The Sinking Admiral

by The Detection Club

‘What about you?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Maybe Griffiths Bentley will still be in his office at this time on a Friday afternoon.’

  ‘Good thought.’

  Then he took her hand with more warmth than was perhaps strictly necessary. His empathetic brown eyes were working overtime. ‘Don’t worry, Amy. Between us, we’ll find out who killed Fitz… who of course we now know, thanks to Greg Jepson, was on the verge of becoming a very rich man—’

  ‘A very rich man who was murdered. Yes.’

  ‘So how was it for you, sunshine?’ Detective Inspector Cole said to DC Chesterton above the crunch of the pebbles as they progressed along Crabwell beach.

  ‘How was what?’

  ‘The post-mortem on the Admiral yesterday.’

  ‘You mean did I enjoy it? Not particularly. But I didn’t pass out.’

  ‘That’s a relief. I’d be worried if you had. That pathologist dissects whatever is stretched out in front of him. I’ve lost more DCs that way than I care to remember.’

  Black humour goes with the job in CID. Chesterton tried to appear amused.

  ‘Did he come to any useful conclusion?’ Cole asked.

  ‘Not while I was there. Various bits and pieces had to be sent to the lab for analysis.’

  ‘The usual story. And the white coats won’t be hurried. We could go for a Caribbean cruise before they report back. That’s not a bad idea, in fact, researching the Admiral’s background. Legitimate travel expenses. I wonder if the chief constable would sanction it. Did he drown? The Admiral, I mean, not the chief constable.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Thought so. Bullet through his brains?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Severed an artery? Swallowed caustic soda? Self-strangulation? Tripped over a rock? Struck by lightning? What’s the point of an autopsy if you don’t find out the cause of death?’

  ‘If it had been as obvious as that, he’d have said.’

  ‘Did he have any opinion at all?’

  ‘He found some bruising on the top of the head that he said was consistent with a fall.’

  ‘The top of the head?’

  ‘He called it the cranium, but that’s what he meant.’

  ‘How would anyone get a bump on the top of his head from falling down?’

  ‘By cracking it on the mast.’

  Cole pictured this for a moment before nodding and saying, ‘Possible.’

  ‘Or one of the thwarts.’

  This triggered a longer pause while the detective inspector decided whether to claim he knew about thwarts, he’d grown up with thwarts, he’d seen more thwarts than Chesterton had had hot dinners.

  Chesterton finally said, ‘The seats that go across the middle. It’s a nautical term.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain. And that knocked him out?’

  ‘Subdural haemorrhaging was what he called it. Old people are prone to it if they hit their heads.’

  ‘Ties in nicely with what I said from the beginning. He staggers to his boat, high on a lethal cocktail of drink and drugs, crashes into it, bashes his head against the mast, and goodbye sailor.’

  ‘The pathologist didn’t venture an opinion.’

  ‘They’re cagey buggers. I happen to know he’s been on the phone to the coroner.’

  Chesterton was impressed. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. The only reason you and I are back on this godforsaken beach is because of an email I found in my inbox this morning. The coroner isn’t entirely happy with the suicide explanation, so would we take another look? “Isn’t entirely happy.” As if it was our job to make him happy. Who wants a happy coroner, laughing and joking all the way through the inquest? He’s paid to be serious, not happy.’

  ‘What’s he on about? What else could have caused the death?’

  ‘Accident – but then there wouldn’t have been a suicide note. Anyway, we now know the old salt was up shit creek. The pub has been leeching money for months, if not years. Amy Walpole, the manager, hasn’t been paid a penny in wages for nearly a month. It’s a lost cause, and the captain has to go down with the ship. If this wasn’t suicide, you can have my job and welcome to it.’ Cole grimaced. ‘I’ll get back to the coroner pronto and tell him to get a move on. I want the suicide verdict tied up with a bow on top as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is that his boat – the dead man’s?’ Chesterton was pointing to one of several small craft hauled up on the stretch of beach in front of them. This one had a mast and was mostly covered with a tarpaulin.

  ‘Looks like it to me. What’s the name on the side?’

