V

Holiday Task

When he had made certain, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that there was nothing to be done, he ran out of the enclosure and a few yards along the footpath. Down below, by the causeway, he saw Coombe, in bis shirt sleeves, with his pipe in his mouth, standing on the end of the village jetty. He looked up, saw Alleyn, waved and then straightened. Alleyn beckoned urgently and signaled that they would meet at the top of the hotel steps. Coombe, seeing him run, himself broke into a lope, back down the jetty and across the causeway. He was breathing hard when he got to the top of the steps. When Alleyn had told him, he swore incredulously.

“I’ll go into the hotel and get one of those bloody disks,” Alleyn said. “I had to lock the gate, of course. And I’ll have to get a message to Miss Pride. I’ll catch you up. Who’s your Div. Surgeon?”

“Mayne.”

“Right.”

There was no one in the office. He went in, tried the drawers, found the right one, and helped himself to half a dozen disks. He looked at the switchboard, plugged in the connection and lifted the receiver. He noticed, with a kind astonishment, that his hand was unsteady. It seemed an eternity before Miss Emily answered.

He said: “Miss Emily? Roderick. I’m terribly sorry but there’s been an accident and I’m wanted here. It’s serious. Will it be a great bore if we delay your leaving? I’ll come back later and explain.”

“By all means,” Miss Emily’s voice said crisply. “I shall adjust. Don’t disarrange yourself on my account!”

“You admirable woman,” he said and hung up.

He had just got back on the lawful side of the desk when the hall porter appeared, wiping his mouth. Alleyn said: “Can you get Dr. Mayne quickly? There’s been an accident. D’you know his number?”

The porter consulted a list and, staring at Alleyn, dialled it.

“What is it, then?” he asked. “Accident? Dearrr, dearr!”

While he waited for the call to come through, Alleyn saw that a notice, similar to the one that had been tied to the enclosure, was now displayed in the letter rack. Warning. And signed Emily Pride. He had started to read it when the telephone quacked. The porter established the connection and handed him the receiver.

Alleyn said: “Dr. Mayne? Speaking? This is a police call. I’m ringing for Superintendent Coombe. Superintendent Alleyn. There’s been a serious accident at the spring. Can you come at once?”

“At the spring?”

“Yes. You’ll need an ambulance.”

“What is it?”

“Asphyxia following cranial injury.”

“Fatal?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.”

He hung up. The porter was agog. Alleyn produced a ten-shilling note. “Look here,” he said, “can you keep quiet about this? I don’t want people to collect. Be a good chap, will you, and get Sergeant Pender on the telephone. Ask him to come to the spring. Say the message is from Mr. Coombe. Will you do that? And don’t talk.”

He slid the note across the desk and left.

As he returned by the footpath, he saw a car drive along the foreshore to the causeway. A man with a black bag in his hand got out.

Coombe, waiting by the gate, was peering into the enclosure.

“I may have broken the slot machine,” Alleyn said. But it worked, and they went through.

He had dragged the body to the verge of the pool and masked it, as well as he could, by the open umbrella.

Coombe said: “Be damned, when I saw that brolly, if I didn’t think I’d misheard you and it was the other old — Miss Pride.”

“I know.”

“How long ago, d’you reckon?”

“I should have thought about an hour. We’ll see what the Doctor thinks. He’s on his way. Look at this, Coombe.”

The neck was rigid. He had to raise the body by the shoulders before exposing the back of the head.

“Well, well,” said Coombe. “Just fancy that, now. Knocked out, fell forward into the pool and drowned. That the story?”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it? And, see here.”

Alleyn lifted a fold of the dripping skirt. He exposed Miss Cost’s right hand, bleached and wrinkled. It was rigidly clenched about a long string of glittering beads.

“Cor!” said Coombe.

“The place is one solid water of footprints, but I think you can pick hers: leading up to the shelf. The girl dropped the beads yesterday from above, I remember. They dangled over this ledge, half in the pool. In the stampede, nobody rescued them.”

“And she came back? To fetch them?”

“It’s a possibility, wouldn’t you think? There’s her handbag on the shelf.”

Coombe opened it. “Prayerbook and purse,” he said.

“When’s the first service?”

“Seven, I think.”

“There’s another at nine. She was either going to church, or had been there. That puts it at somewhere before seven for the first service, or round about 8:15 if she had attended it, or was going to the later one. When did it stop raining? About 8:30, I think. If those are her prints, they’ve been rained into, and she’d got her umbrella open. Take a look at it.”

There was a ragged split in the wet cover, which was old and partly perished. Alleyn displayed the inside. It was stained round the split, and not with rain water. He pointed a long finger. “That’s one of her hairs,” he said. “There was a piece of rock in the pool. I fished it out and left it on the ledge. It looked as if it hadn’t been there long, and I think you’ll find it fits.”

He fetched it and put it down by the body. “Any visual traces have been washed away,” he said. “You’ll want to keep these exhibits intact, won’t you?”

“You bet I will,” said Coombe.

There was a sound of footsteps and a metallic rattle. They turned and saw Dr. Mayne letting himself in at the turnstile. Coombe went down to meet him.

“What’s it all about?” he asked. “ ’Morning, Coombe.”

“See for yourself, Doctor.”

They joined Alleyn, who was introduced. “Mr. Alleyn made the discovery,” said Coombe and added: “Rather a coincidence.”

Dr. Mayne, looking startled, said: “Very much so.”

Alleyn said: “I’m on a visit. Quite unofficial. Coombe’s your man.”

“I wondered if you’d been produced out of a hat,” said Dr. Mayne. He looked towards the spring. The umbrella, still open, masked the upper part of the body. “Good God!” he ejaculated. “So it has happened, after all!”

Coombe caught Alleyn’s eye and said nothing. He moved quickly to the body and exposed the face. Dr. Mayne stood stock-still. “Cost!” he said. “Old Cost! Never!”

“That’s right, Doctor.”

Dr. Mayne wasted no more words. He made his examination. Miss Cost’s eyes were half-open and so was her mouth. There were flecks of foam about the lips and the tongue was clenched between the teeth. Alleyn had never become completely accustomed to murder. This grotesque shell, seconds before its destruction, had been the proper and appropriate expression of a living woman. Whether here, singly, or multiplied to the monstrous litter of a battlefield, or strewn idiotically about the wake of a nuclear explosion or dangling with a white cap over a cyanosed, tongue-protruding mask — the destruction of one human being by another was the unique offense. It was the final outrage.

Dr. Mayne lowered the stiffened body on its back. He looked up at Alleyn. “Where was she?”

“Face down and half-submerged. I got her out in case there was a chance, but obviously there was none.”

“Any signs of rigour?”

“Yes.”

“It’s well on its way, now,” said Dr. Mayne.

“There’s the back of the head, Doctor,” said Coombe. “There’s that too.”

Dr. Mayne turned the body and looked closely at the head. “Where’s the instrument?” he asked. “Found it?”

Alleyn said: “I think so.”

Dr. Mayne glanced at him. “May I see it?”

Alleyn gave it to him. It was an irregular, jagged piece of rock about the size of a pineapple. Dr. Mayne turned it in his hands and stooped over the head. “Fits,” he said.