by Anne Morice
‘Which is that?’
‘The message to Mr Padmore’s secretary, purporting to come from Elfrieda, to change the appointment, but which Elfrieda appears to have had no knowledge of, since she had asked Len to hang around indefinitely, so as to drive her home afterwards.’
‘And you see Melanie’s hand in that too? Or her voice, rather?’
‘Yes, I do. Don’t forget that I’ve given her a whole night on her own, up in the dome. If for no other reason than to alleviate the boredom, she would undoubtedly have had a good snoop through Elfrieda’s desk, including her engagement diary. In fact, one could say that it would have been essential to find out as much as she could about the following day’s programme.’
‘And so came across the item concerning this appointment?’
‘Which would have been bad news; specially if she’d also seen a note about the car going in for service. She’d have realised at once that there was a strong chance that Elfrieda and Mr Padmore would leave together, so that he could give her a lift home. My theory is that she waited until it was fairly certain that he would be out to lunch, then used the bar telephone to call his secretary, imitating Elfrieda’s voice. In fact, you know, Toby, it’s that incident of the false telephone message which really started me off on all this. No one has made any attempt to account for it.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right, but I must caution you against bleating about it to anyone else. It could make you unpopular.’
‘I’ve no intention of it,’ I assured him. ‘I’ve only told you to show you what a good case could be made, if one has a mind to, but that’s the end of it. The poor old Rotunda is in a precarious enough state already, without my adding to the problem.’
‘By the way, you haven’t told me how Melanie could have managed to get out of the building, but I suppose it would be too much to hope that you haven’t thought of that?’
‘Yes, and I can’t see that it would have been at all difficult. She had only to stay hidden upstairs until after the second interval, when the bar closed and the house-lights were down, go back to the ground floor, walk two yards to the emergency exit and vanish into the night.’
‘There now, so you have not overlooked a single detail, and perhaps, after all, it won’t be wasted. Melanie will have to surface, you know, sooner or later, if she is to claim her legacy and then perhaps they will start asking some of the questions to which you will have all the answers.’
‘I doubt it, Toby. If she’s as bright as I take her to be, she’ll lie low for a few weeks, but keeping constantly on the move, so that no one could expect her to produce a solid alibi for any given day. I don’t imagine the penalties for ducking out and breaking the probation rules will be very tough, specially now that she’s a girl of means and specially, also, if she has managed to keep out of trouble in the meantime.’
However, keeping out of trouble was the one thing that Melanie had not managed to do, as we discovered only half an hour later. The tide had just turned on the start of its inward journey and Toby proposed that, while there was still time, we should work off our lunch by taking a stroll round to the bay beyond, the seaweed, as he pointed out, always being greener on the other side. Although, true to Jamie’s prediction, we had not seen another soul, we nevertheless felt dubious about leaving Viola’s rugs and picnic basket unguarded in the middle of the beach. So, rather than lug them with us or take it in turns to go for a walk, we compromised by packing everything up, with the intention of concealing it behind a large pile of loose rocks at the edge of the cliff.
‘I wonder if this is wise, though?’ Toby said, as we approached it. ‘They are ominously new looking. Perhaps the cliff is eroding so rapidly that we shall return to find all our belongings buried under a new fall.’
That would not have been half so bad, however, as the discovery of what had been buried under the last one, for he had hardly uttered this gloomy prediction than we both stopped dead in our tracks. Sticking out from under the white mound was a plump and youthful female hand, with a few inches of arm above it, showing the frill of a scarlet sleeve.
Jamie had been quite wrong in one respect and, whatever else might happen, Melanie would never be able to claim her ten thousand pounds.
ELEVEN
Toby tossed a coin. I couldn’t swear that he cheated, but I expect he did, because he thrust it rather hastily back into his pocket, and I was the one to be left behind to stand guard, while he walked back to Viola’s house to telephone the police.
‘Well, why don’t we both go?’ he asked, interrupting my stream of complaints about this unfair division of labour. ‘She is not likely to run away this time.’
I reminded him that not even Jamie was infallible and of how dreadful it would be if some party of laughing, innocent children should take it into their heads to explore the cove, and also that, if the local police were as dim as some people had implied, it might take them hours to locate the exact spot on their own.
When he had gone I spread out my rug again and settled down to wait, and the wait seemed endless. I had no cigarettes, nothing to read and nothing whatever to do except re-live the recent gruesome experience and count the minutes until my release came.
After a whole miserable hour of it, it dawned on me that the tide was rapidly encroaching and that before long I should be forced to remove myself to a point higher up the beach. One thing I was certain of, though; in no circumstances did I intend to remain there until the moment came when I should have to paddle my way out; still less to remain nobly at my post, surrounded by water on three sides and a dead girl on the fourth.
