Tales: Short Stories Featuring Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford (3 page)

W
HEN I SAW
her on the strand, like a mermaid who had wandered too near our world, I knew at once that she was dead. The easy, relaxed sleeper enjoying the sun and a warm breeze was very different from a stiff, angular corpse. She had been dead some time, in fact, I realized as I got within a few feet of her. Rigor mortis had set in but not faded yet.

A pretty girl, long dark hair spread under her head and across the white shirtwaist she wore, slim and nicely dressed—but not for an afternoon by the sea. Dark blue walking skirt, good black leather shoes.

I disliked leaving her there, but I had the beach to myself. It was very early and there was no one I could ask to stand watch.

Glancing at the tide, I saw that she was safe from the sea for now. I didn’t think it had washed her up, but it could take her away. And on the far side of her, someone had come this far, turned, and walked back. The prints weren’t deep enough for him—it was a man’s shoe and size—to have carried her and left her here. But he’d found her, as I had, and hurried away.

“I’ll come back,” I whispered, and turned to run the way I’d walked this morning.

Finding a constable proved harder than I expected, and then I had to explain who I was—a nurse, on leave from
Britannic
—who had driven here for a little peace and quiet. One could still hear the guns in Eastbury, on the Sussex coast, and there was very little beach for me to walk, given the barricades against invasion, but there was no time to go home to Somerset and none of my flatmates were in London just now to cheer me up. Still, it offered solitude.

We walked back together, past the church whispered to be a nest of smugglers two hundred years ago, but serene now in its wooded churchyard.

She was where I’d left her. But someone had been there in my absence. There was a third set of footprints now. And they belonged to a woman.

I pointed these out to Constable Whitaker, and he nodded.

Across the road behind us came more men, including someone I thought must be an inspector. We waited for him, and he knelt to look at the girl. He was graying, too old for the battlefield, staying on at his post like so many people striving to replace the soldiers gone off to war. But his eyes, a keen blue, were young.

“How did you know she was dead?” he asked, not looking up at me.

“I’m a nurse,” I said tartly. “We are supposed to recognize the difference between life and death.” He hadn’t introduced himself, and I wasn’t a foolish hysterical girl.

“Do you know what killed her?”

“I didn’t touch the body,” I said.

“Then let’s turn her over, shall we?”

I helped him lift her and we both saw the wound in her back.

“Knifed from behind,” he said. “But not here.”

There wasn’t enough blood for that. “Then where? And whose footprints are those? The second set wasn’t here when I discovered her.”

The inspector sent a pair of constables to follow the footsteps, then said to me, “We haven’t had many murders this spring.” He began to search the woman’s pockets, but there was nothing to identify her.

It was 1916, the war to end all wars was now two years old, and Britain was getting tired. Working flat out, trying to keep the troops supplied, struggling to bring in what we desperately needed on ships plundered by the German fleet and subs, we had all done our bit as the King had asked, but the human body wasn’t a machine, it needed rest and good food and peace. Who still had the energy for anger, much less murder?

I must have said that last aloud, because the inspector looked at me, a hard stare, and said, “Why do you think it was anger—or murder?”

“She couldn’t have stabbed herself. The elbow doesn’t bend that far. And she wasn’t in a struggle with her killer, there are no signs of cuts or scrapes or bruises that I can see. She must have turned away from him. Or her. A lover’s quarrel? Or a matter of jealousy?”

She
was
very pretty. He could see that himself.

The inspector got to his feet and introduced himself finally. His name was Robbins. “Bess Crawford,” I told him.

“Have you dealt with murder before?”

Not in England. But I’d seen it in India as a child, when we were living there. “No,” I answered, rather than explain. “But I deal with dying men and sometimes dying women. It won’t help to cry over her. I’d rather see her killer found.”

“Very commendable,” he said dryly. “Do you ever cry?”

I looked at him. “Often. But I don’t think that’s your business to ask.”

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

One of the constables came trotting back. “The earlier prints lead to the road. I couldn’t follow them there. But I did walk through the churchyard. There’s a bloody patch by one of the gravestones to the east of the church.”

