The Beach Tragedy
Wakened abruptly by the trilling of a bell beside his bed, Sir Clinton
bitterly regretted the striving of the Lynden Sands Hotel towards
up-to-dateness, as represented by a room telephone system. He leaned
over and picked up the receiver.
“Sir Clinton Driffield speaking.”
“I'm Armadale, sir,” came the reply. “Can I see you? It's important,
sir, and I can't very well talk about it over the 'phone.”
Sir Clinton's face betrayed a natural annoyance.
“This is an ungodly hour to be ringing anyone up in his bed,
inspector. It's barely dawn. However, since you're here, you may as
well come up. My room's No. 89.”
He laid down the receiver, got out of bed, and put on his
dressing-gown. As he moved across the room and mechanically began to
brush his hair, a glance through the window showed him that the rain
of the previous night had blown over and the sky was blue. The sun had
not yet risen, and a pale full moon was low on the western horizon, A
murmur of the incoming tide rose from the beaches; and the white
crests of the waves showed faintly in the half-light.
“Well, inspector, what is it?” Sir Clinton demanded testily. “You'd
better be brief, be businesslike, and be gone, as they say. I want to
get back to bed.”
“There's been another murder, sir.”
Sir Clinton made no effort to conceal his surprise.
“Another murder! In a place this size? They must be making a hobby of
it.”
The inspector observed with satisfaction that his superior had given
up any thoughts of bed, for he was beginning to dress himself.
“This is what happened, sir,” Armadale continued. “Shortly after
midnight a man appeared at the house of the local constable—Sapcote,
you remember—and hammered on the door till Sapcote came down. He began
some confused yarn to the constable, but Sapcote very wisely put on
his clothes and brought the fellow round to me. I've got a room in a
house near by, where I'm staying till this Hay affair is cleared up.”
Sir Clinton nodded, to show that he was paying attention, but went on
swiftly with his dressing.
“I examined the man,” Armadale continued. “His name's James
Billingford. He's a visitor here—he's rented old Flatt's cottage, on
the point between here and Lynden Sands village. It seems he sometimes
suffers from sleeplessness; and last night he went out rather late,
hoping that a walk would do him some good. He strolled along the beach
in this direction, not paying very much attention to anything. Then he
heard the sound of shooting farther along the beach.”
“Does that mean one shot or several?” Sir Clinton demanded, turning
from the mirror in front of which he was fastening his tie.
“He was a bit doubtful there,” Armadale explained. “I pressed him on
the point, and he finally said he thought he heard two. But he wasn't
certain. He seems to have been mooning along, not paying attention to
anything, when he heard something. It wasn't for some seconds that he
identified the sound for what it was; and by that time he was quite
muddled up as to what he had really heard. He doesn't seem very
bright,” the inspector added contemptuously.
“Well, what happened after the Wild West broke loose on the beach?”
Sir Clinton demanded, hunting for his shoes.
“It appears,” pursued Armadale, “that he ran along the beach close to
the water's edge. His story is that he couldn't see anything on the
beach; but when he came level with that big rock they call Neptune's
Seat he saw a dead man lying on it.”
“Sure he was dead?”
“Billingford was quite sure about it. He says he was in the R.A.M.C.
in the war and knows a dead 'un when he sees one.”
“Well, what next?”
“I didn't question him much; just left him in charge of Sapcote till I
came back. Then I hunted up a couple of fishermen from the village and
went off myself along with them to Neptune's Seat. I made them stick
to the road; and when I got within a couple of hundred yards of the
rock, I left them and went down to the very edge of the water—below
Billingford's marks, as the tide was still falling—and kept along
there. There was enough moonlight to save me from trampling over
anyone's footmarks and I took care to keep clear of anything of that
sort.”
Sir Clinton gave a nod of approval, but did not interrupt the story by
any verbal comment.
“The body was there all right,” Armadale continued. “He'd been shot
through the heart—probably with a small-calibre bullet, I should
think. Dead as a doornail, anyhow. There was nothing to be done for
him, so I left him as he was. My main idea was to avoid muddling up
any footprints there might be on the sand.”
