On the discovery of the body, Elma hastened to marry Holland, thinking that Walter was the murderer and she would lose another chance of marrying; Holland hastened to marry Elma, chivalrously, because he thought she would be under suspicion. Denny, hearing (from Emery) that documents had been taken from the desk, dashed up to London, to know what was being done with those which compromised him. Mount found the extra coil hanging to the mooring-post, did not understand it, but destroyed it to screen his wife, which was also why he obliterated her footmarks on the bed. The white dress (which had been worn by Elma because she wanted to attract the Vicar, hoping to persuade him to divorce Celia) was taken up to London because it was the nearest thing she had got to a wedding-dress.
The precise time of the murder and the precise distance to which the corpse was towed by Walter are to be settled by the tide experts. Walter wanted to make it look as if the boat had been drifted up with the tide all, or most of, the way from Whynmouth. The key was left in the Admiral’s boat by Celia. This was meant to suggest that Penistone had left all locked when he (supposedly) went to Whynmouth; and would have done so but for Walter’s confusion of the two boats. Celia had a false key to the french window, as well as to the desk.
The plotters assumed that Holland’s story would be disbelieved, and that he would be thought to have murdered Penistone at or near Whynmouth round about eleven o’clock.
CHAPTER IX
By Freeman Wills Crofts
ON THE afternoon before the crime, Walter calls on Celia, whom he has fixed up at the Judd Street hotel. After he leaves, she somehow suspects what is going to be done that night. She is horror-struck and resolves at all costs to save Penistone. She will enlist Mount’s help, who, through her confession, knows the circumstances. The five-thirty train has gone, so she travels by the seven to Drychester and motors to the Vicarage. The house seems shut up and before knocking she goes to see if Mount is in the summer-house. While making up her mind to knock, she sees Penistone starting. She grasps the knife and what she thinks is her bag and rushes to the river, shouting as loud as she can. But the Admiral doesn’t hear her. She thinks it may be too late if she goes for Mount, so she follows Penistone herself. If desirable, she can have seen (or felt?) the knife in the summer-house. She cannot untie the painter, so runs back for the knife.
She comes on Penistone’s boat about half a mile down the river. (If it was at the bridge, there would not be time for Walter to get back to personate Penistone.) There she finds Walter and Denny, and the Admiral already murdered. Denny seems almost out of his mind with fear. She is horrified. She fears Walter is guilty, but she doesn’t know. They tell her Penistone committed suicide. She doesn’t believe it, but she doesn’t know. Weakly, she takes no step. Walter sends her to his car, which is hidden close by. He and Denny row the boats back and shove both into the Rundel Croft boat-house. Denny waits while Walter goes up and steals the papers—which clear Penistone’s character, incidentally revealing the trick Walter and Denny have played on him in China. Walter tells Elma what has happened. She is aghast, but cannot do anything without destroying Walter, of whom she is so rond. She decides to know nothing about what has happened.
Walter has prepared the consent, and this he gives to Holland. When Holland goes, Walter and Denny put the body into the Vicar’s boat, as the best thing they can think of, and send the boat adrift. They had intended to throw it into the river, but the Vicar’s boat seems a better idea. This putting the boats into the boat-house accounts for the boat’s tidal movements, as also the clothing on the body being dry.
Denny then walks home, letting himself in unseen. Walter takes Celia to London, but because he is afraid of her giving the show away he takes her on to Paris till the storm blows over.
It should be explained that Celia took the Vicar’s hat by mistake, and therefore left her bag behind. In this bag Mount found the Drychester and London addresses.
Chronology
The dates appear to be as follows:
Monday, 8th August.—New moon.
Tuesday, 9th August.—Penistone dines with Mount. The murder in the evening.
Wednesday, 10th August.—Discovery of body. Rudge investigates up to end of 39 Articles.
Thursday, 11th August.—Rudge reports to his superiors and investigates lives of Rundel Croft household.
Friday, 12th August.—The inquest. Rudge goes to Drychester and London.
Saturday, 13th August.—Rudge finds Judd Street hotel.
Monday, 15th August.—Rudge goes to Drychester and reports to Super.
