Death at Rottingdean (18 page)

“Ah, yes, indeed. There's the little mischief-maker,” the doctor said with satisfaction. He pointed to it with his fork. “Lodged just under the right clavicle, having been deflected from a rib.”

“That's it? That's the bullet that killed 'im?” the constable whispered, awed. “That little white thing?”

“That's it,” Barriston said happily. “All, all is revealed. No secrets from the prying eye of the X-ray, eh, what? Damned good thing, too. We could have missed the bloody trail and poked around for hours before we happened to stumble on it. Now let's go slice the chap open and dig out that little jewel.”

Ten minutes later, they were studying the bullet itself, which the doctor had retrieved, wiped, and laid upon Charles's open palm.

Charles pulled out a magnifying lens and studied it. “Four grooves, and a right-hand twist. And it looks to be in very good condition.”

Sir Robert pursed his mouth. “You said it struck a rib, Doctor. And yet the bullet shows no sign of deformation.”

“That's because it is copper-jacketed.” Charles replied. “Copper-jacketed with a lead core at the base.”

“Ah,” Sir Robert said, and put his hands behind his back. “One of the new military rifle bullets.” He frowned. “And yet I thought you concluded, my lord, from the distance at which it was fired, that the weapon was a pistol.”

“I hold to that conclusion.” Charles said. He turned to the doctor. “Have you ever seen a pistol that fired this sort of bullet?”

“I?” Barriston asked. “Have I ever seen such a weapon?” Whimsically he answered his own question.
“I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies, I know the croaking chorus from the
Frogs
of Aristophanes,
but I have not a shred of information about modern ammunition.”

“And this is very modern,” Sir Robert said. “I've never seen anything like it. But there's a chap in Hoggs Lane who trades in firearms. He might be able to help us.”

“Ah, Reginald Barker, an old friend of mine. Give him my regards, would you?” The doctor turned back to the dead captain. “Now, then, why don't the two of you trot along and leave me to finish up our friend here. As a matter of medical curiosity, there are one or two things I want to look into while I have him open.” He glanced at Charles. “Do I have to leave him tidy, or does it matter?”

“I can't answer that,” Charles said. “I understand that he has no wife or children in Rottingdean, but as to parents—” He shrugged.

The doctor nodded. “I'll sew him up. If there's a funeral, he'll be presentable.”

Charles dropped the bullet into a cloth bag, they took their leave, and left the doctor singing cheerfully to himself:

Eggs with Truffles
Break eight new-laid eggs into a stewpan, to these add four
ounces of fresh butter, two ounces of truffles (cut up in very
small dice, and simmered in a little butter), a gill of cream, a
small piece of glaze, a little nutmeg, mignonette-pepper, and
salt; stir this quickly with a wooden spoon over the stove-fire
until the eggs, etc., begin to thicken, when the stewpan must
he withdrawn; continue to work the eggs with the spoon, observing,
that although they must not be allowed to become
hard, as in that case the preparation would be curdled and
rendered unsightly, yet they must be sufficiently set, so as to
be fit to be dished up: to this effect it is necessary to stick the
croûtons or fleurons round the inner circle of the dish with a
little flour and white-of-egg paste; dish up the eggs in the
centre of these, and serve.

—CHARLES FRANCATELLI
The Modern Cook
(1896)

 

 

 

I
n the few days they had been at Seabrooke House, Kate had come to enjoy the place very much. It was a far cry from the huge, chill London house, suited to Kate's taste and appropriate for a retreat to the seaside. Seabrooke was a large two-story brick residence built in the middle of the last century, with a wide bow window that looked onto the High Street in the front, and a handsome wrought-iron veranda overlooking a generous walled garden in the back, whose stone walls were covered with a medley of pink and red late-blooming roses. Beyond the wall were the downs, sweeping eastward in a tranquil harmony of golden grasses and earth and sky.

