And Lucilla wasn’t at all unwilling.
It was late when they left the gardens. Down on the esplanade things were quieter, though they met more people near the pier. Then they were in a quiet street that lay behind the Kursaal, and it was outside the house where she had her room that she suddenly pulled herself out of his good-night embrace. He glanced at her curiously.
“I clean forgot,” she said. “I must be out of my mind.”
“What is it?”
He was grinning at her in the darkness of the silent street. But she wasn’t smiling. “That damned girl,” she said. Her eyes snapped at the memory. And she had meant to tell him the first moment she’d seen him again, and then she had completely forgotten it once in his company. “It was just after you left the hoop-la this afternoon.”
“What was?”
He wasn’t particularly interested.
“This girl.” She glanced at his face shadowed by his grey hat, hesitated. She didn’t want to spoil their evening. Then she shrugged, it was probably nothing. “She said she thought she knew you. She’d seen you with me.”
He mightn’t have heard her, he mightn’t have been listening. He appeared as relaxed and casual as ever.
“What did you say?” he said. She didn’t catch the grating note in his voice.
“There was another one with her. She was wearing glasses. I said I didn’t know you. It was the truth.” She smiled at him lovingly. “I didn’t — then.”
“What else she say?”
“She asked me if your name was Destiny. Johnny Destiny. I gave her the same answer. I didn’t know you, I said.”
“Who’s he?” he said. He had given her the name under which he booked at the hotel in Southend, where he’d managed to get himself fixed up.
“Search me,” she said, and clung to him again, her mouth seeking his.
This had hit him like a bolt out of the blue, but he was smiling at her, his arms about her were holding her close, as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered. It could be some sharp-eyed piece had recognized him from his photo in the newspaper. But it seemed incredible, to have spotted him in all that mob, he didn’t believe it. Yet how else? He needed to find out a bit more about this girl who’d recognized him.
“She’d got me mixed up with someone else, I guess,” he said. “I don’t know any girl who wears glasses.”
“It wasn’t her. She was just a friend, she stayed in the background. The girl was dark and pretty. She asked about you.”
“Only pretty girl I know in the whole wide world is you,” he said. “The only girl I want to know.”
She loved it; while his thoughts were chasing around his brain like a whirlpool of daggers. A dark-haired pretty girl who knew him? He couldn’t tie it up, however he tried. It would have to be somebody he’d met in the last two days, it was his first time over here in years. But there was no one. He’d barely spoken to a soul, since he’d arrived. It must have been some girl gimlet-eye, after all. It just went to prove how careful you had to be. From the passport-photo in the newspaper. It had to be, had to be that. Since Paris, who’d there been? Why, if you like, take it since —?
It was then he remembered the girl on the boat, and the stabbing-question-marks racing round inside his skull began to ease up. The brunette on the cross-Channel steamer, he’d chinned with her. The image of her formed on his mind.
And hadn’t she said something about she was meeting some friend for a holiday in Essex?
Chapter Sixteen
THERE WAS JUST enough breeze to rustle the sedge grass on the other side of Dormouse Creek. The morning sun shone fiercely out of a brilliantly blue sky, and across the marsh isolated pools of water shimmered placidly. In the meadow beyond the Wildfowler Inn, cattle moved slowly across to the boundary ditch and stood in the sparse shade of the trees swishing at the flies with their tails.
Lying on the rug spread out on the deck Miss Frayle glimpsed the white sail approaching, and she sat up to look at it further. She pointed it out to Erica who was lying beside her, face down, sunning her back and legs. Grumbling at being disturbed, Erica raised herself and stared down the creek. It was a small sloop and she recognized its dark blue hull and low easy lines. “It’s Jim,” she said. “In a job he borrows from Burnham.”
Miss Frayle looked with increased interest at the oncoming vessel. She was feeling extremely sophisticated in her swimsuit, Erica had eyed her enviously and that was no faint praise, coming from her. Miss Frayle had wondered if perhaps it wasn’t a bit too much for the rustic environment of Dormouse Creek, but she had received full encouragement from Erica, who wore a much more revealing two-piece affair, and Aunt Edith: “Do the local yokels a bit of good to have an eye-opener.” So Miss Frayle had gone to work on her shoulders and legs with sun-tan oil.
