The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  “Vince, you fool! Once David’s started like that, you can’t tell where he’ll stop or what he’ll say next. Unless you go with me, my precious darling, you may learn more than you learn from listening outside doors in the middle of the night.”

  Vince also rose up.

  “What the hell do you mean,” he asked in a whisper, “by ‘listening outside doors in the middle of the night’?”

  Betty Calder pressed her hands over her eyes.

  The necessity for keeping their voices lowered, in this church-like atmosphere under a dome of mosaic glass, tended to heighten feelings while restraining them. Marion, straight and magnificent in the white dress, raised her eyebrows at Vince. Without a further word she turned round and walked in a foam of rustling underskirts towards the door to the foyer.

  “Forgive me,” said Vince, taking hat and stick from the table. “I’ll follow her, I suppose. I always follow her.”

  He stood for a moment irresolute, with a baffled look on his face. Then he had gone too, instinctively on tiptoe even over soft carpet.

  “Garth, you clever swine,” said Abbot suddenly bouncing up and just as suddenly sitting down, “did you do that on purpose? Did you drive ’em away? Was that the game? Hey?”

  But neither Garth nor Michael Fielding paid any attention.

  “Listen to me, Governor,” the latter was pleading. “If you can possibly believe I killed Glynis Stukeley, you must be out of your mind. At the time she must have been killed on Saturday afternoon, I was talking to a solicitor.”

  “A solicitor?”

  “Well, anyway, dash it,” and Michael made a fighting gesture, “a friend of mine who’s articled to a solicitor. He said—”

  “Michael, I am not concerned with what you were doing on Saturday afternoon. I want to know what you were doing on Friday night.”

  “On Friday night?”

  “Yes. After Mrs. Bostwick’s telephone-call, I left Harley Street to go to Hampstead. What did you do following that?”

  “I locked up the house and went home to my own lodgings, that’s all.”

  “Did you meet anyone afterwards?”

  “No, sir! Not even my landlady in Great Ormond Street. I went to bed.”

  Standing very straight, speaking over Garth’s head, the frightened Michael here turned a little sideways as though he risked staring at Medusa.

  “I didn’t know she was your sister, Lady Calder! Word of honour! I never dreamed…!”

  “Mr. Fielding, I do beg you won’t distress yourself so much.” Clearly Betty was resisting an impulse to cry out. “Nobody could call Glynis a dear one of mine. They’re saying I killed her.”

  “Yes, Michael,” Garth struck in, “they are saying just that. Think about it.”

  Michael moistened his lips.

  “Lady Calder, pray do accept my apologies. You can’t know everything, or you’d forgive me. When you turned up with Hal Ormiston on Friday night, I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

  “Why?” demanded Garth. “Because she looks like her sister? Or because you and Hal frequently compete for the same woman?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “David, do please let him alone! He’s terribly young!”

  “He is old enough to assume a few responsibilities. Do you think I enjoy doing this?” Garth paused. “Betty, be good enough to answer the questions you answered yesterday. Your sister arrived at Fairfield on Saturday morning. You had not told her you expected me, nor did you tell her of a note that arrived later in the post. Yet she knew I would be there. When you protested at her going for a swim, her words were: ‘What’s the matter, ducky; don’t you want your young man to meet me?’ Is all this true?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “How did Glynis know you were expecting me?”

  “David, I can’t answer that!”

  “No, but perhaps Michael can. May I have the note, please? And its envelope?”

  Betty took both from a heavy mesh-bag. Garth spread them out on the table.

  “My stationery, you observe. The note reads, ‘My dear, I shall be with you at six o’clock on Saturday. Yours unalterably.’ This was done on my private typewriter. The envelope is postmarked London, West at 12:30 A.M. on Saturday. Did you ever see these before?”

  “No, Governor. I swear I didn’t!”

  “Michael, don’t lie to me,” Garth said wearily. Then he struck the table with such sharpness, as Vince had done, that one of the elderly ladies looked round and a waiter drifted forward. “You are the only person who had access to the personal typewriter in my living-quarters at Harley Street, as you have access to everything else of mine. I don’t hold it against you—”

  “You don’t hold it against me?”

