‘You little…!’ said Battle, looking dangerous.
Laura, who topped him by two and a half inches, and weighed considerably more than he did, resented the adjective considerably more than the noun.
‘Little nothing,’ she observed coldly. ‘And while we’re on the subject of emoluments, just what did they pay you for blotting out that wretched Firman?’
Battle went white, and Laura, accustomed to teasing her brothers, instinctively ducked. But he made no move to attack her. He turned away and said pettishly:
‘Don’t be a lout. You know perfectly well I don’t kill people.’
‘Still got to break your duck?’ said Laura pleasantly. ‘Well, that’s all right with me. If it comes to a toss up between us, I bet I’m as good as you are. Now, reverting to the main topic of conversation…’
‘Will five bob an hour do? I can’t afford more than that.’
‘Make it seven and six, and it’s a do.’
‘But… all right, then. There’s a screen over there. Get ready behind it, and then— ’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Laura. She had to pass the screen to reach the door, and gave it a hearty shove as she went by. Apart from the fact that, as she had supposed, there was someone concealed behind it, she learned nothing from this man?uvre, and did not stay to repair her knowledge. She tore down the stairs and went straight, to Cuchester police station. By the time the police got to the house, however, both David and the other bird had flown.
‘So now for the cave,’ said O’Hara. ‘You know, Laura, you ought to be throttled for going to Battle and risking your silly young life.’
‘So I shall be, when my young man comes here, and he’s due back any day now,’ said Laura with great contentment. ‘Mrs. Croc. created a bit—unusual with her—but I still say it was worth it. I intended to bust David Battle’s
‘His what?’ asked Gascoigne loftily. He also was very angry with Laura for placing herself in danger, a position reserved by rights for gods and men, and, apart from this lordly sally, had ignored her since their reunion.
‘Suspenders to you,’ said Laura vulgarly.
‘Laura,’ said Mrs. Bradley, later, ‘cannot forgive David Battle for having the same Christian name as her fiance. It endeared him to her at first, and the reaction is all the more severe.’
Unaware of this acute reading of her subconscious mind, Laura sent an affectionate telegram to her beloved, and prepared herself for the cave.
The company, apart from policemen, was to consist of all the protagonists in the drama except for Denis, who had been requested to turn out for his Rugby football club against Richmond. This call of the wild could scarcely be ignored, so, regretfully, he had been obliged to leave his favourite aunt to her own devices for a while and shoulder the responsibilities of manhood.
The others, as Laura gleefully expressed it, were all in the swim, and the party went by car to Slepe Rock under the cover of the darkness and the protection of the police.
‘We shall depend upon you to identify these men, sir,’ said Inspector Fielding to O’Hara.
‘I’ll do that,’ the kingly youth responded. ‘The thing is, what are you going to charge ’em with? Those remains in the iron box haven’t been identified yet, and I don’t think my identification of the fellow who kidnapped poor Firman would be accepted.’
‘Well, sir,’ said the Inspector, ‘we are hoping to charge them with the murder of a Mr. and Mrs. Nankison, whose bodies
‘Never heard of ’em.’
‘Not by name, sir, perhaps. Since we got to know of the goings-on in this cave, we’ve been doing a bit of investigating, and the conclusion we’ve come to is that drowned persons— you may recollect hearing that the first owners of Slepe Cottage, as it was then called, were lost in a yachting accident —might possibly get washed up in a cave or almost anywhere, but what
‘Good heavens!’ said O’Hara. ‘Not really? I mean, you haven’t
‘And Mr. Bulstrode himself, sir, what is more,’ said the Inspector with great satisfaction. ‘Also a head and a pair of hands, which we should like to have identified.’
‘Did Mrs. Bradley put you on to it?’
‘Yes, she did, sir. And a nod was as good as a wink. The police, in their way, sir, are not entirely without imagination.’
O’Hara and Gascoigne, not unused to the interior of Bow Street after Boat-Race night, did not believe this last statement. Gascoigne chuckled, O’Hara was silent, and soon the police car, followed by that of Mrs. Bradley, crept down the long hill towards the sea, and drew up half a mile from the bay.
‘Now, then,’ said the inspector, ‘everybody quiet, please. And no torches unless you see me use mine. You’ll have to manage in the dark, the same as cats.’
‘And bats and owls,’ muttered Laura. But, like the others, she followed the route in silence and in the darkness. The little party—there were a sergeant and two constables with the inspector—soon climbed the grassy slope to the top of the cliffs above the bay, and there, at a curt command, they lay and waited.
Time passed, and three of the hunters had begun to think that the quarry was not going to show up when a searchlight, playing over the bay from a point to the east of the watchers, picked out a fair-sized yacht and a couple of boats which seemed to be making towards her.
‘O.K. for vision,’ muttered Inspector Fielding contentedly, and took his policemen away with him. The boats, in the searchlight’s beam, became a couple of frenzied insects, their oars sprouting like legs.
‘Why can’t we go with them?’ demanded Laura, referring to the police, and feeling disappointed and affronted by the rather mean tactics of the regulars.
‘Because they won’t let us, and because we have other fish to fry,’ replied Mrs. Bradley. She did nothing, however, for twenty minutes after she had made this statement, and her companions assumed restful attitudes, talked softly, and kept their eyes on the sea, which was again in darkness.
Suddenly Mrs. Bradley rose to her feet.
‘Time for the kill,’ she observed. ‘If you wish to be in at the death, you also may be in for a fairly long walk.’
‘Not—?’ exclaimed Laura suddenly.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘We are going to take your Ancient British trackway—all of us except for George.’
‘Cuddle-Up to his intimates,’ said Laura, with a deplorable giggle.
‘George will take the car to Welsea, garage it, and go to bed,’ said George’s thoughtful employer. ‘There is no need for him to spend the night out.’
‘I beg your pardon, madam,’ said George, extremely coldly. Mrs. Bradley knew better than to argue with him, and replied with great cordiality:
‘Very well, George, but you may have to lurch, belch and bellow, when the time comes.’
‘Vcry good, madam. I have often played the part of an inebriate at domestic festivals in order to amuse my mother’s guests, and shall not be at a loss,’ replied George sublimely.
The party, guided by Laura, took the three-thousand-year-old track across the hills. Laura remembered it chiefly as a thyme-scented open vastness of sky and scudding clouds, the distances broken by green and treeless contours on which the round barrows stood out like the old, healed wounds on an oak; but now there was nothing to see except the faint gleam of torches on the ground, and Laura, working by compass, divination and what she privately regarded as her personal luck, but which included a
‘All right, so far,’ she said, getting up from a tumble into the camp’s grassy ditch. ‘There’s a wood comes next, as I remember it.’
‘And in that wood, where often you and I upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, we will ambush the villains Cassius and Battle,’ said Mrs. Bradley.
‘You seem very sure about this,’ said O’Hara suddenly. Mrs. Bradley wasted upon the upland darkness a