This resolve gave rise to speculations as to what would occur if the rescue team did indeed arrive too late. Presumably, Melanie would have to remain where she was until the tide receded again, for it was hard to see how she could be removed through waist-high water over those jagged slippery rocks. This, of course, must be all to the good, so far as one member of the human race was concerned, since, on the assumption that her death was due neither to suicide nor accident, it followed that the murderer’s motive in choosing this remote spot had been to put as much time as possible between the deed and its discovery. In fact, it was bad luck for him that the time had been so relatively short. But for a fluke, weeks could have elapsed before she was found.
However, this line of reasoning did not produce any big thrills because I was now more than half convinced that the imaginary reconstruction I had just given Toby was quite as nonsensical as I had pretended and furthermore that the two deaths were quite unconnected. It was far more likely, I now realised, that the doctor’s verdict on Elfrieda had been correct and that Melanie had suffered the fate which was liable to befall any girl unwise enough to have put herself in the position of having no fixed address, while carrying around a large sum of cash. In all likelihood, she had been murdered by the young man Jamie had seen her out with on that Monday evening. No one had seen her afterwards, whereas, at that time, Elfrieda still had twenty-four hours of life left to her.
I was nearly convinced that this must be the answer, and yet there was still room for one small, obstinate doubt. There was no accounting for it, but in some unidentifiable fashion it was associated in my mind with that single brief and horrifying sight of the plump, innocent looking hand, sticking out from under the pile of rocks. It had carried a message of some sort and I wished that I had the courage to return and look at it again. I was still endeavouring, somewhat half-heartedly, to summon it when my vigil was brought to an end by the arrival of a uniformed outrider from the Dearehaven Police Force. He was followed a second or two later by two more men carrying a folded stretcher, with three slower movers, hampered by their heavy gear, bringing up the rear. I folded my rug once more and walked over to greet them.
The eldest of the party, a red-faced, middle-aged man in plain clothes, detached himself from the others and asked me if I would be Miss Crichton. I assured him that I would and made a wide, sweeping gesture with my left arm at
the lumps of fallen cliff, where his business lay. In doing so, it instantly came to me exactly what there had been about that lifeless hand which had started the doubts and questions in the recesses of my mind.
The red-faced man then introduced himself as Detective Inspector Watson, asked for and noted down various particulars and announced that he would be calling on me later for a full statement. Permission to leave then having been granted, I stumbled over the rocks, along the neighbouring stretch of beach and up the path to Viola’s house.
Toby and Jamie were seated on the terrace, drinking champagne and orange juice and looking as though they hadn’t a care in the world. I daresay they hadn’t, but the sight of the festive little scene inflamed my sense of martyrdom almost to the point of paranoia. However, Toby explained that the delay in despatching the rescue team had been no fault of his. Laden down as he was, it had been necessary to stagger all the way to Jamie’s house, to use his telephone, Viola having gone off to do her matinée, very thoughtlessly omitting to leave the key under the mat.
I caught a whiff of sarcasm here, since he was doubtless aware that I had a front door key in my bag and had very thoughtlessly forgotten all about Viola’s matinée. Jamie naturally possessed keys to every part of the cottage and he could also be very diplomatic when it suited him. He poured oil on the troubled waters by presenting me with a glass of the lovely iced mixture, before proceeding to question me in the most sympathetic manner imaginable on my recent ordeal. There was probably some guile in this too, and he was hoping that I would reveal some unusual and piquant touch which might come in handy for a plot, but I found myself becoming expansive under all this kind attention, anxious indeed to repay him in his favourite coin and I said:
‘As a matter of fact, there was one rather curious and puzzling feature. I hardly noticed it at the time and the significance only struck me after the police arrived. I didn’t mention it to them, there didn’t seem any point, but maybe you’ll agree that it could be important. You remember how Melanie used to . . . ?’
As I reached this crucial point, Viola came prancing out on to the terrace and cut me off in mid-flow. My chance did not come again either, because when she had sat goggle-eyed through Toby’s recital of how our picnic had ended, had asked all the predictable questions and made all the predictable comments, the conversation turned to other matters because she too had news to impart. The pleasure of our company was requested on the following day for luncheon at the home of Sir Douglas and Lady Henshaw. The invitation had come via Roger Padmore, who had explained that, since Douglas was still immobilised by his broken ankle and unable to visit his new property and employees, he was hoping at least to meet some of these under his own roof.
‘Including you, Toby, of course,’ Viola assured him. ‘I gather that as soon as he heard you were here, he was mad keen to meet you.’
‘I shall certainly go,’ Jamie said. ‘I think the time has now come when we should all start being very nice to Douglas.’
‘It has not come for me, though,’ Toby informed them. ‘Nor does he have to meet me under his own or anyone else’s roof. Besides, I hate parties and I’ve had more than enough excitement for one week. I intend to go home tomorrow, to recuperate from my holiday.’
This might have been my cue for reintroducing the topic of Melanie, but no one else seemed inclined to do so and on reflection I decided to save my special bit of news for Robin’s telephone call, which fortunately came through as usual, at about seven o’clock.
‘It was her left hand, you see,’ I told him, having described the afternoon’s events yet again.
‘What was so sensational about it?’
