Dr Morelle and Destiny

by Ernest Dudley

  The Dormouse buoy came in view. Dr. Morelle set course across the creek in towards the mudspit and the reeds which held the remains of Johnny Destiny. As the point came abeam Miss Frayle’s eyes were irrevocably drawn to the shadowy patch of vegetation running out into the water. It looked a ghostly place in the moonlight. The leaning branch she had held at Aunt Edith’s request looked like a giant grotesque arm pointing upwards out of the water. The thought of it sent shivers down her back.

  Soon the point was dropping astern and they came round into the broad expanse of the river.

  “There they are,” Miss Frayle said, her voice high with excitement.

  There was not a great gap between them and the small dark object which was recognizable as a boat. They could make out the two figures in it. Both appeared to be half-standing, half-leaning at one end. The boat ahead was close in to a great shelving mudbank and was making little headway. Beyond, the river stretched out to meet the thin veil of mist that obscured the sea. A long way across the water and marsh a light glimmered, a lonely habitat in a forgotten world. The dark blur of the mudflats and the vague line of the river wall on the further side exaggerated the width of the estuary.

  “They’re not moving very fast,” Erica said. “We’re much faster than they are.”

  “Don’t look as if they’re moving at all,” Miss Frayle said.

  “Listen for their motor.” Dr. Morelle suddenly shut down the throttle to a low hum. No sound came from the boat ahead.

  “They’ve got trouble,” Erica said. “Looks as if they’re trying to clear their propellor. Caught up some weed, I shouldn’t wonder. Plenty of the stuff about.”

  Dr. Morelle had opened the throttle again and the boat surged ahead. His aquiline features were calm, his dark gaze was fixed ahead upon his objective. He could see the other boat drawing ever nearer. He could make out the two figures aboard. The boat appeared to be drifting slowly in towards the mudbank. Dr. Morelle saw that the man, Danny Boy, was struggling to right something low down on the propeller shaft. The girl was close to him, pointing towards them. Suddenly the man stood upright and using an oar pushed the boat round and into the mud. They both jumped out and immediately sank to their ankles. Slowly they began to move up the bank.

  Erica gave a great cry of warning. The unexpected hysterical note in her voice made Miss Frayle jump. “Come back, come back,” she shouted. She turned desperately to Dr. Morelle. “Tell them to come back. That’s Devil’s Flats. It’s full of mudholes.”

  Miss Frayle gasped as she caught the panic-like urgency in Erica’s voice. Dr. Morelle called out to the two stumbling figures ahead. He uttered the warning that they were heading for danger. But the two fugitives did not even look back. Their progress slowed as they fought to drag their feet clear of the mud that pulled at them. Dr. Morelle ran in towards the bank. He cut out the motor, and the stem of the dinghy glided into the ooze, the ripples from their wake breaking all around them. Miss Frayle stood up, swaying the boat as she called across the short stretch of mud to the fleeing figures.

  “They’ll never make it,” Erica said grimly.

  Even as she spoke there came a piercing scream from the girl and she began to sink before their eyes. Dr. Morelle was already pulling up the boards at the bottom of the boat, and throwing them out on to the mud. But they formed up a path of only a few feet. Dr. Morelle stepped out, an oar in his hand. He hurled it like a javelin in the direction of the struggling figures, but it fell unnoticed by either of them.

  Miss Frayle stood in the bow, her eyes fixed on the scene in fascinated horror, as Danny Boy turned to help the girl.

  He had floundered back to her, his arms reaching out to her shoulders. The slimy gurgling sounded horrible. Dr. Morelle was lying flat on the mud pushing the duckboards in front of him with the dinghy’s painter running through his hands.

  But the ooze worked quickly. Suddenly the girl had disappeared, silently and awfully, and only the man’s head showed above the slime. Then, with a choking noise that froze Miss Frayle’s blood he threw up his arms and was gone beneath the surface. The great space gurgled and filled, the glistening ooze rising up in bubbles, and where the two figures had been was nothing but whorls and snaking rings on the surface of the mud.

  Miss Frayle and Erica Travers leaned over the boat to help in Dr. Morelle. Erica stood staring across the mud, while Miss Frayle sank down on the thwart, her head in her hands. The moon pushed up between some ribbons of cloud, the mists curled along the water. No one spoke. From somewhere across the river came the plaintive cry of a curlew.

