To Perish in Penzance (7 page)

But I wouldn't, and neither would Alan.

I went back and sat on my rock, staring this time at nothing. I was very much afraid Alan was going to worry himself to a frazzle over this, fretting all the more because he could play no active role in the investigation of this crime. He'd blame himself for not solving the first murder, all those years ago. He'd wonder if this death was related, and he'd turn everything over in his mind, trying to force from his memory some tiny fact that would help. He'd feel old and ineffectual and useless.

Well, I wouldn't let that happen! I slapped my hand on my knee. “I will not have it!” My shout startled a gull that had once more ventured too close. It flapped away with a scream that, in turn, startled me.

Where
was
Alan? I looked at my watch, but since I had no idea when he'd left, the time shown on the dial told me nothing. I felt as though he'd been gone an hour, but common sense told me that probably no more than fifteen minutes or so had elapsed. We'd taken—what?—about ten to come down from the head of the path, but we'd moved slowly on my account. Alan would have gone up faster, but then he had to get to the car, make the phone call, wait for the police to arrive, and escort them down.

Another twenty minutes, then, at a bare minimum. For the first time in my life I wished I were a smoker. A cigarette would at least give me something to do, and maybe a nicotine hit would keep me from thinking too much?

I had never smoked. That dubious comfort was denied me. I sat and watched the waves.

The tide was coming in.

Fast.

I stood, in an instant panic again. What did I know about tides?

Precious little. I'd spent my first sixty-odd years living in southern Indiana, many hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. I had a vague idea that there were two high tides a day and two low tides, but that they were not at exact six-hour intervals; that's why seaside places issued tide tables. The figure of half an hour stuck in my mind. Was it six and a half hours from high tide to low, more or less? Or twelve and a half from one high tide to the next? Or did the variation work the other way? Could I somehow work it out from when low tide was three days ago, at Marazion?

Well, no, I couldn't. I was too ignorant. All I knew for certain was that each powerful wave that swept into the cove came up a little higher than the one before. Where Alan and I had walked dry shod to the cave, wavelets now lapped. Water licked at the base of what I had come to think of as “my” rock. As I watched in horror, an especially large wave rolled into the cave, going back a few inches before retreating.

It couldn't—it mustn't—

I took deep breaths again.
Think
, Dorothy!

I could do nothing about the tide. King Canute couldn't stop it, and neither could I. Nor could I blunder into the cave to try to rescue Alexis, and not only because of my ridiculous phobia. Much as I was sickened by the idea of the water reaching her, I tried to be reasonable. The sea couldn't harm her now, and if it destroyed evidence, well, that was a serious matter, but I would certainly mess things up much worse if I tried to move her. When someone has died, the very first rule of investigation, as I knew from the hundreds of mysteries I'd read, was “Don't move the body.”

Mysteries. A thought was swimming to the surface, struggling for attention. Don't force it. Think about something else. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, recited the multiplication tables, tried to remember state capitals …

Have His Carcase
, that was it. Dorothy L. Sayers. The body on the big rock, on the remote beach. Harriet Vane found it and then worried because the rising tide might wash the body away before she could get to a telephone and summon the police.

So she took pictures.

I reached in the pocket of my jacket. Yes, it was still there. Only a throwaway camera, but it had a flash. Considerably better than the thirties model Harriet had had at her disposal.

Clutching my stick and gritting my teeth, I splashed through the water, much deeper now, and entered the cave.

How far in would I have to go? How far in could I force myself to go?

There's no danger, I told myself. The tide will never rise anywhere near the roof of the cave. You won't drown. There is no reason whatever to be afraid.

I was sweating profusely, and I couldn't seem to get enough air in my lungs.

You are a photographer, a technician. You have no emotions. You are a recording device
. I repeated the phrases over and over in my mind like a mantra as I pointed and shot, pointed and shot, working almost blind in the dimness. The body first, from as close as I could make myself go. Then the cave, pointing the camera in all directions. The rocky, rapidly disappearing floor. The walls. The area behind the body—I wouldn't think of it as Alexis—from two different angles.

