The Murder of Busy Lizzie

taken Ransome into partnership, but I rather doubt it, you know. Did Marie and Potter meet the partner?’

‘Oh, no, he hadn’t taken over at that time. It was only in the air, so to speak.’

‘So how did Marie know it had come off?’

‘I expect she’s received this year’s brochure, the same as we have.’

‘I don’t remember reading anything in it about a partner. It said, Eliza Chayleigh, Resident Proprietor.’

‘No, there wasn’t anything, I’m sure. I expect, as they’d been there before, Aunt Eliza sent Cousin Marie and the Potter a covering letter. She must have mentioned the possibility of the partnership, though, while they were there.’

‘You began your story in the middle, as I suppose you realise. What brought up this matter of the partnership and our parents’ unworldliness?’

‘Well, you know, Seb, it didn’t occur to me at first to take in what Cousin Marie was saying. She’s a frightful gossip, anyway, so it was quite a long time before I really began to cotton on.’

‘Oh, yes? Well, and when you did?’

‘She said, “I don’t know what difference Eliza thought it might make to me whether she took a partner or not, but I must say she gave me a very straight look, almost like a challenge, when she mentioned the parents’ legacy. I’d always thought that the Lovelaines’ chances disappeared when Clothilde’s straight-laced mamma boycotted Eliza at Clothilde’s wedding and Clothilde followed suit and looked straight through the poor woman, but, after what Clothilde let out to me the last time Pottie and I were there, it almost sounds as though, if this partnership should turn out to be a marriage, the parents’ legacy goes up the spout.” ’

‘What on earth did she mean by that?’

‘I’ve no idea, Seb, but it sounded to me as though Boobie, as usual, had let some cat out of the bag.’

‘The parents’ legacy? Whose parents?’

‘The Tutor’s and Aunt Eliza’s, I suppose. It sounded as though they might have left her some money.’

‘Cousin Marie could have made that up.’

‘And the statement that Aunt Eliza had known the boy since she was twenty?’

‘People like Cousin Marie can stretch dramatic licence a pretty long way, you know. I think we’ll wait and see, but, after what you’ve said, nothing on earth will keep me from spending a holiday on Aunt Eliza’s island.’

‘You don’t think I ought to tell The Tutor what I overheard and deduced?’

‘He’ll only wonder why you haven’t told him before.’

‘No, he won’t. Until today there has never been any thought of our going over to the island, so there would have been no point in telling him. He would just have thought I was tattling, wouldn’t he?’

‘True, my child, and for pity’s sake don’t worry about it now. I like a bit of clean fun, and this summer holiday begins to take on a charm which I never expected.’

‘I wonder whether The Tutor and Boobie know that Cousin Marie and the creep went over to the island last summer? It seems so strange they should hit on that particular spot,’ said Margaret. ‘It would be just like Cousin Marie not to tell anybody, of course. She loves her little secrets. I can’t help feeling there’s more than that behind it though.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Sebastian. ‘Knowing what Boobie thinks of Aunt Eliza— we didn’t until today, but apparently Cousin Marie did—I expect she thought she wouldn’t be invited here again if it were known that she’d been hobnobbing with the busy hoteliere on the mystical island of Great Skua. Perhaps she’s got her fishy eye on the main chance, too.’

‘I wonder?’ said Margaret. ‘Well, we’d better get changed for dinner.’

‘Supper,’ said her brother, with a grin.

Far to the south, on the edge of the New Forest in a small square mansion just on the outskirts of the village of Wandles Parva, a tall, well-built, comely woman was talking to her husband.

‘But it’s not Dame B’s cup of tea,’ she was protesting. ‘You can’t ask her to do your police work for you.’

‘I tell you, Laura,’ countered Robert Ian Gavin, ‘if we could think of anyone better we’d contact him or her, but we can’t. Dame Beatrice is much our best bet. You see, we have nothing to go on but rumour, so a policeman going about and asking questions on a tiny island with a population of only two or three dozen people, would be suspected and rumbled in no time, everybody would shut up tight and we wouldn’t get a solitary bleep out of any of them. Most of them are probably doing something illegal, anyway, and would shy like mustangs if they thought the law was involved.’

‘That’s a nice thing to say about a lot of innocent villagers!’

‘They’re not villagers and I’d take my oath they’re not innocent. There’s no such thing as a village on the island, nothing but a couple of lighthouses, a disused airfield, a farm, a hotel, a deserted quarry, a few farm- workers’ cottages and a small pub. Another thing: the inhabitants are the descendants of wreckers and smugglers, don’t you forget, and I don’t suppose the Ethiopian has changed his skin all that much down the years. All we want is to put an observer there. Dame Beatrice won’t have to do anything. We don’t want to make a move until we can be sure we’re on the right tack. We don’t want anything put down in writing. As soon as she’s got any worthwhile information, we want her to come back with it and give us a hint. Just a tip-off, that’s all we need, but one from an absolutely reliable source. Then we shall know where we are.’

‘I suppose you’re in touch with the Home Office about all this?’

‘Certainly we are. They are perfectly willing to loan Dame Beatrice to us, subject, of course, to her own approval. They can’t exactly order her about.’

‘I should hope not, indeed! She’s not their servant, and she’s a consultant psychiatrist, not a coppers’ nark.’

‘Look here, Laura, if there is anything fishy going on, don’t you think that, at a time like this, we ought to go all out to stop it? Lives are being sacrificed and property reduced to rubble. Surely you realise that?’

‘Dame B. is too old to go chasing about on perilous seas to faery lands forlorn to do your dirty work for you.’

‘She’s not so old that she’s lost the use of her brains and her powers of observation. There won’t be any chasing about. All we want her to do—’

‘Besides, she’s busy writing her memoirs.’

‘And in what better place than on an island where nobody knows her, where there are no interruptions from lion-hunters, where she’ll live four hundred feet above sea-level in one of the healthiest spots on earth… ?’

‘And where the only food, I suppose, will be mutton and potatoes, and where the Atlantic winds blow at gale force all day and all night.’

‘Well, if you’re going with her, and I hope you are, you’ll think you’re in your beloved Hebrides, so what’s wrong with that?’

‘Well, you can ask her, I suppose,’ said Laura reluctantly, ‘but, mind, no argument if she turns you down.’

‘Fair enough. No argument. We’ve found a decent house for you to live in, by the way. Taken it for three months from the beginning of July.’

‘The devil you have! You think of everything, don’t you?’

‘We do our best,’ said Gavin modestly.

One evening, when June was in its second week, Marius Lovelaine, with a deprecating cough, said, in a tentative tone, ‘I cannot think you mean it, Clothilde.’

‘Mean what?’

‘Well, we have always gone on holiday together.’

‘Nonsense. The children went away on their own last year and the year before.’

‘I meant you and I, my dear.’

‘Then it is more than time we made a change. Oh, Marius, why on earth do you want to see Eliza? It would be much better to ignore her letter completely. You can never revive the past. Besides, if she really wanted to make friends with you again, she would have extended an open invitation, not expected you to pay your way at top rates.