“Sir Simon then got into the car and drove at a snail’s pace back to Ipswich. He didn’t have to worry about the car being recognised in that fog. He then went to the cinema, just as he told us, arriving back at Berry Hall after you had got Pete ashore. He must have been very pleased with himself. The inquest went off perfectly. No awkward questions. His secret was safe—until I came along and started meddling, and until Colin decided to turn private detective.” Henry paused. “Can I have a drink?” he asked. “I’m losing my voice.”
Hamish brought him a whisky and soda. Henry sipped it gratefully, and then went on. “Now we come to the story of Colin. That, too, confirmed all my suspicions. It was clear from the beginning that it was Colin’s ill-judged remarks at dinner about tides and books that warned Sir Simon that his secret hiding place was about to be discovered. There’s no doubt that by this time he was slightly mad. It’s just about impossible to murder one of one’s best friends and remain sane. In any case, he had killed once. The second time is easier. He decided that Colin must die. He heard with great relief that Anne was not proposing to spend the night on Mary Jane. That meant his victim would be alone. As soon as I satisfied myself that Colin had, in fact, gone back to his boat and been attacked there, it became obvious that Sir Simon, Herbert, Ephraim or one of the Riddles must be the murderer.”
“How did you work that out?” Hamish asked. “We all heard what Colin said.”
“Yes,” said Henry. “We all heard what Colin said, and what Anne said. But we—the Fleet—went down the hard together afterwards, and we all knew something that the others didn’t. Namely, that Anne was proposing to go back with David to Mary Jane some unspecified time later to pick up her sleeping bag. I trust that, in view of that, none of us would have been such fools as to contemplate attacking Colin in his boat. It was the greatest good luck for Sir Simon that Anne didn’t, after all, go back.”
“Might it have—I mean, might Colin still be...?” Anne began, tremulously.
“No,” said Henry. “Don’t reproach yourself. It’s highly unlikely that you’d have caught him in the act. In fact, Sir Simon arrived after you were safely on Ariadne—Alastair heard him. But I’ll come to that later. The only difference would have been that we’d have known right away that Colin did get back to Mary Jane—and we worked that out soon enough.”
Anne nodded sadly.
“What finally made up my mind for me,” said Henry, “was the matter of the car. Clearly, it had been put out of action deliberately. Why? So that somebody shouldn’t be where he wasn’t wanted that night. The only two people who had any motive or opportunity for tampering with it were Sir Simon and George Riddle, one of whom clearly wanted to be rid of the other for the night. With my suspicions piling up against Sir Simon, I was never in any doubt. He removed the rotor arm from the car when he went, ostensibly, to start her up. Then he left Riddle working on her, with instructions not to bother to come back to the Hall that night if he couldn’t get her going. Sir Simon himself travelled back in Old George’s taxi. Priscilla was already asleep, doubtless full of gin as usual. There was nobody to see the other Priscilla slipping quietly out into the river in the small hours. Sir Simon boarded Mary Jane, knocked Colin out—probably with a dinghy oar—and threw him into the river, at the same time freeing and capsizing Mary Jane’s dinghy.”
“But surely we’d have heard Priscilla’s motor,” Rosemary put in.
“We might have,” said Henry. “That was why he anchored her downstream from the moored boats, and finished the trip rowing his old racing dinghy, which he had towed behind him. Priscilla’s anchor was still wet and muddy when Emmy made its acquaintance the next day, even though Sir Simon swore that the motor was out of action and that the boat hadn’t been out. No, he rowed to Mary Jane, and Alastair heard him.”
“If only I’d known—”
“Nobody knew,” said Henry. “I might have guessed, but I didn’t. So Colin died, and I was certain in my own mind who had killed him, without having a smattering of proof. So we come to the matter of Emmy.” He smiled at her and took another drink of whisky.
“My wife,” Henry went on, kindly, “is brighter than she looks. She’s also a sympathetic character. When she found herself alone in Berry Hall with Priscilla, she realized it was a chance to coax some secrets out of the old dear. And she was right. But Priscilla had only just got around to it when Sir Simon came back from Berrybridge. He heard voices, and went up to Priscilla’s room. There he saw Emmy, who had her back to the door, talking to his sister. And he heard Priscilla say the words, ‘before eleven.’ That was enough. I don’t know what he hit you with, darling, but he grabbed whatever came to hand and let you have it. As for Priscilla—who certainly must have objected to such behaviour—he managed to subdue her with gin and sleeping pills. I’d like to think that he didn’t mean to kill her, but I’m afraid he probably did. After all, he couldn’t rely on her to hold her tongue if she ever regained consciousness.
“Meanwhile, he had to decide what to do with Emmy. Clearly, she couldn’t be killed in Berry Hall. She must disappear, and be found drowned, like the others. It’s curious how conservative murderers are in their methods. Fortunately, George Riddle had just departed on his bicycle. The coast was clear. Sir Simon carried Emmy downstairs and bundled her into the Daimler. Then he drove down to the boatshed. That’s why the car wasn’t in the drive when you two arrived,” he added to Hamish and Anne. “It should have been, of course. That confirmed my suspicions. Sir Simon tied Emmy up and dumped her in the fo’c’sle of Priscilla. It must have been then that he saw your car turning into the drive. You saved Emmy’s life by that visit, and I’m eternally grateful.”
