The Murder of Busy Lizzie

personalities which she would probably make acrimonious. He was not a particularly mean man, but he could see no point in paying for a one-sided and probably lengthy dispute from which nobody would gain except the Post Office.

Meanwhile his children had confided in Laura, who, picking out the word vigilantes from Sebastian’s improbable tale, relayed the gist of his account to Dame Beatrice.

‘They’ve told me that this Ransome Lovelaine has the farm cottage with the smallholding,’ she concluded. ‘Don’t you think we should get speech with him? He’ll surely be willing to talk, if these smugglers attempted to drown him.’

‘But he does not think they did try to drown him. He appears to have regarded the incident merely as a warning, and he may accept it as such. That being so, the last thing he is likely to do—’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Is to grass on the smugglers, you mean.’

‘We have no direct information that the men who set about him are smugglers, you know.’

‘Not even with the tip-off we had from Gavin? Come now, Mrs Croc!’ said Laura, using her private name for her saurian employer.

‘Very well, I concede the point, but the time to talk openly to Ransome Lovelaine is not yet. I will go and see him a little later on, so that there will appear to be no obvious connection between my visit and his experiences in the cave, but, even then, smuggling is the last thing I shall mention,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Won’t you even tell Gavin that we may be on to something?’

‘No, but you are at liberty to do so.’

‘May I say you think as I do?’

‘You may say that I have certain suspicions, if you like.’

‘Do you think the witches were all mixed up in it? I mean, they were the ones who blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back. I can’t help thinking it was all a put-up job. If we could show that the witches are the smugglers — and I told you before that I think they are—’

‘You may be correct, of course, in thinking that.’

‘You mean you think so, too?’

‘I retain an open mind. But where does Eliza Chayleigh come into all this? I shall be interested to hear what happened at the inquest.’

‘We shan’t know, unless it was a verdict of murder and, taking everything into account, I don’t believe that’s likely.’

The verdict was brought to the island by Marius. His children, who were not expecting him back, were not in the hotel when he arrived. However, even although their table-companions, with a few other of the bird-watchers, had left the island, Sebastian and Margaret were not very pleased to see him. All the same, as much out of kindness as out of policy, they decided to disguise their feelings. Miss Crimp, on the contrary, made no attempt to disguise hers.

‘Oh, Mr Lovelaine!’ she had exclaimed in dismay when he presented himself at the reception desk. ‘I quite understood that you had left us! I have let your room.’

‘Then I fear, Miss Crimp, that I must ask you to find me another. I have come to escort my son and daughter home, and that, as you are well aware, cannot be done until the next boat calls.’

‘Well, you know how full the hotel is, Mr Lovelaine. The only thing I can suggest is that we put up a camp bed in the sitting-room of your son’s chalet. That really is the best I can do for you.’

‘Go home?’ said Sebastian, when, on meeting him after his interview with Miss Crimp, he informed them that she proposed to instal him (until the boat called) in their tiny sitting-room. ‘But why? And why have you come back, Father? Not that we aren’t glad to see you, of course, but we thought you had left the island for good and were quite agreeable to our finishing out the month here.’

‘Well, we will talk that over later. Do you not wish to know how it went with your aunt?’

At this incongruous way of putting it, Margaret gave an hysterical little squeal of laughter which her brother stifled by giving her a slight but meaningful kick on the ankle.

‘What did the coroner’s jury decide?’ he asked his father.

‘An open verdict was returned. We may expect the police to be interested. The medical evidence was that she had hit her head and was dead by the time the body had reached the water. It is quite established that death was not by drowning.’

‘So police action is contemplated? Oh, well, that’s a good thing, I suppose, although nobody wants to be mixed up with the rozzers.’

‘From the point of view of common justice it is, as you say, a good thing, my boy. I do not believe that your aunt, knowing the island and its dangers from high winds — the man Dimbleton told the court of cattle which had been blown over the cliffs, incidents within his own experience — I cannot believe that your aunt would have exposed herself to such an obvious danger.’

‘No, it doesn’t seem likely that Aunt Eliza would have taken that sort of risk,’ said Sebastian. ‘Besides, I don’t believe the winds at this time of year would be all that strong. I mean, Maggie and I have walked all round the island, on and off, since we’ve been here, and on the cliff paths, too, and although it’s true that the wind never seems to stop blowing, we never felt we were in any danger of being blown over.’

‘So,’ said Marius, ‘I suggest that you two leave the island and that I employ a private detective to look after my interests. I do not rule out my first impression, which was that your aunt met with foul play. I do not care, either, for the thought that Ransome and his father live on the island and have an interest, very possibly, in Lizzie’s death.’

‘Well, you thought we ourselves might have an interest in it, Father,’ said Margaret, with a bluntness and a boldness which surprised her hearers and herself.

‘Here, steady on, Maggie!’ protested her brother.

‘Really, my dear!’ remonstrated Marius.

‘Well,’ said the girl, facing these strictures with the grimness of one who now felt that, having started a hare, she had better pursue it to the kill, ‘suppose you do employ a private detective, Father, and suppose he does find out that there was something suspicious about Aunt Eliza’s death, isn’t it going to occur to somebody that she was quite all right until we decided to visit the island? It seems…’ Margaret faltered a little, but continued, albeit without quite daring to meet her father’s eye ‘… it seems pretty logical to me. I mean, do we really want to start people talking?’

Sebastian suddenly decided to back her up.

‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘can bring Aunt Eliza back, so I can see Maggie’s point, Father. A private-eye might stir up all sorts of mud. I mean, Aunt Eliza’s past isn’t exactly that of Caesar’s wife, is it? I’ve got to go back to college in the autumn, and Maggie’s got another year at school. We don’t want to have to live down Aunt Eliza’s murder or something else unsavoury. There’s your own professorship, too, to think about, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I should hardly lose that through the death of my only sister,’ said Marius stiffly and, almost for the first time in their lives, speaking as man to man with his son. ‘That is unless there were some reason for thinking that I had a hand in it. All the same, if there was something criminal, I feel I owe it to your aunt’s memory to have it unmasked.’

‘Yes, quite, and all very fine, but dirty linen isn’t only grubby, Father. It also is inclined to stink.’

‘Father,’ said Margaret suddenly, ‘you mentioned Ransome just now. There’s something you ought to know about him. If Seb hadn’t happened to be on the spot, the chances are that Ransome could have been murdered. What we ought to do—’

‘Ransome murdered?’

‘He himself says he thinks it was only horse-play,’ said Sebastian, ‘but I’m not sure he’s telling his true thoughts. It was only a day or two ago…’ He told the story truthfully but economically.

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed his father. ‘Witches and warlocks, bird-watchers and thugs! What sort of place is this island? I am more anxious than ever that you should leave it.’

‘Father,’ said Margaret, ‘Seb and I still want to stay. We thought we might be able to get Dame Beatrice to look into things. You said she was a criminologist and a consultant psychiatrist to the Home Office, didn’t you? We