Authors: Dorothy L. Sayers
developments which might interest him. It was now pretty certain that it was a
case of suicide. Stil, one had to go into these matters pretty carefuly. Had the
body been found? No. The body had not come ashore, and the wind was stil
holding the tide up and making it impossible to undertake any operations off the
Grinders.
IX
THE EVIDENCE OF THE FLAT-IRON
‘Come, tell me now,
How sits this ring?’
The Bride’s Tragedy
Sunday, 21 June
Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey sat side by side on the beach, looking
out towards the Devil’s Flat-Iron. The fresh salt wind blew strongly in from the
sea, ruffling Harriet’s dark hair. The weather was fine, but the sunshine came
only in briliant bursts, as the driven clouds roled tumultuously across the
belowing vault of the sky. Over the Grinders, the sea broke in furious patches
of white. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the tide was at its
lowest, but even so, the Flat-Iron was hardly uncovered, and the Atlantic
waves, roaring in, made a heavy breach against its foot. A basket of food lay
between the pair, not yet unpacked. Wimsey was drawing plans in the damp
sand.
‘The thing we want to get,’ he said, ‘is the time of the death. The police are
quite clear about how Alexis came here, and there doesn’t seem to be any
doubt in the matter, which is a blessing. There’s a train from Wilvercombe that
stops at Darley Halt on Thursdays at 10.15, to take people in to Heathbury
market. Alexis traveled by that train and got out at the Halt. I think it must have
been Alexis al right. He was pretty conspicuous with his black beard and his
natty gent’s outfitting. I think we can take that bit as proved. The guard on the
train remembered him, and so did three or four of his felow-travelers. What’s
more, his landlady says he left his rooms in time to catch the train, and the
booking-clerk remembers him at Wilvercombe.
And
, dear Harriet, there is a
first return-ticket from Wilvercombe to that Halt that was never given up and
never accounted for.’
‘A return-ticket?’ asked Harriet.
‘A return-ticket. And that, as you so acutely remark, Sherlock, seems to
knock the suicide theory on the head. I said as much to the Super, and what
was his reply? That suicides, let alone foreign suicides, were that inconsistent
there was no accounting for them.’
‘So they may be, in real life,’ observed Harriet, thoughtfuly. ‘One wouldn’t
made an intending suicide take a return-ticket in a book, but real people are
different. It might have been a slip, or just habit – or he may not have quite
made up his mind to the suicide business.’
‘I thought my friend Chief Inspector Parker was the most cautious beggar on
the face of the earth, but you beat him. You can knock out habit. I refuse to
believe that our dainty Alexis made a habit of traveling to the Halt in order to
walk four and a half miles to weep by the sad sea waves. However, we’l just
note the return half of the ticket as something that needs explainin’. Very good.
Wel, now, there was nobody else got off at the Halt, though quite a bunch of
people got in, so we don’t know what happened to Alexis; but if we alow that
he could walk at the moderate rate of three miles an hour, he can’t have got to
the Flat-Iron later than, say, 11.45.’
‘Stop a minute. How about the tide? When was low water on Thursday?’
‘At 1.15. I’ve been into al that. At 11.45 there would be about five feet of
water at the foot of the Flat-Iron, but the rock is ten feet high, and rises
gradualy from the landward side. At 11.45, or very shortly after, our friend
could have walked out dry-shod to the rock and sat upon it.’
‘Good. We know he did go out dry-shod, so that al fits in nicely. What
next?’
‘Wel, what? Whether he cut his own throat or somebody cut it for him when
did he die? It’s an awful pity we’ve lost the body. Even if it turns up now, it
won’t tel us a thing. It wasn’t stiff, of course, when you saw it, and you say you
can’t tel if it was cold.’
‘If,’ said Harriet, ‘there had been a block of ice on that rock at that time, you
could have boiled eggs on it.’
‘Tiresome, tiresome. Wait a minute. The blood. How about that? Did you
notice whether it was in thick red clots, or whether it was a sort of jely of white
serum, with the red part at the bottom, or anything?’
Harriet shook her head.
‘It wasn’t. It was liquid.’
‘It was
what
?’
‘Liquid. When I put my hand into it, it was quite wet.’
‘Great Scott! Half a sec. Where was the blood? Splashed al over the place,
I suppose.’
‘Not exactly. There was a big pool of it underneath the body – just as though
he had leaned over and cut his throat into a basin. It had colected in a sort of
holow in the rock.’
‘Oh, I see. That explains it. I expect the holow was ful of sea-water left by
the tide, and what looked like blood was a mixture of blood and water. I began
to think—’
‘But listen! It was quite liquid everywhere. It dripped out of his neck. And
when I lifted his head up and disturbed the body, it dripped some more.
Horrid!’
‘But, my darling girl—’
‘Yes, and listen again! When I tried to take his glove off, the leather wasn’t
stiff – it was soft and wet. His hands had been lying right under his throat.’
‘Good lord! But—’
‘That was the left hand. The right hand was hanging over the side of the rock
and I couldn’t get at it without clambering over him, which I didn’t fancy,
somehow. Otherwise, I should have tried that. I was wondering, you see, why
the gloves?’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But we know there was nothing wrong with his hands.
That doesn’t matter now. It’s the blood – do you realise that, if the blood was
stil liquid, he
can
only have been dead a few minutes?’
‘Oh!’ Harriet paused in consternation. ‘What a fool I am! I
ought
to have
known that. And I thought I was deducing things so nicely! He couldn’t have
been bleeding slowly to death for some time, I suppose?’
‘With his throat cut to the neck-bone? Dear child, pul yourself together.
