The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

  Amy drank some more of her wine and considered the TV presenter over the edge of her glass. What sort of person was he, really? Pushy, cynical, and quite, quite ruthless. And could be unutterably charming. When he wanted.

  One of the few maxims Amy followed in her life was to beware of charming men. In her experience they brought nothing but trouble.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time Amy had finally managed to persuade Ben to quit the bar, and convinced him she was not going to accompany him up to his bedroom, it was well past midnight.

  She took another look at the dirty kitchen and hoped that Meriel would be in early. There was no way she herself was going to deal with it at that hour. Then she shrugged her way into her Barbour and fished a pair of woollen gloves out of the pocket. Roll on spring, she thought.

  She checked that the key to Ianthe Berkeley’s room wasn’t hanging on its hook behind the reception desk. The fact it wasn’t there was no guarantee, of course, that the woman was in her room. Or even in the pub. But the room keys opened the side door, a fact that was always explained to guests on arrival, so Amy locked both that and the front door, then let herself out of the back.

  In the act of using her key to secure that door as well, she stood for a moment fighting an unexpected urge to return and go upstairs to Ben’s room.

  He’d put his empty glass down on the bar, and, just as she was preparing to tell him that had definitely been his last one, he’d run a finger along her right eyebrow. ‘I love the way you raise this whenever you think I’ve gone too far,’ he said. ‘And your nose is enchanting.’ He’d leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on its tip.

  Amy had felt something melt within her. If he’d been silent then, she would probably have been in his bed before you could say ‘reality show’. Instead, ‘Up the stairs with you,’ he had said, and had given her behind a quick smack.

  So that had been that. It was the nearest thing she’d experienced to: ‘Wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am’. Hadn’t the man a smidgen of romance in his soul?

  She had pulled down the grille that secured the bar and its contents, snapping the padlock shut. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Amy!’ He had reached for her, but she wasn’t going to let him get that near to her again.

  ‘Mind the stairs, they’re tricky for anyone under the influence,’ she called on her way out to her coat. She had not looked back.

  For a few moments there had been deep satisfaction at the strangled cry of frustration that had reached her as she left.

  Now, though, she remembered that moment of tenderness and felt something approaching regret.

  The air was chilly outside after the warmth of the bar. Amy drew the ancient but serviceable Barbour around herself as she set off along the shore to her little cottage. The moon was full, flooding the beach with silver light.

  Phrases from the captivating duet from The Pearl Fishers sang in her mind as she crunched her way over the pebbly beach. Was true romance confined to fiction? She had thought her decision never to fall in love again was as sensible as her shoes. Love, true love, had done for her. Amy shivered. The door she had shut on that relationship, one that had brought such delight and such despair, must remain closed. Closed, barred, locked, secured.

  How could she have let a pair of brown eyes switch on a set of electric currents, making her tingle in ways that brought back so many memories? It wasn’t as if she even liked the man! Or could respect him!

  Amy forced herself to put any thought of Ben out of her mind. Instead she considered the unusual behaviour of her boss, the Admiral. Buying drinks for everyone like that, telling them all it was a ‘Last Hurrah’; what had the man been thinking of?

  And what did that constant procession of people up to the Bridge mean? One by one they had climbed the stairs, and one by one they had returned. There had been the occasional order for a pint or some other tipple. None of them had seemed talkative; some had left in a hurried, almost furtive way. What had been their business with the Admiral?

  Once again Amy wondered what it was he wanted to talk to her about. It must be something to do with the pub. She almost managed to convince herself that he had decided it must be sold. Yet he had seemed so uncharacte‌ristically cheerful. And there had been that look he’d given her; surely, though, she was reading too much into it? Thinking that it said something had made him change his mind about her?

