Spotted Hemlock

when he looked at an alligator’s teeth, you said a mouthful, cocky.’

Dame Beatrice, with an alligator’s smile, watched them go. She had been visited by a wild idea, too. She waited. The kitchen garden, as Laura had anticipated, was unusually vast. A strip of lawn separated it from the back of the house, and then it stretched far and wide, beautiful and austere. At that time of year it was given almost wholly over to brussels sprouts and cabbages, and these spread, downhill slightly, to a couple of ponds, a disused cottage and, finally, a gate which opened on to a lane.

Laura, nosing about like a hound which has picked up the scent, made rapidly for this gate and opened it.

‘Nobody except the dustmen ever come in that way,’ volunteered Miss Good, obviously on the defensive.

‘And are the dustcarts horse-drawn?’

‘No, not nowadays.’

‘But a horse has been here. Look at the hoof-prints.’

‘It must have been somebody from Highpepper, as I said.’

‘And it might be your ghost of Henry VIII. Well, I must away and write up my report. Many thanks for your invaluable assistance. Sorry to have taken up your time. Of course,’ she added, as they walked back to the front door together, ‘there is nothing to show that the ghost didn’t come from Highpepper. That needs to be borne in mind. I do agree with you there, and that something caused him to sheer off before there was any ragging.’

‘Well?’ said Dame Beatrice, when they returned to Miss Considine’s room. ‘Did the brussels sprouts enlighten you, I wonder?’

‘Yes and no,’ Laura replied. ‘You know you had an idea that the ghost may have been two people? Well, that’s exactly what it was. It reminded Miss Good of Henry VIIL’

‘You couldn’t call that proof,’ said Miss Good. But Laura wagged her head solemnly.

‘I call it proof,’ she said. ‘Of course, if we could have seen the hoof-prints the morning after you saw this apparition, we might have been able to show that the horse was more heavily laden when it left by the front gate than when it appeared at the back, but that’s past praying for now.’

They took their leave of Miss McKay, and, when they were in the car, Dame Beatrice, with a leer, congratulated Laura on her detective work.

‘I think we may take two things for granted,’ she said. ‘The horse was carrying two persons, neither of whom had to be recognised, and the collaborator with, or abductor of, Mrs Coles did not come from Highpepper.’

‘Did not?’

‘Nobody who knew anything about the environs of Calladale would have trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts, and any Highpepper student who had planned to abduct Mrs Coles would certainly have taken pains to familiarise himself with the topography, if he did not know it already.’

‘Yes, but, if secrecy was the main object, surely the ghostly get-up was a bit noticeable?’

‘Yes and no. You must realise that the effect on most of the students would have been the same as the effect on Miss Good. There is a legend here of a haunting.’

‘Sudden and unreasoning panic? Oh, I see. No hanging about to investigate the phenomenon, but the hasty sauve qui peut? Something in that, no doubt. So what do we get? Somebody carried off Mrs Coles…’

‘And, most probably, with her own consent, although not, I venture to think, upon horseback.’

‘With her own consent? I don’t altogether see the point. If it wasn’t with her own consent she would have kicked up devil’s delight, unless the horseman had some mental or moral hold over her, and so could force the issue? You indicated the possibility, didn’t you?’

‘Did I really? Pray continue your exposition.’

‘Somebody didn’t intend (we think) to betray his presence, but he did so by trampling all over the kitchen garden, not knowing the geography of the college. That rules out the Highpepper youths, who must know it remarkably well. I say, though, there’s something else we ought to consider. In fact, we ought to do more than actually consider it.’

‘Ah! I wondered whether that might occur to you. You refer, no doubt, to the difficulty of actually identifying the pillion rider, if, by any chance, it was not Mrs Coles. After all, she had disappeared some five to six days earlier, don’t forget.’

‘Not Mrs Coles after all? What a sell if it wasn’t! Anyway, this is where I make a noise like Fleet Street and go and see this young husband. Incidentally’—Laura looked suspicious  — ‘you seem very pleased about something.’

‘I was very pleased to note Miss Good’s remark about the position of the butler’s pantry, child, that’s all.’

chapter ten

Phantom Holiday

‘Ernest discovered on the borders of a little marsh, a quantity of bamboos, half buried in the sand. We pulled them out…’

« ^ »

Laura had given considerable thought to an age-old problem. What, she wondered, would be the best things to wear for the interview with the bereaved husband. That it might turn out to be a meeting of extreme importance to the enquiry she was well aware, and she knew that both men and women, particularly young men and young women, were influenced, even if unconsciously, by the clothes worn by interlocutors.