The Witch of the Low Tide

by John Dickson Carr

  “Indeed,” the latter said flatly. “I had hoped…”

  “Look here!” he went on, with an even fiercer gesture. “In this duel going on between you and Twigg, both of you have struck and parried with meanings that were just out of sight. Nothing was ever above-board. Nothing was ever quite what it seemed. And yet I followed that duel pretty well, I fancied, until…”

  “Until when?”

  “Just before you left the lounge, Twigg asked you how you yourself would conduct the case. You recommended him to read a certain novel called By Whose Hand? Do you remember that?”

  “Of course I remember it.”

  “Well, it won’t help you. I have read that book too. The apparent witch-woman, who has been ensnaring and befuddling a much older man, is of course no witch-woman at all. She is innocent. Her ‘impossible’ crimes are only tricks devised by the real murderer, another woman of cold and astute nature who has been trying to fix the blame on her. I asked Twigg what he thought of your statement. Twigg said he agreed with you.”

  “Twigg agrees with me?” Garth echoed incredulously.

  “Yes. He had copied in his notebook some words from the last chapter of that novel. Let me see if I can quote.” Abbot threw up a hand in concentration. “‘I did not succeed,’ says the real murderer, ‘but I might have succeeded. It’s all a question of law. They can’t convict you of any crime unless they can show you how you did it.’”

  Garth lowered his head. He did not see Marion, or Vince, or even Abbot’s hypnotic eye. Twigg had backed him into a corner at last, and used just the wrong part of his own case.

  “Well, my dear fellow? Are those words in the book?”

  “They are.”

  “Has Twigg even a measure of right on his side? And, if he has, how do you mean to meet the charge?”

  “I don’t know.” Garth looked up. “God help me, I still do not know. And yet, before it is too late, I have got to find some way.”

  16

  THE TRAIN REACHED CHARING Cross towards dusk of a fine evening in June. David Garth, emerging from the station, raised his hand towards one of the new motor-cabs in the rank outside.

  Once more the atmosphere swept over him: the tarry smell of wood-paving after a day’s heat, the remnants of sunset beyond Trafalgar Square, a soft traffic-rumble punctuated only by the jingle of hansom bells and the putt-putt of an occasional motor-car.

  But Garth was far from being in the same mood he had felt only four nights ago.

  This was Monday, June 17. A porter followed him from the station, carrying a heavy suitcase and a hat-box: his luggage from the Stag and Glove. Nor was he in evening-clothes this time. He wore the professional uniform of top-hat and frock coat in which he had attended the inquest at Fairfield this afternoon.

  The inquest. Yes.

  Briefly, in that unreal twilight, he wondered if Inspector George Alfred Twigg might not loom up again in front of him. Perhaps he hurried a little. But he saw only familiar things: the shops at the other side of the Strand, and the “Golden Cross,” and Morley’s Hotel facing Trafalgar Square.

  Then the cab-engine sputtered and exploded into life as the driver swung its starting-handle. His luggage was flung up beside the driver.

  “Number 31b Harley Street.”

  Now for the test!

  “Very good, sir.”

  Sitting back in the cab, all that chuttering way through streets half-deserted when theatre-curtains had gone up, he tried not to think. But several times he touched the many sheets of folded paper he had put in the inside breast pocket of his coat. They were not typed, those sheets; he had written them by hand, laboriously, through the long night before the inquest. And images stabbed through.

  In Upper Regent Street, just above Piccadilly Circus, the lights of the Café Royal rolled past on his right. He wondered whether Abbot held court in the big blue-and-gold room where, at the other side of a glass screen, more Bohemian elements drank at marble-topped tables.

  Farther on up Regent Street, towards his left, posters outside the Polytechnic advertised a new French cinematograph entertainment called The Pumpkin Race. That film was worth seeing, people said; one small incident precipitated a wild chase through the streets of Paris which might have been grim if it had not been so hilariously funny, though Marion Bostwick declared she would die and lose her soul before she paid as much as four shillings for any animated-picture show.

  Well, Marion! Now, Marion!

