Spotted Hemlock

The inspector made no comment on this optimistic supposition. He said, ‘Conditions will need to be the same as before. What kind of night was it?’

‘Starry, but moonless. Calm, but not cold.’

‘It was a lot earlier in the year, madam.’

‘We must do the best we can,’ said Laura. ‘After all, what Miss Good thinks she saw isn’t evidence.’

‘We do not require evidence from Miss Good,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but merely a contributory statement.’

She contrived her talk with Basil that same afternoon over tea in the hotel lounge. Laura was ordered to absent herself from the meal, and cadged an invitation from Miss Considine to take tea with her in her private sitting-room at the hostel.

‘Dame Beatrice,’ said Laura, taking a toasted and well-buttered scone, ‘thinks she has some sort of stranglehold on Mr Basil. I can’t believe he’s a murderer, all the same.’

‘I know very little about him,’ said Miss Considine. ‘Have some honey on that. Our own beehives. Do you keep bees?’

Noting the deliberate change of subject and realising that, in Miss Considine’s view, it was not in the best of taste for a lecturer in full possession of her job to discuss a former colleague who had been deprived of his, replied that she had an aunt with a passion for heather-honey, and the conversation developed upon bee-keeping lines.

At half-past five Laura left the cosy sitting-room and its bright fire, and George drove her back into Garchester. Dame Beatrice was still in the lounge but there was no sign of Basil. Laura raised her eyebrows and her employer beckoned her to a chair.

‘All according to Cocker?’ Laura enquired. Dame Beatrice nodded slowly and rhythmically, but did not reply in words. They dined at seven, changed into warmer clothing, put on wraps and thick shoes and gloves, and drove back to the college.

Here there were preparations to be made. The mare was brought round to the kitchen garden, and Laura, who was inclined to regard the proceedings as an entertainment, not realising until afterwards what they portended, suggested that the sight of somebody attired in a sheet would scare the horse into bolting.

Dame Beatrice agreed.

‘The animal is wearing blinkers. You will mount him and then clothe yourself in the ghostly vestments.’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Laura. ‘What happened to the other ones—the ones the original ghost used?’

‘They have yet to reappear. The college laundry list is not short of the two sheets which we have found to be necessary to clothe the ghost, so, obviously, they did not come from here. May I request you to array yourself? The student who is to assist us should be here anon, but the construction of these trappings requires that the major character in the drama should be robed before the party of the second part can be inserted. You had better try it on first, to learn its intricacies, but keep behind the horse.’

Laura climbed into the tent-like and voluminous apparatus. It came to half-way between knee and ankle, and had adequate eye-holes. She gathered in the slack—there were slits for her arms—and announced that she thought she could manage. At the top of the cellar steps two students were waiting for them. Dame Beatrice greeted them, identifying them by the light of a torch, while Laura wriggled out of the trappings.

‘You do not object to taking part in our small experiment?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

‘Well,’ said Miss Good, ‘no, I suppose not. What do you want us to do?’

‘Vastly different things, dear child. We want you to repeat, as exactly as you can, your actions and behaviour on the night you saw this horse and its rider.’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Have no misapprehensions. My nephew, Mr Lestrange, will be with you.’

‘Darling Piggy! What a heart-throb!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. We always call the pig-lecturer Piggy.’

‘I had understood the soubriquet to be a pet-name for Mr Basil. By the way, should you happen to run into Mr Basil, take no notice at all. Do not speak to him, even to greet him. His equilibrium is not to be upset in any way until, as I hope, the ghost-horse upsets it completely. So now, Miss Good, if you will proceed, as the police might put it, to the college front gate, Mr Lestrange will get out of his car there, and the two of you will dawdle about until you see the ghost-horse coming. As soon as it comes in view, do as you did before— hide from it and let it go by. When it has passed, Mr Lestrange will drive you back here. Please be prepared to tell me of any differences you may have noticed between this apparition and the other.’

‘And what about me?’ asked the student who was with Miss Good.

‘You, child? You are wearing breeches, are you?—All right, Miss Good. Off you go.’

‘Well, I thought you said I had to ride a horse,’ the student continued.

‘No; I said that you had to ride on a horse. In this particular case the two are not synonymous. You are helpless and a dead weight. Do not assist Mrs Gavin or the policeman who has just put in an appearance. Right, Constable Starling! Up she goes. Now, student, remain inert.’

Laura, who was also wearing breeches, had already mounted the horse, or, rather, had been hoisted on to its bare back by the policeman. Then he and Laura, the one heaving up the student’s inert body and the other receiving it and hitching round it the billowing, sheet-like garment in which she herself was clad, contrived (with no little difficulty) to get the double-ghost horsed.

‘Right,’ said Laura, when she had a firm grip of the student and both were muffled in the sheet. ‘Can do all right. Miss Good should have reached the gate by now.’

The grey mare moved at a stately walk down the drive. The night was clear, but very dark, and Laura left the