The Floating Admiral. Агата Кристи
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assure himself that Holland had arrived? From the fact that the porter had offered to go and see if he was in, he would have known that he was staying in the house. Perhaps, having ascertained this, his object had been accomplished, and the excuse about the train had been trumped up on the spur of the moment, to account for his exit. He might not have wanted to see Holland just then.
On the other hand, if the visitor had not been the Admiral, why had he given his name? To make it appear that the Admiral had been in Whynmouth at that particular time? This opened up a wide field for speculation, in which one central fact was apparent. The visitor must have known something of Admiral Penistone’s movements that evening. And therefore every effort must be made to trace him.
And what about Holland himself? The Inspector was not at all satisfied on the subject of that impulsive gentleman. Mrs. Davis may have been right in her conjecture that Miss Fitzgerald was not eager to marry him, but he was by no means certain that she was equally right in her opinion that he was not the murderer. There was no means of verifying his statement that he had spent the night in the hotel. He could easily have slipped out during the confusion that appeared to have reigned before eleven, and returned just after six in the morning, when the door was unlocked and the porter was busy with the kitchen fire. Had he done so, and met the Admiral in Whynmouth or elsewhere? The more he considered the matter, the wider the field of speculation seemed to extend before Rudge’s vision.
His original intention had been to drive out and see Sir Wilfrid Denny at West End, after he had finished with Mrs. Davis. But the possible light which that loquacious lady had thrown upon the Admiral’s movements decided him to defer the visit. He had formed the rudiments of a theory as to the time and place of the murder, but the possibility of this theory depended upon the tides in the River Whyn, and upon this subject he must seek expert advice. Why not have another chat with Neddy Ware? He knew the tides as no one else did, his hobby had rendered a study of them absolutely necessary to him. And besides, there was always the chance that he might have observed some detail which he had not recollected in the first excitement of his discovery.
Inspector Rudge turned his car towards Lingham once more, and very soon reached Ware’s cottage. The old man was at home, smoking his pipe contemplatively after his midday meal. He greeted the Inspector hospitably, and the two sat down in a room decorated with models of ships and faded photographs of the vessels in which Ware had served.
“You want to know about the tides in the river?” he replied, in answer to the Inspector’s explanation of the cause of his visit. “Why, they’re simple enough, so long as you remember that it’s high water, Full and Change, at Whynmouth at seven o’clock.”
Rudge laughed. “I haven’t a doubt it’s simple enough to you,” he said. “Personally, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. What on earth do you mean by high water, Full and Change?”
“Why, merely that it’s high water at Whynmouth at seven o’clock nearabouts, on the days when the moon is full or new,” replied Ware. “Now, take this morning’s tide, for instance. To-day’s Wednesday, the 10th. It was new moon on Monday, that’s to say it was high water at Whynmouth at seven on Monday evening. It would be about eight yesterday evening and half-past this morning. You can allow six hours between high and low water, making it low water at half-past two this morning. The tide up here begins to flow half to three-quarters of an hour after low water at Whynmouth, or say soon after three. And that’s when I went out fishing.”
“After three!” exclaimed Rudge. “But I thought you said the church clock struck four not long before you saw the boat?”
“The clock!” replied Ware, in a voice of supreme contempt. “You don’t expect the tide to fall in with the children’s games you play with the clock in summer, do you? You play a game of make-believe with the time, just because you haven’t the courage to face the prospects of getting up an hour earlier than usual. It may be all very well for landsmen, but it won’t do for sailors. To them, time’s time, and you can’t alter it.”
“I see. Then, by summer-time the tide began to flow this morning up here, soon after four. From what you tell me, then, I gather that it began to ebb about ten last night?”
“That’s right, ten or a little before,” agreed Ware. “As I say, the moon was new two days ago, which means that it was pretty well the top of the springs last night. I reckon the ebb must have run down the river nigh on three knots for the first couple of hours or so. After that it would have slacked off a bit, as it always does.”
“So that a man leaving here between ten and eleven would have had no difficulty in getting to Whynmouth by boat?” suggested Inspector Rudge.
“He’d have drifted there and likely enough gone straight out to sea,” replied Ware. “That is, if he didn’t use his oars. If he did, he could have got to Whynmouth in under the hour, easy.”
The old sailor had glanced shrewdly at the Inspector as he spoke. Rudge saw what was in his mind, and smiled. “You can guess what I’m getting at,” he said. “I thought it possible that Admiral Penistone might have taken his boat down to Whynmouth last night. But if he did, the boat cannot have come back by itself. Somebody must have rowed it back and put it into the boat-house.”
He paused, half expecting some comment from Ware, but the old man merely nodded, and continued puffing at his pipe in silence. Rudge tried a new tack. “Why was the painter of the Vicar’s boat cut, and not untied, Ware?” he asked abruptly.
Ware smiled. “Because it couldn’t have been anything else, as the Vicar’s boys could tell you, if you asked them,” he replied. “It’s no business of mine, this murder, but naturally my mind’s been on it all the morning.”
“I’d very much like to hear the conclusions you’ve come to,” said Inspector Rudge quietly. “Why do you say that the painter of the Vicar’s boat couldn’t have been untied, for instance?”
“I haven’t come to any conclusions,” replied Ware impassively. “That is, I don’t know who killed the Admiral, if that’s what you mean. But it isn’t difficult to understand how the boats came to be found as they were.”
“Not for you, perhaps,” remarked the Inspector, “but it would be a great help to me if you’d explain.”
“Aye, that I will. Now take the Vicar’s boat first. She’s not kept in the boat-house while the boys are at home, but out in the stream, tied to a post. Sometimes the lads remember to take the oars and crutches out of her when they come ashore, mostly they don’t. I’ve seen them left in her dozens of times.
“Now, suppose they’d been out in her yesterday evening, and tied her up when the tide was high, or well up, as it would have been any time between seven and ten. You’ll find, in any tidal river, that the greater part of the rise happens during the first three hours of the flood, and the greater part of the fall during the first three hours of the ebb. Right. They come in when the tide’s well up, and what do they do? One of them stands up in the bow, and makes the painter fast to the post. They’re both well-grown lads, and they’d naturally make fast about four or five feet above the water. Then they’d pole the stern round, till it touched the bank and they could jump ashore. Maybe they were afraid of being late for dinner, and forgot the oars and crutches in their hurry.”
Inspector Rudge nodded. This did not seem to take him any further than he had got already.
“Now, take the Admiral’s boat,” continued Ware. “From what I hear, she was seen either in, or alongside, the Rundel Croft boat-house soon after ten. Now this I’m pretty sure of. If anybody took her out between ten and one this morning, they didn’t row far up the river. You don’t make much headway with a heavy boat like that against a three-knot tide. You take it from me, if she went out at all, she went down-stream, and not up.
“After one this morning—I’m talking in shore time now, not real time—things would be different. There’d be only a gentle stream running down till four, perhaps a knot at the most. Anyone could row against that; it wouldn’t take them more than a couple of hours to come up from Whynmouth,