  But he was not obliged to lock up his thoughts—not entirely, at least—when the cab turned into quiet Harley Street towards his own door. Twilight had become darkness. At the kerb stood Vincent Bostwick’s 20-horsepower Daimler landaulette, painted white with red wheels, its head-lamps burning and Vince’s chauffeur-engineer at the controls.

  Vince himself stood on the pavement near a street-lamp, fretfully smoking a cigarette. And Vince rose at the newcomer as Garth paid off the cab.

  “Yes, old boy? What happened at the inquest?”

  “All in good time, Vince.”

  Unlocking the front door, Garth carried his luggage inside and closed the door with a hollow slam. That familiar hall, with its antiseptic white woodwork and its black-and-white tessellated floor, seemed even more bleak when he switched on the light

  “There was nothing on the newspaper-bills,” said Vince, dropping the cigarette on the floor and grinding it out underfoot. “You see—”

  Nowadays it was much the fashion to wear white tie and white waistcoat with a dinner-jacket as well as with tails. Clearly Vince had been dining at his club, and dining well. Though he was no less lazy and lounging, the wine brought out a blue vein at his temple and etched deeper the fine little aging lines round his eyes.

  “You see,” he went on, “I didn’t dare ask a friend of mine in Fleet Street. Marion and I aren’t concerned in this, so far as anyone knows yet; and I can’t have the Yellow Press on our backs. What happened at the inquest?”

  “They adjourned it.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “The only testimony was Betty’s formal identification of her sister’s body as the next of kin, which has to be done as a matter of law. Immediately afterwards Twigg got up and asked the coroner for an adjournment. There were no other witnesses. They didn’t even call me.”

  “Oh? Then all your troubles are over, aren’t they?”

  “Hardly,” Garth said with restraint. “It only means Twigg is waiting to jump. And now Betty has run away. That may be just what he is waiting for.”

  “Betty has run away? Where?”

  “I wish I knew. She’s not at the cottage and she’s not at Putney Hill. At least, nobody answers the telephone at Putney Hill.”

  Garth hesitated, his mouth a line of worry. Only one light still burned against the height of the hall. It was too oppressive with silence when nobody spoke and too full of echoes when you did. Abruptly he led the way to the back room they called the little library.

  This was a little better, after he had touched the electric switch beside the door. Four bulbs, in shades like glass flowers, glowed out above shabbily comfortable Morris chairs and smoking stands, and glass-fronted bookcases with enamelled designs on their doors. Books gave a certain warmth; so did the reflection of lights in glass. But no decoration could remove the atmospheric chill of that house.

  Garth glanced at the little writing-desk to the right of the fireplace. Then he looked back at Vince.

  “For the moment, however, that must wait. Look here: since you and Marion were returning to town anyway, I asked you to execute a commission for me. Well? Where is he?”

  “Michael?”

  “Yes; who else? Couldn’t you find him?”

  “I could find him easily enough, yes. But I couldn’t bring him here. He’s locked up at his lodgings, with a doctor standing guard and two mysterious clergymen as well.” Vince’s eyes grew fixed. “Steady, old boy! Is Michael so important?”

  “Yes, Vince. You know he is.” />
  “It’s just possible the fellow’s really ill! After all, Michael’s not the only person who’s been offering a medical excuse for not being questioned.”

  “If you refer to Mrs. Montague,” Garth said curtly, “I had a word with her this morning before the inquest. I also had a word with Colonel Selby. Both of them are going to be very useful.”

  “Last night, David, you said you needed some kind of inspiration to find a way out of this. Have you found a way out?”

  “Yes, I think so. I even hope so. Where’s Marion tonight?”

  Vince opened his mouth to speak, and evidently thought better of it.

  Here in this little room, with the door closed against traffic-noises from the street outside, it was as though they were buried at the heart of the Great Pyramid. Every colour seemed to acquire sharpness from the intensity with which they looked at it. Vince removed his collapsible opera-hat, folded it together, and flung it into a Morris chair.

  “Old boy, ever since Saturday morning I’ve been wanting to tell you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “On Saturday morning,” Vince stared at the floor, “that fellow Abbot was questioning Marion at Hyde Park Gardens.”