CHAPTER X
By Edgar Jepson
WALTER is the murderer. He has a beard and strongly resembles his uncle the Admiral, whom he impersonated at the Lord Marshall. After the crime he returns to Rundel Croft, sees his sister, whose help he enlists by means of some explanation that does not give the real facts, is mistaken by Holland for the Admiral, while he is searching for File X, which contains the truth about the Hong Kong incident and Walter’s share in it, and then goes upstairs to shave off his dangerous beard in the bathroom. By this means he is able to go unrecognised, and keep in touch with the situation, by posing as the reporter for the Evening Gazette.
CHAPTER XI
By Clemence Dane
HERE, roughly, are the points I have made. Célie, the French maid, and the Vicar’s wife are one person. She has been living with Walter, the murderer, or at any rate, there is a tie of some sort between them, and she knows enough to make her dangerous. He knows that she has gone down to consult her former husband (or for any purpose anybody likes to invent) and desires to divert suspicion from himself, and on to the Vicar by a second murder; or, alternately thinks that she intends to give him away. Anyway, he follows her down.
She has gone to the Vicarage, found her husband is out, and the maids also. (A genuine accident this: they had been given a day’s holiday by the Vicar. He and they have gone to a local flower-show at some distance, or a village outing of some sort.) She has also written to the Hollands to meet her there, for purposes of consultation.
Célie, not knowing that the Vicar’s absence is more than temporary, wanders into the garden, and there picks the greengages, then comes back to the house and encounters Walter. There is some sort of an argument. At any rate he murders her, arranging it to look like suicide, and leaves only a few minutes before the Inspector arrives. Walter thinks himself unseen, but later it must transpire that one of the villagers has seen him. He has a perfectly good excuse: he has called to see the Vicar in pursuit of his reporter’s duties, and, like everyone else, has found the house empty. The Inspector, however, knows that Célie has been in the garden within ten minutes of his own arrival—the wet greengage stones and the handkerchief—and that therefore she must have encountered Walter, who would have just had time to murder her and leave without running into Rudge.
If more time is needed, the handkerchief and greengage stones can be found lying in the shade and would thus take longer to dry. The other importance of the greengage clue is Rudge’s deduction from it, before Walter’s recognition by a villager happens, that a woman who strolls cheerfully into a garden and eats greengages is not likely to commit suicide three minutes later. The funeral card is a false clue: it is really written by one of the servants or by the Vicar himself, and is a genuine message to any possible caller. Or it might be a fake message written in the Vicar’s handwriting by Walter in order to avoid the discovery of the murder for several hours. I don’t know how to explain Elma and Holland’s share or non-share in the business. It’s quite inexplicable to me. So I have gone on the ground that they are two perfectly innocent people, and that all the evidence that points to them is purely accidental. I am, frankly, in a complete muddle as to what has happened, and have tried to write a chapter that anybody can use to prove anything they like.
APPENDIX II
NOTES ON MOORING OF BOAT
(Extract from letter from John Rhode)
I, TOO, wanted it to
be necessary to get into the boat in order to cast it off or make it fast again. Now, as it happens, in a river with a considerable rise and fall of tide (as this river must have had, to account for the swiftness of the ebb and flow of the tidal stream), this is nearly always necessary, if it is desired to keep the boat afloat at all states of the tide. One method of mooring a boat under these circumstances is as I visualised it.
The mooring-post is driven into the bed of the stream, beyond low-water mark, in water deep enough to float the boat at all times. A hard, made of a few loads of stone, is run from the bank to low-water mark, to save ploughing through the mud. A ring-bolt is fixed at the shore end of this hard.
Now, having been out in the boat, you want to come ashore. Right. Make fast the painter to the mooring-post. Pole the boat round till her stern touches the hard. Jump ashore, taking with you the end of a light line, made fast at the other end to the ring in the stern of the boat. Then push the boat off again, and make fast your end of the line to the ring-bolt on shore, adjusting the length of the line so that the boat lies parallel, during the ebb, with the bank.