Again Sir Clinton mutely showed his approval of the inspector's
methods. Armadale continued his narrative:
“It was too dim a light to make sure of things just then, a bit
cloudy. So the best thing seemed to be to put the men I had with me to
patrol the road and warn anyone off the sands. Not that anyone was
likely to be about at that hour of the morning. I didn't think it
worth while to knock you up, sir, until it got a bit brighter; but as
soon as there seemed any chance of getting to work, I came up here.
You understand, sir, the tide's coming in; and it'll wash out any
tracks as it rises. It's a case of now or never if you want to see
them. That's why I couldn't delay any longer. We've got to make the
best of the time we have between dawn and high tide.”
Armadale paused, and looked at Sir Clinton doubtfully.
“I understand, inspector.” The chief constable answered his unspoken
query. “There's no room for fooling at present. This is a case where
we're up against time. Come along!”
As he stood aside to let the inspector leave the room in front of him,
Sir Clinton was struck by a fresh idea.
“Just knock up Mr. Wendover, inspector. He's next door—No. 90. Tell
him to dress and follow on after us. I'll get my car out, and that
will save us a minute or two in getting to the place.”
Armadale hesitated most obviously before turning to obey.
“Don't you see, inspector? All these tracks will be washed out in an
hour or two. We'll be none the worse of having an extra witness to
anything we find; and your fishermen pals would never understand what
was important and what wasn't. Mr. Wendover will make a useful witness
if we ever need him. Hurry, now!”
The inspector saw the point, and obediently went to wake up Wendover,
whilst Sir Clinton made his way to the garage of the hotel.
In a few minutes the inspector joined him.
“I waked up Mr. Wendover, sir. I didn't wait to explain the thing to
him; but I told him enough to make him hurry with his dressing. He
says he'll follow in less than five minutes.”
“Good! Get in.”
Armadale jumped into the car, and, as he slammed the door, Sir Clinton
let in the clutch.
“That tide's coming in fast,” he said anxiously. “The Blowhole up
there is beginning to spout already.”
Armadale followed in the direction of the chief constable's glance,
and saw a cloud of white spray hurtling up into the air from the top
of a headland beside the hotel.
“What's that?” he asked, as the menacing fountain choked and fell.
“Sort of thing they call a _souffleur_ on the French coast,” Sir
Clinton answered. “Sea-cave gets filled with compressed air owing to
the rise of the tide, and some water's blown off through a landward
vent. That's what makes the intermittent jet.”
About a mile from the hotel the inspector motioned to Sir Clinton to
stop at a point where the road ran close to the beach, under some
sand-dunes on the inland side. A man in a jersey hastened towards them
as the car pulled up.
“Nobody's come along, I suppose?” the inspector demanded when the
new-comer reached them. Then, turning to Sir Clinton, he added: “This
is one of the men who were watching the place for me.”
Sir Clinton looked up with a smile at the introduction.
“Very good of you to give us your help, Mr.——?”
“Wark's my name, sir.”
“. . . Mr. Wark. By the way, you're a fisherman, aren't you? Then
you'll be able to tell me when high tide's due this morning.”
“About half-past seven by God's time, sir.”
Sir Clinton was puzzled for a moment, then he repressed a smile
slightly different from his earlier one.
“Half-past eight by summer time then?” he queried.
He glanced at his wrist-watch, and then consulted a pocket diary.
“Sunrise is due in about a quarter of an hour. You gauged it neatly in
waking me up, inspector. Well, we've a good deal less than two hours
in hand. It may keep us pretty busy, if we're to dig up all the
available data before the tracks are obliterated by the tide coming
in.”
He reflected for a moment, and then turned to the fisherman.
“Would you mind going into Lynden Sands village for me? Thanks. I want
some candles—anything up to a couple of dozen of them. And a plumber's
blow-lamp, if you can lay your hands on one.”
The fisherman seemed taken aback by this unexpected demand.
“Candles, sir?” he inquired, gazing eastward to where the golden bar
of the dawn hung on the horizon.
“Yes, candles—any kind you like, so long as you bring plenty. And the
blow-lamp, of course.”
“The ironmonger has one, sir.”
“Knock him up, then, and quote me for the price—Sir Clinton
Driffield—if he makes any difficulty. Can you hurry?”
“I've got a bicycle here, sir.”
