Dorothy Sayers - Have His Carcass

‘I’m tired of giving details,’ grumbled Harriet, perversely.

‘You’ll be tireder before the police and the newspaper lads have finished with you. I have been staving off Salcombe Hardy with the greatest difficulty. He is in the lounge. The Banner and the Clarion are in the smoking-room. They had a fast car. The Courier is coming by train (it’s a nice, respectable, old-fashioned paper), and the Thunderer and the Comet are hanging about outside the bar, hoping you may be persuaded to offer them something.. The three people arguing with the commissionaire are, I fancy, local men. The photographic contingent have gone down en masse, packed in a single Morris, to record the place where the body was found, which, as the tide is well up, they will not see. Tell me all, here and now, and I will organise your publicity for you.’

‘Very. well,’ said Harriet, ‘I tell thee all, I can no more.’

She pushed her plate aside and took up a clean knife.

‘This,’ she said, is the coast-road from Lesston Hoe to Wilvercombe. The shore bends about like this—’ She took up the pepper-pot.

‘Try salt,’ suggested Wimsey. ‘Less irritatin’ to the nasal tissues.’

‘Thank you. This line of salt is the beach. And this piece of bread is a rock at low-water level.’

Wimsey twitched his chair closer to the table.

‘And this salt-spoon,’ he said, with childlike enjoyment,

‘can be the body.’

He made no comment while Harriet told her story, only interrupting once or twice with a question about times and distances. He sat drooping above the sketch-map she was laying out among the breakfast-things, his eyes invisible, his long nose seeming to twitch like a rabbit’s with concentration. When she had finished, he sat silent for a moment and then said

‘Let’s get this clear. You got to the place where you had lunch when, exactly?’

‘Just one o’clock. I looked at my watch.’

‘As you came along the cliffs, you could see the whole shore, including the rock where you found the body.’

‘Yes; I suppose I could.!

‘Was anybody on the rock then?’

‘I really don’t know. I don’t even specially remember noticing the rock. I was thinking about my grub, you see, and I was really, looking about at the side of the road for a suitable spot to scramble down the cliff. — My eyes weren’t focused for distance’

‘I see. That’s rather a pity, in a way.’

‘Yes, it is; but I can tell you one thing. I’m quite sure there was nothing moving on the shore. I did give one glance round just before I decided to climb down. I distinctly remember thinking that the beach seemed absolutely and gloriously deserted — a perfect spot for a picnic. I hate picnicking in a crowd.’

‘And a single person on a lonely beach would be a crowd?’

‘For picnicking purposes, yes. You know what people are. The minute, they see anyone having a peaceful feed they gather in from the four points of the compass and sit down beside one, and the place is like the Corner House in the rush hour.’

‘So they do. That must be the symbolism of the Miss Muffet legend.’

‘I’m positive there wasn’t a living soul walking or standing or sitting anywhere within eyeshot. But as to the body’s being already on, the rock, I wouldn’t swear one way or the other. It was a goodish way out, you know, and when I saw it from the beach I took the body for seaweed just at first. I shouldn’t make a mental note of seaweed.’

‘Good. Then at one o’clock the beach was deserted, except possibly for the body, which may have been, there making a noise like seaweed. Then you got down the side of. the cliff. Was the rock visible from where you had lunch?’

‘No, not at all. There is a sort of little bay there — well, scarcely that. The cliff juts out a bit, and I was sitting close up against the foot of the rocks; so as to have something to lean against. I had my lunch it took about half an hour’ altogether.’

‘You heard nothing then? No footsteps or anything? ‘No car?’

‘Not a thing,’

‘And then?’

‘Then I’m afraid I dozed off.’’

‘What could be more natural? For how long?’

‘About half an hour. When I woke I looked at my watch again.’

‘What woke you?’

‘A sea-gull squawking round after bits of my sandwich.’ ‘That makes it two o’clock.’

‘Yes.’

‘Just a minute. When I arrived here this morning it was a bit early for calling on one’s lady friends, — so I’ toddled down to the beach and made friends with one of the fishermen. He happened to mention that it was low tide off the Grinders yesterday afternoon at 1.15 Therefore when you arrived, the tide was practically out. When you woke, it had turned and had been coming in for about forty-five minutes. The foot of your rock — which, by the way, is locally named The Devil’s Flat-Iron is, only uncovered for about half an hour between tide and tide, and that only, at the top of springs, if you understand that expression,’

‘I understand perfectly, but I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

‘Well, this — that if anybody had come walking along the edge of the water to the rock, he could have got there without leaving any footprints.’

‘But he did leave footprints. Oh, I see. You’re thinking of a possible murderer.’

‘I should prefer it to be murder, naturally. Shouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. Well, that’s a fact. A murderer might have walked along from either direction, if he did it that way. If he came from Lesston Hoe he must have arrived after me, because I could see the shore as I walked along, and there was no one walking there then. But he could have come at any time from the Wilvercombe side.’

‘No, he couldn’t,’ said Wimsey: ‘He wasn’t there, you said, at one o’clock,’

‘He might have, been standing on the seaward side of the Flat-Iron.’

‘So he might. Now, how about the corpse? We can tell pretty close when he came.’

‘How?’

‘You said there were no wet stains on his shoes. Therefore he went dry-shod to the rock. We only have to find out exactly when the sand on the landward side of the rock is uncovered.’

‘Of course. How stupid of me. Well, we can easily find that out. Where had I got to?’

‘You had been awakened by the cry of a sea-gull.’

‘Yes. Well, then, I walked round the point of the cliff and out to the rock, and there he was.’

‘And at that moment there was nobody within sight?’

‘Not a single soul, except a man in a boat’

‘Yes the boat. Now, supposing the boat had come in when the tide was out, and the occupant had walked or waded up to the rock?’

‘That’s possible, of course. The boat was some way out’

It all seems to depend on when the corpse got there. We must find that out.’

‘You’re determined it should be murder,’

Well, suicide seems so dull. And why go all that way to commit suicide?

‘Why riot? Much tidier than doing it in your bedroom or anywhere like that. Aren’t we beginning at the wrong end? If we knew who the man was, we might find he had left an explanatory note behind him to say why he was going to do it. I daresay the police know all about it by now.’

‘Possibly,’ said Wimsey in a dissatisfied tone.

‘What’s worrying you?’

’Two things. The gloves. Why should anybody cut his throat in gloves?’

‘I know. That bothered me too. Perhaps he had some sort of skin disease and was accustomed to wearing gloves for everything. I ought to have looked. I did start to take the gloves off, but they were messy.’

‘Um! I — see you still retain a few female frailties. The second point that troubles me is the weapon. Why should a gentleman with a, beard sport a cut-throat razor?’