  Ever since she had started work at the Admiral Byng, its landlord had been a constant support. She’d arrived in Crabwell on a wickedly rainy winter’s night, her woollen coat soaked right through. She had sat in it on the long bus ride, shivering, not knowing where she was going. All she knew was that she was leaving the past behind her. The bus had dropped her in front of a bank. Both that and the shops arranged around a small attempt at a village square were closed tight. Since it was nearly eight o’clock in the evening, that was hardly surprising. ‘Crabwell, end of the line,’ the driver had said. She had picked up her suitcase, and asked, ‘Is there a hotel?’

  ‘There’s the Admiral Byng,’ the only other passenger left had said as he got off. ‘It has rooms,’ he had added doubtfully. Then he had cheered up slightly. ‘The landlord’s a bit eccentric, but a good sort.’ He had pointed at the road ahead. ‘Five minutes’ walk that way.’

  Amy had thanked him. She had looked around the square again, but it offered nothing useful, so she had set off in the direction indicated. One of the little wheels on her case had come to grief over a large stone as she tramped down the dark road, trees on either side. She had cursed. The case had begun to feel heavier and heavier, and the rain never let up. Then, suddenly, she had come around a bend, and there was the pub, its lights shining on the wet road. It was as though some fairy godmother had waved her wand and conjured a safe haven.

  The landlord had been welcoming. She’d liked his look, his blazer and cravat reminded her of Gramps, the grandfather she had been close to as she grew up, as did the twinkle in his eye. He’d come over the moment she’d entered the bar. He’d taken her case from her, helped her out of the wet coat, and supplied a whisky-mac. ‘It’s what you need, m’dear,’ he’d said, handing the glass over and waving her towards a seat beside the happily burning fire. She’d been the only customer.

  He’d shaken out her drenched coat and said, ‘Not my idea of a waterproof.’ And on the spot he’d found an old Barbour hanging from a hook in the bar and presented it to her. Shabby, but it did keep the rain out, and Amy still wore it. Not really the style for someone her age, but then she’d never been that bothered about fashion.

  The bedroom Fitz had shown her to later that night had a cosily sloping ceiling, a fat old-fashioned eiderdown on a brass bedstead, and a deeply comfortable armchair. More comfortable, in fact, than the bed. But she’d been exhausted, and had slept right through to morning. Then she found that her room had a view of the sea, all a-sparkle with the sun shining as though it didn’t know what grey, rainy days were. A low windowsill meant she could sit in the chair and look at the dancing waves advancing over a beach where sand gave way to pebbles as it approached the waterline. Small boats were drawn up, their anchors buried safely in the shingle.

  They were the same boats she was looking at now, three years later, the moonlight coating them with magic. Beyond them, towards Amy’s cottage, well above the tide line, stood three tents. Tents, in chilly March? Then she remembered that Greta Knox, the Girl Guide leader, had said that her troop was going to sample the delights of camping. ‘Overnight?’ Amy had asked when they had met a few days before in the village shop. ‘I thought your girls were too fond of their comforts to mimic Arctic explorers.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Greta had said, her tone full of the determination that had corralled every teenage girl for miles around to join her Guide troop. She gave a huffing laugh. ‘The girls can surprise one.’

  Amy thought now that she would be amazed if any of the tents contained sleeping teenagers. None of them were zipped
up, and there was no sound. They must be empty. She looked around. There seemed to be the remains of a campfire, with a discarded scrunch of tin foil suggesting potatoes had been baked in it. Greta must have overlooked that, she was a terror over litter. Nothing else provided clues to the evening’s activities. No doubt the Girl Guides were all now safely at home in their warm and comfortable beds.

  As if to hasten her in the direction of her own bed, a nasty gust of wind tugged at Amy’s hair. She had forgotten her beanie. She took a last look at the light silvering the rapacious tide as it surged in towards the shore and then retreated to gather strength for another attack. It was the only movement in the whole scene. She was alone on the beach.

  Afterwards she couldn’t say why her attention had been caught by one of the drawn-up boats. Perhaps it was the moonlight shining on the stuck-on silver letters on its stern, identifying it as The Admiral, Fitz’s dinghy. But it shouldn’t be there. Its usual place was in the other direction. When had it been moved? She remembered seeing it earlier in the day, safely where she’d expect it to be.

