and fairly steeply downwards.
‘Mind how you go,’ she said. ‘There are chunks of stone and all sorts of rubbish down here, but I think we’re pretty well hidden from view from up top.’
Dame Beatrice thought so, too. The sides of the quarry, although they were not precipitous, were steep and almost perpendicular, but the reason for Laura’s assumption was the dense growth of vegetation, chiefly gorse, bracken and small hawthorn bushes, which covered the sides. Even the sky, except for the blue slit directly above their heads, was seen through a maze of green and gold.
It was rough going and they took it slowly. The quarry broadened out and became a square instead of a narrow rectangle. Laura plunged across it and on the seaward side there was an opening from which crudely- hacked steps descended to a tunnel.
‘This is where I came out,’ Laura explained, ‘and quite pleased to see a spot of daylight, I don’t mind telling you.’ She produced a torch and switched it on. ‘I reckon the quarrymen were in cahoots with the smugglers and between them they blasted this passage down to the sea.’ It led downwards fairly steeply and Sebastian, who was bringing up the rear behind his sister and Dame Beatrice, estimated that they must have covered more than half- a-mile before Laura said, in tones that reverberated, ‘You’d all better stand still for a minute. The last bit is a ladder. It’s quite firm, but we have to go one at a time. I’m going down now, and I’ll light the rest of you.’
The ladder, an extremely steady and stable affair, as Laura had indicated, consisted of only a dozen rungs. When all four explorers were on the sandy floor of the cave, Laura cast the beam of her torch around and they could see, on the dry floor, the shuffled outline of a circle.
‘Your surmise that the island witches use the cave seems to be borne out by the evidence,’ said Dame Beatrice, who had also produced a torch.
‘Perhaps folk-dancers practise down here,’ said Margaret, giggling nervously because she found the echoing surroundings eerie.
‘Folk-dancers,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘do not usually place candles at the four cardinal points of the compass.’
She walked round the outside of the scuffled circle. Plainly to be seen in the light of her powerful torch were the marks of four sets of candle-droppings. Then she led the way towards the mouth of the cave, but kept well back from the edge of the water. Here she and Laura switched off their torches, for it was brilliantly sunny over the sea. The force of the waves, as Laura previously had discovered, was broken on the series of black rocks which stood about ten yards out and among which the corpse of Eliza Chayleigh had been caught and held. Dame Beatrice, after studying the scene for several minutes, during which none of the others disturbed her thoughts, turned away and said decisively.
‘I do not think Mrs Chayleigh’s body was ever in this cave.’
‘No?’ said Laura. ‘But it would have been so easy. Knock a person on the head in our present dwelling, get the body into the quarries, cart it down here—you’d be screened all the time, once you got into the quarries—heave the body into the water from the mouth of the cave on an out-going tide, and there you are.’
‘Yes, that sounds feasible, I know. My objection is this: those rocks where the body was found constitute a natural barrier to the force of the incoming tide.’
‘Granted.’
‘They also act as a foil to the outgoing tide. There is never sufficient strength in the ebb to carry a body beyond those rocks and out to sea.’
‘Well, we know that’s true, so what?’
‘The people who know of this cave must be dwellers on the island, I think. If that is so, they must be well aware of the point we have just raised. They would know that the body would get caught up among the rocks and that, when it did, it would be seen from the old lighthouse and also from the cliff-top. They might just as well have left the body in the cave.’
‘With all those witches, or whatever, coming down here to hold their meetings?’
‘Well, but the witches would equally well have seen the body caught up among the rocks. It seems to me that the murderer’s most sensible plan would be to get the body carried out to sea and for it to remain in the water long enough to become unrecognisable. The fact that the body got caught up among rocks makes me wonder whether the murderer (and I am not necessarily assuming that Mrs Chayleigh was killed and disposed of by only one person) was a stranger to the island and not a native of the place, otherwise surely he would have allowed for the rocks and the tides.’
‘It could have been a witchcraft plot, you know,’ said Laura. ‘Had you thought of that?’
Dame Beatrice cackled.
‘Do you mean that the whole coven was in a plot to rid the world of poor Eliza Chayleigh?’ she asked.
‘Well, I’m keeping an open mind,’ declared Laura, stoutly. ‘Has everybody seen enough? I’m getting hungry.’
They were about to return by the way they had come when Margaret murmured,
‘I think there’s somebody coming.’ Instinctively she flattened herself against the dark wall of the cave and, such is the herd instinct, her brother and Laura did the same. Dame Beatrice remained where she was. From the top of the ladder came an oath and it was followed by a woman’s voice saying in frightened tones:
‘Somebody down there!’
‘No matter. Just carry on,’ said a man. ‘It’ll only be some of the bird-watchers and they’re innocent and harmless enough.’
‘Yes, do come down. Don’t mind me,’ said Dame Beatrice, her beautiful voice echoing oddly around the cavern.
‘Out of the way, then, ma’am. Us be carrying a table and that,’ said one of the women, ‘and it’s kind of ockard on this here ladder.’
One after another, five persons climbed down the ladder into the cave, Dame Beatrice politely lighting their descent with her torch. In silence they stacked what they were carrying against the back wall of the cave. There was only one man. Of the women, one was young, the others middle-aged. In illuminating their labours Dame Beatrice also contrived to shine her torch into their faces and was rebuked by the woman who had already spoken to her.
‘Keep that torch out of my eyes, and thank you kindly,’ she said, curtly but not offensively. ‘ ’Tis a powerful light and makes me go quite blind.’
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ said Dame Beatrice, who had seen as much as was necessary. ‘Do tell me, are you preparing for a picnic?’
‘Ay, you might call it that, then.’
‘But where is the food?’
‘Coming later,’ said the man briefly.
‘You won’t tell nobody as you’ve seen us, like, will you?’ said the woman. ‘Don’t want interlopers. Some of they tourists would be all over us if they thought there might be a free supper.’
‘How did you get into the cave, may I ask?’ said the man, who, from his accent, was not an islander.
‘Largely by chance. I have rented
‘Do you usually carry an electric torch with you?’
‘Almost invariably when I am exploring. I read that the island used to be the haunt of smugglers, so I expected to find caves, you see.’
‘Oh, yes? Well, look, you better be off home now, ma’am,’ said the woman. She spoke in a tone of authority and gave the impression that she was the leader of the party. ‘Us ’ud be greatly obliged if we could have the place to ourselves, to finish our preparations, like, as there’s much to be done. Up the ladder with ee, and us’ll foller suit. Don’t want to put ee about, like, but we’ve sort of made this our meetin’ place over the years, so, if it’s all the same—’
‘You wish me to precede you? Very well.’
Hoping that the woman meant what she said and that the party really did intend to make the ascent behind her and leave the way clear for the Lovelaines and Laura to follow as soon as the coast was clear, Dame Beatrice climbed the ladder and made her way along the narrow passage to the open air. She emerged and took the path
