Mystery at Lynden Sands (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 9

  “Now we’ll take Mr. Billingford’s track next,” he said, as he removed the two blocks of wax from their beds. “His footmarks will be the first to be swamped by the tide, so we must get on to them in a hurry.”

  He led his companions back to the road and turned round the landward end of the groyne.

  “This is where he landed on the road, evidently. Now step in my tracks and don’t wander off the line. We musn’t cut up the ground.”

  He moved along the trail, and soon reached the tidal mark, after which the footprints grew sharper. A little farther on, he reached a point where Billingford’s marks crossed an earlier track—the prints of a woman’s nail-studded shoes.

  “Golfing-shoes, by the look of them,” he pointed out to his companions. “We can leave them alone just now. The tide won’t reach here for long enough yet, so we’ve plenty of time to come back. Billingford’s the important thing at present.”

  Billingford’s track ran down to Neptune’s Seat, where it was lost on the hard surface of the rock. Sir Clinton, without halting, directed his companions’ attention to a second trail of male footprints running up from the rock towards the road, and crossed just at the landward side of Neptune’s Seat by the traces of Billingford.

  “There’s no return track for these, so far as I can see,” he pointed out, “so it looks as if the murdered man made them.”

  Without a glance at the body, he stepped up on to the rock, picked up the farther trail of Billingford, and began to follow it as it led along the beach towards Lynden Sands village. The footprints ran along the top of a series of slight whale-backs of sand, behind which lay a flatter zone running up towards the high-tide mark. Nearer the sea, a track showed the inspector’s line of advance during the night. After following the trail for nearly a quarter of a mile, Sir Clinton pointed to a change in its character.

  “This is where he began to run. See how the pace shortens beyond this.”

  Rather to the surprise of his companions, he continued to follow the trail.

  “Is it really necessary to go as far as this?” Wendover demanded after a time. “You’ve come the best part of three-quarters of a mile from the rock. What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to find out the earliest moment when Billingford could have reached the rock, of course,” Sir Clinton explained, with a trace of irritation.

  A few yards farther on, Billingford’s track was neatly interrupted. For twenty feet or so there were no tracks on the sand; then the footprints reappeared, sharply defined as before. At the sight of the gap Sir Clinton’s face brightened.

  “I want something solid here,” he said. “Stakes would be best, but we haven’t any. A couple of cairns will have to do. Bring the biggest stones you can lift; there are lots up yonder above the tide-mark.”

  He set them an example, and soon they had collected a fair number of heavy stones. Sir Clinton, with an anxious eye on the tide, built up a strong cairn alongside the last of Billingford’s footprints which was visible.

  “Now the same thing on the other side of the gap,” the chief constable directed.

  Wendover suppressed his curiosity until the work in hand was over; but as soon as the second cairn had been erected at the point where Billingford’s footprints reappeared on the sand he demanded an explanation.

  “I’m trying to estimate when Billingford passed that point last night,” Sir Clinton answered. “No, I haven’t time to explain all about it just now, squire. We’re too busy. Ask me again in twelve hours or so, and I’ll tell you the answer to the sum. It may be of importance or it mayn’t; I don’t know yet.”

  He turned and glanced at the rising tide.

  “Jove! We’ll need to look slippy. The tide’s getting near that rock. Look here, inspector. Get hold of one of these fishermen and ask them to pounce on the nearest boat and bring it round to the rock. Then we can leave everything on the rock to the last moment and spend our time on the sands, which haven’t got permanent traces and must be cleared up first of all. If we get cut off by the tide, we can always get the body away on a boat, if we have one handy.”

  The inspector hurried off, waving to attract the attention of the fishermen. In a few moments he was back again.

  “They say, sir, that the nearest boat is at Flatt’s cottage, just on the point yonder. They’re off to bring it round. By the way, they warned me against going near that old wreck there, farther along the bay. It seems there’s a patch of bad quick-sand just to the seaward side of it—very dangerous.”

  “All right, inspector. We’re not going any farther along in this direction for the present. Let’s get back to the rock where the body is. We’ve still got the other trails of footmarks to examine.”

