“Could it—” Henry began.
“He was already sitting in his dinghy when you left him.” Proudie, who knew Berrybridge Haven as well as any man in Suffolk, was visualizing the scene. “He was still tied up to the hard. There’s no obstructions other than moored boats between Mary Jane and the jetty, and if he’d bumped into anything, the dinghy could have taken the force of the collision. It’s just not feasible that he could have dealt himself a blow with one of his own oars, even if he’d been trying. The doctor says it was a powerful crack delivered from directly in front of him, and above. No,” said Proudie heavily, “I’m afraid we’ve got to face it, sir. This is a murder case. And it does strike me that—well, we’ve had another similar sort of accident in these parts lately. Chap hit on the head and then drowned. I mean Mr. Pete Rawnsley.”
“Inspector Proudie,” said Henry, “I don’t know what you propose to do next, but personally I’m going straight out to have another look at Mary Jane.”
“Mr. Street’s boat? What d’you expect to find there?”
“First and foremost,” said Henry, “a book. Secondly, if I’m lucky, fingerprints. Can you get your man out here and send him after me to take prints? I’m going to find Mr. Benson and borrow his dinghy.”
Henry got up and hurried out of the cottage and down to the hard. It did not even occur to him to wonder where Emmy was.
***
“Please,” said Emmy. “Please try to remember.”
Priscilla looked at her stupidly, and pulled the orange silk kimono more tightly across her flabby bosom. A half-empty bottle of gin stood bleakly on the dressing table.
“We’re all alone in the house,” said Priscilla suddenly, with a little giggle.
“I know,” said Emmy. “That’s why I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a little chat.”
“You have to be careful,” said Priscilla owlishly. “People listen.”
“Not today,” said Emmy firmly. “We’re all alone. Tell me about the night you lost your jewels. You locked them up, didn’t you?”
“Hamish used to come and talk to me,” said Priscilla inconsequentially. “Such a charming young man. Of course, he wanted money. They all do. Everybody wants money. I suppose it’s only natural. How much do you want?”
“I don’t want any money. I—”
“Of course, I can’t give you any,” added Priscilla, with genuine regret. “I’m so sorry. All gone now. Nothing left.”
Emmy seized this lead. “Where has it all gone?” she demanded.
Priscilla waved a plump hand. “Bills,” she said. “We have bills, just like other people. Simon deals with the money. He’s very clever, you know. Very clever indeed.”
“Where?” said Emmy, loudly and clearly, “does your gin come from?”
Priscilla looked startled. Then she lowered her voice, and whispered solemnly, “The wardrobe.” She pointed an unsteady finger.
“Who puts it there?”
“Papa.”
“Miss Priscilla,” said Emmy briskly, “your father has been dead for years. Who brings you your gin?”
“It comes from Papa.” Priscilla’s voice trembled. “Dear Papa. Always so thoughtful. That’s what he says.”
“Who says that?”
“Why, everybody. Everybody loved Papa.” Priscilla lost interest in the subject abruptly, and began to take the curlers out of her hair, unrolling each one with elaborate care.
“This morning,” said Emmy, “you said people wouldn’t explain things to you, and you told me you knew something. What was it?”
“I think,” said Priscilla, “that I will take a little drink now. It’s good for me, you know. It stops me from worrying.”
In silence, she poured a generous measure of gin into a toothmug. Downstairs, a clock struck once with a silvery chime. Emmy tried again.
“You remember Colin Street?”
“The ill-mannered young man,” said Priscilla promptly. “Simon likes him. Simon says he’s clever. I think he’s just rude.” She giggled slightly. “What about Colin Street?”
“He’s dead,” said Emmy, very distinctly.
“Dead, Mrs. Babbitt? How sad.” Priscilla’s voice expressed no more than a travesty of polite concern. “But then, of course, so many people are dead, aren’t they?”
“He may have died,” said Emmy, “because he found out what it is that you know.”
“No, no, that’s not possible,” said Priscilla in a calm, earnest voice. “Nobody knows what I know. I haven’t told anybody.”
“You were going to tell me, this morning.”
