The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  Though their talk remained polite, even after three hours’ questioning, exasperation lurked at its edges.

  “My dear fellow,” said Abbot, his facial muscles gripping the single eyeglass so that one side of the face seemed to go lopsided, “can’t you help us any further? Can’t you?”

  “I have told the truth. Every word. If you don’t believe it…”

  “Oh, I don’t say I disbelieve you! Not altogether.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tut! There is no need for sarcasm.”

  “No sarcasm was intended,” Garth told him sincerely. “I appreciate your consideration. I appreciate your allowing Lady Calder and me to have a meal at the Stag and Glove.”

  “You understand, let’s hope, that I was obliged to accompany you?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Very well. Now, then!”

  Abbot, short and stocky, wore a frock coat and an elaborate cravat. His grey moustache curled above a firm mouth, and his grey hair was cut short. He could not be called at all dandified; he was too formidable. The gleam on his eyeglass seemed to come rather from the eye behind it than from the light that shone there.

  “There are several reasons,” he said, “why I want to be fair. We made one mistake in the matter of Lady Calder. I’m honest enough to admit that.”

  Garth lowered his head.

  “She’s not the blackmailer we thought she was,” Abbot continued. “She didn’t drive that banker Dalrymple to put a bullet through his head five years ago. We weren’t too much to blame, I might point out. Glynis Stukeley gave her sister’s name at the time of the Dalrymple suicide; Glynis Stukeley used her sister’s name and title when she went back to the Moulin Rouge in ’06.

  “However! We’ve been making inquiries since Lady Calder told this story to the Hampstead police last night. We already had a set of the blackmailer’s fingerprints, taken (unofficially, let’s admit) when Dalrymple died. Fingerprints weren’t allowed in evidence then; and, anyway, there was no prosecution. The woman dead out in that pavilion is the one we’ve been after.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Amen. But don’t you see, my dear Garth—” he spoke persuasively, as a reasonable man, lifting the lapel of his coat to sniff at the gardenia in the buttonhole—“that all this is quite irrelevant?”

  “Irrelevant?”

  “To the question of whether Lady Calder strangled a sister who was driving her out of her mind. Inspector Rogers, at Hampstead last night, overheard her threaten it. ‘If she tries just one more trick, so help me God, I’ll kill her and take the consequences.’ Weren’t you actually there yourself when she said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what sort of trick, by Lady Calder’s own admission, was this sister playing on her today?” Abbot waited. “Now look here, young fella-me-lad. I’ve tried to give you every advantage. So far I’ve taken the questioning entirely on myself. I don’t want to turn you over to Twigg unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

  “Then send for Twigg, by all means. It seems a pity not to give him his opportunity.”

  Some of the cynical benevolence was wiped off Abbot’s face. He squared his shoulders, a mannerism copied from Sir Edward Henry.

  “Oh, Twigg may get his opportunity. Some people think it not wise to question a witness too soon. Let him sweat a little first. That’s what Twigg believes, I understand. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes. I am still telling the truth.”

  “Confound it, man, can’t you help me a little?”

  “How?”

  “Well, how does it feel when you’re penned into a corner? Early this afternoon, before I came down to the country, I spoke to Mrs. Bostwick at Hyde Park Gardens.”

  “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  “Quite frankly, I did.” Abbot smoothed at the under-side of his moustache. “She’s a charming young lady, very. I don’t often meet ’em in the way of business. Last night you put that poor woman through one devil of an inquisition. I ought to put you through a worse one—and Twigg’s the man to do it—except that I think you’re honest. I keep wondering. Why can’t you help me?”

  Tm trying to help you!”

  “Very well. Here’s your chance. Mrs. Bostwick gave you a perfectly straight story, confirmed by all evidence. A woman nearly strangled Mrs. Montague, and escaped afterwards through an unlocked and unbolted cellar-door. Straightforward, eh? Fair enough?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Yet for some reason, Mrs. Bostwick tells me, you disbelieved every word she said and all but frightened the poor girl out of her wits. Why did you doubt her?”

