Only the black-coated
brigade does that. Let’s cal him a tradesman or a bank-clerk. But then they
usualy take their holidays complete with family. This is a solitary sort of fowl. A
schoolmaster? No. Schoolmasters don’t get off the lead til the end of July.
How about a colege undergraduate? It’s only just the end of term. A
gentleman of no particular occupation, apparently. Possibly a walking tourist
like myself – but the costume doesn’t look right.’ She had come nearer now
and could see the sleeper’s dark blue suit quite plainly. ‘Wel, I can’t place him,
but no doubt Dr Thorndyke would do so at once. Oh, of course! How stupid!
He must be a literary bloke of some kind. They moon about and don’t let their
families bother them.’
She was within a few yards of the rock now, gazing up at the sleeper. He lay
uncomfortably bunched up on the extreme seaward edge of the rock, his knees
drawn high and showing his pale mauve socks. The head, tucked closely down
between the shoulders, was invisible.
‘What a way to sleep,’ said Harriet. ‘More like a cat than a human being.
It’s not natural. His head must be almost hanging over the edge. It’s enough to
give him apoplexy. Now, if I had any luck, he’d be a corpse, and I should
report him and get my name in the papers. That would be something like
publicity. “Wel-known Woman Detective-Writer Finds Mystery Corpse on
Lonely Shore.” But these things never happen to authors. It’s always some
placid labourer or night-watchman who finds corpses. . . .’
The rock lay tilted like a gigantic wedge of cake, its base standing steeply up
to seaward, its surface sloping gently back to where its apex entered the sand.
Harriet climbed up over its smooth, dry surface til she stood almost directly
over the man. He did not move at al. Something impeled her to address him.
‘Oy!’ she said, protestingly.
There was neither movement nor reply.
‘I’d just as soon he didn’t wake up,’ thought Harriet. ‘I can’t imagine what
I’m shouting for. Oy! ’
‘Perhaps he’s in a fit or a faint,’ she said to herself. ‘Or he’s got sunstroke.
That’s quite likely. It’s very hot.’ She looked up, blinking, at the brazen sky,
then stooped and laid one hand on the surface of the rock. It almost burnt her.
She shouted again, and then, bending over the man, seized his shoulder.
‘Are you al right?’
The man said nothing and she puled upon the shoulder. It shifted slightly – a
dead weight. She bent over and gently lifted the man’s head.
Harriet’s luck was in.
It was a corpse. Not the sort of corpse there would be any doubt about,
either. Mr Samuel Weare of Lyons Inn, whose ‘throat they cut from ear to ear’,
could not have been more indubitably a corpse. Indeed, if the head did not
come off in Harriet’s hands, it was only because the spine was intact, for the
larynx and al the great vessels of the neck had been severed ‘to the hause-
bone’, and a frightful stream, bright red and glistening, was running over the
surface of the rock and dripping into a little holow below.
Harriet put the head down again and felt suddenly sick. She had written often
enough about this kind of corpse, but meeting the thing in the flesh was quite
different. She had not realised how butchery the severed vessels would look,
and she had not reckoned with the horrid halitus of blood, which streamed to
her nostrils under the blazing sun. Her hands were red and wet. She looked
down at her dress. That had escaped, thank goodness. Mechanicaly, she
stepped down again from the rock and went round to the edge of the sea.
There she washed her fingers over and over again, drying them with ridiculous
care upon her handkerchief. She did not like the look of the red trickle that
dripped down the face of the rock into the clear water. Retreating, she sat
down rather hastily on some loose boulders.
‘A dead body,’ said Harriet,