“We did?” said Anne. “How?”
“Because,” said Henry, “Sir Simon realized he must produce an explanation of why he wasn’t there when you called, and produce an alibi for himself. So, as soon as you’d gone, he left Emmy and drove to Woodbridge, where he bought some tools. By that time, I was getting worried, and I had a good idea of where Emmy might be.”
“You had?” Emmy sat bolt upright in indignation. “Then why the hell didn’t you rescue me, instead of—”
Henry grinned at her. “My love,” he said, “I’m sorry you had to be uncomfortable for another half hour or so, but there was nothing I could do. I got to the boathouse in the nick of time, just as Sir Simon got back. So long as I could divert him and keep him under my eye, I knew you’d be all right. Unless, of course, you were already dead, in which case it didn’t really matter.”
“You monster,” said Emmy, and kissed him.
“In any case,” said Henry, “I knew you weren’t dead, because I heard you wriggling about in the fo’c’sle. But what could I do? I was still hamstrung by having no proof. Once I’d really alarmed Sir Simon, I’d have no hope of catching him. So I’m afraid I left you where you were, and I had to act dumb with Inspector Proudie. I didn’t, by then, want a hoard of policemen tramping round Berry Hall. All the same, I’m glad David found you when he did.”
“So am I,” said Emmy, fervently.
“Well, that’s about all, except for my final effort. Bob Calloway found that things were getting too hot, and disappeared to dispose of the jewels he had on him as fast as he could. That suited me beautifully. I wrote a note to Sir Simon, purporting to come from Bob, and left it in the bar. George Riddle must have taken it up to the Hall. In it, I told Sir Simon to bring in the rest of the jewellery last night. This he was only too pleased to do. After the episode with Colin, and a few hints I’d dropped, he knew we were getting close to the hiding place. So he went out to collect the loot. Fortunately, Alastair and I were there to meet him.”
“You were there,” said Alastair.
“And a fat lot of good I’d have been without you,” said Henry.
“He damn near killed you,” said Alastair. “He didn’t look a reluctant murderer to me.”
“What I meant by that,” said Henry, “was that the situation
had a tragic irony about it. Sir Simon was in love with the house. And the house demanded from him, as victims, all the people he really cared about. Pete, his best friend: Colin, whose brain he admired: and finally, his own sister, his only surviving relative. In the end, it demanded his own life, too.”
There was a long silence. Then Henry said, “Well, that’s the story, and thank God it’s over. Let’s go down to the Bush.”
EPILOGUE
THE STATION WAGON WAS loaded once again, and stood on the hard, trembling with the vibration of her pulsing motor. Beside her, the M.G. stood, black and sleek.
“We’ll say goodbye now,” said Alastair to Hamish. “You’ll be in London before us.”
“You’ll come down to Lymington next weekend to see the new boat?”
“Of course. By the way, this trip of yours to the Canaries—”
“Is off,” said Anne firmly. “But we will go to Holland, when Hamish can take a holiday.”
There was a round of farewells. The Bensons and the Tibbetts piled into the station wagon. Anne jumped into the M.G. without opening the door, and kissed Hamish on the nose before the little black car roared up the hill. The station wagon followed more sedately.
As the hum of the engines retreated, silence drifted back over Berrybridge Haven. The setting sun sent long fingers of gold across the river, and spattered the mud with topaz gleams. Softly, mysteriously, the landscape sank back into its ancient dream. On the point, Berry Hall looked calmly out to the sea, white and beautiful and very quiet.
In The Berry Bush, Bill Hawkes said, “Game o’ darts, then, Herbert?”
“Hay?”
“I said, game o’ darts?”
Herbert looked quickly round. They were alone in the bar. He winked, and a slow grin spread across his wizened face. “Don’t mind if I do, Bill,” he said.
For more “Inspector Tibbett” and other “Vintage”
titles from Felony & Mayhem Press, including the
“Inspector Alleyn” series by Ngaio Marsh,
please visit our website:
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All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
THE SUNKEN SAILOR
A Felony & Mayhem mystery
PUBLISHING HISTORY
First UK print edition (Collins): 1961
First US print edition (as Down Among the Dead Men)
(Holt, Rinehart & Winston): 1961
Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2018
Copyright © The Estate of Patricia Moyes 1961
All rights reserved
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63194-130-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moyes, Patricia, author.
Title: The sunken sailor / Patricia Moyes.
Description: Felony & Mayhem edition. | New York : Felony & Mayhem Press,
2017. | Series: Inspector Tibbett ; 2 | “A Felony & Mayhem mystery.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2017034187| ISBN 9781631941290 (softcover) | ISBN 9781631941306 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tibbett, Henry (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Tibbett, Emmy (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Police--Great Britain--Fiction. | Murder--Investigation--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6063.O9 S86 2017 | DDC 823/.914--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034187
The Sunken Sailor Page 25