Then his mind turned to telephones. He looked around for some garment which the girl might have left behind when she went in to swim. But there seemed to be nothing. Perhaps she had left whatever she was wearing below high-water level and the tide had taken it. Or perhaps it wasn't here that she had gone into the water. Anyhow, there was nothing now with which to cover her body, and Potticary turned away and began his hurried plodding along the beach again, and so back to the Coastguard Station and the nearest telephone.
"Body on the beach," he said to Bill Gunter as he took the receiver from the hook and called the police.
Bill clicked his tongue against his front teeth, and jerked his head back. A gesture which expressed with eloquence and economy the tiresomeness of circumstances, the unreasonableness of human beings who get themselves drowned, and his own satisfaction in expecting the worst of life and being right. "If they want to commit suicide," he said in his subterranean voice, "why do they have to pick on us? Isn't there the whole of the south coast?"
"Not a suicide," Potticary gasped in the intervals of hulloing.
Bill took no notice of him. "Just because the fare to the south coast is more than to here! You'd think when a fellow was tired of life he'd stop being mean about the fare and bump himself off in style. But no! They take the cheapest ticket they can get and strew themselves over our doorstep!"
"Beachy Head get a lot," gasped the fair-minded Potticary. "Not a suicide, anyhow."
"Course it's a suicide. What do we have cliffs for? Bulwark of England? No. Just as a convenience to suicides. That makes four this year. And there'll be more when they get their income tax demands."
He paused, his ear caught by what Potticary was saying.
" — a girl. Well, a woman. In a bright green bathing dress." (Potticary belonged to a generation which did not know swimsuits.) "Just south of the Gap. 'Bout a hundred yards. No, no one there. I had to come away to telephone. But I'm going back right away. Yes, I'll meet you there. Oh, hullo, Sergeant, is that you? Yes, not the best beginning of a day, but we're getting used to it. Oh, no, just a bathing fatality. Ambulance? Oh, yes, you can bring it practically to the Gap. The track goes off the main Westover road just past the third milestone, and finishes in those trees just inland from the Gap. All right, I'll be seeing you."
"How can you tell it's just a bathing fatality," Bill said.