Faintley Speaking mb-27

by Gladys Mitchell

  Laura stared and then laughed.

  ‘Well, I’m dashed!’ she said. ‘I wash my hands of the business after that!’

  But this she was not permitted to do. She woke at six and raked Mark out for an early swim. He came willingly enough, and on the way down to the sands he pointed out to Laura the attractive path on the opposite side of the bay.

  ‘Bags we climb up there after bathing,’ he said. ‘The tide was too high last time. I meant to do it then, but I couldn’t get round. It’s nearly two hours later to-day. We might have done it yesterday morning, but there were too many people about. I’ve an idea it might be trespassing to go up there. I’m pretty certain there’s a whacking big house just behind those trees.’

  ‘If it’s trespassing we must certainly have a stab at it,’ said Laura warmly. ‘I strongly object to this business of parts of the coast being cut off from public use and made into somebody’s private property. Look here, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll bathe from much farther along the beach so that the walk to the foot of those cliffs will be split in halves, so to speak. What do you say about that?’

  They were fortunate enough to have the sea to themselves again, and when, invigorated and thoroughly lively, they were chasing one another along the firm sand at the edge of the sea, the landscape was still without figures, and they began the upward climb without meeting a soul. There was only one fly in the ointment. The path did not seem to be private, after all. A short sea-wall had been built to conserve the foot of the cliff, which was fairly soft and as rose-red as the legendary city, and there were steps in this wall to enable people to gain the zigzag path from the beach. It was obviously a public right of way.

  Two turns of the path, and the sea was for a moment out of sight, for the path was between high bushes on which curled reddish stems of deep-scented, rich-toned honeysuckle. Here and there among the grass grew wild scabious, and, as the path mounted higher, came clumps of gorse and another glimpse of the sea.

  ‘Well!’ said Laura, taking out cigarettes and a piece of chocolate. ‘I’m glad we came! Puff or suck?’

  ‘Suck, please.’ He accepted the chocolate gratefully and for a time they tramped silently upwards. Gulls in the huge cliffs perched on the dizzy ledges or plummeted through arcs of sky towards the sea. The bushes, except for the gorse, grew sparse and then ceased. Mark and Laura came out upon downland grasses where harebells grew and the birdsfoot trefoil was everywhere. There was spaciousness here. They were approaching the summit of the cliff, and the views to the east and west were again of horizon and coast.

  ‘Grand!’ said Mark. ‘I wish we were trespassing, though.’

  ‘We may be, in a minute or two,’ said Laura. ‘Unless my eyes deceive me, which, over this sort of thing, they seldom do, yonder looms a notice-board, and that of the baser sort, and I would risk a small and carefully-hoarded sum that on it appear the magic words we require.’

  They strolled towards the board. It guarded a small stout gate which was strongly wired. In contrast to the bold and open headland, the owner of the gate had planted hawthorn hedges whose tops had weathered the gales but were now bent away from the sea. Any gaps in this formidable barrier… as Mark discovered by prowling… had also been fenced and wired.

  ‘Blow!’ said Mark, rejoining Laura, who was gazing speculatively at the enclosure. ‘Without doing a frightful lot of damage (for which, I believe, you can be jugged), there doesn’t seem a hope of getting in.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Laura. ‘Don’t let’s bother now, but we’ll come out to-morrow morning and try from the other side. I’ve been thinking out the lie of the land, and I’ve some idea that you could work your way round to this point from that path which goes down by the side of the cliff-railway.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Mark. ‘I used that path yesterday while you were in Torbury, and all it does is to branch away under a tunnel. Then it comes out on the opposite side of the cliff-railway and beetles down to that road where cars can get down to the beach.’

  ‘Eyes and no eyes,’ said Laura severely. ‘Your objective was simply the beach, therefore you did not see what I saw when I went along there after bathing on that first morning when you warned me about the tide. You wait, and after breakfast I’ll show you. I’d thought of trying it by myself, but it’s far more fun with the two of us.’

  On the following morning they left the hotel again at six. Laura, accustomed to what she considered to be the dilatory opening of hotel front doors, had no scruples, at that hour of the morning, in breaking out of any place in which she happened to be staying. If the front door had a lock and the key was not there, she merely got out of a window in the lounge. Her argument was that at six in the morning all proper burglars were in bed and that therefore there was nothing anti-social in leaving a window open behind her.

  At the Whitesand, however, the early-morning egress was simple. There were merely bolts top and bottom of the outer doors. The inner ones were swing doors and offered no obstacle. A short time later, Laura was wishing that it had not been easy, or, indeed, possible, to leave the hotel that morning.

  She and Mark were again equipped for swimming, but this time they turned left instead of right along the front, and, coming to the cliff-railway, they crossed behind its upper platform and took a shaded ferny path of slopes and steps which ran alongside the railway track to about halfway down the cliff. Here the path proper, as Mark had pointed out, crossed the line by means of a tunnel, but there was also an ill-defined track which continued beside the line, and, instead of dipping, suddenly rose upwards to a shoulder of wooded hill.

  It ended at a wall from which could be gained a view of the bathing beach below, but before the wall was reached there was a tremendously steep, bare scree which inclined at a desperate angle and offered a hare-brained chance of reaching a path below. Laura and Mark slipped, slithered and shot down this slope, and found themselves in a curiously shut-in little valley. On the farther side of it the entrancingly narrow path they had seen from above squeezed upwards between a wattle fence and some trees.

  ‘Come on!’ said Mark. ‘This is good!’

  The path climbed steeply but steadily until, at a sudden bend, it came out upon a wide, green space which reared at a stupefying gradient and showed a bent hedge at the top and a tiny gap in the hedge where the path went through.

  Laura and Mark toiled onwards, their calf-muscles aching and their backs bent nearly double to assist them in clambering up. At the gap in the hedge the prospect of a further climb met them, but, in any case, there was a gate, and beyond the gate was a large bleak house, cut off from the open country by an iron railing of insurmountable aspect and most repellent mien which reinforced the bent hedge. There seemed no doubt that the owners of the house did not propose to have their privacy violated, for the gate, which was also of iron, showed the same unwelcoming face as the powerfully-constructed railings.

  Laura and Mark stood at the gate and looked through. Mark gave the gate a slight shove, but it did not budge. Around the house were long-neglected flower-beds, weed-ridden and sprawling with nasturtium. The freely-flowering roses were small, and were choked by convolvulus and bindweed. Everywhere was the bright and deadly pink of the greater willow-herb.

  In contrast to all this decay and obvious neglect, the path from the gate to the house had been carefully sanded. On its level greyish-brown surface there was never a footmark, although the surface here and there had been blown a little by the wind. Beyond that, the sand had not been disturbed, and it was obvious that it had not been laid down long.

  ‘Queer sort of place,’ said Mark. ‘I shouldn’t want to be about here much in the evening. Are we going to climb over the gate, or what?’

  ‘We’re in full view of some of the windows of that house,’ Laura pointed out, ‘and as there are curtains to one room it doesn’t look as though the house can be empty. There is a caretaker living there, I should think. Still, having come so far, and
the day being young, it seems a pity to go all that way back, so what I say is, let’s take a pop and see what happens.’

  They climbed over. The gate was not wired. They skirted the house, walking on the unkempt, weedy lawn. The garden on the other side was wild. The high bluff before them showed only the sky, with a gull turned to silver in the sun. When they got to the top the land dipped again, and they could see the wired hedge, and the post, and the back of that notice-board which they had resented two days earlier.

  Mark went up to the board and gave the post a slight kick, but the post seemed firm in the earth and as he was wearing tennis shoes he merely hurt his toe. Laura was prowling along by the side of the hedge, looking for a thin place where possibly they might push their way through.

  Suddenly she stopped. She had come to a dip in the ground and in the dip someone was lying. She could see that it was a woman, but her head was hidden in a gorse-bush, and there was something so odd in this as a choice of head-covering that Laura’s heart thumped oddly and she felt sick. Regardless of the fact that she was on private property, she said urgently, ‘Hi, you! Are you all right?’

  There was no answer; neither (she knew) had she expected one. She looked back. Mark had swarmed up the post and was now clinging on to the notice-board and gazing out to sea. For the moment he seemed occupied, so Laura took out her towel, covered her hands with it to protect them as far as possible from the gorse prickles, and drew aside the bush.

  The woman was dead. There was no doubt about that. The manner of her death was also apparent. A knife, of the type used by Commando troops during the war, had been thrust very neatly and cleanly into the side of her neck. Laura let the gorse fall back and was in time to intercept Mark, who had relinquished his impromptu crow’s-nest and was so soft-footed in his tennis shoes that she had not heard him approach.

  ‘Keep off,’ said Laura. She held her towel, now full of gorse prickles, between Mark and the dead woman.

  ‘Why, what’s up?’ asked Mark. He looked scared, and, suddenly, very much younger than his age. ‘It isn’t Miss Faintley, is it?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ said Laura, in a hearty, unnatural voice. ‘Come on back, and make it slippy. No, look here, we can’t spare all that time. We’ve got to break through this beastly hedge! Let’s take up that post and use it as a ram! There’s somebody ill in that dip. We must get some help. Look, Mark, do something for me. Get through this wretched hedge somehow, and go to our hotel for Mrs Bradley. She’s a doctor. Ask her to come at once. Now, all hands to this beastly post!’

  Her powerful muscles and Mark’s co-operation soon had the post out of the ground. His swarming up it had loosened it. Mark at last charged his way through the hedge where the battering-ram of a post had aided exit, and, scratched, bleeding and breathless, ran down the zigzag path towards the sea. Laura waited until he was well down the slope, and then, with one last look at the body, which, from Mark’s description, she felt certain was that of Miss Faintley, she walked slowly towards the house.

  It was a fair-sized place, judging by the number of windows and the length of the side she went towards, but only the one window was curtained. She walked forward as quietly as she could, and peered in. There was nobody to be seen, so she knocked at the door, but, although she knocked again, and yet a third time, there was neither answer nor sound.

  Laura tried the door, but it was either locked or bolted. Her excuse, if anybody came, was the body lying in the bushes, but she found that she needed no excuse. The house was most certainly empty. She peered in at other windows, went round to the kitchen entrance and knocked there, even shouted aloud in order to attract attention, but nothing came of any of this.

  She returned to the body, but realized that by tramping about she might be destroying evidence, so, in the end, she returned to the notice-board which was now lying on the ground, a witness of her illegal behaviour. While she waited for Mrs Bradley she spent the time in widening the gap in the hedge. Then she crawled through it, sat on the cliff-top and stared thoughtfully out to sea. There was plenty to think about. Miss Faintley inquiring for Torbury railway station, and Miss Faintley dead on top of the Cromlech cliffs did not seem to make sense until it occurred to Laura that Miss Faintley had not intended to travel by train, but had had an appointment to meet someone at the station.

  ‘And he brought her up here and did for her,’ Laura concluded. ‘Must be one of those insane sex crimes. How deadly dull, and how horrible!’

  Mrs Bradley arrived with Mark as guide, crawled through the gap which Laura had considerably enlarged, and sent Mark back to breakfast.

  ‘And now, child,’ she said briskly, ‘what have we here?’

  Laura took her to the spot.

  ‘Hm!’ said Mrs Bradley, rising after she had examined the wound. ‘A very pretty piece of work, neat, skilful and clean. She was killed somewhere else… on that newly-sanded path, we may conclude, unless other evidence is forthcoming. You had better go at once for the police. I’ll stay here until they come. I presume, from the clothing, that this is Miss Faintley. I take it that Mark has not seen the body?’

  ‘No, I took care of that, of course,’ said Laura. She nodded, and bounded away.

  Mrs Bradley knelt down again as soon as Laura had disappeared. There was something more interesting than at first she had thought about the weapon. She took out the small magnifying glass which she invariably carried, and examined all that she could see of the knife. Almost the full length of the blade had been driven home, but she was able to examine the way in which the top of it met the hilt. The knife was not of the Service type, after all. It was, although a neat and powerful job, home-made. Well-forged and even handsome though it was, there was still no doubt that the work had never been done by Wilkinson’s.

  She doubted whether this fact would help the police very much. Private manufacturers of lethal weapons do not usually advertise their wares, and it was unlikely, she thought, that the murderer’s fingerprints would be on record.

  Chapter Four

  DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR VARDON

  ‘O they have hunted in good green-wood

  The back1 but and the rae,2

  And they’ve drawn near Brown Robin’s bow’r

  About the close of day.’

  Border Ballad – Rose the Red and White Lily

  « ^ »

  ‘And you never saw her before, Miss Menzies?’ inquired Detective-Inspector Vardon (Dolly to his intimates).

  ‘Never before.’

  ‘Yet you were staying at the same hotel here in Cromlech?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But the only time I could have seen her was at breakfast on the first morning of my stay, and, as it happens, I went out for an early swim and by the time I had got back to the hotel, and made myself presentable for breakfast, Miss Faintley had left the dining-room.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Mark Street pointed out her table later on. I suppose, that first morning, Miss Faintley had gone up to get ready for their outing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Miss Faintley was not in to lunch that day, of course. She had gone with Mark to Torbury. She did not come back to the hotel.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Menzies. Now, if you had never seen Miss Faintley, what made you come to the conclusion that the dead body you found was hers?’

  ‘Be yourself, Inspector,’ urged Laura reproachfully. ‘I guessed it was Miss Faintley because of the way she… it… was dressed – Mark had described her to me before I went into Torbury – and partly because I knew Miss Faintley was missing and that you had been inquiring about her from the Street family.’

  ‘How was it that you came upon the body?’

  ‘I was trespassing.’

  ‘Oh, you do realize that you had no business to be up there?’

  ‘I don’t agree at all about that,’ replied Laura with spirit. ‘I contend that if selfish people mark off part of the coast as their private property they deserve to have trespassers
and worse. Not litter-fiends, though,’ she added hastily. ‘I do bar those at all times.’

  ‘I understand that you had climbed over into a garden. That, surely, was a different kind of trespass. You will be required to give evidence at the inquest, of course. You’ll be prepared for that, won’t you? Finding the body, you know.’

  He left her and tackled Mark again. Mark, although slightly uneasy, was feeling that he had a place in the sun. For once he would be the chief raconteur at school. He almost longed for the holidays to be over so that he could be there to tell the tale. ‘I realized at once it must be old Semi-Conscious.’ (No, better say Miss Faintley now.) ‘The clues led unerringly to the canyon. I had trailed her for miles up hills where only the toughest and most determined would have ventured, and my keen eye discerned her at once where she lay in the shadow of an enormous bluff…’ (No, somehow, the style, although satisfying, was not quite his. Some fool was sure to butt in with some silly question before he got half as far as that.) He was recasting his account of the affair when the Inspector sent for him.

  ‘Hullo, Mark. Sit down. Now, listen. Whose idea was it that you and Miss Menzies took that early walk and found Miss Faintley dead?’

  ‘Sorry, not a clue,’ said Mark. ‘I don’t think it was anyone’s idea. We just simply went, that’s all.’

  ‘Miss Menzies’ idea,’ wrote the Inspector in his shiny little notebook. ‘Right, Mark. Where were you when Miss Menzies found the body?’

  ‘I was…“ (Fingerprints? Better tell the truth! They’re sure to know!)’I was, well, actually, I was climbing a post.’

  ‘A post?’

  ‘Yes, well, the post with the notice-board on it. You know… “Trespassers will be Dealt With”.’

  ‘Dealt with?’