The appearance of the white-sailed boat would give Miss Frayle an opportunity of assessing her swimsuit’s impact upon a masculine mentality. Not that Jim Rayner was a local yokel. Miss Frayle couldn’t quite decide whether Erica liked or disliked him. But then she had always invariably referred to her young men acquaintances in somewhat disparaging terms, which you didn’t take too seriously. She had given the impression that she thought Jim Rayner was a bit of a dope, but really she seemed to be quite fond of him.
“Don’t worry about him,” Erica was saying now, as she relaxed again, face downwards on the deck. “He won’t be aboard for a while.”
Miss Frayle relaxed and allowed her mind to drift into speculation about the result of her telephone-call yesterday afternoon to Inspector Hood. Had he got in touch with Dr. Morelle, as he had said he would? She thought it was certain he had, but she couldn’t for the life of her decide what Dr. Morelle’s reaction to the story she had given the Scotland Yard man would be. He might have dismissed it as another example of her lurid imagination, as he had more than once described it, running riot. And Miss Frayle gave a wry smile to herself as she pictured Dr. Morelle advising Inspector Hood that he was wasting both his and the latter’s time. Yet Inspector Hood had not sounded at all unimpressed over the phone. Far from it. And Miss Frayle knew how Dr. Morelle was no less interested in Johnny Destiny than the other. Johnny Destiny and the Transatlantic business.
And then she thought: supposing Dr. Morelle decided to take a serious view of what she’d told Inspector Hood? There was no reason why she should hear any more about it, not until the news appeared in the newspapers that Johnny Destiny had been caught, at any rate. She had done her part, there was nothing else she could do. It was in Scotland Yard’s and Dr. Morelle’s hands now, it wasn’t likely either of them would think it necessary to interrupt her and Erica’s holiday to demand their help. If Dr. Morelle did get in touch with her at all about it, it would be merely to advise her to forget the matter and leave her mind free to continue with her holiday.
Miss Frayle saw the sailing-boat draw nearer to the Moya. She observed Erica raise her pretty dark head again to watch it with a casual eye. She reflected that Jim Rayner, who had heard all about it over tea in the café where he’d been awaiting them yesterday afternoon, and Aunt Edith when they’d returned to the Moya, had both thought Erica and Miss Frayle had acted misguidedly at the Kursaal.
Both had agreed it was perfectly obvious that Erica had been mistaken. “To be able to pick out some chap in that mob as someone you met briefly the day before — you’ve been seeing things,” had been Jim Rayner’s verdict. And it had been echoed by Aunt Edith, despite Erica’s profound conviction that she hadn’t been mistaken, backed up by Miss Frayle’s opinion that there had seemed to have been a resemblance between the man at the hoop-la and the newspaper photo.
Miss Frayle would have admitted that Erica’s memory had played her tricks, and then she recalled how Inspector Hood had sounded over the phone. As if he was really interested in what she was telling him, almost as if he was already in possession of some knowledge which was linked with her account. Or had he simply been humouring her?
> The sailing-boat was passing and Miss Frayle raised her head to obtain a closer glimpse of it through the Moya’s rails. The boat had a tiny cabin-top which was surrounded by a cat-walk of a deck, and was trailing a pram dinghy. The safest and largest section of it, it seemed to her, was the cockpit. Jim Rayner was in swimming-trunks, and sat on the coaming with the tiller in his hand. He waved as he went by, calling chattily to Erica and Miss Frayle about the weather and giving them a pretty searching look. Erica muttered to the effect that there would be no more peace that morning, and she and Miss Frayle stood up to watch the sailing-boat put about and glide gently downstream towards them. Jim Rayner came aboard the Moya with a coloured bathing-towel round his bronzed shoulders.
“Thought you’d take a dip with a lifeguard around,” he said. “Already been in and can recommend it.”
“Some lifeguard,” Erica said.
