The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  “If I fail,” Garth said, “the police have lost only twenty-four hours. If by any remote chance I succeed, at least three persons will keep some of the things they value most in life. What do you say?”

  “Done! I say yes.”

  It was very warm in here. And edge of sunlight ran across the damp tile floor as one of the big doors was pushed open from outside. Hal Ormiston marched in, accompanied by a gush of band-music partly stilled when he closed the door again.

  “I want you to take these,” said Hal, walking up to Garth and extending a still-crumpled packet of two five-pound notes. “I shouldn’t have picked ’em up in the first place. Now have ’em back, will you?”

  Even the imperturbable Abbot opened his eyes wide, so that the glass fell on its cord. Hal’s face remained in shadow; Garth could not read his expression. The young man was dressed, as they said, up to the nines; he wore a cream-coloured suit with black pique edging to pockets and lapels, a tall collar, and a broad blue cravat which (Hal would have said) was in the best bounds of good taste.

  “No,” Hal almost snapped, “and I won’t call you ‘Nunkie,’ either.”

  “Thank you. That at least is a relief. But by all means keep the money if it fulfils any pressing need.”

  “There you go again,” said Hal. “Let me be fair, for a change. I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you how infernally offensive you can be. Oh, not with your patients! They’re elderly and decrepit. But you don’t understand younger people; you rather detest younger people. I think you must have been born old.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s true.”

  “Your car has been repaired,” Hal said. “I persuaded a friend of mine here in Fairfield to repair it even on a Sunday.

  And I came down from London just for that purpose. Now, my respected ancient! Will you have the ten quid, or must I put it in your pocket for you?”

  Such is human nature that Garth responded instinctively.

  “Keep it, I tell you! Keep it and welcome! I should be only too glad to think this remarkable change…”

  “Oh, I haven’t changed. It’s you who’ve begun to change, maybe a good deal for the better.”

  “Hal, will you tell me just what…?”

  “Yes. Old Bet—Lady Calder, that’s to say—is in trouble. I didn’t guess how serious trouble until I had another talk with Inspector Twigg not half an hour ago. That close-mouthed devil never says what he’s about when he first asks you to testify. And I want to help. Still, whatever your high and mightiness thinks, I’ve got my feelings too!”

  “Young man,” interposed Cullingford Abbot, lifting the eyeglass with some distaste, “were you so very anxious to help when you made an anonymous telephone-call to the Ravensport police-station?”

  “If I don’t choose, my good Mr. Abbot, I never admit anything.”

  “You don’t have to admit anything, young fella-me-lad. From a question your uncle asked not long ago, he knows it as well as I do. Anyone who telephoned the police-station to report a murder…”

  Hal’s voice went high and thin.

  “Who said anything about a murder? I never did!”

  “Any such person, young man, would have telephoned to Fairfield and not Ravensport. But you had just driven a Scotland Yard official to Ravensport. And you thought that would be better, I fancy. Eh?”

  “I was angry. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Ah!” murmured Abbot.

  “My pious uncle has been carrying on with old Bet. He pretends he hasn’t been, but he has. I thought it might be amusing to say they’d find something ‘unpleasant,’ just as a Fairfield gossip would, if they called at the cottage late at night. I didn’t say then. I said late at night. Some thick-witted sergeant got the message garbled, that’s all.”

  “That’s all, is it?”

  “Yes! I’m sorry I did it. Here.”

  Whereupon Hal made a movement of blinding swiftness, a quicker move than any of which Garth would have thought him capable. He darted forward, pushed the folded banknotes into Garth’s side pocket, and darted back again. The glow from a glass case touched his face.

  “But they were already talking about hypocrisy,” snapped Hal, “while the old Queen was still alive…. It’s not one, two, three with the hypocrisy there is now. You take Marion Bostwick, for instance.”

  Until then Garth had not realized that the band-music had changed to a medley of light-hearted tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan. He had not realized an aquarium could contain so many eyes, all of which seemed to be fixed on them.

  “Young man,” Abbot asked in a dangerously restrained voice, “what is this you tell us about Mrs. Bostwick?”

