The Seaside Corpse, page 13
“Looks like a kingfisher from this far off,” said Arthur, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Hector polished the lenses before pressing the viewing end to his eyes.
“It is she,” he said. “She also is using binoculars.” Indeed, we saw a slight flash as the sun caught the glass of her set. Was she spying on us?
“Crazy old bat,” said Arthur.
But Hector and I knew that she was far from crazy. Whatever her scheme, it was minutely plotted.
Our lookout spot provided an excellent view of the Camp Crewe team, but the rehearsal was a disaster. I forgot about Miss Spinns within moments of spotting her. My gaze was pinned instead on Nina and the men crossing the ledges steps behind the receding water.
“Something’s not right,” I said. “They’re moving too slowly.”
“There is trouble with the barrow,” said Hector. “You see?” He passed his binoculars back to Grannie Jane. “The wheels, they catch on the bumpy stones.”
“Not a good sign,” said Arthur. “It’s not even carrying anything yet.”
Grannie Jane readjusted the focus on the binoculars’ lenses. “I had the impression they intended their pace to be urgent,” she said.
“They should be quicker than this, Mrs. Morton,” said Oscar, “to outwit the Atlantic Ocean.”
Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Volkov took turns trying to steer the barrow, lagging several yards behind Nina and Everett. Nina had two spades resting on her shoulders, while Everett carried what was called a mattock, something like a pickax but with a two-sided head.
“Deadly looking,” said Grannie Jane.
“One side is for digging and prying up,” said Arthur, “and the other bit is for chopping. A mattock is mostly to pull out tree stumps, but if the blades are sharp, they can cut through layers of shale.”
“They carry the tools today to know how much the weight affects the timing,” said Hector.
“Every half minute counts,” I said. “As Nina says.”
Mr. Jarvis, as if he were a horse, dragged the barrow laboriously behind him. The Russian, on his turn, gathered some momentum by trotting while he pushed, letting the barrow wheels bounce and skid where they might. It was this that caused the accident. We on the clifftop gasped in unison as one of the front wheels snapped. The barrow tipped to one side, so that poor Mr. Volkov rammed into it and staggered from the impact. Everett sprinted back to help. Nina paused mere seconds before hurrying on, now walking backward and calling out as she went.
“A determined woman,” said Grannie Jane.
The barrow was abandoned and the men caught up. There appeared to be a lively group debate, with waving arms, while they all kept moving forward to make up time after the delay. When they reached the ichthyosaur’s grave, there still was water to splash through, but only for a few minutes. Hector had the binoculars again, and gave us a running commentary: Everett pulled his stopwatch out of its case and pressed the button. He made a note in his book. He glanced at the sun and positioned himself to take a photograph. Nina and the quarrymen knelt and poked with their tools. They did not dig but seemed to be testing the ground, preparing themselves for what must come tomorrow.
“It is not so entertaining, is it?” I said. “We’re too far away and they’re clumped around the fossil like ants on a sugar cube.”
“Not quite as energetic as a horse race,” agreed Grannie Jane. She stood with a little difficulty from the flimsy camp stool. When she’d rearranged her skirt and fixed her hat, her eyes narrowed to examine me. “The trap is waiting,” she said. “But I am wrestling with my conscience, Agatha.”
“Why is that?”
“I am loath to leave you children here,” she said. “I find myself imagining the scene in which I explain to your agitated mothers my unforgivable lapse in allowing you to sleep in the vicinity of a murder.”
“The murder happened nowhere near the camp!” I said. “It was all the way over there.” I pointed at the distant spires of St. Michael’s, shimmering faintly in the midday sun. “You mustn’t worry, Grannie, you really mustn’t. Look around. Does it feel dangerous to you? We’re safe, we have each other.”
Grannie cradled my cheek in her hand. “Do not make me regret the decision of leaving you behind,” she said. “No reckless adventuring or villain baiting, do you understand?”
“Yes, darling Grannie.”