“Splendid! I know you won't waste time, Mr. Wark.”
The fisherman hurried off in search of his cycle; and in a very short
time they saw him mount and ride away in the direction of the village.
The inspector was obviously almost as puzzled as Wark had been, but he
apparently thought it best to restrain his curiosity about the candles
and blow-lamp.
“I think we'll leave your second patrol to watch the road, inspector,
while we go down on to the beach. I suppose that's the rock you were
speaking about?”
“Yes, sir. You can't see the body from here. The rock's shaped rather
like a low chesterfield, with its back to this side, and the body's
lying on what would be the seat.”
Sir Clinton glanced towards the bar of gold in the east which marked
the position of the sun below the horizon.
“I don't want to go blundering on to the sands at random, inspector.
What about a general survey first of all? If we climb this dune at the
back of the road, we ought to get some rough notion of how to walk
without muddling up the tracks. Come along!”
A few seconds took them to the top of the low mound. By this time the
dawn-twilight had brightened, and it was possible to see clearly at a
fair distance. Sir Clinton examined the beach for a short time without
making any comment.
“That must be my own track, coming along the beach from the village,
sir. The one nearest the water. I kept as close to the waves as I
could, since the tide was falling and I knew I was sticking to ground
that must have been covered when Billingford came along.”
“What about the fishermen?” Sir Clinton asked.
“I made them keep to the road, so as to leave no tracks.”
Sir Clinton approved with a gesture, and continued his inspection of
the stretch of sand below.
“H'm!” he said at last. “If clues are what you want, inspector, there
seem to be plenty of them about. I can make out four separate sets of
footprints down there, excluding yours; and quite possibly there may
be others that we can't see from here. It's lucky they aren't all
muddled up together. There's just enough crossing to give us some
notion of the order in which they were made—in three cases at least.
You'd better make a sketch of them from here, now that there's light
enough to see clearly. A rough diagram's all you'll have time for.”
The inspector nodded in compliance, and set about his task. Sir
Clinton's eye turned to the road leading from the hotel.
“Here's Mr. Wendover coming,” he announced. “We'll wait till he
arrives, since you're busy, inspector.”
In a few moments Wendover clambered up the dune.
“Did you turn back to the hotel for anything?” he inquired, as he came
up to them.
“No, squire. Why?”
“I noticed a second track of motor-wheels on the road at one point as
I came along. It faded out as I got nearer here, so I thought you
might have gone back for something or other.”
“That would have made three tracks, and not two; one out, one back,
and a final one out again.”
“So it would,” Wendover admitted, evidently vexed at having made a
mistake.
“We'll have a look at that track later on,” Sir Clinton promised. “I
took care not to put my own tracks on top of it as we came along.”
“Oh, you saw it, did you?” said Wendover disappointedly. “Confound
you, Clinton, you seem to notice everything.”
“Easy enough to see the track of new non-skids on a wet road,
especially as I didn't see my own track while I was making it. We'll
have no trouble in disentangling them, even if they do cross here and
there, for my tyres are plain ones, and a bit worn at that. I think I
ought to mention that our patrols report no traffic on the road since
they came on to it; and, as I remember that there was no rain in the
early evening, that gives us some chance of guessing the time when
that car made its tracks in the mud.”
“The rain came down about half-past eleven,” the inspector volunteered
as he finished his sketch. “I heard it dashing on my window just after
I'd gone to bed, and I went up stairs about twenty past eleven.”
Sir Clinton held out his hand for the inspector's note-book, compared
the diagram with the view before him, and passed the book to Wendover,
who also made a comparison.
“Better initial it, squire,” the chief constable suggested. “We may
need you to swear to its accuracy later on, since we'll have no
visible evidence left after this tide's come in.”
Wendover obeyed, and then returned the note-book to the inspector as
they began to descend from the dune towards the road. Halfway down,
Sir Clinton halted.
“There's another set of tracks which we couldn't see from the place we
were,” he said, pointing. “Behind that groyne running down towards the
rock. The groyne was in the line of sight up above, but we've moved to
the left a bit and you can just see one or two footprints. Over
yonder, inspector. You'd better fill them in when we get to the road
and have a clear sight of them.”