  “Mind your eye, Mr. Policeman! I said nothing at all against Marion, if that’s what you mean. Maybe that’s just the trouble.”

  “Indeed?”

  “You heard me. I was talking about hypocrisy. They brought her home from India when she was fourteen; a handsome piece even then, so I’m told. I met her four years later, in ’05, at least three months before Vince Bostwick set eyes on her. If there’s one thing that girl keeps saying, over and over and over, it’s how fond she is of young men. Ask Dr. David Garth if Marion doesn’t say that.”

  Garth did not comment He stared at the floor, listening hard for every word.

  “Well, she’s lying,” shouted Hal. “I’ve tried hard enough since she was married; and so, I happen to know, has Michael Fielding. At first I thought she must have peculiar sexual tastes, but…”

  “‘Sexual tastes,’” repeated Abbot “‘Sexual tastes.’”

  And it was the raffish-seeming Abbot of all people, who seemed most outraged by these words.

  “Young man,” he said in a still-restrained voice, “has no one ever told you we are not accustomed to speaking of ladies in that way?”

  “Yes; quite often. Follow my point about hypocrisy? Since you’re old enough to know better—”

  “I am old enough to be your father,” said Abbot “But I am still capable of giving you a hiding you’ll remember for six months.”

  “You do, Mr. Cullingford Abbot, and you’ll pay me something handsome to keep it out of court afterwards.”

  Abbot’s eyeglass dropped on its cord. It is a sober fact that his hands lunged out for Hal’s throat.

  “Steady!” said David Garth. “Steady, I tell you!”

  “What’s the matter with you, Nunkie?” Hal appealed to him. “I’ve apologized, haven’t I? I’m trying to do my best for you and old Bet, aren’t I?”

  “Hal, you’d better go. Stop a bit, though! If it were necessary, would you swear to what you’ve just informed us? That both you and Michael Fielding made the most gallant attempts on Mrs. Bostwick’s virtue, and that she resisted both of you?”

  “Garth,” said Abbot, “have you lost all decency and good manners too?”

  “Quiet! Hal, would you and Michael mind testifying to that?”

  “Michael would mind, you can bet. He’s got more parsons in his family than in twenty pages of Crockford; and he’s going to be a doctor like you. Still, if I get something for my trouble, I’ve got no objection.”

  “You will get something for your trouble, I promise. (Steady, Abbot!) That’s all, Hal. Thank you.”

  Hal stalked out, leaving the door open. Abbot caught it and slammed it, again partly blotting out band-music. Then there was a hard-breathing pause.

  “Sorry,” Abbot growled after a moment “Silly of me. Lost my temper.”

  “That’s all right”

  “You dealt with me.” Abbot said, “as I dealt with you last night when you wanted to wring Twigg’s neck. Well, turnabout. All the same! ‘Sexual tastes.’ Spoken openly like that! What’s the world coming to?”

  “Michael Fielding, it would appear, is not quite the young innocent I believed. The cards will have to be dealt a little differently for this conference of ours. We can’t have Marion Bostwick there; and certainly we can’t have Vince.”

  “H’m. Thi
s scheme of yours, I trust, includes an explanation for an impossible murder?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the awkward part.”

  “Tut! The point need not be stressed. It will be difficult, yes! But—”

  “I did not say it would be difficult; it is not difficult at all. I said it will be awkward.”

  “Are you aware.” inquired Abbot, again restraining himself, “that you are now talking exactly like that damned Prince Ahriman in your own stories?”

  “Forgive me.” Garth looked at his watch. “Abbot, we must make haste. The train will be here. With any sort of luck, we should be approaching one part of the truth. Are you ready?”

  Serene sunlight dazzled their eyes in the parade. A spatter of applause from spectators standing or sitting twenty deep round the bandstand, greeted the end of the Gilbert-and-Sullivan medley. It was not too little applause to sound frigid or perfunctory; it was not too much applause to sound extravagant; it mingled with sky and sea and the nature of things.

