Fall of a Philanderer by Carola Dunn Page A

this!” But the moment he opened his black bag, Vernon put on the gravity proper to his future profession. He took out a small hand-mirror and a magnifying glass. “I’m afraid there’s not much doubt about his decease, though. Should I try not to disturb the body?”
    â€œToo late to worry about that.” Another lifeboatman had arrived, a middle-aged, prosperous-looking man with COXSWAIN painted on his life-jacket. “We’ve got to take him aboard and get back to port. I don’t like the look of the weather.” He gestured out to sea, where a white bank of fog was creeping in, though not yet hiding the sun. The wind had dropped, but the waves crashed against the headlands with unabated vigour. “We need to be ready in case of a real emergency. Let’s get that stretcher put together, Bill.”

    â€œAye, sir.”
    While Bill, Jimmy and Tom Stebbins screwed together the poles and slung the canvas between, Vernon stooped to the mortal remains of George Enderby.
    Held to the mashed mouth and nose, the mirror predictably failed to cloud over. Undeterred, Vernon felt for pulses and peered into mercifully unmashed eyes before he looked up to say, “Should I try the stethoscope, sir?”
    â€œI don’t believe that’s necessary.”
    â€œNo, he’s about as dead as a corpse can be. I don’t know much about rigor mortis, or cadaveric cooling, I’m afraid. Most of what we get in the hospital has died naturally and as often as not been pickled in formalin.”
    â€œThe sun and the water may have changed the timing anyway. With luck we … they will be able to establish the time of death by other means.”
    Assuming Enderby had stayed behind his bar till the end of opening hours at three—no, two thirty on a Sunday, he had to have time to reach the top of the cliff. He must have left the pub on the dot and walked up at a good clip. Meeting someone?
    Alec himself had been up there by half past three or soon after, and had seen no one else. Not that it was his problem, but as a witness he could narrow the time of the fall to a very short period.
    He turned to the lifeboat coxswain. “I believe he fell into four or five inches of water. Can you tell me what time the tide would have been at that level?”
    â€œWell, now.” The coxswain eyed the level of barnacles, limpets and seaweed on the rocks, the edge of the wave presently creaming up the beach, the steel-cased chronometer he pulled from a pocket of his life-vest, and the position of the body. “Midway between neap and spring,” he said, and his men nodded. “On-shore wind. Well, now, this is not a cove I’m very familiar with, so I won’t commit myself, but I should say around three o’clock there would have been four or five inches right here.”

    The men nodded. “Aye, thereabouts,” Jimmy agreed.
    Their estimate matched Alec’s. Barring definitive evidence to the contrary, Enderby had died at approximately three o’clock that afternoon. Which would not leave much time for an assailant—if any—to descend the cliff path, re-ascend, and be out of sight when Alec, Daisy and the girls arrived.
    â€œSir!” Crouching by the body, Vernon was examining the back of the neck with his magnifying glass. “Sir, there are splinters of wood in his skin here. Do you think it’s important? Do you think someone hit him before he fell? Shall I leave them there or pull some out? I have tweezers in my bag. I could—”
    â€œHold your horses, lad!”
    Alec scanned the surrounding area. A few small sticks, bleached by salt water, and the smashed remains of a packing case lay scattered among the rocks, none within a dozen feet of the body. A hundred feet to his left, a weathered log leant up against the cliff, jammed between two boulders. He looked up at the cliff. As his gaze rose higher and higher, he saw tufts of grass,