it’s only academic, isn’t it?”

  “Academic? Rogers won’t stay out there drinking whisky in the dining-room. He’ll go straight down to the cellar. You know what he’ll find.”

  The thin little amusement-wrinkles deepened round Vince’s mouth and eyes and then vanished in an
instant

  “Quite,” he agreed, “I know. I overheard you telling Marion you’d drawn both bolts yourself. Consequently, if the bluebottles won’t accept honest people’s words, they’ll find the door both unlocked and unbolted just as Marion said it was.”

  “Ah, I see,” Garth said after a pause. “We support what is convenient, then, because otherwise it might lead to uncomfortable conclusions.”

  “Well, what else can we do?”

  “You might be right. Sure you’re not acquainted with Glynis Stukeley, Vince?”

  “Never saw her in my life, old boy.”

  “Still, you’ve seen Betty. I am supporting her.”

  “It’s not necessary,” Betty cried, “for anybody to support me. May I be allowed to see the Inspector now? And then please, please, may I never have to see any of you again?”

  She spoke in an unnatural voice, hot with shame and humiliation, face averted. And so, because Garth was touched to the heart, he must half yell at her.

  “I told you once before, Betty, not to be a fool. Those things don’t matter.”

  “Don’t they? To you?”

  “No! When you go back to Fairfield tonight, I’ll go with you. If Glynis should happen to be there, we’ll see her together.”

  “Oh, no, we won’t! I mean—”

  Betty shut her eyes, and opened them again.

  “I mean,” she said, “it’s nice of you to pretend. I love you for pretending. But it does matter. It will matter. It can’t help mattering. If you believe you can meet me again without wondering what I am and what’s in my mind, then make it tomorrow, late tomorrow, when you’ve had time to think it over. But you won’t. It is over, David, and I wish to God it had never started. Tell this man not to touch me, please. I’m going to see the Inspector.” And Garth made a sign to Vince, who stood aside.

  But he should not have let her go. Certainly he should not have let her return to Fairfield alone. Whatever was diabolic in this, it burst over David Garth towards six o’clock on the following afternoon.

  PART II

  THE IMPOSSIBLE

  Like “s’il vous plait” in Paris, “If you please,” or “please,” is generally used in ordering refreshments at a café or restaurant, or in making any request. The English forms of politeness are, however, by no means so minute or ceremonious as the French.

  —Baedeker’s London and Its Environs for 1908

  6

  FAIRFIELD-ON-SEA, EVEN LATE DURING a Saturday afternoon in June, could hardly be described as a place of gaiety.

  No pier marred Fairfield’s dignity. No banjos twanged on its sands, no blackface minstrels sang, no wandering preacher began to explain what was wrong with the world and went into a fit when he explained it. Though many of the inhabitants were elderly or invalid, still more were merely prosperous and sedate.

  It was true that a few bathing-machines—those curious eighteenth-century survivals, Garth reflected, like narrow outhouses on wheels—could be rolled towards the tide so that stately bathers could undress inside and take a dip without any necessity for appearing on the beach in bathing-costume. But the tide was out now, showing a vast surface of shiny grey mud under a grey overcast sky.

  It was also true that they had built up a sea-front parade with tall lamp-standards of ornamental ironwork. There was a formal garden with mummified benches, and a gilt bandstand from which, on occasion, you might hear the strains of Gilbert and Sullivan. But at this time, towards six o’clock of a warm day, most people were still snugly indoors after tea.

  Except for one or two dogs who grew nervous and could not be prevented from barking, Fairfield lay in a hollow of silence.

  “Now I wonder!” David Garth thought.

  Some distance away along the coast to the north was a larger, noisier watering-place which bore the regrettable name of Bunch. Occasionally, a matter to be ignored by Fairfielders, some veer in the wind would carry strains not unconnected with giddy-go-rounds and coconut-shies. Of the two towns Garth himself might have preferred Bunch. But you might not have guessed this to see him walking southwards along the parade now. In that direction lay the open country where Betty’s house loomed above the coast; and, still farther south, a third seaside-town named Ravensport.

  Garth had discarded his professional silk hat and frock coat for country tweeds and a Trilby. He still looked formidable and black-browed because he was thinking of last night, and of certain wild words spoken shortly before Betty Calder had left the house at Hampstead.

  Betty was still there, being questioned by Inspector Rogers in the den, when Vince Bostwick made an explosive suggestion to Garth.

  “Old boy, forget your repetition of ‘impossible,’” Vince had said pettishly. “Are you still talking about trying to explain a door double-bolted on the inside?”

  “Yes. Strangely enough, I am.”

  “Well, you know,” said Vince, “I think I can explain it.”

  A remark like this, made at the wrong time, brought Marion near a scream.