Having had your drink, you want to put off again. Cast off the line, and haul the stern of the boat in till it touches the hard. Jump in with the line up in the stern. Go forward, haul in on painter till you are near enough to the post, then cast off.
I gather that you want someone to get into the boat and cast off the painter. As you will see, unless the boat is approached by water, this is necessary in any case. In describing the incident, remember how the boat swings. During the ebb the boat lies as described. But during the flood the stern will swing in of itself, and will remain touching the shore throughout the flood. This, of course, does not matter since the water is rising.
Remember, too, that any particular point in the tidal phase occurs (near enough for this purpose) about three-quarters of an hour later on successive days. Don’t make it high-water at 10 a.m. one day and low-water at 11 a.m. the next. Also, in a river like this, the tide ebbs longer than it flows. I laid down rules for this particular river, though I don’t remember them exactly now, for the guidance of those who followed.
As for the distance of the pole from high-water mark, you can, within limits, make this to suit yourself. If you allow twelve feet or more, measuring horizontally, between H.W.O.S.T. and L.W.O.S.T., and six feet or more between L.W.O.S.T. and the post, you won’t be far wrong. These distances can be increased almost indefinitely, but I shouldn’t decrease them much, or you will make your bank awkwardly steep.
COUNSEL’S OPINION ON FITZGERALD’S WILL
HAVE looked up your point in the library this afternoon and the result of my researches, for what they are worth, is that it certainly has been held again and again, where a certain person’s consent to marriage was required and that person had died by act of God, or at least by no fault of the beneficiary, the condition requiring a particular consent is void.
None of the cases run the thing so fine that there is only twenty-four hours between the death of the person whose consent is required and the wedding of the beneficiary who wants an absolute title to the property, and I think it would be necessary, where the death is within twenty-four hours of the ceremony, for the beneficiary, in order to get her absolute right, if there were any contest, to show:
Either (1) That she intended to ask the necessary consent before the marriage ceremony;
(2) That she was prevented by the death, and would have had time to ask consent but for the death;
and (3) If suggested that the death was any fault of hers, to defend herself against the allegation;
or else That the ceremony was not arranged until after death had made it impossible to obtain the necessary consent. Provided this last is true, it matters not how soon after the death the beneficiary claims to treat the condition as void.
As to the last possibility, I am no authority on marriage licences, but from the books it appears that provided one party has resided fifteen days in the locality in which it is intended the marriage should take place, notice may be given to the registrar by that party and a marriage licence obtained from the registrar after the lapse of one full week-day—in law language in forty-two to forty-eight hours, provided Sunday does not intervene.
This procedure is applicable to marriages in any other place than the established church, i.e., registrar’s office, or Nonconformist place of worship licensed for marriages.
Without the fifteen days of previous residence the business takes longer.
Once obtained a marriage licence is available for quite a long time: three months I think, but you might verify this. It is possible that one of your parties had got a licence and was waiting for a favourable opportunity for the beneficiary to ask the necessary consent. This sort of licence is only granted for marriage in a particular place. See Whitaker.
In the case of conditions, subsequent, if the condition is impossible through the act of God, the gift remains, tho’ there may be a gift over on non-performance of the condition. For instance, if the person whose consent to a marriage is required dies before the marriage.
Collett v Collett. 35. B. 312.
In this case the widowed mother’s consent to marriage was required. The mother died in 1856.
In July, 1865, her daughter Helena married.
Master of the Rolls held “that the gift over (i.e., to remainder man in case of life tenancy only) will not take effect, if the performance of the condition has become impossible thro’ the act of God, and no default of the person who had to perform it.
“Here it is reasonably certain that the mother, if she had lived, would have given her consent to this marriage, one eligible in all respects.”
The principle is the presumption of the testator not requiring the performance of impossibilities, and that his intention will be substantially carried into effect by permitting it to be executed as far as can be done.
“The condition having become impossible by act of God, her estate for life is become absolute.” Aislabie v. Rice. 3 Mad. 25 C.
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This 80th anniversary edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011
First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton 1931
THE FLOATING ADMIRAL. Copyright © The Detection Club 1931, 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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The Floating Admiral (Detection Club) Page 29