  “Yes?”

  “Marion was repeating her story about—about Glynis Stukeley attacking Mrs. Montague at Hampstead on Friday night.” Vince still stared at the floor, flinging out words. “Marion was going to Abbot about you.” She said you seemed to doubt her story about the attack, and said she couldn’t understand why on earth you doubted it”

  “Yes. Well?”

  “Then Abbot appealed to me, and I said I couldn’t understand either. In other words, I let you down after you’d supported both of us. I’ve always felt like smiling when people use words like ‘cad’ or ‘rotter’ or the like; but it’s not really so very funny. I was in a blue funk, and I let you down.”

  “Vince, forget all that! No apology is necessary.”

  “All the same…”

  “I greatly appreciate,” and Garth struck his hands together, “I greatly appreciate your schoolboy code of ethics. I’m afraid I share that code. But this matter has grown too desperately serious; it’s going to end in a smash.”

  “Yes. That’s what I meant. David, what are you planning? If you expect me to support any scheme against my own wife…I”

  “No! I don’t expect that. Even the law doesn’t expect it.”

  “What’s the game, then?”

  “Can you bear it if I speak frankly?”

  “Old boy, I only hope to God you will.”

  “It’s not easy to decide how much of this affair you must have guessed already and how much of it will still shock you when you hear it. At the same time, you’ve lived with Marion for two years. Your worst enemy couldn’t call you a fool.”

  “Has it ever been observed,” said Vince, with one eye on a corner of the carpet, “that Marion’s favourite word is ‘fool’?”

  “No, I disagree,” Garth said sharply. “Her favourite word is ‘old.’ She even calls you old. Do you remember?”

  “David, I admit to being a good deal of a fraud. Most of my ideas in this life have come out of books, out of E. F. Benson and The Dolly Dialogues and all the rest of the airy persiflage we’re supposed to keep up. Any other ideas (yes, you’ve hit it!) are from schoolboy ethics and from these accursed stories about mysteries. By the way, there’s a rumour going round—don’t ask me how it started!—that you yourself are a fellow called ‘Phantom.’ Is it true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve suspected it once or twice. But that doesn’t help us with Marion.” Vince’s tone changed. “And I warn you, if you’re planning anything against Marion…!”

  “Whatever I am planning, you have my promise no harm will come to Marion. It’s only that we had better face a few facts about her. In some ways she’s not unlike the late Glynis Stukeley. She is greedy, she is unscrupulous, and she’s not entirely normal.”

  “Is this some of your damned Viennese psychanalysis?”

  “No. For the most part it’s plain common sense, as any experienced G.P. could tell you. Glynis Stukeley only wanted money. Whereas Marion inspired somebody to commit murder.”

  “I deny—”

  “Deny it or not, it’s true.” Garth raised his voice. “She may not have done so knowingly or consciously, though I’m not even sure of that. But she won’t suffer for it. She can’t suffer for it. Whatever happens and whatever life is wrecked, Marion will go on her way in all serenity after she has wept and howled a little. That’s her nature. Both her guardians have known it from the beginning.”

  “David, what are you going to do?”

  “Very shortly I am going to Hampstead. Should you care to accompany me—”

  “If you mean to see Mrs. Montague and Colonel Selby, that’s no good. They’re still at Fairfield.”

  “On the contrary, they are in London. They returned this afternoon at my special request”

  “To give Marion away? To tell the whole blasted world that…”

  “Haven’t I already assured you, Vince? No harm can come to Marion. She is safe. She’s as safe as—as you are yourself. Possibly I can’t expect you to help me. But it will save a great deal of trouble if you answer a plain question. Where is Marion now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Vince—”

  “I tell you, I don’t know,” shouted Vince. “She nipped out of the house as soon as we returned this afternoon, and I haven’t seen her since. That’s why I had dinner at the club. And you tell me your friend Betty Calder has run away? It’s odd, isn’t it, it’s devilish damned odd, that both those two women should have chosen to make themselves scarce on the same day?”