  “Abbot, there are professional reasons why I can’t tell you!”

  “Oh, no. You shouldn’t have told Twigg you were Mrs. Bostwick’s medical adviser. She denies it. In fact, she disowns you and says she wants nothing more to do with you.”

  “I see.”

  “So that won’t wash.” The monocle gleamed like a dragon’s eye. “And don’t say the police suspect Lady Calder of attacking Mrs. Montague. We don’t suspect that. We’ve pretty well established she was attacked by Glynis Stukeley. You’ve got no reason to shield Glynis Stukeley. Why did you doubt Mrs. Bostwick’s story?”

  “Abbot, did you ask Mr. Vincent Bostwick the same question?”

  “Yes. He couldn’t understand either. Why did you doubt Marion Bostwick?”

  Garth looked at the floor.

  He put his hands on his knees. He started to get up, but thought better of it. He looked up at the yellow silk shade of the lamp, and at the open bookshelves round the walls. Behind his head, beyond lace curtains and open windows, the long surf swayed and rippled at the edge of the beach. Farther out, where an occasional low wave struck under the piles of the pavilion, reflections from the light inside it trembled against dark water.

  And still the inscrutable Abbot watched him.

  “Look here, I’ll be quite frank with you,” Abbot said abruptly. “You’re a clever chap, Garth. I don’t underestimate you. And I won’t ask you, not now anyway, to change one bit of your testimony about what happened out there at the pavilion—”

  “Abbot, for the last time…!”

  “I won’t ask that, I say,” the other struck in, “if you’re equally frank with me about other matters. Is it agreed?”

  Abbot stalked out to the middle of the room. Behind him the ledge of the mantelpiece was cluttered in Betty Calder’s happy, untidy fashion with silver-framed photographs. One of them, Garth saw, was a snapshot of a woman who must be Glynis herself, pictured with Betty when both of them were much younger. Betty’s presence haunted all her possessions, even when she waited terrified and half-sick in an upstairs room.

  “Is it agreed?”

  “Yes, it’s agreed. If I’m accused of intimidating Marion Bostwick—”

  “That’s what you did, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. When I think of Betty there,” and he pointed to the mantelpiece, and Abbot craned round to look, and suddenly it was as though cold fingers gripped Garth’s throat, “I wonder how many times we hurt patients instead of helping them. The most detestable thing in this world is a kind of calm know-it-all bullying that shakes its head fishily and warns people of the direst consequences if they don’t do as they’re told. That’s why I can’t get on with Inspector Twigg. He reminds me too much of a nephew of mine. Abbot, you remind me of somebody too.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? My personal appearance—”

  “I didn’t refer so much to your personal appearance, any more than Twigg looks in the least like Hal Ormiston. If we’re talking about personal appearance, I should say you look more like a certain Mr. Frank Harris.”

  For the first time, without intending to do so, he had stung Abbot badly.

  “Frank Harris? That bounder who used to hold forth at the Café Royal, and boast about his power over women?”

  “Forgive me. I was trying—”

  “Quite
so. You were trying to divert me again. Don’t go on trying it; I need information. For instance! When I wanted a word with Mrs. Montague, they told me on the telephone she’s not at Hampstead.”

  “They’ve taken her to a nursing-home, you mean?”

  “No, young fella-me-lad, I don’t mean that. I mean Mrs. Blanche Montague is in Fairfield at this very minute.”

  “In Fairfield? That’s impossible!”

  “Why? Is it medically impossible, after the attempted strangling?”

  “No, it’s not medically impossible.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Abbot, I didn’t examine the lady. But there was much bruising and possibly worse damage as well. In a case of that sort, you always risk oedema of the larynx.”

  “What does that mean, in plain language?”

  “If the patient gets excited and raises her voice, or even drinks hot tea instead of something cold, her vocal chords may swell so much that it needs an operation to save her life. I wonder her doctor allowed her to get up.”