“Was I? Oh, I think you must be mistaken, Mrs. Humbert. I mustn’t tell anybody, or Papa will be cross. I promised.” She lifted the toothmug and sipped the neat gin. “In any case,” she added, “it couldn’t be important. That’s what nobody will explain. Why it’s important.”
“You must tell me,” said Emmy desperately. She had so little time.
“We are lucky to have this house,” said Priscilla socially. “Of course, it is an expense, but Simon insists that everything should be of the best. It’s what Papa would have wished.”
“Miss Priscilla, I—”
“And the views are so fine,” Priscilla went on relentlessly. “From my windows here, I can see everything—the front door, the drive, everything. It’s most interesting. And then, from the Blue Drawing Room, one can see Steep Hill Sands—on a clear day.”
Emmy’s mood of despair turned abruptly to intense excitement. She sat quite still, hardly daring to breathe, lest the stream of chatter should dry up.
“So much coming and going,” Priscilla went on with a little laugh. “Boats and cars and people. Day and night. You’d be surprised the people I’ve seen. Herbert and Sam and Hamish, and that nice Mr. Benson and his wife...there’s a pretty girl who comes sometimes, too, and a tall, fair young man. And then the boats. Priscilla and Mary Jane and Ariadne...Pocahontas and Tideway and Blue Gull... No, not any more. That was when it started. No, not then. Earlier. Much earlier, it started.”
There was a silence. Then, suddenly, Priscilla turned to Emmy. Her eyes were bright, and she clasped her stubby hands together, like a delighted child.
“Mrs. Tibbett,” she said, “I have made up my mind. I like you. I trust you. I am going to tell you.” Emmy waited, breathless. Priscilla leant forward. “You see,” she said, “it was before eleven.”
“What was?”
“Why—”
A light footstep sounded outside in the white marble gallery, and a door opened quietly. Neither Emmy nor Priscilla heard it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARY JANE WAS as trim and tidy as ever when Henry and Proudie climbed aboard her. Henry went straight to the bookshelf, ran his finger along the row of volumes, and said, “I thought so. It’s not here.”
“What isn’t?”
“The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss. I,” he added, “am a bloody fool.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, sir.”
“Colin as good as told me twice that that book was the key to the whole thing,” said Henry moodily. “Voss on Sea Anchors.”
“Sea anchors?” Proudie repeated, bewildered: and added, apologetically, “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir. I’m a fishing man myself. What have sea anchors got to do with it?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Henry helpfully. “Thank goodness, Alastair has a copy aboard Ariadne. Would you like to row over and get it, Inspector, while I have a look around here?”
“Anything you say, sir,” said Proudie, in the tone of one who has given up trying to make sense of the situation. He clambered laboriously out into the cockpit, as Henry turned his attention to Colin’s bunk.
When Proudie got back to Mary Jane, with the little book tucked firmly into his pocket, he found Henry in a state of some excitement.
“I’m prepared to take a bet with you, Inspector Proudie,” he said, “that Colin Street did come back to his boat last
night.”
“How do you work that out?”
“Little things,” said Henry, with satisfaction. “We’ll be able to check them with Miss Petrie later on—but for once, this is classic, story-book detection. Exhibit one: an unwashed mug in the galley, which has clearly contained Alka-Seltzer. Colin was pretty drunk, and he’d almost certainly have taken something for it.”
“He might have taken it earlier on,” objected Proudie.