“I don’t think I will,” Miss Frayle said. She glanced over the side. The water didn’t appear to her to be particularly clear. Besides, although she could swim a bit, it was much too deep.
“Not here,” Jim said easily. “Too much mud. Thought of taking you down to the Dormouse.”
“The Dormouse?” Miss Frayle said.
“It’s a sandy strip near the mouth of the creek,” Erica explained. “Much nicer to bathe from there, clear water.”
“It’s covered a couple of hours either side of high water,” Jim said. “But it’s ideal at this state of the tide. No mud or barnacles to tread on, just clean firm sand.”
Erica had already slipped into the deckhouse and reappeared with two bathing towels. Immediately afterwards Aunt Edith came on deck with her canvas shopping bag, and pausing before going ashore was full of enthusiasm for the idea of a dip from the Dormouse. With the scales thus weighed against her Miss Frayle reluctantly took a towel and she, Erica and Jim made their way along to the jetty ladder where the yacht lay alongside.
Miss Frayle stepped into the cockpit and Jim Rayner’s arms, he had gone aboard first. He indicated the side seat and turned to help aboard Erica, and then pushed off. “Heads down,” and the mainsail-boom swung across. The sails filled and they moved slowly over the tide down the creek.
“Sort yourselves out,” Jim said, cleating home the jib sheet and settling down on the aft coaming with the tiller and the mainsheet. He smiled at Miss Frayle and she blushed a little beneath his gaze which ranged over her figure. She thought she detected a glint in his eyes and decided that it didn’t need Dr. Morelle to deduce that her swimsuit was a success.
“Slide along here, Miss Frayle,” he said. “Rest your back against this coaming.”
She did so, and somehow his hand seemed to find its way on her shoulder. Erica had made a cushion of her towel and was sitting on it, her arm resting on the cabin-top. Miss Frayle took up her towel. “I’ll put this round my shoulders,” she said. “They’ve had quite enough sun this morning.”
“Sensible idea,” Jim said, helping her to drape the towel.
The creek twisted through the marsh, gradually widening as it neared the river into which it flowed. Dark brown mud sloped down into the water from the grass-covered walls on either side. When they went close to the edge of the channel Miss Frayle could see the bottom with here and there large stones to which streamers of green weed clung, swaying to and fro in the eddies like tentacles.
“There’s the Dormouse,” Erica said, pointing ahead as they rounded the last turn in the creek. Miss Frayle saw a thin strip of gleaming sand just left of the centre of the creek. The water broke all round it in dazzling ripples. Beyond it was the river. The eastern bank of the creek curved round to follow the river at a point parallel to the tip of the Dormouse, but on the western side the wall continued and curved outwards like a mole before following the river upstream. This formed a little bay which sheltered part of the sand strip from the west.
“We’ll put her nose on the bar,” Jim said as they sailed in towards it. “Breeze is light enough to go in all standing.” He moved into the cabin. “I’ll get the plate up.” Miss Frayle saw him pick up the end of a rope.
Erica was looking at him.
“You mean you’re going to run aground?”
“That’s where she spends most of her time when I’m ditch-crawling. What she’s built for. Sits on the mud like a duck.”
“What’s the plate you’re talking about?” Miss Frayle said, intrigued.
“Centre plate,” he said, pointing towards the floor of the cabin, and by leaning forward Miss Frayle could just see the top of a slim wooden case protruding upwards from the floor. “It’s a kind of movable metal keel that swivels up and down. It’s down now so that we don’t make too much leeway. When you’re running before the wind or anchored or sailing in shoal waters, you haul it up and it’s housed in that case. This job draws only one-foot-six with the plate up, so I can go practically anywhere where there’s a cupful of water.”
“What a wonderful idea,” Miss Frayle said.
Suddenly Jim began to haul on his ropes. There was the squeal of a pulley-block and then the sound of metal against metal as he pinned the plate home. The next moment the nose of the boat slid into the sand and they slowed to a stop. Jim jumped up on to the side deck and juggled with the halyards against the mast and Erica and Miss Frayle were almost smothered in white canvas as the mainsail came down. Soon it was neatly folded along the boom, the jib was stowed and Jim took the anchor and dropped it into the sand.