  Had the Admiral moved it this afternoon? But when would he have had the time, and why would he want to? Or had he gone out into the moonlight after ordering the last round and brought it here? If so, why?

  Maybe someone else had moved it. The Admiral was known to be highly selective about who he allowed on his beloved dinghy. Never anyone without him, and only allowed to take the tiller after they had proved themselves seaworthy, as he called it. Once some pranksters had taken the boat out and then left it swinging drunkenly from its anchor in the far reaches of the bay. The Admiral had not been amused.

  Amy reached the anchor and checked the way it had been set in the shingle. Right and tight it looked. The chain stretched down to the boat itself, now beginning to wallow drunkenly on the incoming tide. There was something not quite right about its movement. The beach shelved steeply down from where she was standing, so that it was almost possible to see inside the craft. Amy caught her breath. It looked as though… But surely it couldn’t be…

  Without hesitating, and heedless of her sensible shoes, she ran down the beach and through the water to the dinghy. As she got closer, she saw that the waterproof cover had been rolled back and stuffed into the prow.

  The boat was half-full of water – that was why it was wallowing. But there was more than water in there. Amy took hold of the dinghy’s side, forcing it towards her so that she could scramble aboard. With horrible squelches she managed to find a steady footing. A man was slumped on his front in the bottom of the boat, his face beneath the water. Supporting herself on the gunwales, Amy shuffled her way alongside the collapsed figure to the boat’s stern. Then she bent and slipped her hands beneath the shoulders and tried to pull whoever it was up far enough to bring his head above the water that slopped about as the boat veered from side to side with her movements, threatening to capsize.

  In her heart Amy knew her efforts were hopeless, but still she struggled, lifting and pulling the shoulders, cursing her weakness, looking along the shoreline for help. But the beach was empty. With a final effort, using unexpected reserves of strength, she managed to pull the heavy body up, then to turn it so that the drowned man sat supported by the mast, his feet caught up in the oars that lay along the boat’s bottom.

  For a moment she stood holding onto the mast, gasping, her eyes closed as she tried to recover from her efforts. Then she opened them and looked at the sorry remains of the man who had been lying in the bottom of the boat.

  The grey hair was soaked, plastered to the skull, the eyes that had been so bright such a little time ago were staring sightlessly. All personality had been stripped away by death. Only the blazer with its brass buttons proclaimed the corpse’s identity.

  Exhausted by her efforts, struggling not to fall as the dinghy moved with the rapid surges of the incoming tide, Amy looked at the body of her boss. What on earth had the old man been up to? What could have made him move the dinghy so late at night? And just how had he managed to fall and drown himself in his beloved boat?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Amy was surprised by the tears running down her cheeks. She knew it wasn’t just shock at discovering the body. It was an overwhelming sadness at the thought that she’d never hear the Admiral’s voice again. Maybe, somewhere deep down in her psyche, she had felt love for the old bastard.

  She decided, rather than ringing the police from her cottage, she would have to go back to the pub and prepare herself for a long night of disruption and probably questioning.

  Her basic knowledge of police procedure, gleaned from endless television cop shows, told her that she should touch as little as possible at a crime scene, but when she looked closer at the boat she saw something white, stuffed into the folds of the crumpled boat cover.

  An envelope. Printed on it the words: ‘TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN’.

  Sod not touching anything at a crime scene. No power could have stopped her from opening that envelope. Fortunately the flap was just tucked in, so she didn’t have to tear it.

  She read what was written on the folded sheet inside.

  I’m sorry. All the pressures were just getting too much. I’ve had my Last Hurrah and it’s better to go out on a high. Apologies to anyone who’s going to be upset by my death (though I don’t think there’ll be many).

  Fitz

  The text was not handwritten. It had been typed and printed. Possibly using the computer in the Admiral Byng’s downstairs office.

