‘Susan wouldn’t have known who the dead man was, even if she had passed beside the corpse. She was out with Isis and Nephthys when Goodfellow called on us and he never came near us again after you had taken him to see Dame Beatrice. We can both swear that Susan had never set eyes on him and wouldn’t have a clue to who he was.’
‘I’m going to ask whether we can call at the Stone House this afternoon. I think Dame Beatrice ought to know about this.’
‘I expect she does know. It’s in the papers.’
The detective-inspector had got there first. Polly, the maid who answered the door, informed the sisters that Dame Beatrice and Mrs Gavin had two policemen with them. ‘But come in, miss, do,’ she said to Bryony. ‘The ladies won’t be long, if you’d care to wait. They’re in the library.’ She showed Bryony and Morpeth into the drawing-room. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll be all that long,’ she repeated comfortingly. ‘The police hasn’t much time to waste, nor have our two ladies. You can play the piano if you want. They’ll not hear it from here.’
Bryony had preserved a long silence which had lasted for the whole of the journey. When the door had closed behind Polly, she broke into speech.
‘So the police have beaten us to it,’ she said. ‘I can’t think what made you go to the police station before you had spoken to me about that wretched newspaper picture.’
‘I did what I thought was the best.’
‘The way to hell — ! Oh, well, it’s done now. I wish, all the same, that we’d got our story to Dame Beatrice before the police arrived.’
‘I don’t see what difference it makes.’
‘Of course it makes a difference.’ She lapsed into a brooding silence again. Morpeth stood it for the next ten minutes and then she went over to the piano and began very softly to strum. This did nothing to relieve the tension. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Bryony exclaimed. Fortunately, soon after this Laura came into the room.
‘Sorry we had to park you, ’ she said. ‘The rozzers have gone, so I’ll ring for tea and then you can tell us why you’ve come.’
‘I suppose,’ said Bryony bluntly, when tea had been brought and Dame Beatrice had joined them, ‘it’s no good asking what was said between you and the detectives?’
Dame Beatrice cackled and replied that she saw no need for absolute secrecy. She proceeded to give an account of the interview. It had begun when she was asked whether it was true that she had been called upon to treat a patient named Robin Goodfellow.
‘Well,’ said Morpeth, as she and her sister drove home, ‘I hope you are not going to continue the great silence. You know how I hate it when you don’t speak to me.’
‘I’m sorry I was angry with you. Perhaps, after all, you did the right thing in going straight to the police when you saw that madman’s picture in the newspaper.’
‘Dame Beatrice told them that in her opinion — and she made it in her professional capacity — he was not a madman.’
‘I don’t have to agree. Only a madman would cut his own throat.’
‘People do that sort of thing in a fit of depression, not because they’re mad.’
‘I didn’t notice that Goodfellow gave us any impression of feeling depressed when we met him, nor in the car when I took him to the Stone House.’
Back in that Georgian domicile, Dame Beatrice and Laura were conducting their own conversation.
‘You told them you saw no need for secrecy, ’ said Laura, ‘but you withheld the most important point, didn’t you?’
‘I thought I qualified it by saying “absolute” secrecy. Are you thinking of anything in particular?’
‘You didn’t mention that the police think the throat-slitting was not suicide but murder.’
‘My dear Laura, that word was never mentioned. I am aware of what the police think, but they were careful not to say it.’
‘And you were careful not to put the word into their mouths.’
‘All they said was that they had not found the implement with which the deed was done.’
‘Well, wasn’t that tantamount to saying the man had been murdered? You can’t cut your throat and then get rid of the knife or whatever it was.’
‘The part of the valley where the hiker found the body is no longer cordoned off, we were told. I think that tomorrow we will drive over there and look at — ’
‘The spot marked with a cross?’
‘The police were not sufficiently informative to make certain that we can do that, but I would like to obtain a general view of the setting.’
‘Fancy Morpeth’s having the guts to take action without first consulting Bryony!’
‘You mean that, on her own initiative, she went to the police? It was an impulse she may live to regret.’
‘Why?’
‘I do not like this disappearance of the coat, hat and bag from that loft.’
‘There doesn’t seem much doubt about who had those. The poacher Adams knew of that room, so did the tramp he found asleep there, so, possibly, did the prowler they talked about and, if one tramp, why not others? It would get around that the Rants are on their own at night and that there is no lock on the front gates — and none, so far, on the door to the loft. All these points have come out in conversation at various times and, I thought, were emphasised today.’