“No,” said Henry. “I’ve been on a boat long enough to know that one doesn’t leave loose, unwashed crockery about. Everything is washed and stowed away as soon as it’s been used. Then there’s exhibit two—Colin’s bunk. You see that mattress isn’t rectangular; it tapers slightly towards the bows to fit the shape of the bunk, and the daytime cover is tailored to the same shape. Well, it’s been put on the wrong way round. That’s a thing Anne would never do. Then there’s another thing. Anne’s sleeping bag is stowed up in the forepeak, with the sails, while Colin’s is under his bunk. We’ll check with Miss Petrie, but it seems likely to me that they were both normally stowed in the forepeak. It’s drier there. My guess is that Colin came back here, took an Alka-Seltzer, removed his bunk cover, laid out his sleeping bag, and probably climbed into it fully clothed, except for his shoes. In the state he was in, he must have gone out like a light, and almost certainly he wouldn’t have woken up if anyone came aboard—especially as he was expecting Anne to come and get her sleeping bag, so that the sound of a dinghy alongside wouldn’t have worried him. His murderer got aboard, knocked Colin out, probably with the dinghy oar, and heaved him into the water. Then he—or even possibly she—cast off Mary Jane’s dinghy, capsized it, and left it to drift upriver on the tide, meanwhile hastily tidying the cabin to make it look as though Colin had never been back aboard. It was obviously somebody who doesn’t know the boat too well, or they wouldn’t have made those mistakes about the bunk cover and the sleeping bag: but that doesn’t get us far because I don’t suppose anybody here except Anne has actually slept aboard.”
Henry paused for breath, and ran a hand through his sandy hair, so that it stood spikily on end. “Let’s see that book,” he went on. “And by the way, can you read Tide Tables?”
“I can, sir,” said Proudie. “Most people can, in these parts.”
“Then look up the tides for next weekend,” said Henry, “while I wade through this.”
For a few minutes there was silence in the small cabin. Proudie ruffled the pages of the Nautical Almanack, muttering to himself about Summer Time and variations on High Water Dover. Henry immersed himself in the chronicles of Captain Voss. Then Proudie said, “Next Saturday, high water Berrybridge eight four A.M. and eight sixteen P.M. Any use?”
“Not at the moment, but it will be,” said Henry. “Write those times down, like a good chap.”
He went on reading, flipping through the pages, devouring paragraphs whole. Proudie sat on the opposite bunk in silence. Suddenly Henry gave a shout. “We’re getting hot,” he said. “What about this for a chapter heading? ‘History of the Great Treasure—Where is it Hidden?—Prospecting and its Difficulties.’ This is all about how Voss and a friend went hunting hidden treasure in the Cocos Islands.”
“Blimey.” said Proudie, but without emphasis. He was beyond surprise. “Did they find it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t got that far.” Henry read on, absorbed. Voss’s simple, graphic prose had caught his imagination, and he felt the liberating exhilaration of following the great nineteenth-century seaman, with all his paradoxical romanticism and tough expertise, on the quest of pirate gold. He turned the page: read a paragraph: reread it with mounting excitement: then said quietly, “Inspector, I’m an even bloodier fool than I thought. It’s so obvious. Listen to this.
“The island was then searched high and low by the crew of the cutter, but nothing was found. Not even traces in the vegetation.
“That no traces could be discovered in the vegetation so soon after the crew of the ‘Mary Dyer’ had left the island is almost impossible to believe... After looking carefully over the foot of the hills and sandspit I came to the conclusion that if I had been the captain of the ‘Mary Dyer’ I should certainly have buried the treasure in the sandspit, for the following reason. The spit is solid sand, and at low water is dry. At high tide, it is submerged to a depth of three feet, and it would have been very little trouble to take a boat-load of the treasure over the spit at high water, dump it overboard and bury it when the tide was out. Then, in about six hours time, when the first tide washed over the spit, the traces would have been entirely obliterated...”
Henry shut the book slowly, and he and Proudie looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Proudie said, “So that’s where the Trigg-Willoughby jewels are. Buried in Steep Hill Sands.”
“It certainly looks like it,” said Henry. “That was the conclusion Colin came to, anyway, and somebody was sufficiently perturbed about it to kill him before he could investigate. Now, what did you say? High water at eight o’clock next Saturday? That means low water six hours later. Two o’clock in the morning. And a half-moon. Perfect conditions for making a clandestine expedition to Steep Hill. This weekend, high water’s at two, and low water at eight, which means that anybody trying to dig on the sandspit would have to do it in daylight.”
“Mr. Street said,” Proudie remarked, reflectively, “that he knew the how and the why, but not the who. The how is easy enough. Someone knocked Mr. Rawnsley out, and left him to drown. The why—that’s what we’ve just discovered—the buried jewels. Mr. Rawnsley must have disturbed somebody digging up the loot.” He reached for the Almanack again. “Let’s see what the tides were doing that day. May twenty-ninth, it was. Here we are. High water, six fifty-eight A.M.”