The inspector completed his diagram, and handed it to his companions
in turn for verification.
[Illustration: A diagram of various sets of footmarks. At the bottom
of the diagram is a road, labeled “To Lynden Sands” on the right.
Centered at the top of the diagram is an oval shape labeled “Neptune’s
Seat,” to which are connected five different sets of tracks. One set,
labeled “Billingford,” arrives at Neptune’s Seat from the right, and
then continues downwards towards the road. Two other sets lead from
the road to Neptune’s Seat and then back again. One is labeled
“Woman’s Light Shoes,” and the other is labeled “Woman’s Golf Shoes.”
The latter tracks connect with the road at the same points as a set of
motorcar tracks. A fourth set of footmarks, labeled “Murdered Man,”
leads from the road to Neptune’s Seat but not back. Along the left
edge of the diagram is a heavy line labeled “Groyne,” and a fifth set
of tracks, labeled “Man’s Shoes,” comes from the road alongside the
groyne and then back again.]
“We may as well start with this track,” Sir Clinton suggested. “It's a
fairly short one, and seems isolated from all the others by the
groyne.”
He stepped down on to the sand, taking care to keep well away from the
footmarks; and his companions followed his track. They walked on a
line parallel to the footprints, which ran close under the groyne. At
first the marks were hardly defined; but suddenly they grew sharp.
“This is where he hit the sand wetted by the tide, obviously,” said
Wendover. “But the trail looks a bit curious—not quite like a normal
man's walk.”
“Suppose he'd been crouching under the groyne as he went along,” Sir
Clinton suggested. “Wouldn't that account for it? Look!”
He moved on to a piece of untouched sand, bent almost double, and
began to move cautiously along. Wendover and the inspector had to
admit that his tracks were very like those of the trail beside the
groyne.
“Somebody spying on the people on the rock?” Wendover hazarded. “If
you can get hold of him, Clinton, he ought to be a useful witness.”
The inspector stooped over the footprints and scanned them closely.
“It's a clear impression. A man's shoe with a pointed toe, it seems to
be,” he announced. “Of course, if he was creeping along behind the
groyne we can't get his ordinary length of step, so we haven't any
notion of his height.”
Sir Clinton had moved on to the end of the trail.
“He evidently crouched down here for quite a while,” he pointed out.
“See the depth of these impressions and the number of times he must
have shifted the position of his feet to ease his muscles. Then he
turned back again and went back to the road, still crouching.”
He swung slowly round, looking about him. The beach was empty. Farther
along it, towards the hotel, a group of bathing-boxes had been erected
for the use of hotel visitors. Less than ten yards from the
turning-point of the footprints, on the other side of the groyne,
Neptune's Seat jutted up from the surrounding sand. It was, as the
inspector had said, like a huge stone settee standing with its back to
the land; and on the flat part of it lay the body of a man. Sir
Clinton bent down and scrutinised the surface of the sand around the
turning-point of the track for some minutes, but he made no comment as
he completed his survey. When he rose to his full height again, he saw
on the road the figure of the fisherman, Wark; and he made a gesture
forbidding the man to come down on the sand.
“Just go up and see if he's got the candles and the blow-lamp,
inspector, please. We may as well finish off here if he has.”
Armadale soon returned with the articles.
“Good fellow, that,” Sir Clinton commented. “He hasn't wasted time!”
He turned and gazed across at the advancing tide.
“We'll have to hurry up. Time's getting short. Another half-hour and
the water will be up near that rock. We'll need to take the seaward
tracks first of all. Hold the blow-lamp, will you, inspector, while I
get a candle out.”
Wendover's face showed that even yet he had not grasped the chief
constable's object. Sir Clinton extracted a candle and lit the
blow-lamp.
“Plaster of Paris gives a rotten result if you try to take casts of
sand-impressions with it,” he explained. “The classics pass rather
lightly over the point, but it is so. Therefore we turn to melted wax
or tallow, and by dropping it on very carefully in a thin layer at
first, we get something that will serve our purpose. Hence the candles
and the blow-lamp. See?”
He suited the action to the word, making casts of the right and left
footprints in the sand from the sharpest impressions he could pick
out.
“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 mustn'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 towards the rock from 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
footprints.
“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.”