Death at Rottingdean (14 page)

 

 

Patrick was grainy-eyed when he arose the next morning, for he had not gotten a great deal of sleep. The return journey from Hove in Lord Sheridan's motorcar had held a great many excitements, not the least of which had been the three tires that had gone flat, one after the other, before they passed Kemp Town and the French Convalescent Hospital. His lordship carried a supply of compressed air but it was quickly exhausted, and Patrick had earned several extra shillings for reinflating the tires with the awkward hand pump. Then both headlamps had failed just as they reached the road to Ovingdean, due (as his lordship explained) to the dampness that had partially spoiled the carbide that fueled them.

But the headlamps wouldn't have been of much use anyway, Patrick reminded himself, for a dense fog had blown in off the Channel and quickly had become so thick that it was impossible to see any distance ahead. At last, Lord Sheridan had directed him to get out and walk ten paces in front, carrying a lantern, while the motorcar crawled along behind. Away to the right, the sea muttered and chuckled among the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Picking his way, Patrick had thought unhappily of the stories he had heard of coast guards lured over the cliff's edge by smugglers who had moved the white rocks that were supposed to mark the road, and tales of carriages that had lost their way, horses and passengers tumbling to a dreadful death. He made sure of every foot of their journey.

Delayed as they were by these difficulties, they had not reached Beacon Hill and the old windmill until just before midnight. Mr. Kipling and Lord Sheridan had talked briefly with the man they encountered there—his lordship's servant, he had proved to be, whom Lady Sheridan had apparently dispatched to guard the place. Then his lordship and Mr. Kipling had gone inside with the lantern and come out again in a few minutes, as grim-faced as Patrick himself must have been when he looked upon Captain Smith, dead as a stone, and with a hole in his chest.

“There is nothing more we can do tonight,” Lord Sheridan said wearily. “Whatever is to be learned will have to wait until morning. Lawrence, you will stay here, and turn away anyone who might come.” He put his hand on Patrick's shoulder and his voice softened. “And you must go home, lad. Your mother will be very anxious. Shall I come with you and make some explanation?” “Mrs. Higgs only looks out for me, sir,” Patrick said. He grinned wryly. “Anyway, she went to the Black Horse and won't've missed me. I'll be glad to stay here,” he added, eager for more adventure.

Mr. Kipling shook his head. “Straight home with you now, Paddy,” he said firmly. “And not a word to Mrs. Higgs about what's happened.”

“Before you go,” Lord Sheridan said, fixing him with those piercing brown eyes, “I wonder if you would like to tell us what you know about this killing, or about the death of the other coast guard.” He had spoken almost conversationally and now paused, as if to give Patrick time to think about what he had said. “It will help us, you know, a very great deal.”

Patrick pressed his lips together and shook his head numbly.

“Very well, then,” his lordship said, sounding disappointed. “You must promise not to speak of this matter to anyone—not of this man's death, not of the Prince's interest, not of anything that has happened tonight.” He paused, stern, but not unkind. “If you cannot take us into your confidence, can we at least trust you to be silent, Patrick?”

Patrick chewed his lower lip, thinking of all he owed Mr. Tudwell and feeling that by swearing himself to silence he was casting his lot for these two outsiders and against the man who had been to him what his father had not. But there was Captain Smith, with a bloody bullet hole in his jacket, and the other dead coast guard, and two young children orphaned and a wife left without a husband.

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking down.

“Thank you, Patrick,” Lord Sheridan replied with grave courtesy. “I shall be here at sunrise tomorrow morning. I could use your help, if you are not afraid to be near the dead man, and if the hour is not too early for you.”

“It's not too early,” Patrick said.

“I shall depend upon you, then,” his lordship said, and shook his hand as if he were a man. “Sleep well, Patrick. And thank you for your good work tonight.”

But for all his exhaustion, Patrick had not gotten to sleep as soon as he might have liked. He had just slipped into his bed when Mrs. Higgs, definitely in her cups, returned from the Black Horse in the company of Mrs. Portney. They made a pot of tea, sat down at the kitchen table, and talked, more loudly than they might have done if they had been quite sober.