“Look out for each other.”
When the patient driver had assisted Grannie Jane in mounting the trap and we’d waved them off, the rest of us sat under the welcome shade of the kitchen canopy, chewing our way through rubbery mackerel. We ate slowly. Was it worse than cow’s tongue? Very possibly.
Nina and Everett had returned to camp, with Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Volkov dragging their failed fossil barrow. The mood was storm-cloud miserable. Helen came out with a platter of ham sandwiches and discreetly removed the fish debris.
“Dad’s got good days and bad days,” she whispered.
“Do let us know when a good one comes along,” said Everett. The sandwiches were gone in a flash, but for crumbs.
Nina stood, so we all could hear, and began to speak.
“We’ve had a bad week.” She took off her hat and pushed sweaty hair back from her forehead. “We’ve…lost Howard…” She paused to breathe in deeply. “We’ve angered a potential buyer, whether we want to sell or not. We’ve got policemen and reporters popping up at odd moments, and now, our barrow is broken!” She took a long drink of water. “But spring tide is tomorrow. You all know that our responsibility to excavate this extraordinary treasure must take precedence over our grief, for a few more days at least. Howard would have wanted us to do this much, no matter where Izzy ends up.”
“How do we make that happen, ma’am?” said Mr. Jarvis. He wasn’t being rude, but he was a man used to practical solutions—and one of those was not in sight.
Mr. Volkov shifted in his seat and lifted his calloused hands, to remind us that he’d only got two. Even Everett’s shoulders sagged, fingers turning his tea mug this way and that.
Nina’s weary smile went around the table. “We’re going to be resourceful,” she said. She pounded one fist into the other palm like the rallying beat of a drum. “We’re going to think.” A long minute went by, and then another. The glum silence stretched.
“Excuse me, Madame Nina,” said Hector. He cleared his throat and stood up. I would rather eat another serving of mackerel than address a table full of staring grown-ups. But Hector? He just spoke.
“Please excuse that I mention your husband’s departure, but that is what inspires the idea that comes to me.”
“Go on,” said Nina.
“Yesterday the boat of Constable Sackett carries the professor from the beach to the harbor. Can this method not also be used to carry the ichthyosaur?”
One, two, three seconds more of silence, and then Everett began to clap.
“Smashing idea!” said Arthur.
We all joined Everett’s applause. Within moments, our spirits were dancing anew. The quarrymen wore grins of relief. Even Spud popped his head out of the cook tent with a crooked smile—and reminded Helen there were carrots to be scrubbed. Everett assigned Mr. Jarvis, with Arthur as assistant, to find P.C. Sackett in town and to hire his boat for the next day.
“We can salvage the upper part of the barrow, don’t you think?” said Everett. “Craft a board to lift Izzy from the ledge into the boat?”
“She’ll come out in pieces,” said Mr. Volkov.
“Get started on cutting the barrow bed into four smaller planks,” said Mr. Jarvis. He had a bicycle, and Arthur sat on the handlebars. Inspired by the lady cyclists at the circus, he held his long legs wide of the wheel and away they went.
Miss Spinns chose that moment to appear, blue coat folded over her arm. The walk must have been warm. When she understood the reason for our jollity, she joined right in. Only Hector and I knew that she was a rotten, double-dealing opportunist, undeserving of the right to celebrate. And wasn’t it bold of her to appear in camp, when her sly use of a camera could momentarily be exposed!
“You seem to have a mix-up on your calendar,” said Everett. “You missed Friday and yet here you are on Saturday.”
Miss Spinns managed a brittle chuckle. “I was unwell yesterday. I apologize,” she said. “I did not know how to inform you. Alas, I seem to have left behind my fountain pen. Perhaps Miss Morton will be so kind as to assist in finding it? It must have rolled under a table in the work tent.”
She trapped me as easily as that. How could I refuse to help an old lady find her pen? Obediently, I stood to follow.
“Hector too,” I said.
