The Mystery of Luccombe Bay

Featuring the private detective - Harry Sharpe

I was in my office one day, going through some old cases, when I came across one that reminded me of the time I spent on the Isle of Wight.

I remember that it was August and the agency was ticking over nicely but the number of new cases had dropped off, so I thought it would be a great time to take a vacation. 

Linc's, my business partner, offered to look after things in my absence. He recommended a place called Ventnor on the Isle of Wight and The Luccombe Bay Hotel as the place to stay.

Two weeks in 'Mayfair by the Sea' sounded just like what the doctor ordered, as you Brits might say. So I packed my bags and off I went.

After checking in I was sitting at a table on the hotel patio, soaking up the sun, when a rather attractive young woman approached me and asked if she could join me. At first, I thought my luck had changed, but then she asked if I was a private detective, so I figured it wasn't a date she was after.

Now, those who know me, know all too well that I could never turn a sweet-talking lady away, especially one with such a pretty face. So, I invited her to take a seat and listened to what she had to say. 

She told me her name was Emily Saunders and that her life had been threatened. I told her she had a pretty name, and that it was a job for the cops. She said that she had spoken with them and that they believed it to be a hoax.

Well, I have to say, the fact that she was sitting at my table, very much alive, tended to support that theory. But anyway, it was clear to me that she was upset and in need of some help, so I agreed to take the case.

I never mentioned a fee, and she never offered me one. The way I saw it, the enquiry would give me something to do over the next two weeks of my stay.

She handed me a blue envelope and told me it had been pushed under her door three days earlier. It was addressed to the lady in room thirty-five. There were no stamps on it and nothing else to identify where it had been sent from. 

Inside I found a single sheet of white paper with the words, leave this hotel immediately or die, written upon it in ink. There was no signature, of course, but I did notice that the author had used small circles instead of dots above the letter i which I thought was rather unusual.

Miss Saunders then got up, shook my hand, thanked me for looking into the matter and left, allowing me to continue to soak up a few more of the sun's rays.

After half an hour, I walked over to the reception. Standing behind the desk was the guy who had checked me in earlier. He told me his name was Stephens and that he was in charge of the hotel whilst the owner, a Mr Reginald Morrison, was away on business in France. I explained my position and asked if I could inspect the guest register. He said I could. I asked him why there were only two sets of handwriting in the book. He told me that It was company policy for the person behind the desk to write the entries and then invite the guests to sign alongside their names. One set of writing belonged to him, the other, I was told, belonged to his boss.

I could see that apart from myself and Miss Saunders, the only other guest to have signed in within the last week was a guy called Henry Lecointe, who was French and spoke very little English. Despite the obvious language barrier, Stephens had managed to ascertain that the Frenchie was a biologist from Paris who had sailed from Calais to Portsmouth harbour aboard the MS Free Enterprise and that he had arrived at the hotel on the day of his crossing. That just so happened to be the same day that Miss Saunders had received the threatening letter.  

So, from my initial enquiries, I now had a suspect in mind, but what was his motive, and why the threat to Emily Saunders life?

Stephens confirmed that on the day Miss Saunders had arrived at the hotel, she had asked for a room for an extended period, as she was looking to buy a house on the island. Initially, Stephens had told her that there were no rooms available, but had then come up with a plan.

Room thirty-five was on the top floor of the hotel. It was one of only three rooms on the left-hand side of the building exclusively used for storage. Stephens had asked Miss Saunders if she would accept the room, if he could have it cleared, and she had apparently jumped at the chance. After preparing the room, Stephens had handed her the keys and told her that she could stay there for as long as she needed. 

After thanking Stephens for his help, I left the reception and made my way over to the library, where I found a copy of the latest Portsmouth Shipping News. I studied it for about twenty minutes, after which I returned to the lobby and used the public phone to make a number of calls. I knew it would take some time for my enquiries to be answered, so I went up to the third floor and knocked on the door of room thirty-five.

Miss Saunders opened it and kindly invited me in. We chatted for a while over a cup of tea and as I sat there; I noticed that the view from her window looked directly out over the sea. I later discovered, from Stephens, that room thirty-five was the only room in the hotel that had such a view. He added that despite this, most guests preferred a room at the front of the building, overlooking the patio and splendid gardens, and that was why the three rooms on the side were used for storage.

After leaving Miss Saunders' room, I walked down to the cliff's edge, to the area adjacent to her bedroom window. You couldn't see the sea from ground level, just two gigantic rock faces rising up from the gorge below. They were divided by a steep path, strewn with fallen rocks and debris, deposited there from what looked like a previous landslip. The path, at one time, had clearly taken you down to the shore, but now it looked near on impossible to navigate. There was even a sign warning residents not to descend. It left them in no doubt of the dangers they would encounter were they to try.