  They hurried off towards Neptune’s Seat, and at the edge of the rock Sir Clinton halted.

  “Here’s a set of prints—a neatly-shod woman, by the look of them,” he pointed out. “She’s come down to the rock and gone back again almost on the same line. Take a cast of good ones, inspector, both left and right feet. Be careful with your first drippings of the wax.”

  Wendover inspected the line of prints with care.

  “They don’t tell us much,” he pointed out. “Billingford’s tracks don’t cross them, so there’s no saying when they were made. It might have been a visitor coming down to the beach yesterday afternoon.”

  “Hardly,” interrupted Sir Clinton. “High tide was at half-past eight; and obviously they must have been made a good while after that or else this part of the sands would have been covered. But it was a moonlight night, and it’s quite possible someone came down here to look at the sea late in the evening.”

  “It’s a small shoe,” Wendover pursued, without answering the criticism.

  “Size 3½ or thereabouts,” Armadale amended, glancing up from his work. “I shouldn’t make it bigger than a 3½, and it might be even smaller.”

  Wendover accepted the rectification, and continued.

  “The step’s not a long one either. That looks like a rather small girl with a neat foot, doesn’t it?”

  Sir Clinton nodded.

  “Looks like it. Have you a tape-measure, inspector? We ought to make a note of the length of the pace, I think. It might turn out useful. One never knows.”

  The inspector fished a tape-measure from his pocket; and, with the help of Wendover, Sir Clinton made measurements of various distances.

  “Just twenty-four inches from one right toe-mark to the next,” he announced. “And it seems a very regular walk. Now if you’re ready, inspector, we’ll go on to the next trail. It’s the single one, so it’s probably the murdered man’s.”

  They moved round the rock a little. The inspector’s face lighted up at the sight of the footprints.

  “Rubber soles, sir; and a fairly well-marked set of screws to check anything with. If they do belong to the murdered man, we’ll have no trouble in identifying them.”

  Sir Clinton agreed.

  “Don’t bother taking casts of them yet. We may not need them. Let’s go on to the next tracks.”

  They had to cut across Billingford’s trail and walk to the far end of the rock before they reached their objective.

  “This is the other end of the track we noticed before,” Wendover pointed out. “It’s the woman in golfing-shoes who came down from the road near the groyne.”

  The inspector fell to work on his casting, whilst Sir Clinton took another series of measurements of the length of pace shown by the footmarks.

  “Twenty-six and a half inches,” he reported, after several trials of comparison. “Now, once the inspector’s finished with his impression-taking, we can have a look at the body. We’ve just done the business in time, for the tide’s almost washing the base of the rock now.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Letter

  Followed by Wendover and the inspector, Sir Clinton mounted the platform of Neptune’s Seat, which formed an outcrop some twenty yards long and ten in breadth, with the
landward part rising sharply so as to form a low natural wall. The body of the murdered man lay on the tiny plateau at the end nearest the groyne. It rested on its back, with the left arm slightly doubled up under the corpse. Blood had been welling from a wound in the breast.

  “Anybody claim him?” inquired Sir Clinton. “He isn’t one of the hotel guests, at any rate.”

  Armadale shook his head.

  “I don’t recognise him.”

  Sir Clinton lifted the head and examined it.

  “Contused wound on the back of the skull. Probably got it by falling against the rock as he came down.”

  He turned to the feet of the body.

  “The boots have rubber soles with a pattern corresponding to the tracks up yonder. That’s all right,” he continued. “His clothes seem just a shade on the flashy side of good taste, to my mind. Age appears to be somewhere in the early thirties.”

  He bent down and inspected the wound in the breast.

  “From the look of this hole I guess you’re right, inspector. It seems to have been a small-calibre bullet—possibly from an automatic pistol. You’d better make a rough sketch of the position before we shift him. There’s no time to get a camera up here before the tide swamps us.”

  Armadale cut one or two scratches on the rock as reference points, and then, after taking a few measurements, he made a rough diagram of the body’s position and attitude.

