Spotted Hemlock

‘I am truly sorry to come bothering round again,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they arrived, ‘but I have a fine new theory about Miss Palliser, as I suppose she will continue to be referred to by the college, and, although I do not expect my interview with Miss Good to do much, if anything, to support it, I must try to clear her out of the way first.’

‘You’ll be a change from the police, at any rate,’ said Miss McKay. ‘We’ve had them morning, noon and night. Did you know that they have decided to keep an open mind as to whether the dead girl really was Mrs Coles? It seems there’s a doubt.’

‘No, but I thought they might do so. Shall we see Miss Good before lunch?’

‘Yes, I think that would be best. She is on practical work this morning, but has an essay this afternoon. Let me see, now… yes, she will be down at the piggeries with Mr Lestrange. I am sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’

Miss Good was also pleased to see them. Carey had just concluded an exposition, with demonstration, of the way to introduce a newcomer into a pen which already held a settled group. He had caught and anointed three pigs, the newcomer and two others, with pig-oil powerfully scented with aniseed, and Miss Good and three other students were each to take a pig of the remaining four and copy his method.

‘And, of course, the pigs are all right—quite sweet, actually—but the smell of aniseed makes me retch,’ said Miss Good. ‘But if it’s about that ghost I saw… and there’s nothing else you’d want to see me about… well, I did realise afterwards that it might be Highpepper being silly, but, as I didn’t think of that at the time, I didn’t take any notice except to scram.’

‘As who would not?’ said Laura, who had been briefed by Dame Beatrice on the way down. ‘But I do wish you’d tell me a bit more. I’m interested in ghosts, and this may have been a real one, after all.’

‘Mrs Gavin was born in the west of Scotland,’ explained Dame Beatrice, ‘where there is a long history of extra- sensory phenomena.’

‘Oh, yes? I wouldn’t know. But, if Mrs Gavin is interested in ghosts, as such, she’s come to the wrong shop, I’m afraid. You see, what I saw couldn’t have been a ghost. I know that perfectly well now. The proof is that the ghost’s horse trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts. Looking back, it was obviously Highpepper. I can’t see the point, all the same. I should think something came unstuck and the boy had to make a getaway. I mean, no rag was carried out, so far as we know.’

‘Just a moment,’ said Laura. She was carrying a brief-case and from it she produced a stiff-covered, shiny notebook of rather impressive size and very impressive thickness. It was nearly half-full of notes and weird drawings which she had manufactured on the preceding day in preparation for the visit. She skimmed through the notebook—they were in the Principal’s sitting-room—as fine and private a place as the grave once the telephone had been disconnected and the door locked—and found a lurid picture of a headless rider and a headless dog in the middle of what looked like the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. ‘You see, the horse may have been a real one.’

‘The horse?’

‘Well,’ said Laura, temporising, ‘we all know about the Gytrash, don’t we?’

‘I—I don’t see the connection.’

Neither did Laura, but she continued, sternly:

‘So you may as well describe the ghost to me. It was tall, you say?’

‘I don’t know. Anyone on horseback looks tall.’

Broad?’

‘Well, I couldn’t really say.’

‘Did it look like a man or a woman?’

‘I was so scared, I just turned and ran.’

‘It followed you, didn’t it?’

‘I don’t think it followed me. I mean, I don’t think it saw me at all.’

‘Look here, said Laura, upon inspiration, ‘where are those brussels sprouts? I mean, you spotted the horse and rider at the head of the drive, I gather. Where had they been before that?’

A look of intelligent interest replaced the former expression of slightly puzzled distaste on the student’s face.

‘You know, I never thought of it that way before,’ she said. ‘Miss Gonsidine told me about the sprouts being trampled just to prove to me I hadn’t seen a ghost. The sprouts are in the kitchen garden, and that’s about the most unlikely place you can think of for anybody to go riding. It’s right round by the butler’s pantry that was, and all that sort of thing.’

‘Ah, that’s if the person knew the layout here. Try to imagine a person having an assignment with somebody here, but having no knowledge of the geography, so to speak.’

‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’

But Laura, inspired with a truly magnificent notion, was not prepared to explain. She said:

‘I wish you could remember the size of the rider. Haven’t you any idea?’

Thus prompted, Miss Good replied reluctantly:

‘Well, you know Anne Boleyn?’

‘The apparent headlessness of the apparition, you mean?’

‘Yes, so why should I suddenly think of Henry the Eighth?’

‘Her husband, and responsible for the headlessness aforesaid?—No, by thunder!’ Laura got up, smote the astonished and slightly resentful student a congratulatory blow between the shoulder-blades, and said urgently, ‘The kitchen garden, my girl, and quick about it, before my brain has time to cool. As the barrow-boy remarked