“Hector too,” she agreed, in her creaky old-lady voice. “Four young eyes are better than two for seeing into dark corners.”
Chapter 19
A Duplicitous Reporter
“This isn’t safe,” I whispered as soon as we were inside the work tent.
“Madame Nina or Everett may enter at any moment.” Hector glanced fearfully at the door flap.
“What do you want, Mr. Fibbley?” I said. “I’m so mad I could spit.”
Miss Spinns straightened her curved elderly spine to the youthful posture of…of who? Who was she, really? She grinned, removed those thick spectacles and looked forty years younger.
“What took you so long?” she said.
“Tell me the minute Jarvis and Arthur get back with news about the boat, will you?” Nina’s voice came from just outside. “I’m going to send a note to Mr. Wemberly at the museum that we—”
Miss Spinns jammed her glasses back on, and hunched into her old-lady disguise. She snapped open her handbag and snatched out a royal blue fountain pen.
“Such sharp eyes!” she cried. “Thank you, children!”
Nina came in.
“The pen, it is found!” said Hector.
With Miss Spinns in front, we awkwardly bundled ourselves past Nina and out through the door flap. Everett was crossing the field with Mr. Volkov toward the shop yard. Oscar had cadged an empty jar from Spud and lay on his tummy collecting beetles.
“Where can we go?” said Miss Spinns. “It is urgent that we speak.”
“Aggie’s tent?” said Hector.
“Why mine?”
“Better that she be found there than in the tent of the boys,” said Hector.
Miss Spinns patted her face with a lace-edged handkerchief, slipped off her shoes and ducked into the girls’ tent. I glanced around to see that we were not being observed. Except that we were. By Oscar.
“Will you please hum when no one is nearby?” Hector said. “You must appear to be idle, not on guard. If someone appears, you speak. Yes? Say hello out loud.”
Oscar nodded. Hector put his shoes tidily beside those of Miss Spinns and went inside. I hurriedly unlaced and kicked mine off too.
Oscar looked at me and lifted his eyebrows. “What does she want?” he whispered. “She could be the killer!”
She was the one person I knew for certain was not the killer. But I couldn’t say that, because then I would have to explain why.
“I don’t think she killed him,” I said, “but she might possess information we can use to figure out who did. She saw lots of the B-Cs’ goings-on, remember?”
“Scream if you need me,” he said.
* * *
I sat on Helen’s cot with Hector and let Miss Spinns have mine.
“We must be quick,” the old woman whispered. “I’m about to get nicked for that photograph on the beach.”
“We wish for you to tell us—” said Hector.
“What I want is—” said Miss Spinns at the same time. She and I had each pulled out our notebooks, ready to record essential points.
“Shall we take turns?” said Hector. “You may begin.”
“Thank you, young man,” said Miss Spinns, in her Miss Spinns voice. “So polite.”
Too polite on occasion, I could not help but think.
“You don’t deserve a single answer from us,” I hissed. “You are the most deceitful, conniving trickster I ever met.”
“Where precisely did you spot the hat retrieved by the police?” The reporter’s voice this time.
“It is snagged on a prickle bush, on the face of the cliff below St. Michael’s church,” said Hector. Perhaps he was more polite than I, but he was only telling her what the police already knew.
“It could have been blown there by the wind!” said our guest. “What made you think otherwise? Was there any scrap of evidence that the professor had been up top?”
The second it took for Hector and me to glance at one another was long enough for her to know the answer.
“Aha!” she said. “There is something—”
Dash it! Despite my particular determination not to cooperate, we’d already put a nugget in her open palm. Well, humph.
“I believe it’s our turn to ask a question,” I said. Oscar was quietly humming outside. What should I ask? What did she know that we could learn from no one else?
“What are you doing at Camp Crewe?” I said.
Miss Spinns and Hector both looked surprised. I wasn’t asking about the murder, but about why this old lady—who was not really an old lady—had been here before the murder had occurred.