The drawing room, at the front of the house, had a pretty ceiling in low-relief plasterwork and a white-manteled fireplace topped with an ornate gilt-framed mirror. Oriental carpets were spread on the parquet floor, and on them were arranged a high-backed sofa and two large armchairs, covered in a light damask. In the bow-window recess stood a pretty Pembroke table, topped with a tray on which rested the remains of the luncheon that Amelia had carried to Kate—a plate of cold chicken, a bowl of hot vegetable soup, a custard, some cheese, and a glass of wine, arranged on a lace napkin.

And against the wall beside the recess was a desk, the top pulled down to reveal Kate's Royal typewriter, which she had brought, boxed, in her luggage. It was meant to encourage her to undertake the latest Beryl Bardwell novel, which (as her publisher reminded her, lately with growing impatience) was long overdue. Perhaps, now that she was out of London and away from sad memories, she could begin. She not only had Rud Kipling's encouragement to write a story about Rottingdean's smugglers, she had as well, delivered from The Elms this morning, the draft of a poem from Kipling. The accompanying note said, “Perhaps these lines will inspire you, Kate. And I quote to you from the old Law: As soon as you find you can do anything, do something you can't.”

This was the first verse of Kipling's poem:

 

 

Kate had been intrigued by the lines, but they had not sent her to work on Beryl Bardwell's story. Still holding Kipling's poem in her hand, she sat idly in the recess, her feet pulled up and her arms clasped around her knees, gazing out the window at the peaceful, picturesque scene in the High Street: pedestrians hurrying to Mr. Grantly's grocery or Knapton's tobacco shop, or to the post office or Landsdowne's chemist shop, or to Mrs. Howard's Ladies' Fashions for Fashionable Ladies, several doors down on the opposite side. A young boy in a rough smock herded a half-dozen noisy geese up the middle of the cobblestone street, headed for the pond on the Green, and a shawled woman with two water buckets suspended from a wooden shoulder yoke visited the village pump. Two pretty young nurse-maids pushed perambulators toward the beach, and from the opposite direction came the man Kate had met earlier this morning, the self-styled antiquarian. He was still bearing his heavy pack on his back and wearing his smoked-glass eye preservers, even though heavy clouds had come up from the southwest and darkened the sky. He touched the brim of his canvas hat to the blushing, giggling nurse-maids, then strode purposefully onward, up the High Street. Where was he going? Kate wondered. Would he call at Aunt Georgie's, since she had invited him to drop in? Or was he off into the downs in search of more antiquities?

It was not quite an hour since Kate and Aunt Georgie had returned from their visit to Mrs. Radford. Lady Burne-Jones, who was usually full of observations and recommendations about everything, seemed to have been considerably chastened by the young widow's bitter outburst. She announced that she had changed her mind about a house-to-house canvas of the village, at least for the moment. Kate herself had been shaken by Mrs. Radford's indictment of the village and profoundly saddened by the sight of the lonely sheet-covered corpses on their way to Brighton in the back of the wagon, and she could not summon much in the way of conversation. Patrick, too, had said very little on the drive back to Rottingdean and had followed Aunt Georgie without a word when she remarked that she could use his help in the garden.

Kate had felt increasingly certain that Patrick knew more than he had told them and she worried that his knowledge, whatever it was, might put him in serious jeopardy from whoever had killed the two coast guards. Privately, out of Patrick's hearing, she had told Aunt Georgie what she feared and suggested that they keep a close eye on him. Aunt Georgie who seemed genuinely fond of the boy, had readily agreed, adding that she would also see if it would be possible to move him out of Mrs. Higgs's cottage and into North End House, where his comings and goings could be better governed. Kate smiled a little at Aunt Georgie's confidence, since she had the feeling that Patrick was the kind of boy who would resist governing. But it was a step in the right direction. Kate planned to have a serious talk with him once she had thought things through.