  ‘The Admiral, in silver letters.’

  ‘Ridiculous name for a thing that size,’ Cole said. ‘A proper admiral wouldn’t be seen dead in a tub like that. Wouldn’t be seen dead – geddit?’

  ‘I heard the first time, sir.’

  They went closer. It was, indeed, a pitifully modest vessel for a top-ranking officer, even compared with some of the other boats drawn up nearby.

  ‘Why is the front end facing out to sea?’ Chesterton asked.

  ‘Front end? Please! The bow.’ Cole paused before adding, ‘Nautical term.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way around from when it was last dragged out of the water? All the others are.’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m no sailor,’ said the man who knew what the front end was called. ‘I daresay the tide turned it around. Untie the cover and let’s look inside. When I last checked there was a fair amount of water. It may have drained away.’

  Chesterton started loosening the ties and unfurling the cover. ‘Plenty of water still here. Pity we didn’t bring wellies.’

  ‘Neither did the Admiral. Take off your shoes and socks and have a paddle. I want you to examine the bilge.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Another nautical term. You’ve got a lot to learn. There could be a vital clue under the water in the bottom of the boat.’

  Chesterton did as he was told, rolled up his trousers and stepped in. ‘Bloody freezing.’

  ‘Get your hands in and have a feel around.’

  But the constable’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Don’t look now, sir, but isn’t that someone filming us from the top of the shingle bank?’

  Cole looked directly to where a man with a hand-held camera was pointing the lens straight at them. ‘Bloody hell, you’re right. Collar him, Chesterton. He’s a spy.’

  Chesterton was a fit man. He leaped out of the dinghy and started at quite a sprint, but his bare feet and the steep shelf of pebbles slowed him. The spy had seen him coming and hared away in the direction of the Admiral Byng. With such a start, it was no contest.

  ‘We know where to find him,’ Chesterton was able to tell Cole when he returned, breathing a little harder.

  ‘Did you get a good look?’

  ‘Never seen him before. It wasn’t Ben Milne, the TV guy.’

  ‘Probably Stan the cameraman,’ Cole said. ‘We’ll demand that film and destroy it. I’m not having us exposed to ridicule on the box. It’s their favourite game, portraying decent people in undignified situations. We’ll continue our forensic examination of the boat. Step inside again and see what you can find.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘You don’t want to know. Could be his false teeth or a glass eye, or something he threw up.’

  A voice interrupted them, female and very close. ‘What’s he doing?’ A girl in her mid-teens had approached them from behind. In a miniskirt and thin sweater, she made quite a provoking spectacle. She wasn’t dressed for an east-coast beach in March.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Cole said with all the dignity he could muster. ‘On your way, young lady. We’re busy.’

  She showed no intention of moving off. ‘Busy doing what?’

  If Cole had learned one thing in the police it was not to answer questions like that. Not truthfully, anyhow. You have to think of a cover story. ‘He’s on two hundred hours’ community service cle
aning out the boats. Move on, now.’

  ‘Are you his probation officer?’

  ‘Watching his every move, yes. He’s the sort of monster your teachers tell you to stay away from at all costs.’

  ‘You made that up,’ she said with scorn. ‘That was a catch question. I know who you are. You’re the policemen who came here on Tuesday, and that’s the Admiral’s dinghy. He’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Miss Knox told me. I’m Tracy, one of her Girl Guides, and she’s our leader, and we’re trained to observe things. We were camping here on Monday. Some of the young ones are trying for their camper badge. I’m an advanced camper already, got the badge. Each patrol shared a tent, and there was a fire and baked potatoes. It was cool.’

  ‘I bet it was, this time of year.’

  ‘We didn’t stay all night. We broke camp quite early, around eight, but I made sure we left no mess.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now shove off fast, Tracy, or I’ll be forced to speak to your Brown Owl.’

  She poked out her tongue and moved away with a hip movement she must have perfected some time ago. She was advanced in more skills than camping. Cole wondered what else she’d got a badge for.

  While this was going on, Chesterton had been dredging the bottom of the boat with his curled fingers. ‘Found something,’ he announced.