In the novelty of the sail and excitement of running aground on this tiny island Miss Frayle had forgotten she was still wearing her glasses. It was Erica who reminded her and who put them safely in a locker in the cockpit. They took off their sandals and left them there, too, and Miss Frayle felt the warm, firm sand squeezing through her toes.
Jim Rayner led the way to the narrower channel that ran between the Dormouse and the western bank of the creek. This was also the more shallow channel of the two, where the incoming tide was least felt. The water was warm and Miss Frayle regretted only that they had not come sooner, it was an ideal spot.
It was nearly an hour later when they headed back to the Moya. Miss Frayle sat, her towel wrapped round her, in the cockpit. The companion doors and hatch were open so that she could see into the cabin.
She was surprised at the spacious impression it gave. There were two full-length berths with shelves above and lockers underneath. Although the centreboard case broke into the floor space it also served as a support for the folding table, hinged to the mast. Just by the companion there was a cupboard and lockers to starboard and a galley to port with a pressure-stove swinging on gimbals. On the forward bulkhead was a clock, bookshelves, and an oil-lamp and on the locker in the corner a miniature radio-set. An opening in the centre leading through into the fo’c’sle was covered by a curtain. It was cosy enough, but of course, there was no headroom. Miss Frayle knew that if she stood up suddenly she would crash her head on the cabin roof beams.
It was the sight of a solitary figure of a man they passed trudging along the wall of the creek, with a gun under his arm that set Miss Frayle’s thoughts revolving around the image she still held in her mind of the limping man in the rainswept, old churchyard. Why, she mused to herself couldn’t she stop placing such importance to it? It had been an eerie incident, of course, but it was only because of the somewhat macabre surroundings and gloomy circumstances which had caused her to feel about it as she had. The man had as much right to be there as she and Erica had. And why shouldn’t he shelter in what remained of the building as Erica and herself had done in the church porch? As for his furtive manner, that had been nothing more than her imagination. And yet she couldn’t shake off that funny feeling she’d had about it. Even now, in the sun, Miss Frayle shivered.
“Cold?” Erica said, from the cabin. “Thought I saw you shiver.” Miss Frayle shook her head and smiled. Erica popped her head through the hatch, looking for’ard towards the jetty. “We’re nearly there,” she said. She ca
me up into the cockpit and sat next to Miss Frayle as the boat heeled in towards the jetty.
Jim Rayner pushed the tiller with his knee and the vessel turned into the breeze. He needed to Erica. “Take the helm,” he said, and as she obeyed, he went for’ard to the mast. After a few moments struggling with the halyard he muttered something to the effect that it was jammed. They began to lose way and drift on towards the jetty.
At the same moment Miss Frayle’s attention was attracted by a car, a yellow rakish-looking open convertible which was pulling up by the jetty. Her eyes saucer-like behind her glasses she stepped up on to the side-deck for a better view. It was then that Jim managed to get the halyard released. The mainsail came down with a run, its stiff canvas folds falling across Miss Frayle’s back and shoulders. Involuntarily she stepped out of the way, the wrong way. With a squeal of dismay she went feet first into the water.
She surfaced quickly, thankful to find her horn-rims still in place and swam to the steps a yard or two away. As she reached the top of the ladder, her hair bedraggled and dripping with water, a familiar figure came into view, to stare down at her sardonically.
“My dear Miss Frayle,” Dr. Morelle said, “I thought one always dived in head first.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS AT Inspector Hood’s suggestion that he and Dr. Morelle had later that afternoon gone along from the Judo Club to B Division police headquarters in Lucan Place, just off the Fulham Road, for a talk with Detective Superintendent “Spider” Bruce.
There was no doubt that the case of the body in the boat-train had assumed proportions somewhat different from what had at first appeared. In the taxi on their way to Chelsea, Inspector Hood had summed up for Dr. Morelle’s benefit the conclusions reached by “Spider” Bruce and Superintendent Harper, as a result of probing more deeply into the discovery at Victoria Station.
Dr Morelle and Destiny Page 10