  “No; what harm was done? But don’t lie.”

  “David,” cried Betty, who was staring at him, “you said that you…?”

  “I was compelled to tell you so. I lied then, if you like, but Michael must tell the truth now.” And Garth looked up. steadily at the young man. “You wrote this note, did you not, at Glynis Stukeley’s request? And there was something else you did?”

  “No; that was all!”

  Garth still looked at him.

  So desperately in earnest can people become that their gestures seem to be those of the wildest exaggeration. Michael, knocking one of the hats off the table, bent forward and leaned both hands flat on the table-top so that he was staring back at Garth from less than ten inches away. The red plush armchairs, the dome of mosaic glass, the forest of palms round a splashing fountain, all held them poised in an incongruous frame.

  “I wrote the note; very well!” Michael was not really screaming; he only seemed to be. “For the life of me I can’t tell you why she wanted me to write it…”

  “Can’t you? You’re a perceptive young man. Can’t you even guess?”

  “…but on my oath, sir, that’s all I did. Nothing but the note! Nothing else!”

  “Would you take that oath if Glynis Stukeley were alive?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Will you take it before Lady Calder now? Betty—”

  He reached out towards the left, as though to touch Betty’s arm and attract her attention, a moment before he glanced round. But Betty had gone.

  There was nothing at all mysterious in this, as he realized after an instant of sheer superstitious dread. Though she did not fear being “insulted,” as Marion presumably did, Betty had loathed these proceedings; she shrank from them as though from a fire. With Garth’s attention fixed on Michael, and Abbot also entranced like a spectator at a tennis-match, she could have slipped away unnoticed towards the foyer.

  And yet everything, or so it seemed to Garth, now began happening at once in the death-quiet lounge of the Palace Hotel.

  Two waiters in striped waistcoats were approaching the table, one from the direction of the dining-room at the far end and one from the direction of the foyer. Not far behind the second waiter came Detective-Inspector Twigg.

  Garth got up, cursing under his breath. Michael retreated.

  “Sir,” began the first waiter, addressing Abbot deferentially, “can I bring you anything?”

  “Unless you can bring me enlightenment—?”

  “Sir?”

  The second waiter, with Twigg close behind him, had approached Michael Fielding and was speaking to him in a rapid undertone.

  “What lady?” Michael demanded rather wildly. “Where?”

  And then, as the quick whisper continued, Michael’s face took on an eager expression.

  “Sha’n’t be two minutes, Governor,” he assured Garth. “This may settle a good deal. You’ll excuse me, won’t you?”

  It did no good to protest. Not for the first time Garth saw the game being taken out of his hands; it was as though Twigg, massively marching with bowler hat in hand, covered Michael’s own retreat towards the foyer.

  “Now, Doctor, what’s all the fuss and hurry? I’m never in a hurry, am I? You just
sit down, Doctor, and we’ll take care of you in good time. Ur! Quite a posh place, this is. Afternoon, Mr. Abbot. Sorry I haven’t had the chance to see you today, bar that word or two over the telephone.”

  “Does it ever occur to you, Inspector,” inquired Abbot, with a snap behind closed teeth, “that you can interrupt most damnably at the wrong time?”

  “Oh, ah? Very happy to apologize, sir, if you’ll tell what I’m interrupting.”

  “Dr. Garth—”

  “The gentleman’s been asking questions, has he? Thinks he can give the police a bit of help, perhaps? Maybe even thinks he can get to the truth before we do?”

  “And if he does?”

  “Well, sir, I’m sure that’s natural to people like Dr. Garth.” Twigg laughed with much smoothness. “It’s natural for him to try it on in a lot of ways.”

  “Inspector Twigg,” said Abbot, suddenly getting up, “what would happen if only once, just once in your tidy universe, you happened to be wrong?”

  “Oh, I can be wrong, sir! I daresay I can be wrong about a lot of things. But I’m not wrong about this. Now, by your leave, we’ll get back to serious business and I’ll ask the questions. Maybe you hadn’t heard, sir, I’ve been put officially in charge of this case?”