  It was a little while before Dr. Morelle started the motor.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “AND OF COURSE,” Miss Frayle was saying, “it’s obvious how you guessed it was that poor man Danny Boy, when you went into the inn.”

  It was the following day, before lunch-time, and Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle were in the study of 221b Harley Street, where they had arrived an hour before. Dr. Morelle had left Inspector Hood who had arrived as arranged at Dormouse Creek that morning, to tie up any loose end that had remained from the night before. Not that there appeared to be very much uncompleted business left to take care of. The deaths of Lucilla and her father provided a not entirely unsatisfactory solution to the problem of dealing with Johnny Destiny’s killer, while at the same time there was little need to probe any more deeply into the mystery of the limping man and the printing-press under the ruined church. It was obvious that it had been Danny Boy whom Miss Frayle had seen coming out of the ivy-covered vestry that stormy evening, he had deliberately assumed a limp, realizing his presence had been spotted, in order to divert the possibility of suspicion from himself.

  Inspector Hood had agreed with Dr. Morelle that the Transatlantic dossier could now be counted on as finally closed.

  Dr. Morelle expelled a cloud of cigarette-smoke ceiling-wards and raised a quizzical eyebrow at Miss Frayle. “Do you know,” he said, “I can hardly wait to learn how I succeeded in persuading the landlord of the Wildfowler to reveal his identity.”

  “Because of that tune you whistled when you saw him,” she said promptly. She began to hum a strain of the Londonderry Air. “The moment he heard it, he realized the game was up.”

  “Brilliant, Miss Frayle,” Dr. Morelle said. “And, naturally, as always you are perfectly right.”

  “Oh, Dr. Morelle,” Miss Frayle said.

  There had been nothing for her but to cut short her holiday aboard the Moya. Quite apart from the fact that there was a certain amount of work entailed as a result of the dramatic happenings at Dormouse Creek, she herself couldn’t have stayed there an hour longer than was absolutely necessary.

  To her the whole place seemed haunted by an atmosphere of horror which no sunshine the next morning could disperse. The murder of Johnny Destiny and the ghastly end of Danny Boy and Lucilla. One loose string which had so far not been tied up conclusively concerned Johnny Destiny’s end, though all the evidence pointed to the girl having shot him. Dr. Morelle had witnessed her and Johnny Destiny together; and only a little while later had met Danny Boy in The Wildfowler, which seemed to indicate that the father could not have been guilty, and that it therefore followed the girl was.

  What had been her motive must forever remain a matter for some speculation. Jealousy? Because she had discovered the object of his visit to her father? It could have been either of them. Dr. Morelle and Inspector Hood had postulated both theories, but it could have been something else again. Anyway, it was profitless to conjecture, possibly some fresh evidence would arise before the case was finally closed which might give the answer.

  Dr. Morelle resumed dictating some notes to Miss Frayle when the telephone rang jarringly so that Miss Frayle gave a start. Dr. Morelle threw her a faintly mocking look. “I fear your nerves really are on edge, my dear Miss Frayle,” he said. “Obviously you very much need the holiday which has been so unfortunately interrupted.”

  “I know,” she said quick
ly, as she crossed to the telephone. “Perhaps I can make a new start in a day or two, when this lot is finally cleared up, and there won’t be anything else to worry you.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched with the barest flicker of chilly humour at the implication in her tone. She really did believe that she was indispensable to him, that without her at his beck and call the world would stop spinning for him. He scowled slightly to himself, his dark brows drew together as he recalled what it had been like in the past when she hadn’t been on hand.

  She smiled at him sweetly as she lifted the receiver. “This’ll be Inspector Hood,” she said, “with some more news for you from Dormouse Creek.”

  But it wasn’t Detective Inspector Hood’s warm and familiar tones which came over the wire. “It’s Mr. Beaumont — tell Dr. Morelle —”

  The voice exploded in her ear in near-hysterical agitation. She turned to Dr. Morelle, her eyes widening behind her horn-rimmed glasses. He gave her a quizzical look across his desk.

  “It’s Mr. Beaumont,” she said to him.

  He tapped the ash off his Le Sphinx and crossed to her, and as she was about to hand him the telephone the voice from the other end rattled her eardrum once more. “It’s my father — I’ve just found him dead — in his bath —”

  Miss Frayle rolled her eyes expressively upwards, as Dr. Morelle began speaking incisively into the phone. It looked as if any hope she might have had of picking up the thread of her broken holiday was rapidly receding for this summer.

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