‘Lack of adornment, mainly. Just one ring and it looked quite expensive. The only time I got a close-up view of her in life was on that one occasion in Elfrieda’s office and she was wearing at least two to each finger. Awful cheap, trashy looking things they were too, so no one could possibly have been tempted to steal them.’
‘So presumably all but one dropped off when she fell?’
‘If she fell; and I don’t see why they should have. Don’t you agree it’s more likely that she may have removed them herself, in order to replace them with one which was not cheap or trashy at all, like, let’s say, an engagement ring?’
‘I suppose it’s possible. Was she going around with anyone in particular?’
‘Not that I know of, but if she was it would clear up one or two mysteries. That confusion about her stealing the petty cash, for instance, and Elfrieda insisting that she hadn’t. In other words, Melanie didn’t run away because she was a thief, she ran away to get married, knowing that if Elfrieda got wind of it she’d put all sorts of obstacles in the way. Then I suppose it struck her that she’d have nothing to lose by bringing the young man to Dearehaven and trying to work her way back into Elfrieda’s favour. It might have come off too; the old tartar obviously had a romantic streak under that harsh exterior.’
‘Yes, you could be right, but surely it’s all rather irrelevant now? Since both poor ladies are no longer with us . . . ?’
‘But, Robin, can’t you see, that’s the whole point? It raises an entirely new set of questions. Elfrieda’s death may well have been due to natural causes, I’m not disputing that any more, but Melanie’s most certainly was not; or accident either.’
‘Why not? She could have fallen over the cliff in the dark, or been lying underneath when part of it collapsed.’
‘Highly improbable. Why would she have been walking about all alone up there in the dark? Or lying all alone on that rather uninviting beach, for that matter? She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. I happen to know that because part of her dress was showing.’
‘So the idea is that she was killed, most likely by the young man she was seen with, whom she may or may not have been intending to marry?’
‘Possibly, but so much depends on when it happened. It needn’t necessarily have been on the same evening that Jamie saw her. That was almost two weeks ago, so there’s a hell of a long gap.’
‘On the other hand, no one appears to have seen her since then?’
‘No, and if we assume that’s when it did happen it opens up still wider fields for speculation.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Elfrieda was still alive by that time and therefore Melanie was still a threat. Jamie never came face to face with this young man. He described him as being fair haired and wearing jeans, which could apply to thousands of people. It needn’t necessarily have been a man at all and, although it was hard to dredge up a motive for murdering Elfrieda, this is a very different cup of tea. I could name at least half a dozen highly respected citizens who wanted Melanie out of the way, specially if they thought they’d seen the last of her and then discovered that she’d come tripping back and all the trouble was about to be stirred up again.’
TWELVE
Douglas Henshaw had been knighted some years previously for his services to some political party or other, so they told me, and he and his wife lived in distinctly opulent style in a valley about ten miles inland from Dearehaven, near a village called Hawkham. The house was two-storeyed, red brick and over-gabled and dated from the fifties. It was called Dene Cottage, which was an inverted snobbery if ever I heard one, since it must have contained at least twelve rooms and the grounds included a meadow, copse and stream, not to mention a large cultivated area, complete with swimming pool and greenhouses.
‘There had been a cottage of that name here for centuries when I bought the land,’ Douglas explained. ‘Fallen into rack and ruin, unfortunately, so we had to pull it down and start again, but one hates to see the old names getting lost. Don’t you agree?’
In view of what I had heard of his past and also taking into account the approximate age of his son, Charlie, who was down from London for the weekend with his fiancée, I knew that Douglas must be over fifty, but he looked much younger than this, a clean shaven, sleek looking man, with bold and knowing eyes and not a grey hair
or an ounce of overweight. He was handsome too and patently conscious of the fact, as different from his cousin Elfrieda as it was possible to imagine.
His right leg was stretched out in front of him and supported by a footstool, and a pair of crutches rested against his armchair. Pointing to them, he apologised for not rising to greet us, explaining that he was supposed to rest his damaged ankle whenever possible.
‘Charlie will deputise for me,’ he said, directing a fond and complacent smile at his son. ‘Find out what the ladies and gentlemen would like to drink, Charlie! Champagne for you, Crowther, I have it on good authority?’
‘Most kind!’ Jamie murmured, although perhaps he should have been thanking Viola for her good authority.
‘Me too,’ I said, accepting Douglas’s invitation to sit in the chair nearest to his. ‘It is such an easy habit to acquire, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t be afraid, it’s an excellent one. Much better for you than all those mixtures. My wife used to drink pints of it when Charlie was on the way.’
‘And he’s certainly a good advertisement,’ I admitted, truthfully as it happened, for he was an exceptionally good looking young man, with the easy manner which he had inherited or copied from his father. Unlike him, however, he had very blond hair and a deeply discontented expression. There was a suggestion of dissoluteness about him, which I had noticed before in boys who had been doted on and spoilt by their parents.
Douglas reached out and patted my hand: ‘How nice of you to say so, Theresa! I suppose I may call you Theresa?’