  “According to Marion Bostwick,” Abbot retorted, “her doctor didn’t allow it. And she was raising her voice, right enough. Mrs. Montague has relatives in Fairfield; she’s the sort, they tell me, who would have relatives in Fairfield. She kept on screaming to be taken away from Hampstead until Colonel Selby agreed to bring her here. Colonel Selby’s at the Imperial Hotel; she’s with her relatives, guarded behind another doctor’s order not to be questioned. I came especially from London to Fairfield so that I could question her, and drew blank.

  “Failing that, I went on to Ravensport (your nephew very kindly drove me) to join Twigg for a word with the Ravensport police, who until recently have been keeping an eye on Lady Calder. This morning, by my own order from London and therefore my fault, they’d stopped keeping an eye on her. That scarcely seemed important (eh?) until an anonymous telephone-call at near six o’clock warned ’em there was trouble at Lady Calder’s.”

  “An anonymous telephone-call,” repeated Garth. “I see.”

  “Do you, young fella-me-lad?” Abbot asked with extraordinary intensity. “But let’s return to Mrs. Blanche Montague. What does that woman know? What did she say to Glynis Stukeley, if it was Glynis Stukeley, that made the Stukeley herself go berserk? We thought, at first, your friend Vincent Bostwick was being blackmailed—”

  “But you don’t think so now?”

  “No, we don’t. As I had to admit last night, on the telephone, there wasn’t a shred of real evidence to connect Vincent Bostwick with the danger from the Moulin Rouge. And this morning, as I mentioned a moment ago, our people in London made inquiries at Glynis Stukeley’s lodgings. She hasn’t been seen with Vincent Bostwick or with any other man, except…”

  “Yes?”

  “Except,” and Abbot turned the eyeglass full on him, “except a young man in your employ named Michael Fielding. Suppose you tell me everything you know about young Fielding.”

  There was a pause. The surf dragged and rustled.

  Garth should not have lost his temper. He should have held it back, held it back, held it back….

  “Michael Fielding,” he replied, “is studying at Bart’s Hospital on a pittance of a legacy from a clergyman uncle, helped out by what I pay him. He is brilliant, unsure of himself, impressionable, and perhaps not very stable. But he’s not a murderer; neither is Betty Calder. Abbot, why can’t you leave Betty out of this?”

  “Tut, now! It’s overwhelmingly probable she strangled that blackmailing harlot, just as Twigg says she did.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Yes; I’m afraid I do. If one sister is capable of a murderous attack, so is the other. There’s the same blood between ’em. Why should I forget that? Because of her beautiful eyes?”

  “No,” said Garth. “Because you and your God-damned Twigg have been wrong every step of the way. You were wrong about Betty being a blackmailer; wrong about Vince Bostwick being the victim. You’ll never in this world prove Betty was concerned in that murder, and I challenge you to try.”

  Abbot looked at him.

  “Indeed,” he remarked, very deliberately taking the gardenia out of his buttonhole and very deliberately hurling it into the empty fireplace. “Very well, then. Go your own way. I’ve finished trying to help you.”

  Instantly the door to the hall opened, and Inspector Twigg was in the room.

  “Oh, ah! Did you call me, sir?”

  A draught whipped between door and open windows. It belled out the curtains, it set the silk-shaded lamp swinging, it clapped shut the door with a crash that seemed to echo in the thunder of the surf below the pavilion.

  “Did you call me, sir?”

  “No, but I was about to. Take charge of the questioning. Conduct it in any way you please.”

  “Oh, ah!” said Twigg. “Oh, ah! I don’t mind admitting, sir, that suits me right down to the ground.”

  “And it suits me too,” said Garth, who had jumped to his feet.

  “But a word of warning to you, Inspector,” added Abbot, iron-fair and tightly inscrutable again. “You will conduct it according to some instructions for police-officers known as the Judge’s Rules. At all times you will remember those rules.”

  “I can remember ’em, sir, I can remember ’em! Just so long as Dr. Garth here has got it through his head he’s in quite a serious position: he may be headed for prison if not worse; and he can’t order people about at his own sweet will”

  “Stick to your questioning, Mr. Twigg,” snapped Garth. “Try not to begin bluffing before you’ve said ten words to the witness.”

