Have His Carcase

‘No. Not if, you didn’t want to be overheard. If you ever need to talk secrets, be sure you avoid the blasted oak, the privet hedge and the old summer-house in the Italian garden — all the places where people can stealthily creep up under cover with their ears flapping. You choose the middle of a nice open field, or the centre of a lake — or a rock like the Flat-Iron, where you can have half-an-hour’s notice of anyone’s arrival. And that reminds me, in one of your books

‘Bother ‘Bother my books! I quite see what you mean. Well, then, some time or the other, Bright arrives to keep his appointment. How? And when?’

‘By walking through the edge of the water, from any point you like to suggest. As for the time, I can only suggest that it was while you, my child, were snoozing over Tristram Shandy; and I fancy he must have come from the Wilvercombe side, otherwise he would have seen you. He’d hardly have taken the risk of committing a murder if he knew — positively that somebody was: lying within a few yards of h

‘I think it was pretty careless of him not to take a look round the rocks in any case.’

‘True; but apparently he didn’t do it. He commits the murder, anyhow, and the time of that is fixed at two o’clock. So he must have reached the Flat-Iron between 1.30 and 2—or possibly between one o’clock and two o’clock because, if you were lunching and reading in your cosy corner, you probably wouldn’t have seen or heard him, come. It couldn’t be earlier than 1 p.m., because you looked along the shore then and were positive that there wasn’t a living soul visible from the cliffs.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Good. He commits the murder. Poor old Alexis lets out a yell when he sees the razor, and you wake up. Did you shout then, or anything?’

‘No.’

‘Or burst into song?’

‘No.’

‘Or run about with little ripples of girlish laughter?’

‘No. At least, I ran about a few minutes later, but I wasn’t making a loud noise.’

‘I wonder why the murderer didn’t start off home again at once.’ If he had, you’d have seen him. Let me see. Ah, I was forgetting the papers! He had to get the papers!’

‘What papers?’

‘Well, I won’t swear it was papers. It may have been the Rajah’s diamond or something. He wanted something off the body, of course: And just as he was stooping over his victim, he heard you skipping about among the shingle. — Sound carries a long way by the water. The baffled villain pauses, and then, as the sounds come nearer, he hurries down to the seaward side of the Flat-Iron and hides there.’

‘With all his clothes on?’

‘I’d forgotten that. He’d be a bit damp-looking when he came out, wouldn’t he? No. Without his clothes on. He left his clothes at wherever it was he started to walk along the shore. He, probably put on a bathing-dress, so that if anybody saw him he would just be a harmless sun-bather paddling about in the surf.’

‘Did he put the razor in the pocket of his regulation suit?’

‘No; he had it in his hand, or slung round his neck. Don’t ask silly questions. He’d wait in his little niche until you’d gone; then he’d hurry back along the shore-’

‘Not in the direction of Wilvercombe.’

‘Blow! Obviously, you’d have seen him. But not if he kept close to the cliff. He wouldn’t have to bother so much about footprints when the tide was coming in. He could manage that all right. Then he’d come up the cliff at the point where he originally got down, follow the main road towards Wilvercombe, turn back at some point, or other, and meet you on the way, back., How’s that?.

‘It’s very neat.’

‘The more I look at it, the more I like it. I adore the thought of Might’s being Perkins. I say, though, how about this lop-sided, hunch-backed business. Was Perkins upright as a willow-wand, or how?’

‘Not by any means. But I shouldn’t have called him actually crooked. More sloppy and round-shouldered. He had a rucksack on his back, and he was walking a bit lame, because he said he had a blister on his foot.’

‘That would he a good way of disguising any one-sidedness in his appearance. You’re always apt to hunch up a bit on the lame side. Bright-Perkins is our man. We ought to get the police on to this right away, only I do so want my lunch. What time is it? Four o’clock. I’ll slip along in the car and telephone to Glaisher, and then come back. Why should we give up our picnic for any number of murderers?’

Chapter X. The Evidence Of The Police-Inspector

‘My life upon ‘t some miser,

Who in the secret hour creeps to his hoard,

And, kneeling at the altar of his love,

Worships that yellow devil, gold.’

— The Bride’s Tragedy

Monday, 22 June