After receiving the last of the replies to my phone calls, I believed that I not only had a clear suspect, but also a motive for the threatening letter to Miss Saunders: What I needed now though was proof.

It was time to put my plan into action. If I was right, Miss Saunders life was now in immediate danger, and the threat would become a reality that very night.

I used the phone in the hall again to book an overnight room for Miss Saunders at the Wight Rabbit Inn, Chale. As soon as the reservation was confirmed, I rushed up the stairs and told Miss Saunders to pack her bags, but to delay her departure until five that evening. I told her that as she left; she was to make a big song and dance about having to leave the hotel because of the threat.

Sure enough, dead on five, when most of the guests were lining up in the hall for dinner, Miss Saunders came storming down the stairs, suitcase in hand, and slammed her room keys down on the desk in reception. Everyone in the queue turned their heads. Stephens had the look of horror on his face. She would have made a successful actress; her performance that evening could not have been bettered.

At that same time, I was making a call to Sergeant Kemp from Ventnor Police Station and, after updating him on the situation, he agreed to go along with my plans. 

I asked him to come to the hotel that night after dark, accompanied by two uniformed constables. They were not to make their presence known to the hotel staff or guests. Instead, they were to come directly to my ground-floor bedroom window, where I would let them in. In addition, I asked Sergeant Kemp to arrange for a Coast Guard cutter to patrol the seas just off the coast of Luccombe Bay between the hours of eleven and midnight that night.

It was just after a quarter past ten when Kemp and the two constables arrived outside my window. One of the constables was immediately dispatched to the top of the path leading down to the shoreline, with the instructions to give three blasts on his whistle if he saw anything suspicious. Sergeant Kemp and the other constable climbed in through the window, and then we waited.

Shortly before midnight, we heard the constables whistle, and with no time to spare, we left my room, collected Stephen's from the front desk, and headed up the stairs to room thirty-five. The door was locked, so Stephens used his master key to gain entry, and as I entered, I saw that a single hurricane lamp illuminated the room. Standing next to it, by the window, was the man Stephens identified to us as being Henry Lecointe.

Sergeant Kemp leapt forward and informed Lecoint that he was being arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill. It was then that I announced to all present that Monsieur Lecointe was, in fact, Reginald Morrison, the hotel's owner. The wig, false beard and glasses he wore were very convincing, but like his attempt to disguise his handwriting, they didn't fool me.

We later received the news that the Coast Guard cutter had intercepted a French trawler and that five members of its crew had been detained on suspicion of offloading smuggled contraband onto the shore below the gorge.

Morrison was a tiny link in a large smuggling operation. Room thirty-five had been the only room from which he could send the all-safe signal. On his return to the hotel from France, he had discovered that the room was occupied and had sent a threatening letter to Miss Saunders hoping that she would vacate the room of her own free will. Without his signal, the drop-off could not have gone ahead, and that would have displeased the ringleaders immensely. 

We will never know to what lengths Morrison would have gone to accomplish his mission. I doubt he would have committed murder. More likely, he would have forced an entry to the room, incapacitated Miss Saunders in some way and then sent the signal. All under the guise of Henry Lecointe. 

With that disguise, Morrison not only had unrestricted access to the hotel,  but also had the perfect alibi of being in France at the time that any offences were committed. He didn't consider my involvement, though, and that, unfortunately for him, was his downfall. 

His attempt at disguising his handwriting on the threatening letter had failed. The same circles above the letter i were also present in all of Morrisons hotel guest register entries.

The calls I had made confirmed that there was no trace of a biologist called Henry Lecointe from Paris or anywhere else in France. In addition, Lecointe did not appear on any passenger list, but the name R. Morrison did.

Morrison had returned from France on the same day that Lecointe had turned up at the hotel.

The shipping news had also confirmed that the only vessel scheduled to pass within a mile of Luccombe Bay in the coming weeks was a French trawler en route to Poole in Dorset. The schedule confirmed that it was due to pass Luccombe Bay between eleven and midnight on the night that I put my plan into operation: The rest you already know.

Sergeant Kemp received a commendation and was promoted to Inspector for his part in smashing a huge smuggling racket on the island. Miss Saunders bought her dream home in Bonchurch, and I spent two glorious weeks in Paradise on the beautiful Isle of Wight.

When I returned to the office, there was a new case waiting for me on my desk. It involved a ghost, an angel, and a king, but that's another story!

THE END

Adapted from my award winning entry to a short story completion in 2022. 

This is what the judge had to say:

"This writer is to be praised on maintaining a good pace in a well-planned, fast moving adventure story. There is a lot of action, there is intrigue and deception, there is a beautiful heroine, there is danger, and there is a shrewd private detective. And, of course, it all ends happily!  A well-balanced story, in the Private Eye genre, and the reader is almost left looking for Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple".