Chapter IX. The Evidence Of The Flat-Iron
‘Come, tell me now,
How sits this ring?’
— The Bride’s Tragedy
Sunday, 21 June
HARRIET VANE and Lord Peter Wimsey sat side by side on the beach, looking out towards the Devil’s Flat-Iron. The fresh salt wind blew strongly in from the sea, ruffling Harriet’s dark hair. The weather was fine, but the sunshine came only in brilliant bursts, as the driven clouds rolled tumultuously across the bellowing vault of the sky. Over the Grinders, the sea broke in furious patches of white. It, was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the tide was at its lowest, but even so, the Flat-Iron was hardly uncovered, and the Atlantic waves, roaring’ in, made a heavy breath against its foot. A basket of food lay between the pair, not yet unpacked. Wimsey was drawing plans in the damp sand.
“The thing we want to, get,’ he said, ’is the time of the death. The police are quite clear about how Alexis came here, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt in the matter, which is a blessing. There’s a train from Wilvercombe that stops at Darley Halt on Thursdays at 10.15, to take people in to Heathbury market. Alexis travelled by that train and got out at the Halt. I think it must have been Alexis all right. He was pretty conspicuous with his black beard and his natty gent’s outfitting. I think we can take that bit as proved. The guard on the train remembered him, and so did three or four of his fellow-travellers. What’s more, his landlady says he left his rooms in time to catch the train, and the booking-clerk: remembers him at Wilvercombe. And, dear Harriet, there is a first return-ticket from Wilvercombe to that Halt that was never given up and never accounted for.’
‘A return-ticket?’asked Harriet.
‘A return-ticket. And that, as you so acutely remark, Sherlock, seems to knock the suicide theory on the head. I said as much to the Super, and what was his reply? That suicides, let alone foreign suicides, were that inconsistent there was no accounting for them.’
‘So they may be, in real life,’ observed Harriet, thoughtfully. ‘One wouldn’t made an intending suicide take a return-ticket in a book but real people are different. It might have been a slip, or just habit or he may not have quite made up his mind to the suicide business.
‘I thought my friend Chief Inspector Parker was the most cautious beggar on the face of the earth, but you beat him. You can knock out habit. I refuse to believe that our dainty Alexis made a habit of travelling to the Halt in order to walk four and a half miles to weep by the sad sea waves. However, we’ll just note the return half of the ticket as—‘something that needs explainin’. Very good. Well, now, there was nobody.else got off at the Halt, though quite a bunch of people got in, so we don’t know what happened to Alexis; but if we allow that he could walk at the moderate rate of three miles an hour, he can’t have got to the Flat-Iron later than, say, II.45.’
‘Stop a minute. How about the tide? When was low water on Thursday?’
‘At 1.15. I’ve been into all that. At 11.45 there would be about five feet of water at the foot of the Flat-Iron, but the rock is ten feet high, and rises gradually from the landward side. At 11.45, or very shortly after, our friend could have walked out dry-shod to the rock and sat upon it.’
‘Good. We know he did go out dry-shod, so that all fits in nicely. What next?’
‘Well, what? Whether he cut his own throat or somebody cut it for him when did he die? It’s an awful pity we’ve lost the body. Even if it turns up now, it won’t tell us a thing. It wasn’t stiff, of course, when you saw it, and you say you can’t tell if it was cold.’
‘If,’ said Harriet, ‘there had been a block of ice on that rock at that time, you could have boiled eggs on it’
‘Tiresome, tiresome. Wait a minute. The blood. How about that? Did you notice whether it was in thick red clots, or whether it was a sort of jelly of white serum, with the red part at the bottom, or anything?’
Harriet shook her head.
‘It wasn’t. It was liquid.’
‘It was what?’—
‘Liquid. When I put any hand into it, it was quite wet. ‘Great Scott! Half a sec. Where was the blood? Splashed all over the place, I suppose.,
‘Not exactly, There was a big pool of it underneath the body — just as though he had leaned over and cut his throat into a basin. It had collected in a sort of hollow in the rock.’ ‘Oh, I see. That explains it. I expect the hollow was full of sea-water left by the tide, and what looked like blood was a mixture of blood and water. I began to think—’
‘But listen! It was quite liquid everywhere. It dripped out of his neck. And when I lifted his head up and disturbed the body, it dripped some more. Horrid!’ ‘But, my darling girl
‘Yes, and listen’ again! When I tried to take his glove off, the leather wasn’t stiff — it was soft and wet. His hands had been lying right under his throat.’
‘Good lord! But-’
‘That was the left hand. The right hand was hanging over the side of the rock and I couldn’t get at it without clambering over him, which I didn’t fancy, somehow, Otherwise, I should have tried that. I was wondering, you see, why the gloves?’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But we know there was nothing wrong with his hands. That doesn’t matter now. It’s the blood — do you realise that, if the blood was still liquid, he can only have been dead a few minutes?’
‘Oh!’ Harriet paused in consternation, ‘What a fool I am! I ought to have known that., And I thought I was deducing things so nicely! He couldn’t have been bleeding slowly to death for some time, I suppose?’
‘With his throat cut to the neck-bone? Dear child, pull yourself together. Look here. Blood clots very quickly — more quickly, of course, on a cold surface. In the ordinary way it will clot almost instantaneously on exposure to the air. I daresay it might take a little longer on a hot surface like the rock you describe so graphically.’ But it couldn’t take more than a few minutes: Say ten, to give it an outside limit.
‘Ten minutes. Oh, Peter!’
‘Yes?’
‘That noise that woke me up. I thought it was a sea-gull. They sound so human. But suppose it was-’
‘It must have been. When was that?’
’Two o’clock. I looked at my watch. And I shouldn’t think it took me more than ten minutes to reach the rock.
But — I say!’
‘Well?’
‘How about your murder-theory? That’s done it in absolutely. If Alexis was murdered at two o’clock, and I was there ten minutes after what became of the murderer?’
Wimsey sat up as suddenly as though he had been stung.
‘Oh, hell!’ he exclaimed: ‘Harriet; dear, sweet, beautiful Harriet, say you were mistaken. We can’t be wrong about the murder. I’ve staked my reputation with Inspector Umpelty that it couldn’t have been suicide. I shall have to leave the country. I shall never hold my head up again. I shall have to go and shoot tigers in fever-haunted jungles, and die, babbling of murder between my swollen and blackened lips. Say that the blood was clotted. Or say there were footprints you overlooked. Or that there was a boat within hail. Say something.’
‘There was a boat, but not within hail; because I hailed it.’
‘Thank God there was a boat! Perhaps I may leave my bones in Old England yet. What do you mean, not within hail because you hailed it? If the murderer was in the boat, naturally he wouldn’t have put back if it had hailed sweet potatoes. I wish you wouldn’t give me such shocks. My nerves are not what they were.’
‘I don’t know much about boats, but this one looked to me a pretty good way, out. The wind was blowing in-shore, you know.’
‘It doesn’t matter. So long as there was a good stiff wind, and he could sail close _enough to it, he might have made quite a good way in ten minutes. What sort of boat was it?’
Here Harriet’s knowledge failed her. She had put it down as a fishing-boat riot because she could scientifically distinguish a fishing-boat from a 5-metre yacht, but beca
use one naturally, when visiting the seaside, puts down all boats as fishing-boats until otherwise instructed. She thought it had a pointed sort of sail — or sails — she couldn’t be sure. She was sure it was not, for example, a fully rigged fourmasted schooner, but otherwise one sailing-boat was to her exactly like any other; as it is to most town-bred persons, especially to literary young women.
‘Never mind,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’ll be able to trace it all — right, All boats must come to shore somewhere, thank goodness. And they’re all well known to people along the coast. I only wanted to know what sort of draught the boat was likely to have. You see, if the boat couldn’t come right in to the rock, the fellow would have had to row himself, in, or swim for it, and that would delay him a good bit. And he’d have to have somebody standing on and off with the boat while he did it, unless he stopped to take in sail, and all that. I mean, you can’t just stop a sailing boat and step out of it like a motor-car, leaving it on its own all ready to start. You’d get into difficulties. But that makes no odds. Why shouldn’t the murderer have an accomplice? It has frequently happened, before. We’d better assume that there were at least two men in a small boat with a very light draught. Then they could bring her close in, and one of the men would bring her round to the wind, while the other’ waded or rowed alone, did the murder and got back, so that they could make off again without wasting a moment. You see, they’ve got to do the murder, get back to the boat and clear out to where you saw them within the ten minutes between the cry you heard and the time of your arrival. So we can’t allow a lot of time for pulling the boat to shore and making fast and pushing off again and setting sail and all that. Hence I suggest the accomplice.’
‘But how about the Grinders?’ asked Harriet, rather diffidently. ‘I thought it was very dangerous to bring boats close to shore at that point.’
‘Blow it! So it is. Well, they must have been very skilful sailors. But that would mean further to row or wade, as the case may be. Bother it! I wish we could allow them rather more time.’
‘You don’t think—’ began Harriet. A very unpleasant idea had just struck her. ‘You don’t think the murderer could have been there, quite close, all the time, swimming under water, or something?’
‘He’d’ have had to come up to breathe.’
‘Yes, but I might not have noticed him. There were lots of times when I wasn’t looking at the sea at all. He would have heard me coming, and he might have ducked down close under the rock and waited there till I came down to look for the razor. Then he might have dived and swum away while my back was turned. I don’t know if it’s possible, and I hope it isn’t, because I should hate to think he was there all the time — watching me’
‘It’s a nasty thought,’ said Wimsey. ‘I rather hope he was there, though. It would give him a beast of a shock to see you hopping round taking photographs and things. I wonder if there is any cleft in the Flat-Iron where he might have hidden himself. Curse the rock! Why can’t it come out and show itself like a man? I say, I’m going down to have a look at it. Turn your modest eyes seawards till I have climbed into a bathing-suit, and I’ll go down and explore.’
Not content with this programme, unsuited to a person of her active temperament, Harriet removed, — not only her glance, but her person, to the shelter of a handy rock, and emerged, bathing-suited, in time to catch Wimsey as he ran down over the sand.
‘And he strips better than I should have expected,’ she admitted candidly to herself. ‘Better shoulders than I realised, and, thank Heaven, calves to his legs.’ Wimsey, who was rather proud of his figure, would hardly have been flattered could he have heard this modified rapture, but for the moment he was happily unconcerned about himself. He entered the sea near the Flat-Iron with caution, not knowing what bumps and boulders he might encounter, swam a few strokes to encourage himself, and them; popped his head out to remark that the water was beastly cold and that it would do Harriet good to come in.
Harriet came in, and agreed that the water was cold and the wind icy. Agreed on this point, they returned to the Flat-Iron, and felt their way carefully round it, Presently Wimsey, who had been doing some under-water investigation on the Wilvercombe side of the rock, came out, spluttering, and asked if Harriet had come down on that side or on the other to hunt for the razor.
‘On the other,’ said Harriet. ‘It was like this, I was up on top of the rock with the body, like this.’ She climbed out, walked up to the top of the rock, and stood shivering in the wind. ‘I looked round on both sides of me like this.’
‘You didn’t look down in this direction, by any chance?’ inquired Wimsey’s head, standing up sleek as a seal’s out of the water.
‘No, I don’t think so. Then, after I’d fussed about with the corpse a bit, I got down this way. I sat on something just about here. and took my shoes and stockings, off and tucked my things up. Then I came round in this direction and groped about under the rock. There was about eighteen
inches of water then. There are about five feet now, I should think.’
‘Can you began Wimsey. A wave slopped suddenly over his head and extinguished him. Harriet laughed.
‘Can you see me?’ he went on, blowing the water out of his nostrils.
‘I can’t. But I heard you. I t was very amusing.’
‘Well, restrain your sense of humour. You can’t see me.’
‘No. There’s a bulge in the rock. Where, exactly, are you, by the way?’
‘Standing in a nice little niche, like a saint over a cathedral door.’ It’s, just about the size of a coffin. Six feet high or thereabouts, with a pretty little roof and room to squeeze in rather tightly sideways, if you’re not what the Leopard called “too vulgar big”. Come round and try it for yourself.’
‘What a sweet little spot,’ said Harriet, scrambling round and taking Wimsey’s place in the niche. ‘Beautifully screened from all sides, except from the sea. Even at quite low tide one couldn’t be seen, unless, of course, somebody happened to come round and stand just opposite the opening. I certainly didn’t do that. How horrible! The man must have been in here all the time.’
‘Yes, I think it’s more plausible than the boat idea.’
‘Bright!’ said Harriet.
‘I’m so glad you think so.’
‘I didn’t mean that — and it was my idea in the first place. I meant Bright, the man who bought the razor. Didn’t the hairdresser person say he was a small man — smaller than you, anyway?’
‘So he did. One up to you. I wish we could get hold of Bright. I wonder — Oh, I say! I’ve found something!’
‘Oh, what?’
‘It’s a ring the sort of thing you tie boats up to, driven right into the rock. It’s under water and I can’t see it properly, but it’s about five feet off the ground and it feels smooth and new, not corroded. Does that help with our boat-theory at all, I wonder?’
‘Well,’ said Harriet, looking round at the lonely, sea and shore, ‘there doesn’t seem to be much reason why anyone should habitually, tie a boat up here.’
‘There doesn’t. In that case the murderer, if there was one—’
We’re taking him for granted, aren’t we?’
‘Yes. He may have put this here for his own private use. Either he tied a boat up, or he’-’
‘Or he didn’t.’
‘I was going to say, used it for something else, but I’m dashed if I know what.’
‘Well, that’s fearfully helpful. I say, I’m getting cold. Let’s swim about a bit, and then get dressed and discuss it.’
Whether it was the swim or the subsequent race over the sands to get warm that stimulated Harriet’s brain is not certain, but when they were again sitting by the lunch-basket, she found herself full of ideas.
‘Look here! If you were a murderer, and you saw an interfering woman pottering about among the evidence and then going off in search of help, what would you do?’
‘Leg it in the opposite direction:
> ‘I wonder. Would you? Wouldn’t you like to keep an eye on her? Or possibly even do away-with her? You know, it would have been fearfully easy for Bright — if we may call him so for the moment — to slaughter me then and there.’
‘But why should he? Of course he wouldn’t. He was trying to make the murder look like suicide.. In fact, you were a very valuable witness for him. You’d seen the body and you could prove that there really was a body, in case of its subsequently getting lost. And you could prove that there actually was a weapon there and that therefore suicide was more likely than not. And you could swear to the absence of footprints — another point in favour of suicide. No, my dear girl, the murderer would cherish you as the apple of his eve.’
Have His Carcass lpw-8 Page 11