When I had run out of film, I secured the camera in the breast pocket of my shirt. It made an odd bulge, but it would be safe and dry there, with the jacket zippered shut. Then I waded out of the cave, staggering as a wave reached nearly to my knees and tried to knock me off my feet.

Once I was out on the rocks I sought a secluded corner, far enough up the shore to be out of the water at the moment, but close enough to the sea that the tide would reach it soon. Having found an appropriate spot, I was able to relax and let myself lose my breakfast.

I stood taking deep breaths of the lovely, cool air that surrounded me and looking at the vast sea, the ocean that stretched out without an enclosed space between here and France, or so I supposed. I couldn't seem to stop shaking. It wasn't the body, I thought as I wiped my mouth. That wasn't so very awful, if I could forget for a while that it was someone I had known and liked. No blood or other obvious horrors. And the cave was actually just a cleft in the rock, not really a cave, not a deep, dark cavern with the earth pressing down on one's head …

My body discovered that there was a little more in my stomach, and purged itself anew.

When it was all over, I had to rinse my mouth with seawater. It tasted terrible, and the salt burned my lips and cheeks, but it was better than the other taste. Then I found a higher rock and sat to wait for my husband.

He came about ten minutes later, accompanied by the scene-of-crime officers, several men in uniform and plain clothes and two in wet suits. He showed them the cave and then hurried back to me.

“All right, love?”

“I was sick,” I said. “Over there. I thought maybe I should tell you, so if they find it, they'll know it was me.”

He sat and reached an arm around my shoulders. “I'm sorry. I was afraid you'd be upset.”

I leaned against his arm. “My dear man, sometimes you are so very English! Of course I'm upset about Lexa, but that's not what made me sick. I had to go back into the cave.”

I explained about the tide and the pictures. “I have no idea whether they'll do any good. I don't even know what they'll show. It was dark in there. I hope the flash gave enough light, but of course when it flashed I was blinded and couldn't see what I hope the camera saw. I'm sorry I had to go tromping around in there, but I couldn't just let the sea take away evidence, in case there's any to take away.”

“I'm glad you went in, Dorothy, and I must say it was very brave of you. It took much longer for Penzance to organize a team than it ought to have done, and I was concerned about the tide, too. They're going to have a job getting her out, now, without getting her wet.”

“Will it matter so much? I mean …” I had to swallow before I could go on. “Was—was the body dry when you first looked at it? Or had she been there for the last high tide?”

“I don't think so. Her clothing looked dry. Her hair was in a little pool, but that's probably a tidal pool that's more or less permanent.”

“So no—no fish?” I hated to ask, but I had to.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Thank God!”

“Yes.”

He had been watching me, but now his gaze shifted. He focused his whole attention, his whole being, on what he could see of the working scene in and around the cave.

I could feel his tension. Oh, how he wanted to be there with them!

“I'll be all right here, Alan, if you want to go down.”

“I'd only be in the way.”

His voice was oddly distant, and I could have bitten my tongue. Of course. They wouldn't let him in, would they? It wasn't concern for me that kept him by my side, it was fear of rejection. He was out of the loop, and he was hating it.

There was a question begging to be asked. I wondered if I dared. Would it make him feel even more useless, or would it distract him from his situation?

I made up my mind and cleared my throat. “I'm almost afraid to ask, but did you see enough, when you first went into the cave, to tell how she died? I tried not to look when I was taking the pictures, but of course I couldn't help seeing that there wasn't any blood. Though I suppose it might have been washed away.”

“I don't think so. I didn't go near enough to make any sort of examination, but I saw no injuries or wounds of any kind. No bruising or lacerations as if she'd somehow fallen down the cliff. No gunshot wounds, at least not unless there was an entrance wound on her back, with no frontal exit wound. That's possible, of course, but a cave is a foolish place to use a firearm.”

