“I don’t believe anybody batted the woman over the head while she was on this bridge, Chief. It’s too close to the houses and the road.”
“Yes, and it’s an awkward spot to swing a stick or a cosh,” said Macdonald. “Added to which, footsteps are much more audible on a plank bridge than on solid ground. But nobody would have wanted to lift deceased’s body if they could help it. She was too heavy.”
Macdonald walked across the bridge and stood on the far bank facing the stream: behind him was a hedge of thorn and dogrose, elder, blackthorn and bramble: to his left the path led on to the saw mill, to his right the hedge was broken by the path leading up through the park. There was a five-barred gate across the path, latched but not padlocked.
“I think it must have happened here,” he said. Reeves, who had followed him, nodded.
“I agree, but where was she going? I’d got it into my head she’d have been walking across the bridge, towards the street, but she must have turned off here, and gone left a bit, by the stream.”
“The point we want to decide is ‘what was she doing here?’” said Macdonald.
Reeves looked at him enquiringly: “We’re cutting out all the stuff about ‘Sister was queer like, awful tired Sister was and her turned dizzy, poor soul’?”
Macdonald nodded. “I think so. I shall know better when I’ve seen her account books and the rest. Nervous disorder nearly always shows in a person’s handwriting and arrangement of the page, as well as in precision or lack of it: mistakes, erasures and the like. If I find, as I expect to find, that her recent book-keeping has the same precision and legibility as that of past years, I shall assume that she was in normal control of her faculties.”
“All right,” said Reeves. “My guess would be that she came here to meet somebody, or else to spy on somebody. She may have been one of those dames who get a thing about courting couples.”
“Quite possibly, but I favour the former rather than the latter. You see, the village knew she wandered at night, and villagers share their information among themselves. Courting couples would have avoided this spot.”
“Yes. There’s that,” agreed Reeves, “but if she was meeting somebody, why the heck come right down here? There must be plenty of meeting places in the park where nobody would have been likely to see her at all, and it’s the devil of a steep path, isn’t it?”
“I imagine so. Let’s walk up through the park,” said Macdonald.
“And call on the quality,” said Reeves, a grin flashing across his keen dark face.
“Not yet. I’m going to leave them till last,” said Macdonald.
“That’ll annoy them no end. Gentry expect to be priority,” said Reeves. “Didn’t you sense that Peel believed the gentry was on in this act?”
“I think he felt that they’d been reinforcing the village technique,” said Macdonald, as they went through the five-barred gate and turned up the path which had been cut in the steep hill-side. To their right the ground dropped almost sheer to the river: to their left it rose to the ridge where the village street ran.
“It’d be the hell of a path on a dark night,” said Reeves thoughtfully.
Chapter VIII
1
When the two C.I.D. men reached the little plateau at the top of the hill, Reeves said: “That’s quite a climb, Chief.”
Macdonald nodded, his eyes on the Manor House and the church tower beyond. “As you say—and that’s a lovely house. The smaller one over there would be the Dower House. I think I’ll go and talk to Dr. Ferens, if he’s at home. According to Peel, he’s the one person in the place who talks plain commonsense.”
“Right. If it’s all the same to you I’ll go and buy stamps at the post office and shoe laces at the general store and maybe some seeds for my garden.”
“It’s too late in the year to sow seeds. They ought to have been in two months ago.”
“They’re for next year,” said Reeves. “What can I sow for next year?”
“Try wallflowers. Are you playing at being the Royal Navy?”
Reeves hitched up his dark eyebrows. “R.N.? Oh, I see. Showing the flag. Those were the days.”
He grinned as he turned left, along a path which led by the walled garden to the village street, and Macdonald opened a handsome gate, strolled across a wide lawn and entered the garden of the Dower House by the gate in the yew hedge. A slim sunburnt girl, bare legged, bare armed, dark headed, clad in a cotton frock whose pattern of cerise and viridian put Macdonald in mind of Gauguin, was cutting Mrs. Sinkins pinks. When he said “Good-afternoon,” she replied:
“Do you know what to do with Mrs. Sinkins after she’s stopped flowering? She’s threatening to monopolise the border.”
“Cut her back, hard,” said Macdonald firmly. She faced him, holding an armful of snowy flowers whose fragrance was intoxicating.
“Speaking as one having authority?” she enquired, her dark eyes bright and mirthful.
“No. As the scribes,” replied Macdonald promptly, “but if you don’t cut them back they will certainly monopolise the border. I apologise if I’ve come in the wrong way; is Dr. Ferens at home?”
“Yes. This village is unreasonably healthy. He’s in his surgery, in the old coach house, writing up hay fever. I’ll take you there. Chief Inspector Macdonald, I presume?”
“Correct. Is it Mrs. Ferens?”
“It is. As you’re probably aware, the very bees are buzzing C.I.D. It’ll do them a power of good, you know.”
“The bees?”
“No. The village. They’ve
