Death Among the Sunbathers (11 page)

He was still busy with his task when Ferris came in to report on the day's activities and to bring with him a long report from Owen that had just arrived by special messenger, though of course Owen was only one of a score or so of men working on different aspects of the affair.

‘Oh, yes, Owen,' Mitchell said as he took it to see what it was justified the use of a special messenger. ‘By the way I'm wanting a full report from him about this “Mousey” affair – seems now there are likely to be questions about it in the House. “Disgraceful attempt of the police to prevent ex-convict earning honest living.” That'll be the line.'

‘Mousey and an honest living,' said Ferris. ‘Might as well talk about chalk and cream cheese.'

‘Mousey' was the name by which was known a certain receiver of stolen goods recently released on licence and then re-arrested, and his licence cancelled, because of an assertion that stolen property had been found in his possession. But the protests of Mousey – whose real name was Jim Geogeghan, or so he said — that this stolen property had been ‘planted' in his house by the police themselves, in order to give them an excuse for re-arresting him on account of an old grudge held against him, had been so loud and shrill that they had reached the ears of a certain member of Parliament to whom the opportunity of appearing as the champion of the oppressed against a brutal officialdom had been irresistible.

And the consequent questions in the House would have to be dealt with very tactfully, since there happened to be more truth in a part, though only a part, of Mousey's protest than it was desirable should be known just yet.

‘I've made it all right with the Prison Commissioners,' Mitchell continued, ‘but it's going to be difficult to satisfy this M.P. chap, and if he goes on asking questions, it may be jolly awkward, especially as Mousey himself won't say a word. Just shuts his mouth and sits tight, so there's no telling whether we're on the right track with him or not. But all the same, that it was through him Bobs-the-Boy was told to go and work for Mr Hunter in Howland Yard is pretty certain.'

Mitchell went on reading the report Owen had sent in and paying it the compliment of an occasional puzzled grunt. Now and again he fired off a sharp question at Ferris, who for his part was deep in a book he had just picked up from Mitchell's desk. It was entitled
Made Perfect in Sunshine
, by Esmond Bryan, and was published at three and six net by Esmond Bryan at Leadeane Grange for the Society of Sun Believers (Esmond Bryan, president and founder).

‘Find it interesting?' Mitchell asked him abruptly.

‘Well, sir, I suppose it's right enough for those who like it,' Ferris answered. ‘I'm wondering if you think there's any connexion.'

‘So am I,' Mitchell answered, putting Owen's report in its appropriate place in the pile of documents growing ever higher and higher on his desk. ‘What's certain is that it was the Leadeane Sun Bathing show that Jo Curtis left the
Announcer
office to write up. Also, we know her husband was wanting to speak to her on her way there, though it seems he failed to find her. We know some unidentified motor-cyclist did catch her up, and that there was apparently a quarrel between them. It is equally certain that she reached the Grange in safety, because Owen saw her there himself. But unluckily Owen left the place almost at once, and what happened after her arrival there, till we found her lying shot through the body in a burning and overturned motor-car at the bottom of a railway cutting, we don't know. But we do know from the way she did her hair that it wasn't her who was driving her Bayard Seven when we saw it go by. That's certain, too. Only what's it mean?'

‘I suppose,' suggested Ferris, slowly, ‘she couldn't have changed her way of doing her hair, could she?'

‘That,' said Mitchell reproachfully, ‘comes of your not being a married man, Ferris, a great handicap if you ask me. Women don't change their style of doing their hair the way you change your tie, they change it the way you change your religion – weeks of preparation, consultation, debate, hesitation, terror lest your chances in one world or the other will suffer for it. No, I think we may be sure Mrs Curtis hadn't changed her way of doing her hair that afternoon; done the way it was it had to stay till she had time to spend a week or two with her hairdresser. Besides, I've got a report from the doctor, and he says that though the hair was badly scorched there's no doubt which side the parting was.'

‘Well, then,' Ferris asked, ‘if it wasn't her we saw driving, who was it?'