  “Finished?” Sir Clinton asked; and, on getting an assurance from the inspector, he knelt down beside the dead man and unfastened the front of the raincoat which clothed the corpse.

  “That’s interesting,” he said, passing his hand over a part of the jacket underneath. “He’s been soaked to the skin, by the feel of the cloth. Did that rain come down suddenly last night, inspector?”

  “It sounded like a thunder-shower, sir. Dry one minute and pouring cats and dogs the next, I remember.”

  “That might account for it, then. We proceed. I can see only one wound on him, so far as the front’s concerned. No indication of robbery, since his raincoat was buttoned up and the jacket also. Help me to lift him up, inspector, so that we can get this arm free without scraping it about too much. If he wore a wrist-watch, it may have stopped conveniently when he fell, for he seems to have come rather a purler when he dropped.”

  Armadale raised the left side of the body slightly, and Sir Clinton levered the twisted arm gently into a more normal position.

  “You’re right, sir,” the inspector exclaimed, pointing to the strap on the dead man’s wrist. He bent forward as though to turn the hand of the body, but the chief constable stopped him with an imperative gesture.

  “Gently, inspector, gently. We may need to be cautious.”

  Very carefully he manœuvred the dead man’s wrist until they could see the face of the watch.

  “It’s stopped at 11.19,” Armadale pointed out. “That gives us the moment when he fell, then. It doesn’t seem of much use to us yet, though.”

  Wendover detected a flaw in the inspector’s assumption.

  “Some people forget to wind up their watches now and again. Perhaps he did, the night before last; and it might have stopped of its own accord at 11.19, before he was shot at all.”

  “Dear me, squire! This is a break-away from the classics with a vengeance. I thought it was always taken for granted that a watch stopped conveniently at the very moment of the murder. But perhaps you’re right. We can always test it.”

  “How?” demanded Wendover.

  “By winding it up now, counting the clicks of the ratchet as we do it; then let it run fully down and wind up again, also counting the clicks. If the two figures tally, then it’s run down naturally; if they don’t, it’s been forcibly stopped. But I doubt if we’ll need to bother about that. There must be some better evidence than that somewhere, if we can only lay hands on it.”

  Wendover’s eyes had been ranging over the surface of the rock; and, as Sir Clinton finished his exposition, Wendover drew his attention to a shiny object lying at the other end of Neptune’s Seat.

  “Just have a look at it, squire, will you? I’m busy here just now. Now, inspector, it seems to me as if some of this watch-glass is missing. There doesn’t seem enough to cover the dial. Let’s have a look under the body and see if the rest’s there.”

  Armadale raised the dead man sufficiently to enable Sir Clinton to examine the spot where the watch had struck the rock.

  “Yes, here’s the rest of the glass,” the chief constable reported. “And there’s a faint scrape on the rock surface to show that he must have come down with a bit of a thud. Thanks, inspector, you can let him down again.”

  When Armadale had let the body drop back into its original position, Sir Clinton knelt down and unstrapped the wrist-watch, after which he wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief. The fragments of glass he handed to the inspector, who stowed them away in an envelope.

  Meanwhile Wendover had made a discovery.

  “Come here, Clinton. That yellow thing was the brass case of a discharged cartridge.”

  Sir Clinton stepped across the rock and picked up the tiny object, marking its position as he did so by scoring a cross on the stone with his penknife.

  “It’s a .38 calibre, apparently,” he commented, after a glance at it. “You’d better keep it, inspector. Hullo! Here’s the boat coming in.”

  A rowing-boat manned by the two fishermen was approaching Neptune’s Seat.

  “That’s good. We can finish our examination on the spot now. The tide won’t rise to the level of the rock for a while yet; and it doesn’t matter if we do get cut off, now that the boat’s here. Bring her close in, please, if there’s water enough.”

  The fishermen, nothing loath to get a closer view of the proceedings, brought the boat’s bow up to the natural quay formed by the rock; and then, shipping their oars, they sat down to watch what was going on.