The first few words drew Patrick from his bed and down the narrow stairs. Out of sight, he listened intently until he heard Mrs. Portney's chair scrape back and the door close behind her. But before she left, he learned most of what had transpired at the Black Horse—the important part, anyway. It troubled him so deeply that he could scarcely sleep. When he did, he dreamed of Captain Smith, cheeks as white as alabaster and eyes like huge glass marbles, who seemed to glower at him out of the darkness in the corner. When he pulled the blanket over his head and turned to the wall, he saw in his mind's eye George Radford's dead face, and the bloody stain in the front of his jersey.

He dreamed of meeting Harry Tudwell and a crew of fierce-faced villagers in the tunnel that ran under the High Street. When he turned and fled the other way, he ran straight into the clutches of an unholy creature in a cloak that rustled like bats' wings. He woke, sweating and shivering, and lay awake for a long time staring at the ceiling.

But dawn, a pale, gray dawn, came at last. Still troubled, Patrick dressed and stole down to the cold, silent kitchen. Mrs. Higgs was asleep with her head on the kitchen table, her mouth open, snoring loudly. He snatched a piece of bread and washed it down with a cup of cold tea, then climbed the hill to the windmill. The grass was covered with sparkling beads of dew and the damp soaked the legs of his trousers. A hundred yards behind him, most of the village still slept in the cottages and houses nestled in a fold of the great green downs. And to the south, the Channel brooded in the mist which hid the southern horizon.

Lord Sheridan was already there, unpacking a large camera and other sorts of photographic paraphernalia. Lady Sheridan was with him, looking very pretty in a tweed suit the exact shade of her windblown auburn hair. She smiled at Patrick.

“His lordship tells me that he was very glad of your decision to go to Hove to fetch him,” she said. Her mouth quirked and her gray eyes twinkled. She leaned forward and spoke in a whisper, as if for his ears alone. “Sometimes—but just sometimes, mind—it pays to do what you think is right, rather than what you are told to do.”

Patrick felt the warm flush rising in his face. “Th—thank you, my lady,” he said shyly. He looked around. “Where is Mr. Kipling? I thought he would be here.”

“He sent a note saying that both Mrs. Kipling and the new baby are seriously ill with colds and he is needed at home,” Lady Sheridan said.

“I have deputized her ladyship to help me with the camera,” Lord Sheridan said, “and you are to be my investigative assistant.”

Lady Sheridan put her hand on his shoulder. “If you don't feel quite comfortable going inside,” she whispered, “you must say so.”

“It's all right, really,” Patrick said, standing up as tall as he could. “I've already seen him, and that was the big shock.” He looked at her. “But shan't you be afraid?” His experience of ladies was limited, but he had thought that most were delicate and would certainly faint at the sight of a corpse.

“To tell the truth,” Lady Sheridan admitted candidly, “I am a little nervous.” She smiled at him, and he thought once again how pretty she was. “But you and his lordship will be with me, so I shall be quite brave.”

Patrick smiled. He liked this lady, although her firm mouth and sharp eyes somewhat belied her soft voice and he suspected that she was only pretending to be nervous.

“Shall we begin?” Lord Sheridan said in a businesslike tone. “I intend to first photograph the scene, and then we three shall do a thorough search of the interior of the mill. We need to be finished before Sir Robert Pinckney and his officers arrive from Brighton and the villagers become aware that something is going on. Kate, you can help me set up the camera.” He handed Patrick an alcohol lamp. “You shall manage the flash lamp while I take photographs, Patrick. This is how you light it.” He showed him how to do it.

“What about footprints the killer might have left in the dirt floor?” her ladyship asked, frowning. “Won't we disturb them?”

Patrick gave Lady Sheridan a respectful look. Of course—footprints. He should have thought of that earlier. “I'm afraid I've already mucked up any there might be,” he said apologetically. “I'm sure I did a good bit of scuffing around when I was looking at him.”

Lord Sheridan nodded. “I've already had a look around, and there appear to be no distinctive prints. But we must exercise care. Walk lightly, and don't scuffle. Come now, let's get started.”