  In other words, whoever had composed the suicide note, it certainly hadn’t been the computer-illiterate Fitz.

  Which, to Amy’s mind was proof positive that the old boy had been murdered.

  And made her absolutely determined to find out who had committed the crime.

  A car in the blue and yellow livery of the Suffolk Constabulary was heading rapidly towards Crabwell.

  ‘Watch your speed, laddie,’ the DI in the passenger seat told his driver, Detective Constable Chesterton. ‘This isn’t life or death.’

  ‘It’s death, isn’t it?’ Chesterton said. ‘Death in my book, anyway.’

  ‘Come clever with me and you’ll find yourself back in uniform.’ DI Cole didn’t take lip from fast-track graduate detectives. ‘It’s only a suicide. There was a note beside the body, and it couldn’t be more plain.’

  A suicide was difficult to envisage as anything other than a death as far as Keith Chesterton was concerned, but he knew better than to argue with ‘The Lump’, as Cole was known to everyone who worked with him. He cut their speed to fifty-nine and gave thought to the strange circumstances of the incident. They had collected the suicide note from the local bobby called to the scene overnight, who had told them the victim had been found on Crabwell beach lying in a dinghy partly filled with water and anchored in the shingle. A young woman out walking had made the grim discovery and then suffered a worse shock by recognising the corpse as that of her own employer, the owner of the pub that overlooked the beach.

  ‘So there’s no rush,’ Cole said. ‘It’s not like murder or a robbery, rounding up suspects. The perpetrator was the corpse, and he isn’t going anywhere.’

  Only on the most momentous journey any of us will ever make, Chesterton mused. He had a spiritual side he kept to himself. ‘Where is the body right now?’

  ‘The mortuary, of course. They wouldn’t leave it in the open for all and sundry to gawp at. That wouldn’t be fitting.’

  ‘They could have put a forensic tent over it and taped off the area so nobody could get near.’

  ‘What would be the point of that?’ Cole said. ‘I keep telling you, there’s only one person involved in a suicide.’

  ‘But if it was suicide, how did he end up in the boat?’

  ‘You know what boat-owners are like. They have love affairs with the bloody things. When they die they can’t think of anywhere they’d rather be.’

  ‘Like a ship burial?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything a
bout a burial, cloth-ears.’

  ‘So how do you suppose he managed to kill himself and end up there… sir?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem, won’t we? My guess is that he had a supply of sleeping tablets and mixed them in with a bottle of grog from his pub, then swallowed the lot. Best way to go. He took the short walk to his dinghy, and crashed.’

  ‘Remembering to take the suicide note with him?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘First tucking it carefully into the folded tarpaulin where it wouldn’t get wet?’

  ‘You’re making sense at last.’

  ‘And crashed. But we won’t know for sure until they test his body fluids?’

  ‘Right.’ Cole grinned to himself. ‘Have you ever attended a post-mortem?’

  When Amy Walpole answered the insistent knocking and saw two strangers at the pub door she told them at once that she wasn’t open for business. There had been a bereavement.

  ‘We know about that, my poppet,’ the older of the two men said. He was grossly overweight, and dressed in a brown suit with a windowpane check that wasn’t just loud, it was bellowing. ‘It’s why we’re here.’

  Amy wasn’t anyone’s poppet, least of all this clown’s. She decided they were journalists and slammed the door. Well, almost. The younger of the two placed the palm of his right hand against the wood before it closed. He was strong.

  ‘If you want trouble,’ Amy said through the narrow gap, ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘No need,’ the first man said. ‘It’s me and him.’ He held up an ID, and it didn’t look like a press-card. ‘Cole and Chesterton, detectives, here about the man found dead in the boat last evening. May we come in?’

  The second man also dipped in his pocket with his free hand and produced his warrant card displaying his photo, and the insignia of the Suffolk Police. He was not bad looking, quite a dish, in fact, but Amy wasn’t in any mood to be friendly.