‘That's what we've got to find out,' agreed Mitchell. ‘And was she murdered already then, and her dead body hidden in the car, or was she picked up further on and murdered afterwards? And if she was murdered before, was it at the Grange itself or after she had left the Grange? Gibbons was at the Grange first thing this morning, you know. His report is that Mr Esmond Bryan says Mrs Curtis got there early, though he's not sure of the exact time, and was there all afternoon. He says he is used to visits from journalists, and welcomes them, and lets them go all over the place alone, after he has done his best to answer their questions. Apparently, after Mrs Curtis had finished looking round the place she came back to his office, where he and his partners were having some sort of committee meeting that he says she rather interrupted, and after another long talk when he tried to convert her to the sun bathing cure-all fad, he walked across the lawn with her to the entrance to the old stable yard, where visitors park their cars now. That part is fully corroborated, because there is independent evidence that he was seen walking about and talking with a woman who answers to Mrs Curtis's description. Afterwards, there's proof that he did, as he says he did, go straight back to his office, ring up Lord Carripore and have a talk with him – it seems he is trying to get Lord Carripore to put money into the concern. So it seems whatever happened, happened after Bryan left her at the entrance to the car park that used to be the stable yard. We know from Owen's report that both Hunter and Keene were at the Grange during the afternoon, but both say they left early. We'll have to check up on their alibis. I'm having that done, of course. But we can't at present rule out the possibility that one or the other might have been waiting for her on the road – she knew both, and would presumably have stopped for either if she had seen them.'

‘But what motive could either of them have?' Ferris interrupted. ‘We know they're planning – at least we suspect they're planning – arson. But up to the present they've clean records. They've only got to stop it, and they're safe as houses; why should they add murder? – It's not credible.'

‘Not looking at it that way,' agreed Mitchell, ‘and if they give up their arson idea, supposing they have it, and if they have nothing to do with Mrs Curtis's murder, well, then they're all right, both of them, and no concern of ours. But you can't shut your eyes to the fact that Mrs Curtis had been to Howland Yard, and what's the explanation if not that she suspected something? And if she went to Leadeane Grange, was it because she suspected something more, and knew Keene and Hunter were meeting there? And was the result some quarrel that ended – well, as quarrels sometimes do? Of course, we've got to remember Curtis himself, and his threats, as well as his pistol he says he threw away, but that may be the one that was used for the murder – a jealous-minded man on the drink is capable of anything. And then there's the unknown motor-cyclist as well.'

‘Yes,' objected Ferris, ‘but if it was a woman who was driving the car when we saw it pass, where does she come from? No woman in this business that I can see, except Miss Frankland.'

‘How do we know it really was a woman we saw?' Mitchell asked. ‘We only had a glimpse, remember, as the thing shot by. It would have been easy enough for a man to stick on that hat covering half his face – tie it on with string to make it stick perhaps – and put on the coat with the collar turned up to cover the other half, and all the rest of his body hidden. Good enough flying by at sixty m.p.h. And easy enough to stop for a second, put back the hat and coat on the body lying at the bottom of the car, and shoot the thing full speed over the edge of the cutting. The murderer slips down after it, either sets the car on fire or makes sure it's burning already, and clears away along the track.'

They both fell silent, in the imagination of both a grisly picture enough of the little Bayard Seven dashing along the road with the murdered woman's body within and the murderer disguised in her hat and coat seated at the wheel. Then Mitchell said,

‘Somehow we've got to know why she went to Leadeane Grange – whether it was only to write it up or whether there was a reason. And then we've got to find out what happened there. You and I will go there to-morrow, Ferris, and see what we can find out, and meanwhile you can instruct Owen to go on working on his own.'

The little village of Leadeane had never been able quite to make up its mind whether to be proud of its sun bathers or to regard them as a crying scandal.

At first it had come down rather heavily on the crying scandal side. There had been much indignant talk, a suggestion of a protest meeting, of an appeal to ‘the authorities', though what authorities no one seemed to know. Rowdy youngsters of the type always eager to associate a righteous indignation with a display of hooliganism had begun to look forward to a little excitement. One or two windows of Leadeane Grange, the sun bathers' headquarters, had stones thrown through them; and there was one night when a gang of youths marched up and down before the house, beating tea trays, till they grew tired of that harmless and no doubt enjoyable but somewhat monotonous amusement.

Lately, however, public opinion had distinctly leaned towards taking an amused pride in the establishment. It had been written up once or twice, just lately in the
Morning Intelligence
, with a large photograph on the back page – inset Mr Esmond Bryan, the director and founder of the establishment and President of the Society of Sun Believers. Originally, by-the-way, this had been the Society of Sun Worshippers, but the last word had been altered on the representation of some of the local clergy, who feared misunderstanding.

