The Perfect Daughter Read Free Page B

tied with ropes to a piece of wood. I must have let go because she swung out again, over the empty space where the tide had gone away. I called as if she’d come back.
    â€˜Verona!’

Chapter Two
    â€˜H ER SKIRT WAS SOAKED, ’ I SAID. ‘ THE TIDE must have been up at least once.’ The constable didn’t write that down. He’d already got most of the things they’d need for the coroner’s officer. I’d been on a visit to my cousin’s wife. I’d happened to wander into the boathouse. When I’d found Verona I’d gone straight up to the house and Commodore North had reported to the police by telephone. They were very considerate, these policemen. The sergeant spoke with a gentle Devonshire burr and the constable managed to write and look sad and respectful at the same time. Commodore North and his family were well known locally. I counted as family and I think they were genuinely shocked and sorry for me. It wasn’t an attitude I was used to from the police. I’d answered their questions as well as I could, but with most of my mind going in and out with the tides as it had been for the twenty hours or so since I’d found her. I’d looked up the tables. I had nothing much else to do, waiting in the boarding house where I had stayed overnight behind the East Promenade. Yesterday, the day I found her, the tide had been high around eight in the morning. Its slow drag out might have been strangling her even while I was travelling down from Paddington on the train. High again at about quarter to eight the evening before, half past seven the morning before that, broad summer daylight every time.
    â€˜When did you last see Miss North?’
    I explained about the Buckingham Palace deputation. I sensed a little change in their attitude. They were surprised, even hurt, that the commodore’s daughter should have been mixed up in anything like that. It made the sergeant’s next question sharper than it might have been otherwise.
    â€˜Did Miss North ever give you any indication that she was thinking of taking her own life?’
    â€˜None whatsoever.’
    â€˜Can you think of any reason why she might have?’
    â€˜No.’
    Silence. There was sunshine coming in at the window, a smell of fresh paint and the sea. The sergeant sighed.
    â€˜I’m afraid we shall have to ask you to come back for the inquest, Miss Bray. We’ll let you know the date.’
    â€˜Does that mean you don’t need me any more at present?’
    They didn’t. They asked if I’d be going back to my cousin’s house and whether I needed a cab. I said no, thanked them and walked out into the sunshine.
    *   *   *
    I walked to the railway station, checked that the next train for London would leave in an hour and went back along the seafront towards the boarding house to pick up my bag. It was the Friday before the bank holiday weekend and Teignmouth, the resort at the mouth of the estuary, was getting ready for visitors. An ice-cream seller on a tricycle was attracting a few early customers. White cumulus was building up out to sea, and a stiff breeze was fluttering the canvas of the Punch and Judy booth. On the beach of red-brown sand, old-fashioned bathing machines were lined up on both sides of the pier on their big iron wheels, advertisements for Pears soap and Fry’s chocolate painted on their sides. Some children and their parents were down at the tide line. The children’s skirts and trousers were hitched up and they were playing games with the tide, advancing a few steps into shallow water as a wave bubbled away, retreating squealing when it thudded back.
    I turned inland to the lawns and flowerbeds behind the promenade and watched two gardeners planting out pink begonias round the edges of a big floral clock, with the hours picked out in house leeks. More house leeks against a white background spelt out two words on