“Good work.” Robbins dusted the sand from his fingers.

The doctor was just coming toward us, breathing hard as he made his way over the sandy beach. I could hear him click his tongue when he saw the girl. I understood when he said, “What a pity.”

While he finished what he had to do, we stood and stared out to sea, Robbins and I. I could tell he was thinking. And so I stayed quiet.

The other constable called to us. “I think I’ve found something, sir.”

In the palm of his hand he had a small object that I quickly realized was a woman’s earring. “It was in the sand. It could belong to anyone but…”

His voice trailed off. I looked at it with interest. An old fashioned piece. Gold, with a citrine in the bob. The part that hooked into the ear had been sprung, and it must have simply slipped out. I reached out to touch the girl’s hair. But there were gold studs in her ears, and both were there.

Robbins examined the object. “Find the match and we’ll know whether it’s important or not,” he said, deflating the hopes of the sharp-eyed, elderly constable.

“All right,” the doctor said, and Robbins signaled for a stretcher to be brought up. I stayed while they lifted her gently onto the canvas, and I saw in the sand under her body a small scrap of newspaper. Robbins had seen it too, picking it up and smoothing it out in his palm. There was part of an obituary on one side and on the other an advertisement for a companion.

“A clue?” he asked, “or was it here before she put on the beach?”

I had no answer there and he smiled.

I said, “A nurse is trained to observe.”

“So is a policeman, Miss Crawford,” he told me dryly. “And I don’t believe this will help us very much. Unless of course you’re looking to apply for a position as companion?”

“Matron would have a few words to say about that,” I informed him.

The stretcher was being taken away now, and I turned to follow it. Inspector Robbins spent a few minutes more looking around in the sand, and then caught me up just as we reached the road, where the ambulance was waiting. I watched the girl being put into it, a sheet over her face, and thought again how young she was—my age, perhaps, or a little younger. What had brought her to this place and her death? She was well enough dressed, and she didn’t appear to be starving.

As if he’d read my thoughts, Inspector Robbins said, “Someone will look for her. She’s not the sort to go missing. There’s a family somewhere.”

“It will depend on how far she’s come to take up that position as companion,” I said. “May I see that scrap of newspaper again?”

He reluctantly passed it to me, and I studied both sides.

“This obituary. It’s for a soldier. A Captain MacRae. You can trace him through the War Office, I should think. It would tell us what newspaper this came from.”

“Would you like to do my work for me, Miss Crawford?”

“No.” The ambulance was pulling away. “But I have a feeling she died because she was lured somewhere on purpose.”

“And you can infer this from a bit of newspaper?” He smiled. “Come now!”

I looked at him. “I’m sorry, Inspector. Not from the newspaper. I have parents, you see. They wouldn’t allow me go wandering about England on a whim. So hers must have thought there was a proper reason for that poor girl to leave home.”

“And what if this bit of paper was blowing down the strand early this morning, and her killer never noticed it when he put her down?”

“What if she held on to it as she died, and it slipped through her fingers as she was placed there?”

We went to the churchyard to look at the blood the constable had discovered.

“I think she may still have been alive here,” Inspector Robbins said. But there was little else to help him—or me—understand why this girl had to die.

He gestured to the road. “Walk with me back to the station. I’ll need your statement.”

I knew what was in his mind.

“I didn’t kill her. I’ve never seen her before. But I’m her age. You aren’t.”

He laughed, a deep chuckle that reminded me of the Colonel Sahib, my father. We called him that when he was pompous.

We walked in silence past the houses that faced the water, and to where the shops began, heralding the center of Eastbury. The police station was only a stone’s throw from my hotel, a small hostelry that catered to off-season travelers like me.

I wrote out my statement and signed it, then passed it to the constable set to watch over me. And then Inspector Robbins was back again. “Would you care for a cup of tea, Miss Crawford?”

I thought he must have put in some telephone calls. His manner was very different. And I was as dry as the desert. So I accepted, to see what he was up to.

We sat down in a corner of the little shop where one could choose from the scant array of baked goods and take tea with friends. I wasn’t sure Inspector Robbins was a friend. After he’d ordered jam-filled biscuits and tea, he turned back to me.