A few moments later, Patrick was standing not far from the rigid body of Captain Smith, holding the lamp in his hand. His lordship was stationed a few feet away, under the hood of a large camera set up on a wooden tripod, not very different from the camera used by the beach photographer to take pictures of the day-trippers who wanted to show their friends that they had visited the seashore. But that photographer worked with a painted scene, a lady and gentleman in bathing dress and holes to put a face through and the sea for a backdrop. Here, there was only a dead body in a dark mill, and Patrick could not imagine why his lordship should want photographs of such a grisly scene.

Lord Sheridan adjusted something on the camera. “Now, then, Patrick,” he said in a muffled voice, “let there be light!”

Patrick struck a match against the stone wall and lit the alcohol flame of the strange-looking lamp, then squeezed the rubber ball, as he had been instructed. A puff of magnesium powder flew into the flame. For an instant the shadowy interior of the old windmill was illuminated by a blinding white light, brighter than any Patrick had ever seen, and the pallid face of Captain Smith seemed to leap at him out of the darkness.

“Very good, my lad,” Lord Sheridan said, and repositioned his camera. “Now, shall we do it again?” His lordship took a dozen photographs, handing each exposed plate to her ladyship to be stowed in a leather bag. A dozen times Patrick flashed the magnesium lamp, each time turning his head to avoid seeing the awful glare of white light, like the light of the Resurrection, on the dead man's face.

With the last flash, a reflection on the floor by the wall, not far from the spot where his shillings were hidden, caught Patrick's eye. It was a shiny brass cartridge casing, almost an inch long and perhaps a third of an inch in diameter. He was about to pick it up when Lady Sheridan stopped him.

“There might be fingerprints,” she cautioned.

“Fingerprints?” Patrick asked dubiously.

“Marks made by the tip of someone's finger, and visible only with special inspection. It is a new means of identifying criminals.” She raised her voice. “Charles, come and see what Patrick has discovered. It's a bullet!”

Patrick was still not quite sure what a fingerprint might be, but he knew a casing when he saw it, thanks to the hours he had spent shooting with Mr. Tudwell. “It's a casing, not a bullet,” he said. “And it was not here two days ago, when I came to—” He was about to say,
to put two shillings behind the stone,
but thought better of it. “When I came to look at the pigeons.”

“Patrick is correct. It is a casing.” Lord Sheridan knelt and studied the shiny brass cylinder where it lay, not touching it. “But it's very odd, I must say.”

“What's odd about it?” Lady Sheridan asked, bending over for a closer look.

“Well, for one thing,” his lordship said, “the size and nature of the wound led me to assume that the coast guard was killed by a pistol.”

In spite of himself, Patrick's eyes were drawn to Captain Smith's bloody jacket. The hole, just above the dead man's silver watch-chain, was small and neat. He had seen birds and rabbits peppered with shotgun pellets. This was different.

“But this cartridge would not fit any pistol with which I'm familiar,” Lord Sheridan went on. “If indeed the weapon was a pistol, it is of a very unusual type.” He stood, hands on hips, surveying the scene. “And notice the distance between the casing and the body.” He took out and unfolded an ivory rule and measured it off. “Eight feet, four inches,” he muttered. “Remarkable. Quite remarkable.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand, Charles,” Lady Sheridan said apologetically. “What is so remarkable about the distance?”

“Look here.” His lordship went back to bend over Captain Smith's body. “There are powder bums on the victim's jacket,” he said, pointing, “where the bullet entered. This would suggest that he was shot at very close range—a foot, no more.” He cocked his head, speaking half to himself. “Why, then, is the casing
there,
by the wall, a full seven feet from the point where the gun was fired?”

“I don't see any great difficulty,” her ladyship returned. “The killer likely picked up the cartridge from the point where it fell and tossed it there.”

But Patrick was beginning to see the direction of Lord Sheridan's observations, and the logic behind them. “That's not the way it would have happened,” he said excitedly. “A man using a revolver would have left the mill with the casing still in the cylinder. He would not have broken it open, ejected the cartridge, and tossed it away. And if by some chance he broke open the pistol, he would have put the spent cartridge in his pocket, or let it fall where he stood.”