  Cole glanced at the shiny circular object resting on his assistant’s damp palm. ‘Money?’

  ‘A button. A blazer button, and it’s still got some cloth attached to it, as if it was torn off quite violently. If we didn’t know he’d committed suicide, I’d say he’d had his blazer grabbed by someone.’

  ‘Caught one of the rowlocks as he fell, more likely. Rowlocks, constable. D’you know what I’m talking about?’

  Chesterton said, ‘Rollocks.’

  Cole’s blood pressure rose to danger point. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s the right way to say the word.’

  After some uncomfortable heart-searching the inspector decided his only option was to ignore the insubordination. ‘Good find, though. I knew there had to be something, and now we’re going to reward ourselves. Put on your shoes and socks and we’ll step up to the Admiral Byng and make ourselves known to that cook woman.’

  ‘Meriel Dane?’

  ‘You don’t need much encouragement, do you? I saw her bedroom eyes all over you when we were questioning her about her movements on the night of the suicide.’

  ‘Really? That’s news to me.’

  ‘This time we won’t ask that mean bitch Amy Walpole. We’ll go straight to the kitchen – or you will. Tell sexy Meriel you’re up for it.’

  Chesterton’s eyes were the size of the rowlocks. ‘She’s old enough to be my aunt.’

  ‘And when she asks you “Up for what?” say “Late lunch. Mixed grill with all the trimmings and kindly make that two”.’

  ‘Do you really think it’ll work?’

  It did. For once, Cole was spot on with his analysis, and two policeman-sized late lunches were swiftly served. Meriel brought them to the table herself, having first removed her apron and unfastened the top buttons of her blouse.

  ‘Phew. Extra helpings, constable,’ Cole remarked.

  Once Meriel had returned to the kitchen, Chesterton took the opportunity to ask what else needed to be done to make the coroner happy.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Cole said. ‘We interviewed almost everyone who spoke to the Admiral on his last night.’

  ‘His “Last Hurrah”.’

  ‘Yes – that’s the phrase that kept coming up. It was even in his suicide note.’

  ‘The Admiral wasn’t interested in politics, was he?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘The Last Hurrah was a book about an elderly politician in his last campaign. It was a film, too. That’s where the phrase comes from.’

  This smart-arse DC was skating on thin ice. Cole forked up another mushroom and chewed it viciously.

  ‘I only mentioned it because one of the witnesses said she thought the local MP was here that night,’ Chesterton added.

  ‘Have you typed all the statements on your laptop yet?’

  ‘I haven’t had time. I was at the mortuary yesterday.’

  ‘Make time. With the coroner breathing down our necks we can’t drag our feet.’

  ‘We didn’t get much from all those witnesses. Did you notice how guarded every one of them was about what the Admiral said when he spoke to them on the Bridge?’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Cole said. ‘It was personal stuff, The Long Goodbye. Or, if you prefer, Farewell My Lovely. That’s two books, by the way, and two films.’

  ‘Right. I suppose he’d made the decision to do away with himself and wanted to tie up the loose ends, settling any unfinished business and letting them know how much he valued their friendship – if they were all his friends.’

  ‘I’m not sure they were,’ Cole said, ‘but he may have thought they were. You never know what other people truly think of you.’

  ‘How true,’ Chesterton said.

  Meriel Dane came from the kitchen again and asked if they wanted extra of anything.

  Cole winked at her and said, ‘DC Chesterton here might welcome a bowl of cereal. He likes his oats.’

  She giggled. ‘Me, too – and not just for breakfast.’

  Chesterton was quick to put police tape across that route. ‘We were meaning to ask if a man with a camera came in a short time before us.’

  ‘He did, yes. That was Stan, Ben’s cameraman. He’s upstairs now. He isn’t staying here, but he reports to Ben each morning, and they plan their day’s shooting.’

  ‘We need to have a word with him,’ Cole said. ‘He’s been filming things he shouldn’t.’