“Captain MacRae died of his wounds in Surrey. He was buried there five days ago. Sarah Elizabeth MacRae, his daughter, is missing.”

The coast of Sussex was not so very far from Surrey.

“Why do they feel she’s missing?”

“Because,” he said, “she eloped against her parents’ wishes. Her mother has sent for the police.”

“
Eloped?”

He relished my surprise. “Yes, you didn’t foresee that, did you?”

Frowning, I said, “She didn’t seem to be the sort…” I gave that some thought. “Was the Captain very rich, do you think?”

“What does that have to do with—oh, I see. Was she an heiress, worth cultivating and marrying?”

I said, “She looked so very young. Not just in age. Protected. Cosseted. Inexperienced.”

“And you, of course, are elderly and wise?” He was making fun of me.

“I’ve seen more dead bodies than you ever have, Inspector. I’ve seen wounds that would make you turn away. I’ve held men down while their limbs were cut off. It takes away a little of your youth and innocence.”

“I’m sorry,” he said for the second time. And I thought he meant it. “It’s just that I’ve never shared an inquiry with a young woman before. Young women don’t belong in police work. It’s a sordid business.”

I smiled. “And so you want to send me back to my parents and tell them not to let me involve myself in murder. But I already have. I found her.”

“And if she eloped without her parents’ blessing and was cut off without a penny, perhaps the man who did this married her for her money, then killed her when he discovered he wouldn’t see the fortune he was expecting.”

“She was stabbed in the back,” I said. “It could be that she’d already learned what an unscrupulous man he was. Possibly he was willing to wait a bit longer to see if her family changed their minds. But she was disillusioned, and wanted to go home. Annulments can be arranged.”

“Hmmm. And I’ll give you odds the man isn’t local. I’ll give you odds he thought the sea would take the body, and no one would be the wiser.”

“She was in dry sand. He should have put her where it was wet.” They had come with our tea, and I was feeling cold now. I sipped mine, warming my hands around the cup.

“I didn’t think to ask the man’s name. But that can be rectified. They would have been staying in a hotel. I’ll send my men out to ask about.”

“I don’t think he—her killer—is still in Eastbury. Would you linger?” I asked Inspector Robbins. “And who was the woman who came down to the beach?”

“Someone who doesn’t wish to be involved with the police.”

“Or an accomplice, come to see if she was still there or not.” I finished my second biscuit before I knew it. “Or perhaps she killed Sarah out of jealousy.”

“I thought we were agreed that the husband or whatever he calls himself had killed her?” His smile reached his blue eyes this time.

“I’d question both of them, in your shoes.”

He laughed again, that deep chuckle, so like my father’s. “Has anyone ever suggested that nursing wasn’t your true profession?”

“My mother, on any number of occasions.”

“She’s a wise woman, your mother.” Finishing his tea, he said, “Well, pleasant as this has been, I have work to do.”

“You won’t leave me out of the picture here at the very end!” I demanded. “After I’ve been so much help to you.”

He was standing now, and he hesitated. “Oh, very well. It won’t hurt to find out more about our mysterious suitor.”

We went back to the police station, and he put in another telephone call to Surrey. His eyes on me as he spoke, he agreed with several things being said to him, and then was busy writing something on a thick pad of paper.

I felt very out of place in this dingy room, down a dingier corridor from the main desk where a very grim old sergeant had glared at me for returning, as if once I’d given my statement, I was excess baggage to be collected only if the need arose.

Inspector Robbins put up the phone and looked at me quizzically. “Sarah’s mother is coming to see if the body we found is indeed her daughter. I rather hope it isn’t.”

“So do I, except that we’d be no farther along. And I’d rather see her taken back where she belongs. She looked so—lost there on the beach.”

“Very sentimental of you.”

I could feel myself blushing. “And the man?”

“He and his sister—they tell me the woman is his sister—live in Hastings.”

“Not very far from here,” I said. “There’s a much better strand there, but it’s very close to the net drying sheds and the fishing boats. Even if they don’t go out very often, it’s a busy place.”