The Plot Thickens
When the words had died away, it was the Colonel who broke the stunned silence.
"Where?" he demanded. "Whose body?"
"Dunno, sir," said the sergeant, answering the last question first. "A man, youngish, bearded, brown hair, dressed in a heavy sweater and dark trousers. He was washed up on the edge of the salt flats. Looks like he drowned. We couldn't find any marks on him."
"Is there any identification?" the Colonel wanted to know, but the sergeant said that he had come straight up to report the discovery as soon as the body had been found. The others had been left to drag it up well beyond the high tide mark and to go through the pockets.
"Good work, Sergeant," approved the Colonel. "You'd better get back and supervise the removal of the body to the police station." He reached for the telephone. "I'll contact them and warn them you're coming."
The Sergeant saluted self consciously and left the room as the Colonel spoke to the operator and asked to be put through. There followed a brief conversation in which the local police were alerted to the arrival of the Home Guard party and their pathetic burden. When he had finished, the Colonel replaced the handset thoughtfully.
"What does that suggest to you, Nigel?" he asked his son.
Cub said that youngish probably meant he would be in one of the services.
"I'd guess the Navy," hazarded Ginger. "Bearded, heavy sweater, sounds like someone from a submarine."
The three of them exchanged glances, remembering what the GOC had said about the reported sighting by the Sunderland.
"You could be right, my boy," said the Colonel, approvingly. "Bigglesworth was right, you do have your wits about you."
Ginger had the good grace to blush at the unexpected praise.
After tea, the Colonel was called back into his study to answer the telephone. It proved to be the police sergeant reporting what had happened when the Home Guard patrol had brought in the body.
Ginger and Cub, in the drawing room, eagerly awaited the Colonel's return. They were not to be disappointed.
"The man was a Jerry," announced the Colonel. "He was wearing dog tags." He turned his keen gaze on Ginger, "you were right, my boy," he said approvingly, "he was a sub-mariner, Albert Schmidt was his name. It seems that somehow or other he was lost overboard. The doctor has had a look at him and is as certain as he can be without a post mortem that the man drowned. He must have been washed overboard during the storm. It brought a tree down in the Park," he said, referring to the estate not far from the farm, "Lord knows what it must have been like for shipping."
"There's been no merchant shipping due to dock here for them to strike at," mused Cub. "So why would there be a U-boat in this area? Anyway, why would it be inshore and running on the surface in that terrible storm? It must have been most unpleasant."
They could come up with no reasonable solution. Ginger summed up their problem succinctly.
"So, what is a U-boat doing off this coast, and what could it have been up to that would cause it to lose a man overboard?" he wondered aloud.
The question hung in the air. No-one could give him an answer.