  “We may as well go through his pockets next,” Sir Clinton suggested, returning to the body. “Go ahead, inspector.”

  Armadale began his search, reporting each object discovered.

  “Raincoat pockets—nothing in either. Left-hand breast pocket of jacket—a handkerchief. Right-hand breast pocket—a note-case.”

  He handed this over to Sir Clinton, who opened it.

  “Fifteen-ten in notes. Nothing else. Well, it wasn’t a case of robbery, apparently. Go on, inspector.”

  “Right-hand upper waistcoat pocket,” the inspector droned obediently, “a pocket diary.”

  Sir Clinton took it, skimmed over the pages, and put it down.

  “It’s a calendar diary—blank. A book of stamps, with some stamps missing, in the cover. Not much help there. Go ahead.”

  The inspector continued his search.

  “Other upper pocket—a pencil and fountain-pen. Lower waistcoat pocket, left hand, a silver match-box with monogram—S and N intertwined. Right-hand pocket—a penknife and a cigar-cutter. Trouser side-pockets—some money, mostly silver, and a nail-trimmer, and a couple of keys. Hip-pocket—a cigar-case.”

  He handed the various articles to the chief constable.

  “Nothing in the ticket-pocket. Outside jacket pockets. Left-hand pocket—there’s a pipe and a tobacco-pouch. Right-hand pocket—ah, here’s something more interesting! Letter-card addressed to ‘N. Staveley, Esq., c/o Billingford, Flatt’s Cottage, Lynden Sands.’ So his name was Staveley? That fits the S on the monogram. And here’s another bit of paper; looks like a note of some sort. No envelope to it.”

  He held out the two papers to Sir Clinton, who examined the letter-card first.

  “Posted two days ago in London—W.1. H’m! Nothing much to take hold of here, I’m afraid. ‘Dear Nick,—Sorry to miss you on Tuesday. See you when you get back to town.’ No address, and the signature’s a scrawl.”

  He turned to the single sheet of note-paper, and as he unfolded it Wendover saw his eyebrows raised involuntarily. For a moment he seemed in doubt; then, with a
glance at the two fishermen, he carefully refolded the paper and stowed it away in his pocket-book.

  “That will keep for the present,” he said.

  Over the chief constable’s shoulder, Wendover caught a glimpse of a figure advancing along the sands from the direction of the hotel bathing-boxes. A towel over its shoulder showed the reason for the appearance of the stranger on the beach before breakfast. As it approached, Wendover recognised the gait.

  “Here’s Cargill, that Australian who’s staying at the hotel, Clinton. He’s come down for a bathe, evidently. You’d better do the talking for us.”

  Cargill had evidently recognised them, for he hastened his steps and soon reached the groyne.

  “I shouldn’t come any farther, Mr. Cargill,” Sir Clinton said politely. “There are some tracks there which we may want to look at if we have time; and I’d rather not have them mixed up with yours, if you don’t mind.”

  Cargill halted obediently, but looked inquisitively at the group on the rock.

  “Is that where the murder happened?” he inquired.

  “How do you know about it?” Sir Clinton replied, giving question for question.

  “Oh, the news came up to the hotel with the milk, I expect,” the Australian answered. “I heard it from a waiter as I came through on my way to bathe. The whole staff’s buzzing with it. I say, who is it?”

  “Couldn’t say yet,” Sir Clinton returned with an air of candour. Then he added: “I’m sorry we haven’t time to talk it over just now, Mr. Cargill. This tide will be all round us in a minute, if we don’t get a move on.”

  He turned to the fishermen.

  “We’ll shift the body into your boat now, and then you can row slowly along towards the village. Don’t hurry; and don’t go ashore till you see Inspector Armadale there. He’ll take the body off your hands. You understand? Thanks.”

  The boat was brought close alongside the natural quay and the body of Staveley put aboard without mishap. At a sign from Sir Clinton, the boat put out into the bay. Armadale seemed a little at a loss over the procedure; but he made no audible protest. Cargill remained on the other side of the groyne, obviously taking the keenest interest in the whole affair.