is
‘You jump to conclusions, do you not?’
‘In this case I hardly think so. I can’t wait to hear what the Rants have to say, but perhaps they panic easily.’
‘Perhaps they do. We shall soon know what is troubling them and then we can make up our minds whether their panic is justified. Bryony certainly sounded agitated.’
The Rant sisters arrived to time and the story was unfolded.
Police had called at Crozier Lodge, having notified their intention of doing so and requesting that Susan be there with the sisters and that the hounds should be under strict control during the visit. A man in plain clothes, accompanied by another, had identified himself as Detective-Inspector Harrow and his companion as Detective- Sergeant Callum. They had been polite, but their questions were penetrating and they had been persistent in checking and re-checking the answers they had been given.
The three women had been questioned separately and that, said Bryony, was frightening in itself, since it was clear, in every case, that the police did not intend to allow the other two to hear what the third one had to say, although all had consulted together after the police had gone. They had exchanged stories and it seemed that the questions to the Rants had followed the same pattern.
‘On the morning when your kennel-maid found that man in the river, at what time did you first see her?’
‘At about a quarter to seven, ’ said Bryony. Morpeth put it at nearer half-past six, but this slight difference of opinion could be ignored.
‘Was it her usual time?’
‘Yes. She came regularly at about that time.’
‘How long had you been up and about?’ It turned out that Morpeth had been up first and had already begun to prepare breakfast when Bryony came downstairs.
‘Did you go into the garden before Miss Susan arrived?’
Separately, both sisters had denied having crossed the threshold until they had heard from Susan that the Labrador bitch was missing from her shed and did not appear to be anywhere in the grounds.
‘Were you aware that a man had spent the night in the room above your garage?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Bryony, but when it came to Morpeth’s turn to answer the same question, she said she wondered whether that would account for the prowler.
‘Prowler? Yes, miss, we’ve heard mention of this prowler. Can you tell us anything about him?’
‘He creeps up to the house at night just before we go to bed and taps on the window of the room where we are and runs away when we look out to see who it is.’
‘How do you know it’s a man? You have a doctor’s brass plate on your front gates, we noticed. Could it not have been a woman seeking medical advice — a summer holiday visitor who did not know that a doctor no longer lives at Crozier Lodge? — your late father, wasn’t it?’
Morpeth admitted that this was so, but she doubted whether the window-tapper was a would-be patient because, in that case, surely the caller would have knocked on the door or returned in the morning to ask for help, whereas nothing of the kind had happened and they had had to put up with the nuisance for several nights in succession. Bryony had also rejected the suggestion that the unwanted visitor was a woman.
‘It never gets really dark when the skies are clear at this time of year,’ she said. ‘We saw him run off and he ran like a man. Besides, I don’t believe a woman would come prowling round the house and tapping on windows. It isn’t the kind of thing women do unless you know them very well and are prepared to let them use such informality. We are on no such terms with anybody, not even Susan.’
Harrow had remarked, at this point, that it was not possible to estimate, particularly in these days, what women would or would not do, or to state categorically whether a woman running away with her back to the watchers could be distinguished from a man, particularly if the fugitive was wearing trousers and disappearing into the darkness of the garden bushes.
‘Well, none of the village women would venture to enter the grounds, even by daylight,’ said Bryony. ‘As for Susan, why should she come and haunt us at bedtime?’
‘She is in your mind, though, miss, or you wouldn’t have mentioned her. As for anybody else, man or woman, I suppose they would take it for granted that your dogs would be shut away by night.’
‘Why should they? Lots of people have guard dogs which are let loose to roam the garden at night. We don’t, because our hounds are too valuable for us to risk having them stolen. There’s only Sekhmet left loose and she is hardly worth stealing and certainly would be no use as a guard dog. She’s a fool and trusts everybody.’
‘Yet, according to the story we heard before the inquest and, again, at it, somebody may have made an attempt to steal her, miss, and that brings me to my next point. Our information is that somebody took the Labrador out very much earlier than usual on the day in question and the inference is that, when your kennel-maid reported the dog was missing, it had been gone for only about an hour or less, and had been taken out for a run, it seemed, by a so-far unidentified person.’
‘Well, I can assure you none of us took her out that morning.’
‘Are you sure you did not take her out yourself that morning, miss, and leave her at Watersmeet and get yourself back to the house before the kennel-maid showed up?’
Both sisters had been firm in denying that they had left the house before breakfast that morning. Bryony dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous; Morpeth had asked plaintively why anybody should think either of them would depart so far from custom as to take that particular dog out at all.
‘Poor old Sekhmet hardly ever gets a run like the hounds,’ she said. ‘She has all the grounds to roam and we take it in turns to play with her, throwing sticks or a ball. She never lacks exercise and we all go miles with the hounds each day and really couldn’t do with any more walking.’
When the police had done with the Rant sisters it had been Susan’s turn. Bryony reported to Dame Beatrice