  Cyclists rang their bells in the parade as two formally dressed men, Cullingford Abbot and David Garth, walked through formal gardens, past brilliant bands of flowers, towards the turrets of the Palace Hotel beyond Victoria Avenue.

  Though clearly Abbot was brooding about something, it did not remain quite the black thundercloud of before. When a child rolling a hoop caromed into him, and retreated with a frightened cry of “Please, sir,” Abbot dived into his pocket. What he gave that child was not a sixpence but a gold sovereign. And then, when they had almost reached Victoria Avenue, the band struck up “Land of Hope and Glory.”

  Perhaps not a person round the bandstand failed to straighten in pride as the slow, solemn notes smote out against drowsy afternoon air. Abbot stopped dead. Glowering, he touched his companion’s arm.

  “Look here,” he began in a rush. “I’ve jeered a good deal at Fairfield and what it represents. So have a number of us who fancied ourselves as wits. But in my heart of hearts I like it.”

  “Well?”

  “Don’t you understand? I said I like it.”

  “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t like it, except that this is strange talk to hear from you of all people. You, the advocate of the twentieth century? You, the apostle of advancement and progress?”

  “Of scientific progress, yes! My father believed in that, just as I do. It’s an altogether different matter. Fairfield may belong to the past—”

  “Fairfield isn’t the past, Abbot. Ravensport is the past. Fairfield is the present, very much the present; it’s everyone here who insists on living in the past.”

  “Then what’s the future?” Abbot walked to the edge of the kerb and swung round. “Not Bunch? Don’t tell me it’s Bunch? Not that blasted place with machines grinding out mechanical laughter on the pier, and people stamping on each other’s toes just to prove nobody’s got an advantage over anyone else?”

  “Yes, possibly Bunch. Nothing ever remains the same. We can’t expect it to.”

  “I don’t expect it, really. But, my God, Garth, how I dislike it!”

  “Perhaps, in my own heart, I like it no better than you. That doesn’t alter the fact that the child grows into the adult, and everything changes.”

  “You think so? There’s one thing at least that doesn’t change. Listen!”

  And Abbot nodded towards the bandstand. Brassy with massed instruments, almost relieved of pomposity by its deep feeling, the music threw a spell over every listener.

  Land of hope and glory, mother of the free,

  How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?

  It threw a spell over the cynical Abbot too. Top-hat rakish but eyeglass glittering, he stood with his shoulders back as though at attention.

  Wider still and wider, shall thy bounds be set—

  God, Who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!

  Slow, inexorable, the triumphant paean soared to its end in a cymbal-clash and such a thunder of applause that half Fairfield seemed to be joining in as the bandmaster bowed.

  “Come!” said Abbot, suddenly sneering at himself and snatching off his hat as though about to kick it like a football. “That’s enough of such nonsense. We’ve work to do. Besides,” and he pointed across Victoria Avenue, “besides, unless I’ve gone blind, Mr. and Mrs. Bostwick are going into the hotel at this minute. We can’t stop ’em. Also, that’s Lady Calder in the landau coming from the direction of Parliament Street; so the young chap beside her must be Michael Fielding. If you’re anticipating an explosion, my dear Garth, you’d better prepare for one.”

  The explosion occurred sooner than any of them expected.

  13

  “I DON’T THINK I understand, Doctor.”

  “You don’t, Mr. Fielding?”

  “No, sir! I’m only too happy to assist you in any way I can, of course; but you didn’t say much on the telephone.”

  “Was it necessary to say much, Mr. Fielding?”

  Marion intervened. “Really, David, if this young man can’t help you, he can’t!”

  Vince said, “Marion, my pet, don’t chatter.”

  Betty Calder and Cullingford Abbot remained quiet, watching.

  In the lounge of the Palace Hotel, under a high and gaudy roof of mosaic glass, the six of them sat round a table as though waiting for tea. A fountain splashed in the centre of the lounge, amid palms that seemed to have grown to an unusual height.