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ she said. ‘In Crabwell? I thought nothing like that ever happened here.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was that same Friday evening that Amy interviewed Bob Christie over a gin and tonic in the snug (nicknamed the ‘Mess’) of the Admiral Byng. There weren’t many customers in the main bar, but she wanted a level of privacy. She had seen Christie often enough in the pub, but could not claim to know him. She couldn’t claim to like him that much either. And she certainly had no idea what went on beneath his bluff, gruff exterior.

  Christie was by nature a mild man. He had had a good relationship with his mother, and as a child had always been willing to help out at her tea parties. He’d always wanted to write – probably novels about young men’s rites of passage – and had been a bit surprised to end up as a journalist. Lacking the natural aggression for such a profession, he had assumed it like a disguise, wearing his gruffness throughout his career, along with the livery of a green-eye shade, braces, and carpet slippers. The meekest of men, Christie had trained himself to bark. His bark was almost as good as his bite, and he enjoyed barking into the phone ‘Christie, Clarion here’, on the spurious grounds that that was how a real newspaperman would have spoken.

  At times he convinced himself that he was a real newspaperman. He had assumed the front for so long that it had almost become the reality. At times he genuinely believed that, but for a wretched run of bad luck, he, rather than some jumped-up university-educated smart-arse, should be spinning in the editorial chair of a national daily rather than behind the dilapidated desk of The Crabwell Clarion.

  Since he felt certain that any proper red-blooded hack would have fancied Amy Walpole, he duly acted as though he fancied her. He had seen her often enough behind the bar fending off clumsy compliments from the locals to know that men found her attractive. So he also pretended to lust after Amy, and when she had telephoned suggesting meeting for a drink, just the two of them, at the Admiral Byng, Bob Christie had readily relinquished his true personality, which was timid and gay, and came over all lounge lizard. He had read of such situations involving women like Amy and men such as he wanted to be, and he kn
ew how to behave. Accordingly, he leered. Gone was the real editor of a nondescript local newspaper, and in his place stood a contemporary denizen of Fleet Street, red in tooth and claw. The transformation was, to his mind, wholly convincing. Alas, others were not as convinced as he was. He barked and he leered, but deep down he was still timid, and it showed.

  It didn’t show, though, to Amy as he asked for a stiff gin, so she persisted in treating him like the reptile whose image he presented. Unaware of his deep insecurities and experienced in dealing with constant-top-up drinkers, she bided her time. She produced what looked like large G&Ts for both of them, but – an old barmaid’s trick – she’d omitted the G from her own. Only after Bob Christie had swallowed down his modicum of Dutch courage (aka a double Gordon’s) did she ask him what he and the Admiral had been discussing in the Bridge on that Monday. Instantly he was all a-tremble.

  ‘What makes you think I saw the old thing that afternoon?’ he blustered.

  ‘You were filmed going up the stairs in footage for the documentary that Ben Milne’s been making.’

  It was difficult for him to argue with that, but he very quickly came up with another defence. He explained that he had been in the Bridge that afternoon because the Admiral wanted to see him about having his own regular column in the Clarion, to be called ‘Through the Telescope – or a Sea-Dog’s Tricks – old, new, and beautifully boxed’. Fitz claimed already to have written a number of what he called ‘opinion pieces’.

  Christie thought there might be something in the idea, but at that Monday meeting they hadn’t been able to agree over terms. The Admiral wanted to be paid for his efforts; the editor was in favour of an unpaid contribution, ‘at least for the first few weeks until we see how it beds down’.

  ‘Do you think Fitz was keen on the idea because he needed the money?’ asked Amy.

  ‘No. And even if I had paid him, the Clarion rates are pretty pathetic. No, he was just rather full of himself and reckoned everyone in Crabwell would be interested in his opinions.’

  Though the observation about Fitz’s character rang true, Amy wasn’t convinced by Christie’s story. If her boss was seriously going to have a regular column in The Crabwell Clarion, she felt sure he would have mentioned the fact to his cronies in the bar of the Admiral Byng, and this was the first she’d heard of it. Also, never shy of expressing his opinions, if he’d got a whole supply of ‘opinion pieces’ stacked up, he’d have mentioned them too. But she didn’t challenge Bob Christie at that point, just waited to see what other embellishments he would add to his lie.