steps?’
‘What do you think? I wanted to find out whether she was another witch. If she had not tumbled down the steps I should have known her for one. She had saved herself from life imprisonment, so I thought she could save herself from a nasty little fall.’
‘I shall never forgive you.’
‘Then I shan’t tell you how the black witch took the body to the old house.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I worked it out. She came in a car, didn’t she? She burnt the car. She borrowed another one.’
‘How could she do that?’
‘Anthony Wotton has only one double and one single garage. The other cars were left outside. People are careless. They don’t always lock their cars. They think that at the houses of friends they are safe.’
‘You may be right about that. Over that weekend there would have been — let’s see. Ah, yes. Anthony’s car and Celia’s mini in the double garage, and mine, as I was the first guest, in the car-port. That means that Roland Thornbury’s car, William Underedge’s, Dame Beatrice’s and, for the night he was there, Hardie McMaster’s, were left in the open.’
‘Not Roland Thornbury’s. It was bogged down,’ Aunt Eglantine reminded me. ‘And the white witch had gone.’
‘But, supposing that you are right and that’s the way she got the body from the burnt-out car to the old house, how did she hide it from the Saturday night until the morning the gardener found it?’
‘I worked that out, too,’ said Aunt Eglantine with great satisfaction. ‘I’ve had nothing to do here but quarrel with the nurses and think my own thoughts. She killed that woman on the way down here and put the body in the boot before she set fire to the car. All she had to do was to go to a hotel in the town — you will never know which one because she will have given a false name and it’s not a thing which matters — ’
‘It matters if it proves that she was actually in Hilcombury on that Saturday night. She didn’t show up at Beeches Lawn until the Sunday.’
‘Very well.’ Aunt Eglantine closed her eyes. ‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘She couldn’t move the body to the old house until the car had cooled down.’
‘Even so, when did she get a chance to move the body without anybody knowing?’
‘It gets dark early at this time of year. All Anthony Wotton’s people would have been indoors and his gardeners would have gone home. It would have been easy enough for her. An ordinary person might have run into trouble, but not a wicked black witch like her.’
‘Your thinking seems to have been deep, logical and constructive, clever old Eglantine. You have an answer to everything.’
‘Oh, people think I’m crazy,’ she said, opening her eyes, ‘but I can out-think most of them when I put my mind to it. Anyhow, I’ve told the police all that I’ve told you and they believe me, even if you don’t. They’ll catch up with her, you mark my words.’
‘Are you telling me that she risked staying in a local hotel all those nights after she had burnt the car with the body in it?
‘I don’t know. She was in the old house for part of the time. She was seen by others and I met her there when I had my accident.’ She chuckled. ‘She wasn’t expecting any of us, I’ll wager,’ she said, ‘neither those young people who got caught in the rain or me so early in the morning.’
I thought of the empty cans of food and drink which had led to Rouse’s enquiries about squatters. Her explanations could have covered those, too. Hotels are expensive nowadays.
‘She would have been pretty cold in the old house,’ I said. Aunt Eglantine had an answer to that.
‘Not if she chanced the staircase and made a fire in one of the bedrooms,’ she said. ‘The stairs would have borne a lightweight like her, I daresay, whereas I brought them crashing down.’
‘Smoke from a bedroom fire, or anywhere else in the old house, would have been noticed,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, it wasn’t. It took a conflagration to draw attention to the old house, didn’t it? Do stop raising silly objections. All that I’ve told you covers the known facts, so have done with your contumacious carpings, young man.’
I returned to my flat and tried to settle down to work, but it was impossible to concentrate on the new book. What with the conversation with Aunt Eglantine and my approaching marriage, I found myself incapable of serious application to creative writing. I soon gave up the attempt and wrote to Imogen instead. That is to say I was halfway through the letter when Anthony’s call distracted me. He sounded incoherent.
‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Take a deep breath and begin again. Are you tight?’
Apparently he relinquished the phone to Celia, for it was her voice which came through.
‘It’s that girl again,’ she said. ‘Do come.’
‘Has she been arrested?’
‘No, and Cranford Coberley is free. Drop everything and come, please. We need you badly.’
I did as she asked. I left my letter unfinished, got my car and drove straight to Beeches Lawn, stopping only to pick up a sandwich and some coffee on the M4. When I had pulled up in the forecourt of Anthony’s garage, I locked the car, a precaution I had never taken before at his place, and as I walked by the kitchen garden I met Platt, the gardener.
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but, in case you didn’t know, there’s trouble up at the house.’
‘Yes, I had a telephone call,’ I said.