  “Yes,” answered Garth, suddenly struck by a new thought, “it’s odd. It may not be devilish damned odd, but it is odd. I am wondering…”

  “What?”

  Outside, in the hall, on its table beside the stairs, the telephone began to ring.

  It may have been the wine he had drunk, or it may have been the inhuman stridency achieved by the ringing of a telephone in a silent house, that made the blue vein stand out farther at Vince Bostwick’s temple.

  Garth opened the door to the hall. And, at the same moment, someone began to ply the knocker of the front door. Garth, on his way towards the telephone, stopped and hesitated on a wire of nerves between the two.

  “Answer the telephone, will you?” he called over his shoulder to Vince. “If it’s a personal or professional call for me, say I’m out. I’m out to anyone except Betty. Or to Marion, of course, though that’s unlikely.”

  “Why don’t you answer the blasted telephone yourself? Is it less important than some joker at the door?”

  “It may be less important, yes, if the joker happens to be Inspector Twigg with some new trick for us.”

  “They don’t like each other, do they, do they?”

  “Who?”

  “Marion and your—Marion and Lady Calder.”

  “No, they don’t like each other. Answer the telephone!”

  The strident ringing was cut off a second before Garth, gritting his teeth, opened the door. But he need not have worried; or, at least, he thought he need not have worried. Outside stood Cullingford Abbot.

  Evidently Abbot had been holding court as usual at the Café Royal. Like Vince he wore a dinner-jacket, under a short cape whose scarlet lining gleamed by the light of a street-lamp as he flipped back the edge. A barrel-organ was tinkling through a side street; the chauffeur-engineer at the wheel of the white Daimler landaulette seemed to be whistling in time to it.

  “Ah!” said Abbot, lifting the eyeglass. “They told me you lived here as well as kept your consulting-room here. I could not be sure a light on the ground floor meant anything, or that I was wise to dismiss my cab. Still, I see you own a second motor-car.”

  “Motor-cars are too expensive a toy for me to own more than one. Th
e Daimler belongs to Mr. Bostwick. However, pray come in.”

  Vince was saying something to the telephone in a low and argent voice. Abbot’s expression sharpened to alertness as he swept off his hat.

  “My dear Garth, is anything wrong?”

  “I’ve lost Lady Calder. That’s to say,” Garth corrected himself quickly, “I don’t know where she is. Mr. Bostwick has been having the same difficulty with his wife.”

  “Tut! Then we all have our troubles. I’ve lost Twigg.”

  “That’s a great pity, isn’t it?” Garth spoke not without sarcasm. “Our Inspector Twigg, I should think, would be a difficult man to mislay.”

  “It is a pity, sir, when I don’t know what he’s doing and I want to know. Er—”

  Abbot paused as Vince clashed the telephone-barrel back on its hook. Garth swung round.

  “Yes, Vince? Who was it?”

  “Colonel Selby. He wanted to speak to you. I said you were out.” A slight roar became noticeable under Vince’s tone. “Well, old boy, isn’t that what you told me to say?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No; stop; fair play!” Vince hesitated, moistening his lips. “He wants you to go up there at once. I said I’d go instead. I suppose it means we’ll both go?”

  “It does indeed mean that. Why did he want to speak to me?”

  “He wouldn’t say. No, it’s nothing devilish, if that’s what you’re thinking! He said it wasn’t important; it could wait. Anyway, we’ll both go in my car.”

  “Yes. If you remember, Vince, we made a similar journey on a summer night just over two years ago? When you first introduced me to Marion?”

  “David, what in hell is happening? How is it you know Colonel Selby? Wait; stop; of course! You said you’d spoken to him in Fairfield today.”

  “That’s not altogether it, Vince. I now have his permission to tell you. On Friday evening he called on me professionally.”

  “Professionally?”

  “My profession, I should say. About some person whom he believed, in his own view at least, to be insane.”

  Vince put the tips of his fingers on top of the telephone table, and looked back without speaking. Cullingford Abbot, though not an easy person to ignore at any time, had to draw Vince’s attention by a loud throat-clearing.