‘If you will pursue your present line of argument, you will come to a conclusion. Whether that conclusion is correct, only time, of course, will show. By the way, when the police have done the necessary things with the body, the Superintendent will want a word with you.’
‘As many as he likes – not that I can help him very much. You don’t suppose Mrs Schumann murdered her daughter and then whistled up Fergus, do you?’
The Superintendent arrived at the Stone House at half-past two. He and Laura were old friends. He knew of her husband’s position at Scotland Yard and he was honorary uncle to her son Hamish.
‘Before I take a statement from you, Mrs Gavin,’ he said, ‘I suppose I’d better warn you that you may be wanted at the inquest. This death is so clearly a case of murder that I don’t suppose anything but identification and the medical evidence will be taken, but, as you found the body, there might be something …’
‘Right. I should have attended the inquest in any case.’
‘Yes, so I supposed. Now, perhaps I could have your account of how you came to find this Miss Schumann. You knew her, I gather?’
‘Oh, yes, in a way. I bought my dog from her mother last April. I did not know her before that, and that is all I had to do with her. As I told you, she lived with her mother over at Leveret Copse, on the other side of those woods. Mrs Schumann breeds Irish wolfhounds and clumber spaniels. She exhibited at Crufts this year. That’s how I got the address.’
‘We’ve been to see Mrs Schumann to break the news and get her to identify the body. She’s terribly cut up, of course. This daughter was one of twins. The other is a son and, according to his mother, not much good. She poured out quite a lot, but, naturally, she was in such an upset state that we shan’t take official notice of what she said until after the inquest. By then we shall have made more enquiries. Now, what can you tell me about your discovery of the body?’
Laura gave him her account of this, and the reason for her early-morning walk.
‘Interesting about the dog running off like that,’ he commented, when she had told her tale. ‘You assume he was obeying a signal that he recognised?’
‘I’m sure he was, but there’s a mystery attached to that. I thought Miss Schumann must have whistled him up when she found she was being attacked, but, if she has been dead as long as Dame Beatrice thinks, she couldn’t have whistled up the dog at something after four last evening, which is when Fergus left me and went galloping off across the common.’
‘How far does a dog-whistle carry?’
‘That’s another point. Not more than three to four hundred yards. Fergus couldn’t possibly have heard it from where the body was found. I worked that out. But, if he didn’t get the message, what could have made him go careering off like that?’
‘It’s a bit of a mystery, Mrs Gavin. The likeliest thing is that he went off for some other reason, and not because he had heard the whistle.’
‘Well, whatever it was, it led him to find the body and mount guard over it.’
‘You say you bought him in April. How old is he?’
‘One year and a bit. Of course, I intended to buy a tiny puppy. It was for Hamish to show off at school. But the puppies were too young to be weaned, and Hamish refused to wait and, in any case, had fallen heavily for Fergus and implored me to buy him. Mrs Schumann was quite keen to sell, and accepted my offer of a lower price than the dog was worth because her daughter had had a great disappointment over him. It appeared that she’d picked Fergus out, bought him from her mother and reared him herself. She intended, when he was fully trained, to give him as a birthday present to her fiancé, but the fiancé wouldn’t have him and they had a row and she was left with the dog, and, I’ve no doubt, was pretty sick about it.’
‘So there was a fiancé, was there? And a quarrel about the dog? That might prove interesting. I don’t suppose you’ve met the young man?’
‘She did not mention his name. I don’t even know whether he is an Englishman …’
‘Ah, yes. The Schumanns were naturalised, but were of German origin. Mrs Schumann has given us the family history. When you found the body you probably spotted something rather interesting which might also prove useful to us. Skewered over the heart by a thin steel knitting-needle was a piece of paper. The bushes had kept it pretty dry in spite of the mist, and on it you may have read: In Memoriam 325.’
‘Yes, I saw it, of course. One couldn’t miss it,’ said Laura. ‘Could it tie up with the Nazis, do you think? Revenge for a death in a concentration camp – something of that sort?’
‘It’s possible. I don’t want to worry Mrs Schumann more than I can help until she’s had time to recover from the shock, but, of course, I’ll have to question her again. She told me a good deal, none of it very useful, but I may be able to get something more when she’s had time to think things over.’
(6)
The medical evidence given at the inquest was straightforward and uncompromising. The girl, whose age was given as twenty-four, had been garrotted by a piece of stout cord which would certainly have rendered her unconscious, and death had been made certain by manual strangulation, the murderer having used his right hand and having gripped his already unconscious victim from the front. There were no fingernail scratches, but there were a series of small bruises on the victim’s