  “Bluffing, am I?”

  “Stop this,” said Abbot

  The bursting quality of the silence clamped over them like a lid. Nobody moved for perhaps ten seconds. Then Garth sat down again on the window-seat leaning back with an outward assumption of casualness. Twigg, his bowler hat on the back of his head, took only a little longer before his look smoothed itself out to the agreeable.

  “Well, now, sir,” he said heartily, “that suits me too.”

  “Go ahead, then,” said Abbot.

  “Mind you, though!” added Twigg, as if suddenly remembering something and carefully defining his terms. “It might be, Mr. Abbot I’ve had to disobey some of your orders already.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Well, sir, it’s Lady Calder. She tried to run away. I had to question her in private before you wanted me to, and maybe speak a bit sharp to her. Bless you, sir, all women get a bit hysterical at one time or another!”

  “Sit down, Garth,” snarled Abbot. But his large grey moustache showed implacably against a congested face. “Inspector, if you have gone one step beyond—”

  “Oh, I’ve kept to the Judge’s Rules! You ask the lady herself if I haven’t. And I didn’t have much choice, as you might say. We’ve got a witness outside, Sergeant Baines and I have, that makes it look pretty bad for the lady without another word being said.”

  “Who is the witness?”

  Twigg did not reply.

  He walked over towards Garth, who again had sat down. Dragging out a large padded chair, Twigg pulled it sideways and himself sat down on the arm so that he towered above the man on the window-seat. He took out a notebook and the stub of a pencil.

  “Now, then, Doctor,” he began.

  9

  “INSPECTOR,” DAVID GARTH ASKED some three-quarters of an hour later, “how much longer do we need go on with this?”

  “Plenty of time, sir. Plenty of time!”

  “May I point out that we have been over the same old ground at least half a dozen times?”

  “That’s right, Doctor. And we may have to go over it half a dozen times more. Eh?”

  “Do you mind if I get up and walk about?”

  “Not a bit, sir! You do just that. Now, then: about the last question I was asking…”

  It had begun to shake Garth’s nerve, and he knew it.

  This did not come from mere rep
etition, which would not have troubled him. But he could not meet Twigg’s slippery manoeuvring, or once strike back with any vital reply. Time after time Twigg would take him almost up to ground he had been expecting, and then lead him away before he could use his answers.

  Cullingford Abbot sat watching the exchange with a look between impassivity and cynical admiration. His eyeglass turned back and forth from Twigg to Garth like that of a man at a tennis-match; a thin cheroot was in his mouth, and smoke drifted up towards the light.

  “I hope you’re following me, Doctor?”

  “I am following you, Mr. Twigg. Go on!”

  Abruptly Garth rose up from the window-seat, glancing out of the nearest window.

  The sound of that surf was not in the least loud; it only seemed loud to his heightened senses. The drag of water was so gentle that two uniformed policemen, now launching a tiny boat into the tide, could easily push it to the pavilion with oars for poles. The boat swayed and swung as they tied it to a hook by the door.

  Long before dark they had taken plaster casts of the footprints. Long before dark they had seemed to be taking endless photographs inside the pavilion, using a tripod camera and magnesium flash-powder. What were they doing now?

  Garth, with a frustration beyond any he would have imagined, walked towards some low bookshelves at the other side of the fireplace. The bright-coloured prints above all these bookshelves were mostly reproductions of paintings by Mr. Maxfield Parrish, showing supple nudes against purple dawn or dusk; no very high standard of taste, he supposed, but why shouldn’t Betty choose them? Again he kept wondering where Betty was now, and what she had been telling Twigg.

  Then her name, struck at him and he turned round.

  “I beg your pardon? What did you say about Lady Calder?”

  “We’re coming to her, Doctor. What time was it, again, you claim you got here this afternoon?”

  “It was a little before five minutes to six. Possibly six or seven minutes to the hour. I can’t be more definite than that”