  Since Inspector Rogers was using the den to question Betty, the other three had gathered in the drawing-room. Marion paced back and forth, fanning herself and once or twice smoothing down her gown across the hips.

  “The fact is,” said Vince, whose eye seemed to have turned inward, “I was thinking of this writing-chap. ‘Phantom.’ Very clever, whoever he is. Now, ‘Phantom’—”

  “If you men don’t stop going on about stories,” said Marion, “I think I shall go quite, quite out of my mind. Stories! Stories! Stories!” Her voice went up the scale at each repetition of the word. “Your ridiculous stories have nothing whatsoever to do with all this.”

  “That’s not so certain, my pet,” replied Vince. “If you’re telling the truth, as David says, somebody played a trick with the bolted door.”

  “Oh? Who did?”

  “Suppose I did it myself?”

  Marion drew in her breath, staring. Every object in the room, from bright Indian mats to golden-oak furniture, seemed to have acquired a hard lustre. Vince extended a long finger and pointed at Garth.

  “When I knocked at the front door,” he went on, “you and Marion were too absorbed to hear me. That front door was unlocked. Very well! Suppose the basement door was also both unlocked and unbolted, as Marion says? Suppose I had already slipped into the house, by whichever entrance you please? Suppose I wanted to prove my dear wife a liar and land her in difficulties with the police? Suppose I bolted the door myself, and then slipped upstairs and made a noise out in the foyer as though I’d only just arrived from the front?”

  “That’s not fair,” Marion cried out “It’s not fair.”

  Retreating rather blunderingly, she groped for the arms of a chair and sat down.

  “You’re having your revenge now, Vince, aren’t you?” she accused him. “The night we saw that musical play, The Merry Widow, I—I teased and joked you a little about something else. Now you’re getting back at me.” Her expression changed. “You didn’t really do that, did you?”

  “No, dash it all, of course I didn’t! It’s not a thing even for me to joke about.”

  Vince’s expression changed too. He went over and dropped his hand on Marion’s shoulder.

  “I’m still in love with you, you overgrown child, though it goes against the grain to admit I am.” Worry sharpened the long features. “I didn’t do that, no, but somebody else may have. Somebody may be waiting to spring a trap, and let the bobbies know this house was locked up after all.”

  “But the police won’t learn that! Inspector What’s-his-name believes everything we say!”

  “H’m. Maybe. You never can think two moves ahead, my pet”

  “But Vince—!”

  “What do you say, David? Isn’t that the reasonable solution?”

  “Well,” Garth told him, “it’s a remotely possible solution. When I first thought of it…”

  “You’d already thought of it? About me?”

  “Yes, a
bout you. It’s fairly obvious.”

  “Now that’s a nice thing to tell me, I must say,” exclaimed the outraged Vince, with all his banter struck away. “You mean you think I did that?”

  “No. I don’t think you did it; I don’t think anybody else did it. This house is like a sounding-board; every floor creaks and cracks; the wooden stairs to the cellar are even worse. Marion and I were alone here. Even if we were preoccupied, I can’t imagine that happening without my hearing anything at all. There are several other reasons, but let them go. I could almost swear it’s not the true explanation.”

  And, as they were to discover under grim circumstances, Garth was quite right. For the moment, bedevilled, he could see only the look on the other’s face.

  “But, good God Almighty—!”

  “What’s the matter, Vince? You’re the one who has been so casual and bland about all this. What’s the matter now?”

  “I’ve been thinking, that’s all. Unless it happened in that way, it couldn’t have happened in any way. It’s a ruddy impossibility!”

  “Ah. If you’re finally convinced of that, Vince, we can go forward a little. Somebody may very well be laying a trap for us. If so, we must be prepared to meet it.”

  “How?”

  At the back of the foyer, in something of a rush as though at the end of a strained interview, the door of the den opened. The lamp of the bronze Diana quivered on the newel-post. But Betty was walking slowly, with greater despair in the set of her shoulders. Inspector Rogers escorted her towards the front door.

  “Yes, my lady, that’s all for the moment. It won’t be all, I’m afraid. It’s a pity this woman’s your sister.” Here Betty made a sharp gesture as the Inspector spoke. “Still, if she’s the one our people want to talk to (as you might say) for other causes, it can’t be helped and maybe it’s just as well.”

  “Will they arrest her?”

  “That’s not for me to say, my lady. Until Mrs. Bostwick makes an identification, yes or no, there’s no proof she assaulted the poor lady upstairs. I’ve got her address here,” Rogers tapped the notebook in the breast pocket of his tunic, “and I’ll pass it along to Scotland Yard.” Then he added, “No offence being meant, there’s still one thing I’m bound to ask.”