“That’s right,” Henry put in. “Alastair said they’d left at seven to catch the ebb tide. So low water was at one.”
“Broad daylight,” said Proudie. “Lunchtime.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Henry. “Don’t let’s go too fast. Remember that this is only Colin’s theory, and even if he was right about the jewels, Pete Rawnsley could have been killed for some quite different reason. Or maybe because of a complicated web of reasons. That’s the first thing to remember. The second thing is the fog. That’s a fact that cuts two ways. You see what I mean?”
“No,” said Proudie. Henry explained.
“Which still leaves us,” said Proudie, “with the question of who?”
Henry took a pen and a notebook out of his pocket and began to write. “There’s a fairly short list of possibles,” he said. “Look at it like this. The person we want has to have certain qualifications. Opportunity to steal the jewels in the first place. Let’s put down both Rawnsleys, Anne Petrie, George Riddle, Herbert Hole, Sam Riddle. I wonder if David Crowther was at that Hunt Ball. Make a note to find out. Then, there’s the question of opportunity to bury them—Herbert, Sam, George and any of the sailing people who had the chance of going out alone. Unless, of course, we’re dealing with a conspiracy.”
“The other day, in my office,” said Proudie, “you came up with a theory about the robbery—”
“I’m afraid I was wrong,” said Henry. “At least, it looks like it. I can check it to a certain extent by one or two questions to a couple of people.” He paused, and considered his notebook. “It would be interesting to find out just what George Riddle was doing that morning,” he went on. “And Herbert turned up unexpectedly in his launch. That’s something that needs investigation.”
“It occurs to me,” said Proudie slowly, “that there’s another way of tackling this. From the other end, as you might say. If somebody has been digging up those jewels, it’s because they got short of cash and wanted to sell some of them. Since none of them has come onto the market in recognisable form, I’m inclined to think that our thief is using a highly skilled professional fence. Which leads us—”
“To Bob Calloway, who’s been making frequent trips
to London recently,” supplied Henry. “I know. I’m prepared to swear that Bob knows a lot more about all this than he’s prepared to say: but now that there’s been a second, rather clumsy murder, he’ll be scared stiff and we won’t get a word out of him. I know Bob of old, Inspector. He just sits tight and refuses to talk—and there’s not a damned thing one can do about it.”
Henry closed his notebook with a snap, and stood up. “Let’s get back,” he said. “There’s work to be done. I’ve wasted a hell of a lot of time already, trying to convince myself that Rawnsley’s death was accidental. Now it’s pretty clear that we’ve got a double murder to investigate. Two trails, one fresh and one stale. And somewhere in the two of them we’re going to find a point of contact, a similarity—”
“Plenty of similarity,” said Proudie, a trifle sourly. “Both victims hit on the head and left to drown. Both interested in Steep Hill Sands. Why don’t we go and dig for the stuff, as a start, sir?”
“No,” said Henry. “I daren’t risk letting the criminal know that we’ve tumbled to the hiding place. Come on, let’s get ashore. This afternoon I want to interview everybody again—in the light of a murder investigation this time. We’ve let things go far enough as it is.”
As they rowed ashore, Proudie spoke only once, to ask, “Do we let on we know it’s murder, sir?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Henry. “But be sure not to give anybody the idea that we’re interested in the sandspit.”
“O.K. by me, sir,” said Proudie. Several minutes later, he added gruffly, “Lovely day.”
It was a lovely day. The tide was full, and the river was a sheet of frosted blue glass, ruffled by tiny wavelets. Once again, Henry experienced a sense of wonder at the subtle intensity of colour. But what had seemed to Henry a week ago to be the essence of calm, uncomplicated beauty, now created an atmosphere at once unspeakably sinister and sad, like the painted face of a corpse in an American mortuary parlour. He was briefly surprised at himself for conceiving such an analogy: he had never been to America let alone into a mortician’s den. Perhaps they weren’t like that at all, in spite of all one read.
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