‘Well, you probably know about these school outings. If up to twenty children go, at least one teacher must accompany them; up to forty, two teachers, and so on. For a hundred children, five of the staff were required, which, to all intents and purposes, meant six. The physical education at this particular school is in the hands of one man, a Mr Shorthorne, and one woman, a Miss Huntley, with another girl, Miss Borman, who takes something called Modern Dance. She was perfectly willing to help with the coachloads, but three more volunteers were called for, and the response came from the two young women who were housed with Mrs Castle, and a certain Mr Towsdale, a friend of the P.E. master.’
‘But Mrs Castle did not go?’
‘No, she did not go. According to the other two, she decided to spend the day in Bournemouth.’
‘And she did so?’
‘We don’t know yet. All we do know is that when the other two returned to the house at about nine o’clock on Whit Saturday night she was not there, and they don’t know at what time she came in. She had a key, of course, so they got themselves a bit of supper and turned in early. They concluded that she had gone to the evening performance at the Winter Garden or somewhere.’
‘But Mrs Castle did come back to the house that night?’
‘Yes, she was there at breakfast, but gave no indication of how she had spent the day and the evening. After breakfast she said she was going to church and, from there, out to lunch. She supplied no details, but they took it for granted that she had met friends in Bournemouth the day before, and had been invited to lunch on Sunday. They never saw her alive again.’
‘What happened on Whit Monday, then, if she had not come back to the house?’
‘The other two went for their outing.’
‘Without trying to find out what had happened to Mrs Castle? Surely they were concerned for her?’
‘They say they concluded that she had been asked to stay the night with the friend or friends who had invited her out to lunch, and if you know the sort of easy-going life these unattached professional women lead, it’s a perfectly likely story. You see, the majority of them think in terms of boyfriends and subsequent marriage, and there’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement – ladies’ agreement, I suppose one ought to call it – that they don’t muscle in on one another, ask any awkward questions or do anything else to queer one another’s pitch. Prostitutes have the same unwritten law, of course – not that I’m making any comparisons, naturally.’
Laura laughed. Dame Beatrice said:
‘And then?’
‘Well, when she didn’t show up at the house on Whit Monday night either, apparently they did feel it was a bit odd, but they did nothing about it until eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, when they rang up the headmaster at his home, but by that time the body had been discovered by a couple of Boy Scouts playing one of those spooring games, or whatever they call them, over by Badbury Rings.’
‘Poor kids!’ said Laura. ‘How beastly for them!’
‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Gavin. Not at all the sort of discovery I’d like my boy to make.’
‘Where exactly was this?’ Dame Beatrice asked.
‘You know that avenue of trees which leads past the Rings and was planted, I believe, by one of the owners of Kingston Lacey, that big house owned by the same Bankes family as own Corfe Castle? Well, between the trees on the left-hand side of the road as you go towards Wimborne Minster, and the big open space where people park their cars, and picnic and play games and so forth, there’s a sort of broad pathway with bushes that partly screen it from the road. That’s where they found her.’
‘And the cause of death?’
‘Just like the other three, and, another similarity, the body had been dumped, we think. She didn’t die on the spot where these lads found her. The doctor thinks she was killed sometime on Whit Sunday, probably in the afternoon.’
‘And any car tracks?’
‘Indistinguishable. Any number of cars had passed that way during the Whitsun week-end, of course. The inference is that the body was hidden away and then dumped late on Sunday evening. Whitsun being another school holiday, Phillips has had a go at James again, and we’re checking on the movements of the two young women, of course. As I say, I can understand their conduct up to Whit Monday afternoon, but I can’t understand why they didn’t report Mrs Castle’s absence until latish on the Tuesday evening.’
‘Just an instinct not to interfere, as I think you indicated,’ said Laura.
‘Yes, so they told their headmaster. But when she hadn’t shown up on Tuesday at eight, and knowing that she’d got several things to get ready before she went to school on the following morning, they decided that something was wrong.’
‘And before that time you knew what it was.’
‘Yes. These kids found her at just after three on Whit Monday afternoon, but, until the headmaster came forward, we hadn’t any means of identifying her.’
‘I wonder somebody had not stumbled upon the body earlier in the day. Badbury Rings and their environs are well-frequented,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘We’ve no information. If anybody had found the body earlier, they made no move to let us know.’
‘People do hate getting mixed up in anything fishy,’ said Laura, ‘and on a Bank Holiday, too, when their only object is to enjoy themselves.’
‘Not what you’d call