That might be some time, however, for a great many questions were tumbling about in Kate's mind in the same confused, inchoate way they often did when Beryl Bardwell was turning over the plot of one of her stories. But these events weren't part of a light, frivolous entertainment created to fill an idle reader's empty hour. They were agonizingly, irrevocably real. A family had been destroyed, a husband and father lost forever, his widow and children forced to leave their home. Two coast guards were dead—one, the captain, a trafficker in smuggled goods. At least, that was Mrs. Radford's claim. What was more, she had implicated the entire village, and her passionate words had rung with the urgent truth of her belief. “Are you blind? Are you foolish?” she had cried. “The whole village is in on it!”

Suddenly struck by the awful significance of the woman's words, Kate half rose from her seat. She must find Charles and tell him what she had heard! But he had not yet returned from Brighton, where he had gone with the Chief Constable. She would have to watch for him, and when he arrived, tell him the news as quickly as possible. He would want to question Mrs. Radford himself before she left for Manchester, and discover whether her claims had any substance. Perhaps her accusations sprang from her bitter grief.

Kate sank back on the window seat, turning over more questions in her mind. Mrs. Radford had claimed that her husband was not involved in the smuggling. What, then, was the connection between the two murdered coast guards? Had the same person killed both the guilty man and the innocent? And why were they killed? George Radford might have been stabbed in a moment of rage or fear, or in a desperate, hand-to-hand fight. But Captain Smith's relaxed posture—the man had been seated beside a wall of the abandoned mill, smoking—suggested that he had been waiting for his killer. There had been no signs of a scuffle in the dirt floor; no indication that he had attempted to defend himself, the only clue the green pasteboard ticket that Patrick said had come from the bathing machines. What of the man whom Patrick claimed to have seen taking George Radford's body out to sea? Was he the killer, or someone trying to dispose of the body? And what was to be made of Constable Woodhouse? He was the authorized representative of the Queen's law, yet he had not done his duty where George Radford's death was concerned. Why? Was the constable involved as well?

Kate frowned, thinking once again of the bitter young widow in the cottage at Black Rock. “Your village may have a good heart,” she had said, “but its soul is rotten right through.” Was she right? Was the picturesque peace of Rottingdean a camouflage for something sinister, something evil, in which the entire village was engaged? Or was it only Beryl Bardwell's vivid imagination—the fancy of a novelist—that made her think so?

There were too many questions and not a single answer, too many mysteries and not a single clue. Kate glanced once more out the window. Very little had changed, but the scene seemed darkened. Those two men on the opposite side of the street—their faces looked pinched and anxious, she thought, and their conversation seemed furtive. The scurrying woman with the large paper parcel appeared to be glancing from right to left, almost as if she expected to be apprehended. And the man coming out of the post office, ripping open an envelope and pausing to read, suddenly turned pale, thrust the letter into his pocket and hurried off. What had happened to Rottingdean's calm tranquillity? Or was she merely seeing with new eyes?

Kate stood. There was something she could do while she waited to share her news with Charles. She could talk with Mrs. Portney, who was probably in the kitchen making plans for tea and the evening meal. The cook-housekeeper might be able to shed some light on some of these events, or offer some insight into the affairs of the village. And there was the business of the brandy spill in the cellar, which had made Kate very curious. Kipling had mentioned brandy in his poem about smuggling, as well as tobacco and lace.

Kate frowned. Was Mrs. Portney involved in whatever was going on now? Well, there was only one way to find out, and that was to talk with her. She picked up the luncheon tray. When the lady of the house wanted to speak to one of her employees, the servant was usually summoned abovestairs, for it was considered beneath the lady's dignity to appear in the lower regions—and even, in some households, an intrusion on the servants' privacy. But baroness or no, when Kate was at home at Bishop's Keep, she was accustomed to having regular conferences with her cook beside the comfortable warmth of the kitchen fire. And her unexpected appearance in the Seabrooke House kitchen would have the advantage of surprise. She might catch Mrs. Portney off guard, or encounter one of the other servants—the timid little tweeny or the upstairs maid—who might be willing to tell her something.