“Because of the ricochet problem?”

“That, yes, but these sea caves are unstable, as well. The roof, the whole lot for that matter, could come down.”

I shuddered. The thought of a cave-in raised my claustrophobic sensibilities by several orders of magnitude. I took a few very deep breaths, trying not to let him notice, trying not to think about the cave.

They worked as fast as they could, I'm sure, but it was some time before they brought out a stretcher with a body bag lying on it. An ugly, shapeless black bag. It was horrible that the beauty that had been Alexis was reduced to this.

“Oh, heavens, Alan! Has anyone told her mother? She'll be frantic. She'll know that Lexa's missing—”

“I told the constable who answered the phone that I could identify the body positively, and that someone needed to notify Mrs. Crosby. I'm sure she knows by now.”

He spoke with a remote courtesy, his gaze still fixed on the police activity. I stood up. “Then I think we should go back to the hotel. Now. Someone needs to be with that poor woman until family can get here. Alan, let's go.”

He looked at me then, looked as if he wasn't quite sure who I was, and then made a curious little gesture and said in an almost normal voice, “Yes, of course. If you'll give me your camera, I'll just speak to the DCI for a moment.”

The detective chief inspector was nearby. I heard Alan tell him about the pictures, and about the little pile of unsavory evidence I had added to the scene. Then my husband, the former chief constable of Belleshire, very formally handed over my camera and asked if he was still needed as a witness, and was very formally told that he might leave.

We climbed the cliff path in silence.

W
ITH
what I thought was commendable restraint, I made no further comment on the situation until we were on the road back to Penzance.

“So. What have you told them?”

“Only that we found the body, who it was, under what circumstances we found it. Later they'll ask us a good many questions about when we last saw Lexa, her frame of mind at the time, how well we knew her, and so on.”

“How well we knew her! That sounds like something you'd ask a suspect.”

“No, it's just routine. They have to establish the facts about her before they can even begin to establish whether they're dealing with a crime or an accident.”

“But it's perfectly obvious—”

“Nothing is obvious, Dorothy, except that Alexis Adams is dead. She hadn't been happy; even we could see that. We've seen her worried, upset, depressed. This could be anything.”

“Are you saying she committed suicide?”

Alan didn't reply for a moment. I looked at him and saw an expression on his face I'd never seen before. When he did speak, his voice was tightly controlled. “I have no idea whether she committed suicide, suffered an accident, or was murdered.”

It was the sort of voice I'd used, back when I was a teacher, to a fourth-grader who had pushed me almost beyond the limit of endurance.

I, too, was silent for a time. Long enough to call myself seventeen varieties of idiot. Would I never learn when to keep my mouth shut?

When I did speak, I tried very hard to sound calm and sensible. “Alan, I'm sorry. That was stupid and insensitive. I'll leave it alone, I promise.”

He sighed, but said nothing the rest of the way to the hotel. I was back in the room with a brooding husband, and had changed into clean clothes, before I ventured a question. “Do you think I should go see Mrs. Crosby? I hate the thought of her being alone, but I don't want to intrude.”

“I can't see that it would hurt to try.” His voice was neutral; I could gather nothing from it. “If she doesn't want company, I imagine she'll tell you so.”

“Yes. Well. I guess I'll call her room and check.”

An unfamiliar voice answered the phone. I identified myself, said I was an acquaintance and was aware of the tragedy and asked how Mrs. Crosby was feeling.

“Not very well, Mrs. Martin. I'm WPC Danner, and I'm staying with her for a little while, but she did mention your name, and I believe she'd like to see you.”

“She hasn't been given a sedative?”

“She refused one.”

“I'll be right there, then. What's the room number?”

Mrs. Crosby's room was immediately above ours and was almost identically furnished. It should have been as pleasant as ours, sea view and all. But the draperies had been drawn, shutting out air and sunshine, and the gloom of sorrow made the dim atmosphere even darker and drearier.