The Murder of Busy Lizzie

and was immediately drenched with spray and half-deafened by the noise of the waves as the incoming tide flung the whole of its force at the granite fortress of the Atlantic coast of the island. Disregarding all this, she worked her way, precariously but with great caution, still further to her right. Here the rocks which had harboured the body were taking the full force of the assault, so at one place the water did no more than cream in over the island shelf. Laura decided to chance her luck. She got within two feet of the water at this quieter point, glanced down, watched the retreating wave, dropped in, and the next oncoming breaker washed her into the cave.

‘Shouldn’t want Gavin to see me do that,’ she thought, as she floundered forward into the darkness and found the water getting shallower. ‘Wonder whether my torch still works?’ Realising that, even if she did not need to enter the water, she must inevitably be soaked by the spray when she reached the foot of the cliffs, Laura had wrapped her electric torch in a bit of oil-skin and buttoned it in the zipped pocket of the waterproofed anorak she was wearing. Scrambling onward into the cave and at last finding that her feet were on dry sand, she got out the torch and switched it on.

‘I went back to my gang on the top of the cliff,’ said Laura, reporting to Dame Beatrice on her return to Puffins, ‘and mighty surprised they were when I came upon them from the rear. They’d seen me drop into the water and disappear and the girls said they were a bit worried, but the boys, after their easygoing masculine manner, said I’d be all right and the girls were not to panic. They were going to give me an hour and then, if I didn’t show up, they would raise the alarm. Well, I found that the water only comes about halfway up the cave. After that it’s quite dry and, of course, being another of these smugglers’ hidey-holes, there’s a way out from the back. The ladder I found is pretty new and on the sand there’s a scuffle of footprints in the form of an almost perfect circle. If you ask me,’ concluded Laura impressively, ‘the cave is now the meeting-place of the witches and witches may be the smugglers. What do you say to that?’

‘Imaginative, ingenious, inspired and, of course, quite probable.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing, although it will change the subject. Dimbleton has an empty pig-sty in his garden.’

‘The trouble will be to find out when last he had a pig in it. But to revert to the smuggling, if it is what Robert and the others suspect, what can be gained by it?’

‘Well, there don’t seem to be any coastguards, so supposing the goods are not so much smuggled into the island as out of it? Gun-running to some trouble spot somewhere, for instance? No bother about getting the things either in or out, you see, and a fat profit at the other end.’

‘There I admit that you open up an avenue for thought.’

‘I guessed perhaps I might,’ said Laura, squinting modestly down her nose. ‘Of course, all the islanders must be implicated. You couldn’t risk having informers.’

‘But what has all this to do with the death of Eliza Chayleigh?’

‘I have no idea. But don’t you think my theory about the empty sty needs following up?’

‘Your ideas are always picturesque.’

‘And bear no relation to reality, I suppose!’

‘Reality is always relative, dear child. So far as the death of Mrs Chayleigh is concerned, I think first we must find out why she died, for we must remember that, so far, we cannot be certain that she was murdered.’

‘But you think she was, don’t you?’

‘It is as likely and as unlikely as that she committed suicide or was killed as the result of an accident, but I prefer to await the result of the inquest before I make up my mind.’

‘Meaning,’ said Laura shrewdly, ‘that you don’t propose to be bound by its findings. Is that your attitude?’

‘I have no more to say. Speculation is useless at the moment.’

‘Then shall we get on with the memoirs?’

‘I should prefer to take the air. Will you show me whereabouts on the cliff-top the bolt-hole from this cave comes out? I do not propose to scramble down the face of the cliffs as you did, but your ‘fairly new’ ladder sounds a possible means of descent, even for one of my advanced years.’

‘Well, all right, so long as we get back in time for our next meal. So you do think this was murder, and not accident or suicide, don’t you? I wish we knew why she really consented to come to this house and who it was she met here. Incidentally, the passage up from the back of the cave comes out at the end of the quarries, so one way of reaching it, if you wanted to throw people off the scent, might be to start from the back of this house, worm your way into the quarries and approach the entrance to the passage that way. You’d never be spotted unless somebody was actually in the quarries at the time, because they’re all overgrown with plants and small bushes and so there’s plenty of cover. My bet is not only that Mrs Chayleigh was conned into coming to this house and murdered here, but that the body was taken to the cave and put into the sea on an outgoing tide. What do you think of that for an idea? There must have been more than one murderer, of course. That’s why I thought of the smugglers. I don’t believe one person could have managed all that alone.’

chapter eleven

The Witches’ Cavern

‘Dame, dame! the watch is set:

Quickly come, we all are met.

From the lakes and from the fens,

From the rocks and from the dens,

From the woods and from the caves,

From the churchyards, from the graves…’

Ben Jonson

« ^ »

What made you think that the cave had a second exit?’ Dame Beatrice asked as they climbed the knoll at the back of Puffins.

‘There’s a similar way up out of the cave I use as a bathing hut. There may be others on the island, for all I know, and there’s also a deep gorge which goes halfway across the island where the stream runs. This place must have been a smugglers’ paradise at one time and I believe it still is. Stuff comes in from the Continent, or further east, and goes out to Ireland and maybe to Cuba, or it comes in from America and goes out to the Middle East. There are all sorts of possibilities and apparently, on the island itself, no restriction. But the smugglers can wait for a bit, don’t you think? I feel that our immediate concern is with the death of Eliza Chayleigh.’

From the top of the knoll a well-trodden path led to the top of the old quarries. These had been so long untouched that they were pleasantly overgrown by climbing plants, bracken, heather and wild flowers. For fifty yards or so Laura still followed the path and this kept to the line of the old railway track, which also sprouted wild plants, grass and gorse-bushes. When they came to the end of it against a huge pile of rubble and discarded blocks of stone, a further path led along the cliff-top towards the old lighthouse. Here Laura stood still.

‘Now the fun begins,’ she said. ‘Oh, damn! We’ve got company.’

The company to which she referred was that of Sebastian and Margaret, who greeted her as they came towards her from the direction of the old lighthouse. Dame Beatrice leered at them kindly and asked how they did.

‘Well,’ said Margaret, when they had returned her salutation, ‘I’m glad we met you. Mrs Gavin—Laura— there’s a marvellous story going around among the bird-watchers at the hotel that you climbed down the cliffs on the end of a rope, took if off and left it dangling and came up by another route. We thought that could only mean you’d found another cave like the one we use for bathing. Do show us the exit. We’ve looked everywhere.

‘Another smugglers’ hole, in fact, it is. Quite right,’ said Laura. ‘I’m going to show it to Dame Beatrice. So you want to come along? All right, then. But I had no rope.’

Behind the heap of stone and rubble there were bushes. Laura parted these and held them apart for Dame Beatrice to follow her before she plunged into a sea of bracken through which a narrow path led away to the left