  “And perhaps you had not heard,” said Abbot, leaning down to strike the table with his fist, “that you will still take your orders from me whenever and however I choose to give them?”

  “What might those orders be, sir?”

  “If you are still so determined to question Lady Calder, or Mrs. Bostwick either…”

  “Lady Calder? Mrs. Bostwick? Why, bless your innocence, sir,” and Twigg’s heartiness rang like a benediction, “but who’s been telling you all that? I never did see much we could learn from Mrs. Bostwick. And Lady Calder? I’ve already heard what I want to hear about that young-lady-with-a-past, if you’ll pardon the expression; and a lot of it there is and very interesting it is too. No, sir! The one I want to see now is Dr. Garth here. That is, if Dr. Garth’s got no objection? Eh?”

  “I have no objections,” said Garth, “and it would scarcely matter if I had. All the same, who was the woman?”

  “Woman? What woman?”

  “That was what Michael Fielding wanted to know. Not two minutes ago a waiter came in here with a message for him, presumably that some lady wanted to see him out there somewhere. You’ve met Michael; you saw him in Harley Street last night. And you were so close behind the waiter that you must have overheard the message.”

  “Well, Doctor?”

  “Well, who summoned Michael out of here at that particular time? Why was he summoned?”

  “And that’s supposed to be important, is it?”

  “No; probably it isn’t. But you might at least ask the waiter. He must take fifty such messages in an afternoon. If you delay much longer he’ll have forgotten.”

  “Now I’ll tell you what it is, Doctor,” said Twigg, with a different shade of red sweeping into his face. “You’ve delayed me and obstructed me and tried to flummox me just about long enough. Fair’s fair; I’ve finished.” His voice grew more hoarse. “You try it just once more, and you’ll find yourself in Queer Street. You’ll find—”

  “Stop,” Abbot interrupted sharply. “My dear Garth! You don’t seriously mean young Fielding is in danger?”

  “No, I honestly don’t think he is.”

  “Ah!” murmured Twigg.

  Garth, lost in a concentrated attempt at fitting together every factor in his mind, seemed miles away. He looked down at the note on the table.

  “Last night,” he added, “I did wonder if there might be another act of violence. I was questioning Mrs. Bostwick in the middle of the night, when somebody crept up outside the door of my sitting-room to listen. It’s no use going after your notebook, Mr. Twigg. In the first place, I don’t know who it was. In the second place, I think now I was only suffering from a fit of the horrors.”

  Twigg changed colour again.

  “In danger?” he repeated after Abbot, and shook the notebook in the air. “That young man? At tea-time on a Sunday? At the front of the biggest hotel in Fairfield, with a band-concert going on smack outside the door?”

  “Mr. Twigg, I said I had changed my mind. The murderer killed once because this particular murderer was badly frightened. That’s why it usually happens, surely?”

  “Never you mind why it usually happens. If you knew more about murderers in real life, Dr. David Garth—”

  “I know quite enough about them,” replied the pale-faced Garth, “to have testified half a dozen times at the Old Bailey. Glynis Stukeley was killed because the murderer grew frightened. That’s all there was to it. It won’t happen again. It can’t happen again. Unless, of course—” Garth stopped. “By the way, Mr. Twigg, was it at the Old Bailey you learned I had written a number of foolish stories under the name of ‘Phantom’?”

  “God’s truth, Doctor, do you want to drive me up the pole? Haven’t I got enough on my mind already? Mr. Abbot! Sir! I appeal to you.”

  “And I say to both of you,” snapped Abbot, with a ruthless and glittering calm, “that you’ll have me ejected from this hotel as an undesirable guest unless you both moderate your voices and try to behave. Is that clear?”

  Twigg had been wrong on one point, at least. The band-concert was over. Groups of other guests had begun to stalk or drift into the lounge, searching tea, amid a burst of talk which was no less loud because they moved so slowly. Otherwise, with Twigg and Garth again at each other’s throats, the outburst could not have gone unobserved.

  “Is that clear, I say?” demanded the inexorable Abbot.

  Garth bowed and sat down.

  “Very well,” said Abbot. “If you have any further questions, Inspector, this is the time to put them. If not, shall we end these proceedings now?”

  “I have further questions, sir, thanking you very much. Nothing’s ever ended quite as easy as the doctor may think it is.”

  “Or as I think it is, perhaps?” inquired Abbot, suave behind his eyeglass. “Never mind! What are the questions?”

  “Doctor,” said Twigg, corking himself down after an obvious and violent effort, “you’ve been asking. ‘What woman?’ And you seem to think I ought to be asking it too. That’s as may be. But there is one woman, and not Lady Calder or Mrs. Bostwick either, I’ve been almighty interested to meet this very day.”

  “Mrs. Montague, you mean?”

  “Ho, now!” said Twigg. “If that’s the invalid lady who near got herself killed on Friday night, I think we can give her a rest too. No, Doctor! I was referring to a Mrs. Hanshew, Mrs. E. Hanshew,” and Twigg looked at his notebook, “now staying with her married daughter at number 72 Acacia Avenue in Bunch. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  (“Look out! Look out!”)

  Garth had no reason, offhand at least, to think himself vulnerable here. But the hunt was up again, and he was the quarry. Alertness tapped out a warning just in time.

  “Mrs. Hanshew? That’s Lady Calder’s housekeeper, I believe?”

  “You ‘believe’ she’s Lady Calder’s housekeeper? Lummy, Doctor, can’t I ever get a plain answer to a plain question? You know she’s Lady Calder’s housekeeper, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I know it.”

  “Oh, ah! You’ve met Mrs. Hanshew any number of times, I daresay? She’s acted as a kind of chaperone, like, when you and Lady Calder and other people have gone for a swim? Or had these life-saving exercises on the beach?”

  (“Look out! Look out!”)

  “If it pleases you to call her a chaperone, Mr. Twigg—”

  “Never mind what pleases me or don’t please me. Just answer plain questions, if you don’t mind. Do you know, Dr. Garth, what I was doing in the train going back to London last night?”

  “Not being a star-reader or a crystal-gazer, Mr. Twigg, I’m afraid I do not. Why don’t you try asking plain questions for a change?”

  “I laid
myself open to that one, didn’t I? All right! Then I won’t ask you; I’ll tell you.” Twigg allowed a pause. “I was reading a book called The Mystery of the Yellow Room.”

  14

  THOUGH THE FOOTSTEPS OF hurrying waiters made no noise on that soft carpet, the whole lounge stirred to a shuffle and rattle of tea-trays. George Alfred Twigg, Garth was thinking, had an oblique form of attack that always took you from an unexpected side. He studied the edge of the table, wondering. It was Cullingford Abbot who jumped into the breach.

  “The Mystery of the Yellow Room?” Abbot demanded. “Where’d you get a copy of that? You didn’t take the one from Lady Calder’s house.”

  “No, sir, and I didn’t need to,” Twigg said with dignity. “It’s in the Daily Mail Sixpenny Series. You can buy one at any railway-station bookstall. And I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Lummy, Mr. Abbot, why does anybody buy a book? I wanted to see what was in it. Have you read it, sir?”

  “No; but I’m beginning to believe I should have. Did you find anything helpful in one of your despised police romances, Inspector?”

  “Rummy kind of laws they’ve got in France, sir, if that book’s any example. Rummy ways of conducting a trial, too. And liberties allowed to journalists that’d make your hair stand on end.

  “You see, Mr. Abbot—” but Twigg’s cold eye was on Garth as he spoke—“it’s about an old scientist and his daughter who’s a scientist too, if you can believe that. They’re working on some queer business called ‘the instantaneous dissociation of matter,’ like as if you could have people wiped out by a bomb (ho!) that wouldn’t even leave a trace of ’em afterwards.”

  “Well?” asked Abbot. “Is someone killed by a bomb?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what’s the application?”

  “I’m trying to tell you!” Twigg was still watching Garth. “The young lady in the story (she’s not so young, either) sleeps in a little room with yellow wallpaper, all locked up like a strong-room but locked on the inside. In the middle of the night they hear screams, the sound of a struggle, and one or maybe two revolver-shots. When they break in…”

  Abbot looked sour. “They always break in, it seems. Yes?”