The Mudflats of the Dead, page 21
part #56 of Mrs Bradley Series
‘And was assured that there had been no mistake over the booking. The holiday cottages are booked only from Saturdays, never mid-week. The Lowsons’ tenancy was to begin when the Kirbys’ tenancy ended. There was one other small point. I was sure that Lowson was not in bed when Palgrave came in that night, otherwise he would have been aware of a man groping for a suitcase and would have made some remark. Well, then, of course the story of blackmail unfolded itself and the death of Colin Palgrave clinched matters, although I had to find out whether Lowson had read his book. That book could not damage Mrs Lowson directly, but it might – or so Dr Lowson thought – seriously injure his own medical career. Mrs Lowson was persuaded by her husband to invite Palgrave to discuss his book with her. The invitation must have come from her – in fact, when she broke down after hearing that her husband was not only dead, but had left a full confession, she admitted that she had invited Palgrave to spend the weekend with them in their Lancashire home. Dr Lowson was to pick him up in a car near his lodgings and then drive up to Lancashire through the night and return Palgrave to his lodgings on the Sunday evening.’
‘So no hotel entered into the arrangements at all!’
‘As the police found out. In any case, Lowson would never have risked being seen at a hotel in the company of a man he intended to murder. They would have had coffee and sandwiches in the car as soon as they got out of London. The autopsy showed that arsenic was in both the food and the drink. As soon as Palgrave was taken ill, Lowson drove towards the river – there are alleys wide enough for a car – and dragged the body out of the car and then pushed it over the bank into the Thames.’
‘I wonder who cleaned the car? It must have been in a pretty awful mess,’ said Laura, practical as ever. ‘So Lowson went to Saltacres with the full intention of killing Camilla the blackmailer. How would he know where she was?’
‘They would have kept in close touch because of the blackmail payments.’
‘So Lowson was a double murderer and committed suicide when the Kirbys warned him that you and the po1ice were on the track. Do you think Palgrave’s novel would have given the truth away if ever it had been published?’
‘Only to a man with a guilty conscience, and he knew the truth already.’
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A 3S Release— v1, html]
[April 12, 2007]
Gladys Mitchell, The Mudflats of the Dead
