‘We could have, but the next Durban boat doesn’t leave until next week. One of the ships had to go in for repairs, I think, so they lost a sailing.’
‘And why did you come to Salcombe in the first place? Why not hide away in a big city like London or Bristol?’
‘I’m not sure you’re going to believe this,’ said Jimmy, ‘but Mr Allen came here once as a child and liked it so much he decided to come back.’
‘Why didn’t you go with him, with Mr Allen? Why were you left here trying to escape disguised as a policeman?’
‘He said that if I was with him and he was caught, the police would assume I was guilty too, even though I hadn’t committed any crimes. He thought I’d have a better chance on my own.’
‘Tell me, Jimmy, is there a link of some sort between you and Mr Allen?’
There was a pause. Finally Jimmy said, ‘He’s my grandfather, Lady Powerscourt. My father died when I was very young so he’s more or less taken his place. I think he brought me along because he liked being with me, one of his own flesh and blood.’
The water level in the William and Emma dropped gradually while the men watched the drama by Salcombe Bar. The lifeboat had almost stopped moving now. The cloud had lifted again and the moon shone over the mouth of the Salcombe Estuary. The Morning Glory had about fifty yards left before she hit the bar. Several members of the William and Emma were praying now, their eyes tightly closed, their lips moving. Usually they were called out here after disaster struck. Now they were looking at disaster unfolding in front of them. Nat Gibson was leaning out over the side to get a better view. He told the crew that the yacht was carrying far too much sail. A long way behind them the grey bulk of HMS Sprightly maintained her watch over the proceedings. Then it happened. Morning Glory capsized. She keeled over very slowly like a drunken man. There was a tearing, screeching sound as if a mast or some of the rigging had broken free. There was one very long scream. There was no sign of the man aboard.
‘What should we do, in heaven’s name?’ asked Robbie Barton. ‘Should we head over there and see if we can find him?’
Nat Gibson was definite. ‘No, we shouldn’t. We’re in no fit state to rescue anybody. It’ll be all we can do to rescue ourselves.’
‘What would you say are the chances of his being alive?’ Inspector Timpson spoke very quietly.
‘Very small,’ said Nat Gibson. ‘Tiny. Many ships have been lost like that on the Salcombe Bar over the years. There have never been any survivors, never.’
Robbie Barton looked sad as he reorganized his men. No lifeboatman, trained to rescue people from the sea, gives up easily on what he regards as his primary duty. Half, including Powerscourt and the Inspector, were to row. The rest kept bailing. Robbie sent up two great flares to alert HMS Sprightly so she might be able to send out a rescue mission to the remains of the Morning Glory.
‘Twilight and evening bell,’ Nat Gibson was pronouncing an epitaph over the missing man, ‘And after that the dark!/And may there be no sadness of farewell,/When I embark.’
It took a long time for the William and Emma to limp into the harbour. They dropped Powerscourt and the Inspector at the Yacht Club landing stage and staggered off to their own quarters in the centre of the town. Inspector Timpson was assured that the local doctor, who treated everybody rescued by the William and Emma, would attend to the wounded shoulder. Powerscourt promised Robbie Barton fifty pounds for the repair of the boat.
Inspector Devereux’s prophecy on the train came true, but with only a few minutes to spare. The Chief Constable of Devon, Colonel St John Weston-Westmacott, arrived at the Marine Hotel shortly before ten o’clock, wearing a dinner jacket and a scarlet cummerbund. Inspector Devereux, as the senior officer present, briefed him on the proceedings so far. The colonel said ‘jolly good show’ to all and sundry, including the head porter who scarcely deserved it. They were all assembled in the reserve dining room. Jimmy Strauss had gone down to the seafront to await the return of his grandfather.
Very wet and rather pensive, Inspector Timpson and Powerscourt came back, water squelching from their boots. Jimmy Strauss stayed behind at the waterfront, praying for a miracle that never came. The Inspector delivered the news.
‘There is a chance that Allen might survive, but I very much doubt it.’
Normally it was Powerscourt who filled in the gaps and answered any remaining questions at the end of his cases. This time it was Lady Lucy who filled the company in on what she had learnt from Jimmy Strauss. Inspector Devereux reported on the further details that had been forwarded by the South African police. Elias Harper had been suspected of murder on no fewer than three occasions but there was never enough evidence for a conviction. Jimmy Strauss would be a very rich young man once the formalities had been carried out. Wilfred Allen had endowed one hospital in Johannesburg already and a school for the poor. The Inspector had also wired to the two other Inspectors, one in Maidenhead and the other in Norfolk, that their crimes had now been solved and they could regard the matter as closed.
‘I think you’ve all done jolly well,’ the Chief Constable said again. ‘Four murders solved, including the villain who was taken out in a boat and never returned. And to think the centre of the whole affair was here in Salcombe, and that the final action took place on the Salcombe Bar:“For though from out our bourn of Time and Place/The flood may bear me far./I hope to see my Pilot face to face/When I have crossed the bar.”’
Three days later the Powerscourts were eating breakfast in Markham Square. The case of the death in the Jesus Hospital, Powerscourt had told Lady Lucy in the train on the way back, had been one of the most unusual he had ever investigated. Not until the very very end, he said, had we known that we were on the right track. The whole case, so full of conjecture, might have disappeared in a puff of smoke at any moment. This morning Lady Lucy was opening her mail. He checked that her husband wasn’t looking as she pulled out a couple of sheets of paper and positioned them carefully behind the teapot. The correspondence came from Salcombe. Before they left she had asked Jimmy Johnston, Sergeant Vaughan’s estate agent friend, to send her details of substantial properties in and around the town. Well, here they were, a Georgian rectory in a neighbouring village, and a Victorian fantasy castle high up on the cliffs west of the town, with breathtaking views of the harbour and the estuary. She peered discreetly at the prices. My word, she thought, this place is nearly as expensive as London. But look at the view. Look at the ridiculous battlements and little towers in the Victorian extravaganza. Should she say anything to Francis? Probably not, she said to herself. No point in worrying him before things have been decided.
Francis was muttering into his Times. Lady Lucy thought she caught the words ‘bloody fools’ three times. At first she thought he was talking about the House of Lords. Then she realized he was talking about a cricket match. Slowly and carefully she placed the Salcombe properties back in their envelope.
The next and final piece of correspondence felt stiff inside its expensive envelope. Lady Lucy approved. She had always had a weakness for high-quality writing paper and stationery. Inside this one was an invitation. ‘Lady Hermione Devereux’, it said on the top line. Then in a slightly larger typeface ‘At Home’. Then ‘Devereux Hall, Southwick, Northamptonshire’.
Then ‘June 27th, 1910, 10 o’clock’. And then, the moment of glory, ‘Dancing’. Lady Lucy looked across at her husband. ‘What do you know of Devereux Hall, Francis?’
‘Huge pile, Lucy, slowly falling down for lack of money. There’s a lake there with an island in the middle. Very romantic, I should say, if you like that sort of thing.’
Powerscourt was well aware that his wife did like that sort of thing, as he put it. Come to that, he would have had to admit that he quite liked that sort of thing too.