Have His Carcase

‘I think I stayed there’ for three-quarters of an hour or so.’

‘And who passed you on the beach during that time?’ demanded the constable sharply.

‘Who passed me?’ Why nobody.’

‘No man, woman or child? No boat? No horse? Nothing?’

‘Nothing whatever. The beach was quite deserted. Even the unpleasant man took himself off in the end. Just before I left myself, that would be. I kept an eye on him, just to see that he didn’t try any more tricks, you know.’

P.C. Ormond bit his lip.

‘And what was he doing all that time? Tinkering with his car?’

‘No. He seemed to finish that quite quickly. He seemed to be doing something over the fire. I though the was cooking. Then he went away up the lane.

The constable thought for a moment.

‘What did you do then?’

‘I walked rather slowly on along the beach till I came; to a lane that runs down between stone walls on to the beach. It comes out opposite some cottages. I got on to the road that way, and walked along in the direction of Lesston Hoe till I met the young lady.’

‘Did you see the man with the dark spectacles again that afternoon?’

‘Yes; when I came back with the lady, he was just coming up out of the lane. To my annoyance, she, quite unecessarily, stopped and spoke to him. I went on, as I did not wish to be subjected to any further incivility.’

‘I see, sir. That’s a very clear account. Now I want to ask you a very important question. When you next had an opportunity of regulating your watch, did you find it fast or slow, and how much?’

‘I compared it with the clock in the garage at Darley. It was exactly right at 5.30.’

‘And you had not altered it in the interval?’

‘No — why should I?’

P.C. Ormond looked hard at Mr Perkins, shut up his note-book with a snap, thrust out his lower jaw and said, quietly but forcefully:

‘Now, look here, sir. This is a case of murder. We know that somebody passed along that beach between two, o’clock and three. Wouldn’t it be better to tell the truth?’

Fear flashed up into Mr Perkins’s eyes.

‘I don’t — I don’t—’ he began, feebly. His hands clawed at the sheet for a moment. Then he fainted, and the nurse, — bustling up, banished P.C. Ormond from the bedside.

Chapter XXV. The Evidence Of The Dictionary

“Tis but an empty cipher.’

— The Brides’ Tragedy

Tuesday, 30 June

IT was all very well, thought Constable Ormond, to be sure that Perkins’ evidence was false: the difficulty was to prove it. There were two possible explanations. Either Perkins was a liar, or Weldon had deliberately deceived him. If the former were the case, then the police would be faced with the notorious difficulty of proving a negative. If the latter, then a reference to Mr Polwhistle at the Darley Garage would probably clear the matter up.

Mr Polwhistle and his mechanic were ready and eager to help. They perfectly remembered Mr Perkins — which was not surprising, since the arrival of a complete stranger to hire a car was a rare event in Darley. Mr Perkins had pulled out his watch, they remembered, and compared it with the garage clock, mentioning as, he did so that the watch had run down and that he had had to inquire the time of a passer-by. He had then said: ‘Oh, yes, it seems to be just right,’ and had further asked whether their clock was reliable and how long they would take to get to Wilvercombe.

‘And is your clock reliable?’

‘It was reliable that day all right.’

‘How do you mean, that day?’

‘Well, she loses a bit, and that’s a fact, but we’d just set her on the Thursday morning, hadn’t we, Tom?’

Tom agreed that they had, adding that she was an eight-day clock, and that he was accustomed to wind and set her every Thursday morning, Thursday being an important day on account of Heathbury market, the centre about which all local business seemed to revolve.

There seemed to be no shaking this evidence. It was true that neither Mr Polwhistle nor Tom had actually seen the face of Mr Perkins’ watch, but they both declared that he had said: ‘It seems to be just right.’’ Therefore, if there was any discrepancy, Perkins must have been intentionally concealing the face. It was, perhaps, a little remarkable that, Perkins should so insistently have drawn attention to the rightness of his watch. Constable Ormond remounted his motor-cycle and returned to Wilvercombe, more than ever convinced that Perkins was an unconscionable liar.

Inspector Umpelty agreed with him. ‘Tisn’t natural,’ he said, ‘to my mind, for a man all upset as he was to start bothering about the exact time the minute he gets into a place. Trouble is, if he says he saw Weldon, and we can’t prove he didn’t, what are we going to do about it?’

‘Well, sir,’ suggested Ormond, with deference, ‘what I’ve been thinking is, if Weldon or whoever it was rode along the shore between Darley and the Flat-Iron, somebody ought to have seen him. Have we asked all the people who passed along the top of the cliffs round about that time?’