‘So she’s prepared to throw James to the wolves if it comes to a question of having to save her own skin,’ said Laura.
‘There is more,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Detective-Inspector Maisry appears to have gone quite as far as he dared in questioning Mrs Schumann without cautioning her first. The document goes on:’
Q. I know you have satisfied Superintendent Phillips as to this, Mrs Schumann, but he was able to talk to you before my department was brought into the case. Will you tell me just how you spent the day on which Superintendent Phillips believes your daughter died?
A. I will tell you anything you wish to know, but you must not make traps for me with my words. I will tell you what I have already told the so kind Superintendent Phillips, also Dame Beatrice, always my friend. On the day before she died, my Karen telephones me to say there is a day’s holiday for the school – two special half-days which the teachers decide to turn into one whole day – you understand? Karen asks shall she come home for the day. Edward – her fiancé, you know – wants to spend the day at his books, and the two girls who share a flat with Karen are to go out with their friends. I say no, not convenient to come, as I have an engagement at Ringwood and too late to alter it.
Q. And you went to Ringwood to fulfil this engagement? At what time would that have been?
A. I go to Ringwood in my car, taking my prize dog to give a service, and I get there – I do not know exactly, but it would have been – oh, I am desolate to think of it! – it would have been while my Karen was being done to death by this monster.
Q. Yes, but what time by the clock was this?
A. Oh, half-past eleven, perhaps. I do not know.
Q. Superintendent Phillips has been to see the people concerned. They say that you arrived with your dog at about a quarter past twelve.
A. No, no! Much earlier than that.
Q. I see. You suggested to Superintendent Phillips that your daughter must have left her flat very early in the morning to have arrived at the spot where her body was found, and to have been killed there at the time the doctors stated at the inquest, but I do not follow your reasoning. How long would you say it took your daughter to reach your cottage from her flat?
A. Twenty miles – let us say an hour, allowing for traffic. But my daughter did not come to the cottage that day. How could she, when she knows I have arranged to go out?
Q. Well, we have come to the conclusion that she did go to your cottage that morning, that she was killed there and her body taken to where it was found.
A. But why should you think that?
Q. The time factor leads us to think so. Your daughter finds out that the cottage will be empty during the late morning and the middle day. She arranges to meet somebody there. That somebody kills her. Now, at what time would you say you got home that afternoon?
A. I was invited to stay for lunch – this also I tell Karen over the telephone – and I leave at perhaps half-past two, a quarter to three, something like that. What does it matter, since, by that time, my Karen is dead?
Q. It matters to this extent: if your daughter was killed at the cottage, the murderer had plenty of time to move her body to where it was found. What do you say about that?
A. I have always believed – the police, they tell me nothing! – I have always believed that Karen had an assignation with someone in those woods, and that he killed her there.
Q. The ground was expertly and very minutely examined, and there was no sign of a struggle.
A. But she would have been taken by surprise. She would not have had a chance to struggle. The murderer came on her from behind and twisted the cord of the dog-whistle around her neck and made her unconscious, and then he – then he—
Q. Finished the job by manual strangulation. I still think she would have threshed about a bit, you know, wouldn’t she?
A. Please, please! I do not like this picture!
Q. Neither do I. How do you account for the fact that the dog-whistle was round her neck at all?
A. The murderer put it there, like I am saying, to make her unconscious.
Q. I am trying to form another picture in my mind. She must have been on terms of some intimacy with her murderer if she allowed him to put a string round her neck. It sounds as though a playful situation had been contrived, of which he then took advantage.
A. You mean she had a lover, my little Karen?
Q. What does it look like to you?
A. But she was engaged to Edward!
Q. His alibi has never been proved, you know.
A. You think Edward killed her?
Q. I did not say that. Let us return to this dog-whistle. There seems to be no doubt that it was in response to it that Mrs Gavin’s dog left Mrs Gavin’s side and followed somebody across the common and into the woods where your daughter’s body lay. Further, that whoever used the whistle knew the dog and commanded him to stay with the body. Now I want you, Mrs Schumann, to think very hard about this. I want to know – and here I do not believe that anybody except yourself can help us – I want to know the names of any persons whom the dog would have known and would have trusted to that extent.
A. There was nobody except Karen herself.
Q. Who must be ruled out for obvious reasons.
A. I think the dog was using instinct, not