“I answered an advertisement in the Torquay Voice,” said Miss Spinns, shrugging like a casual young man.
“The newspaper where you work?” said Hector.
“Yes,” she said. “A secretary was required to assist at the site of a paleontological survey. She must be able to type and must not be bothered by having a female employer. That was intriguing enough for me. Worth a few days of investigation. Then Nina made the discovery of a lifetime. I had a scoop to set the world of science alight! The murder, to be crass, was butter on bacon.”
“So, you came along in disguise,” I said.
“Well, yes,” said Miss Spinns. “A woman must always have an escape route ready.”
“And you watched them up close for weeks,” I said. “You wrote their letters. You read their letters. You faded into a corner of the work tent and—”
She nodded. “And eavesdropped on every word they said.”
“Did you see anything that makes you believe she killed him?” I said. “Because what I don’t understand is, why would she do it like that? Why would she push him off a cliff?”
Miss Spinns’ fingers slid up and began to scratch behind one ear. I suddenly realized that her flat gray hair in its tight chignon must be a wig. A hot and uncomfortable wig.
“I don’t know yet,” said Miss Spinns, “but I truly hope that she is not the killer. Clever women—especially when it comes to skeletons—are too rare! If Nina killed her husband, she has tainted the cause for hundreds of others! People will think, Ha! Women can’t be scientists! Women can’t be trusted. They are unreliable, hysterical murderers…More than anything I want her to be innocent.”
“But it is not what we want that matters,” said Hector. “Innocent or guilty is merely what we must determine.”
“Hello,” we heard Oscar say, quite suddenly.
“Hallo, Oscar!” Arthur’s voice rang right outside the tent. “Jarvis rode me both ways on his handlebars. I’ll wager he hasn’t washed in a month!”
“That’s nice,” said Oscar, clearly not too interested.
“P.C. Sackett agreed to row the boat for us tomorrow,” Arthur said. “Jarvis told him Everett would pay five pounds!”
Miss Spinns turned to a fresh page in her notebook and wrote that down.
“Waste of money,” said Oscar. “He’s too podgy to tie his own bootlaces. How can he row a heavy boat?”
“Well, he owns it, doesn’t he? And he rowed the dead body, didn’t he?” said Arthur.
“Like a podgy old man.” I could almost hear Oscar’s eyes rolling.
“What are you doing?” said Arthur.
“Counting the legs on this spider,” said Oscar.
“Probably eight,” said Arthur.
“Eight?” said Oscar. “You don’t say.”
“The police are here again,” said Arthur. “Sergeant Harley and my cousin Ronnie. Looking for Miss Spinns. Ronnie won’t speak to me because of being on duty. He’s over in the shop yard, grilling the quarrymen. Have you seen her?”
“What would I want to see her for?” said Oscar.
“Clever boy,” whispered Miss Spinns. She grinned at me and I grinned back. It was one of Mr. Fibbley’s favorite tricks—to evade a question by asking another question. But then I remembered she didn’t deserve a smile, and I scowled instead.
“Do you think she killed him?” said Arthur. “Are they here to arrest her?”
“I don’t think she killed him,” said Oscar, “but she might have a clue or something—from being with B-C so much, you know?”
They were quiet a moment. We could hear the thwack of a hammer from the shop yard, where Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Volkov were adapting the broken barrow into something suitable for boat transport. If P.C. Guff was trying to ask them questions, those hammer thuds meant that he was being ignored.
“If Ronnie Guff were my cousin,” Oscar said, “I’d plague him till he told me about the coroner’s report. Don’t you want to know what they found on B-C’s body that makes them think it’s murder?”
“I suppose,” said Arthur.
“It’s the key to the whole mystery!” said Oscar.
“You think?”
“And you’re the only one who can find out,” said Oscar.
“I suppose it can’t hurt to ask him,” said Arthur.
“Worst thing that can happen, he tells you to piss off,” said Oscar.