Look here. Blood clots very quickly – more quickly, of course, on a cold
surface. In the ordinary way it wil clot almost instantaneously on exposure to
the air. I daresay it might take a little longer on a hot surface like the rock you
describe so graphicaly. But it couldn’t take more than a few minutes. Say ten,
to give it an outside limit.’
‘Ten minutes. Oh, Peter!’
‘Yes?’
‘That noise that woke me up. I thought it was a sea-gul. They sound so
human. But suppose it was—’
‘It must have been. When was that?’
‘Two o’clock. I looked at my watch. And I shouldn’t think it took me more
than ten minutes to reach the rock. But – I say!’
‘Wel?’
‘How about your murder-theory? That’s done it in absolutely. If Alexis was
murdered at two o’clock, and I was there ten minutes after –
what became of
the murderer
?’
Wimsey sat up as suddenly as though he had been stung.
‘Oh,
hell
!’ he exclaimed. ‘Harriet; dear, sweet, beautiful Harriet, say you
were mistaken. We
can’t
be wrong about the murder. I’ve staked my
reputation with Inspector Umpelty that it couldn’t have been suicide. I shal
have to leave the country. I shal never hold my head up again. I shal have to
go and shoot tigers in fever-haunted jungles, and die, babbling of murder
between my swolen and blackened lips. Say that the blood was clotted. Or say
there were footprints you overlooked. Or that there was a boat within hail. Say
something.’
‘There
was
a boat, but not within hail; because I hailed it.’
‘Thank God there was a boat! Perhaps I may leave my bones in Old
England yet. What do you mean, not within hail because you hailed it? If the
murderer was in the boat, naturaly he wouldn’t have put back if it had hailed
sweet potatoes. I wish you wouldn’t give me such shocks. My nerves are not
what they were.’
‘I don’t know much about boats, but this one looked to me a pretty good
way out. The wind was blowing in-shore, you know.’
‘It doesn’t matter. So long as there was a good stiff wind, and he could sail
close enough to it, he might have made quite a good way in ten minutes. What
sort of boat was it?’
Here Harriet’s knowledge failed her. She had put it down as a fishing-boat –
not because she could scientificaly distinguish a fishing-boat from a 5-metre
yacht, but because one naturaly, when visiting the seaside, puts down al boats
as fishing-boats until otherwise instructed. She thought it had a pointed sort of
sail – or sails – she couldn’t be sure. She was sure it was not, for example, a
fuly rigged four-masted schooner, but otherwise one sailing-boat was to her
exactly like any other; as it is to most town-bred persons, especialy to literary
young women.
‘Never mind,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’l be able to trace it al right, Al boats must
come to shore somewhere, thank goodness. And they’re al wel known to
people along the coast. I only wanted to know what sort of draught the boat
was likely to have. You see, if the boat couldn’t come right in to the rock, the
felow would have had to row himself in, or swim for it, and that would delay
him a good bit. And he’d have to have somebody standing on and off with the
boat while he did it, unless he stopped to take in sail, and al that. I mean, you
can’t just stop a sailing boat and step out of it like a motor-car, leaving it on its
own al ready to start. You’d get into difficulties. But that makes no odds. Why
shouldn’t the murderer have an accomplice? It has frequently happened before.
We’d better assume that there were at least two men in a smal boat with a very
light draught. Then they could bring her close in, and one of the men would
bring her round to the wind, while the other waded or rowed alone, did the
murder and got back, so that they could make off again without wasting a
moment. You see, they’ve got to do the murder, get back to the boat and clear
out to where you saw them within the ten minutes between the cry you heard
and the time of your arrival. So we can’t alow a lot of time for puling the boat
to shore and making fast and pushing off again and setting sail and al that.
Hence I suggest the accomplice.’
‘But how about the Grinders?’ asked Harriet, rather diffidently. ‘I thought it
was very dangerous to bring boats close to shore at that point.’
‘Blow it! So it is. Wel, they must have been very skilful sailors. But
that
would mean further to row or wade, as the case may be. Bother it! I wish we
could alow them rather more time.’
‘You don’t think—’ began Harriet. A very unpleasant idea had just struck
her. ‘You don’t think the murderer could have been there, quite close, al the
time, swimming under water, or something?’
‘He’d have had to come up to breathe.’
‘Yes, but I might not have noticed him. There were lots of times when I
wasn’t looking at the sea at al. He would have heard me coming, and he might
have ducked down close under the rock and waited there til I came down to
look for the razor. Then he might have dived and swum away while my back
was turned. I don’t know if it’s possible, and I hope it isn’t, because I should
hate to think he was there al the time – watching me!’
‘It’s a nasty thought,’ said Wimsey. ‘I rather hope he was there, though. It
would give him a beast of a shock to see you hopping round taking
photographs and things. I wonder if there is any cleft in the Flat-Iron where he
might have hidden himself. Curse the rock! Why can’t it come out and show
itself like a man? I say, I’m going down to have a look at it. Turn your modest
eyes seawards til I have climbed into a bathing-suit, and I’l go down and
explore.’
Not content with this programme, unsuited to a person of her active
temperament, Harriet removed, not only her glance, but her person, to the
shelter of a handy rock, and emerged, bathing-suited, in time to catch Wimsey
as he ran down over the sand.
‘And he strips better than I should have expected,’ she admitted candidly to
herself. ‘Better shoulders than I realised, and, thank Heaven, calves to his legs.’
Wimsey, who was rather proud of his figure, would hardly have been flattered
could he have heard this modified rapture, but for the moment he was happily
unconcerned about himself. He entered the sea near the Flat-Iron with caution,
not knowing what bumps and boulders he might encounter, swam a few strokes
to encourage himself, and then popped his head out to remark that the water
was beastly cold and that it would do Harriet good to come in.