  There were other details Garth would afterwards remember: Marion’s white dress and Betty’s of dove-grey, and Marion in a pose he suspected of being imitated from Mrs. Patrick Campbell on the stage. Both wore hats heavy with a close-lying plume. But individual doubts or fears were lost under the glances now being turned on Michael Fielding, who looked as though he had passed a worse night than Garth.

  And Michael knew this.

  He had been careful to put on sober Sunday black, with a very high collar. You seldom noticed the ugliness of his features because of a real charm which gave him his usual air between brashness and timidity. Michael’s coarse sandy hair contrasted with brilliant hazel eyes like those of a matinee-idol.

  “Sir—!” he began in a rush.

  On the table stood three silk hats, emblems of respectability, together with Michael’s own billycock hat and Vince Bostwick’s silver-headed walking-stick. But Michael need not have lowered his voice. Despite its gilded cornices and all the frippery, this lounge-hall was so large that they might have been sitting at Euston Station. A few guests had already ordered tea, well out of earshot. Another man slept outright in a red plush armchair. The fountain tinkled monotonously.

  Then Michael rose to his feet

  “I don’t think this is quite fair,” he cried. “What do you want of me, sir? Why did you bring me here?”

  “Michael,” and Garth dropped the formal style of address, “I’m trying hard not to be unfair. I don’t even want to embarrass you. It’s only—”

  “Half a minute, old boy,” interrupted Vince, leaning forward to rap his knuckles on the table. “Nobody else has been spared embarrassment. Marion and I haven’t, and we’re not guilty of a dashed thing. Now are we, old girl?”

  “No, we most certainly are not.” Marion lifted one shoulder like Stella Campbell in The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. “I don’t even know why we’re here and I find it quite, quite intolerable!”

  “That’s precisely it, sir,” Michael said with pale earnestness. “Nobody’s done anything. You’re going too far.”

  It was this air of injured innocence, common to all of them and doubtless reasonable enough, which nevertheless scraped Garth’s nerves raw. He looked up at Michael.

  “I told you on the telephone, did I not, that Glynis Stukeley was murdered late yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yes, sir, you did. Anyway, a name like that was in this morning’s newspapers.”

  “Michael, I am not setting a trap. The police know you were very well acquainted with the lady before she died.”

  There was a st
artled silence. Marion craned round to look at Michael too.

  “You?” she said incredulously. “You? Why, you funny little man! How perfectly extraordinary!”

  And she began to laugh. Michael had gone as white as a ghost. Marion, instantly seeing the error, became so decorous that she might have been praying.

  “Governor,” said Michael, “I met her. Yes, that’s true. We’ve all met one or two women, I daresay, it would have been better if we hadn’t met.”

  “Now there,” observed Cullingford Abbot, “we have a short history of mankind expressed with admirable terseness.”

  “Abbot for heaven’s sake! I’m grateful to you for backing me up, but this is difficult enough to handle without a parade of your epigrams.”

  “Humblest apologies, my dear Garth. I myself have one or two ideas I should like to express presently. However, as a mere policeman, I apologize for butting in.”

  “I only meant—!”

  “I know what you meant, man. Get on with it!”

  “Michael,” said Garth, “you’re not very well off, are you?”

  “No, Governor, you know I’m not. Don’t hold that against me.

  “You knew Glynis Stukeley never granted her favours, I take it, without expecting something in return?”

  “Governor, what do you mean by ‘granted her favours’?”

  “There was never anything between you two?”

  “Nothing, so help me!”

  “You never once went to bed with her? And, in order to get to bed with her, you never did at least two things she persuaded you to do?”

  Again the fountain tinkled during a funereal hush.

  It is hard to say what effect those words might have created if they had carried to the ears of two elderly ladies seated at a table some thirty feet away, or of the waiter in the striped waistcoat who was marching towards them with a tea-tray. Even at their own table the words had a galvanizing effect. Marion Bostwick rose up.

  “Vince,” she said in a stifled voice, “I’m leaving. Whether or not you accompany me, I’m leaving. I don’t mean to stay here and be insulted.”

  “Marion,” said Vince, flinging his head round, “now just who is insulting you?”