After all, not every village in the Thames valley got ‘write-ups' like that in one of the most popular of the five or six national papers that direct our destinies, instruct our tastes, and dictate to us the opinions we hold with such a depth of passionate conviction. Had not the
Morning Intelligence
called Leadeane one of the loveliest of our English villages? Had there not been a reference to its alert and intelligent inhabitants? Leadeane, gratified, but not surprised, admitted silently that it owed these not undeserved compliments to Mr Bryan, and was henceforth inclined to view his establishment with a more lenient eye.

After all, why should not a man wear sandals and long hair? Surely each of us has a right to treat his own extremities as he will?

Possibly also, for this is a materialistic age, Leadeane was not altogether uninfluenced by the fact that the sun bathers brought a certain amount of money into the village. The garage proprietor, for instance, found his turnover doubled or trebled. The Leadeane Arms did well with thirsty chauffeurs, waiting about while their employers sunbathed. Then needed supplies were as much as possible bought locally, and there were often odd jobs to be done in the way of small repairs, gardening, and so on.

Nor was there anything in an establishment so well run to which reasonable exception could be taken. Inside the old boundary wall of the extensive grounds and beyond the belt of trees that lined it, there had been erected at considerable expense a wooden fence seven feet high. The sun bathers therefore were too well hidden from passers-by for any possible offence to be given. Even the curious, who, as sometimes happened, scaled the wall and penetrated the wooded belt beyond in order to peep through any chink they could find in the fence, saw little or nothing for their pains, for beyond the fence again was another, wider belt of shrubs, and flower beds, and ornamental trees, that bounded the open, grassy expanse, sloping to the south, where the actual sun bathing took place – that is, when the sun was so kind as to permit it.

On this grassy slope then when the sun was kind the members, their friends, and visitors, disported themselves, though always very strictly obeying the careful regulations laid down by Mr Bryan, whose watchful eye was ever on the alert to see they were properly carried out. Every one on joining, every visitor as well, had to read these regulations aloud, to submit to be questioned about them so that it might be certain they were understood, and to sign a promise to obey them in the letter and the spirit. The exact number of inches below the thigh that had to be covered, the exact amount of back and chest that might be exposed, were precisely laid down, and the weight and thickness of the material of which the body clothing had to be made was specified minutely. Indeed, the regulations were more strict and detailed than probably any seaside town would have dared to enforce on its mixed bathing beach.

For those more advanced, who desired to sun bathe
in puris naturalibus
, as Mr Esmond Bryan liked to put it, the strictest separation of the sexes was enforced. For the women, the flat roof of the house was reserved. On the ground floor was the general club room and the bar, as Mr Bryan called it, where, of course, no alcoholic beverages were served – still less those sources of all ill, tea and coffee and cocoa. Than those three Mr Bryan would far sooner have served neat alcohol to his patrons, or prussic acid for that matter, holding it less deadly on the whole. But your taste for tomato juice, neat or mixed, for turnip tea, for dandelion, parsley, and nettle tea, for orange juice, for a dozen other strange and presumably innocuous beverages, could be gratified; and as you quaffed your goblet of fresh nettle brew you could satisfy your hunger with nuts, carrots, many kinds of fruits, raw chopped cabbage or lettuce, and other similar foods that must have been delicious, for they all seemed to be devoured with equal gusto. On the first floor were the executive offices, where a couple of girls tapped typewriters all day long, Mr Bryan's private quarters, the committee room where the managing committee met, and beyond this and leading out of it Mr Bryan's private office that also communicated on the other side with his sitting-room. The next floor was cut off by a green baize door beyond which none penetrated, save those ladies admitted to the privileges of the roof. The door was fastened by a spring lock, and could be opened only by a key that never left the possession of the guardian, a stout severe matron, a Mrs Barrett, widow of a police constable, who kept careful watch to see that none passed but those who had the right. On the floor above were the sun-ray lamps with which the bathers had to content themselves when the sun itself was hidden. These operated in a large apartment that had been made by knocking several rooms into one, so that they occupied almost the whole of the floor space except for a row of dressing cubicles. Finally there was the flat roof itself, fitted up with couches and screens and protected by a specially erected parapet, where in the appropriate weather one could lie and roast like any Christmas turkey. And that this sort of cooking was much superior to that to be obtained from the sun-ray lamps, Mr Bryan was never tired of proclaiming.