‘No. It was the same colour and, from what I could remember, the same material as the trousers Sekhmet was guarding when I found her and the dead man, but there was no maker’s mark or anything else on it. There seemed no reason why anybody should have chopped it out of the waistband, still less why I should have pushed it into a drawer where the sergeant said he found it.’
‘I believe you know a man by the name of Adams who lives on the moor. Has this Adams any reason to wish harm to you?’
‘Not so far as I know. I don’t personally pay him for the rabbits he gives the Rants or provide him with any food, but I have always called Bryony or Morpeth when he comes to Crozier Lodge, so he never goes away with empty pockets or an empty belly. I can’t do more than that. It isn’t my business to pay him or feed him.’
There was a long pause before Dame Beatrice said very gently, ‘You did not really go for a swim that morning.’
Susan looked at her sharply and then at Laura. An expression of mulish obstinacy came over her large, unattractive countenance . Her small, green eyes became wary and her heavy jaw was firmly set. When she spoke, she said sullenly, ‘If you’re not going to believe me, we may as well leave it at that.’
‘I am always prepared to listen to the truth,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is clear that you were seen to leave the cottage at a very early hour that morning. It is equally clear that unbiased persons, who had every opportunity to do so, did not see you in the pool, and nobody saw you return to the cottage until the evening.’
‘How do you know the fisherman and the man in the boat were unbiased? Everybody makes enemies. There are people around who don’t like me much.’
‘Why don’t you come clean with us?’ demanded Laura. ‘Seems to me you’re in a bit of a spot.
‘That’s what that damned policeman said. Well, it amounted to that. He said he would tell me something they had found out from Adams. He said Adams had told them he had gone early to Crozier Lodge with some rabbits for the hounds, but, as nobody was up and about, he had left them in the post box because the back door was locked, so he couldn’t get into the kitchen. Well, that was true enough. Bryony found the rabbits when she went down to take in the milk. What may or may not be true is the rest of Adams’ story.’
‘You mean that Adams told the police that he had seen two people talking together in the grounds of Crozier Lodge that morning? We had that story from my chauffeur, who met Adams in the Crozier Arms,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I sent him to make an enquiry about hats, but he came back with a tale of five rabbits. Oh, well, there is an established connection between hats and rabbits, as every amateur conjurer knows.’
‘A rabbit might eat the hat the detective-sergeant found in my cottage,’ said Susan, perking up as though she felt an easing of the tension. ‘It was made of straw.’
‘Whereas, according to the description of it which Adams gave to George, the hat worn in the garden of Crozier Lodge was likely to have been of felt or tweed. Can you think of anybody who might have been calling so early in the morning?’
‘No, I can’t. Nobody ever calls. They’re afraid of the Pharaohs.’
‘A strange man who gave me his name as Robin Goodfellow also claims to be a Pharaoh. He introduced himself at first as Ozymandias, king of kings, as in Shelley’s poem.’
‘Oh, yes, the Rants have mentioned him once or twice. They thought he was a nutcase. Whether he was or not, he was a stranger in the place or he would never have dared to walk up to the door. As for Adams, well, so far as his story goes, I think he could have made the whole thing up. He’s quite capable of inventing a tissue of lies. He’s lied himself out of trouble often enough when he’s been charged with poaching.’
‘I see no reason, though, why he should lie in the circumstances we are discussing. He saw what may have been two strangers in the Rants’ grounds and he had a legitimate reason for being in the grounds himself that morning. The rabbits the Rant sisters found in their postbox are proof of it.’
‘Oh, as to rabbits, if he can’t supply them — and we don’t always get them, even when he’s got any, because he can get a better price for prime young plump ones from the butcher in Axehead — we can always purchase them elsewhere.’
‘Elsewhere?’
‘Yes, elsewhere. The hounds are partial to rabbit.’
‘Will you tell me how you came to team up with the Rant sisters?’
‘By accident, in a way.’
‘We also came to know them by accident, or, rather, because of an accident in which their car was involved.’
‘Mine wasn’t that kind of accident; it was because of a row in a shop between the shopkeeper and Morpeth. Had Bryony been there, I would not have been needed, but Morpeth is not very tough and the shopkeeper turned bad-tempered with her. Can’t remember what it was all about, but I think she had brought back a chicken which was getting a bit too ripe. The tradesmen won’t go to Crozier Lodge, otherwise Bryony would soon send the goods to the rightabout if they weren’t up to sample; so poor old Morpeth gets the job of taking anything back to the shop if it isn’t what’s wanted because mostly she is the one who has been fobbed off with it in the first place.’
‘So you came to her rescue in this instance?’
‘Yes. Then we got into conversation and the upshot was that I went back with her to Crozier Lodge and offered to help with the hounds and they accepted.’
‘Up to that time, your time was your own, I take it. I wonder how you occupied yourself before you joined forces with the two sisters? Were you alone in the world?’
Susan told her story. She and her elder brother had been orphaned at a very early age — or else they had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Whichever it was, they had been taken into care by the county authority and, later, Susan had been separated from her brother, fostered and then adopted by the late vicar of Axehead Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier. When his wife died she had looked after the ageing man, and on his retirement in favour of a younger incumbent had moved with him into a local cottage, which he had since left to her by will. She had continued to live in the cottage after his death.
What money he left also came to her and, although it was not much, it brought her a tiny income which she
