the sergeant’s eye said was, “God give me patience!” What his tongue said was, “It all sounds a bit strange to me, Mr.—er—”
“Tisdall.”
“Tisdall. Can you tell me how the lady got here this morning?”
“Oh, yes. By car.”
“By car, eh? Know what became of the car?”
“Yes. I stole it.”
“You what?”
“I stole it. I’ve just brought it back. It was a swinish thing to do. I felt a cad so I came back. When I found she wasn’t anywhere on the road, I thought I’d find her stamping about here. Then I saw you all standing round something—oh, dear, oh dear!” He began to rock himself again.
“Where were you staying with this lady?” asked the sergeant, in exceedingly businesslike tones. “In Westover?”
“Oh, no. She has—had, I mean—oh dear!—a cottage. Briars, it’s called. Just outside Medley.”
“ ’Bout a mile and a half inland,” supplemented Potticary, as the sergeant, who was not a native, looked a question.
“Were you alone, or is there a staff there?”
“There’s just a woman from the village—Mrs. Pitts—who comes in and cooks.”
“I see.”
There was a slight pause.
“All right, boys.” The sergeant nodded to the ambulance men, and they bent to their work with the stretcher. The young man drew in his breath sharply and once more covered his face with his hands.
“To the mortuary, Sergeant?”
“Yes.”
The man’s hands came away from his face abruptly.
“Oh, no! Surely not! She had a home. Don’t they take people home?”
“We can’t take the body of an unknown woman to an uninhabited bungalow.”
“It isn’t a bungalow,” the man automatically corrected. “No. No, I suppose not. But it seems dreadful—the mortuary. Oh, God in heaven above!” he burst out, “why did this have to happen!”
“Davis,” the sergeant said to the constable, “you go back with the others and report. I’m going over to—what is it?—Briars? with Mr. Tisdall.”
The two ambulance men crunched their heavy way over the pebbles, followed by Potticary and Bill. The noise of their progress had become distant before the sergeant spoke again.
“I suppose it didn’t occur to you to go swimming with your hostess?”
A spasm of something like embarrassment ran across Tisdall’s face. He hesitated.
“No. I—not much in my line, I’m afraid: swimming before breakfast. I—I’ve always been a rabbit at games and things like that.”
The sergeant nodded, noncommittal. “When did she leave for a swim?”
“I don’t know. She told me last night that she was going to the Gap for a swim if she woke early. I woke early myself, but she was gone.”
“I see. Well, Mr. Tisdall, if you’ve recovered I think we’ll be getting along.”
“Yes. Yes, certainly. I’m all right.” He got to his feet and together and in silence they traversed the beach, climbed the steps at the Gap, and came on the car where Tisdall said he had left it: in the shade of the trees where the track ended. It was a beautiful car, if a little too opulent. A cream-coloured two-seater with a space between the seats and the hood for parcels, or, at a pinch, for an extra passenger. From this space, the sergeant, exploring, produced a woman’s coat and a pair of the sheepskin boots popular with women at winter race-meetings.
“That’s what she wore to go down to the beach. Just the coat and boots over her bathing things. There’s a towel, too.”
There was. The sergeant produced it: a brilliant object in green and orange.
“Funny she didn’t take it to the beach with her,” he said.
“She liked to dry herself in the sun usually.”
“You seem to know a lot about the habits of a lady whose name you didn’t know.” The sergeant inserted himself into the second seat. “How long have you been living with her?”
“Staying with her,” amended Tisdall, his voice for the first time showing an edge. “Get this straight, Sergeant, and it may save you a lot of bother: Chris was my hostess. Not anything else. We stayed in her cottage unchaperoned, but a regiment of servants couldn’t have made our relations more correct. Does that strike you as so very peculiar?”
“Very,” said the sergeant frankly. “What are these doing here?”
He was peering into a paper bag which held two rather jaded buns.
“Oh, I took these along for her to eat. They were all I could find. We always had a bun when we came out of the water when we were kids. I thought maybe she’d be glad of something.”
The car was slipping down the steep track to the main Westover-Stonegate road. They crossed the high-road and entered a deep lane on the other side. A signpost said “Medley 1, Liddlestone 3.”
“So you had no intention of stealing the car when you set off to follow her to the beach?”
“Certainly not!” Tisdall said, as indignantly as if it made a difference. “It didn’t even cross my mind till I came up the hill and saw the car waiting there. Even now I can’t believe I really did it. I’ve been a fool, but I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Was she in the sea then?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t go to look. If I had seen her even in the distance I couldn’t have done it. I just slung the buns in and beat it. When I came to I was halfway to Canterbury. I just turned her round without stopping, and came straight back.”
The sergeant made no comment.
“You still haven’t told me how long you’ve been staying at the cottage?”
“Since Saturday midnight.”
It was now Thursday.
“And you still ask me to believe that you don’t know your hostess’s last name?”
“No. It’s a bit queer, I know. I thought so, myself, at first. I had a conventional upbringing. But she made it seem natural. After the first day we simply accepted each other. It was as if I had known her for years.” As the sergeant said nothing, but sat radiating doubt as a stove radiates heat, he added with a hint of temper, “Why shouldn’t I tell you her name if I knew it!”
“How
