“Should be. We ought to have half an hour yet.”
“We’ll go down to this grotto of yours first, then. Can we slip in by a back door afterwards, and dodge the house-party?”
“Yes, easily, from the back courtyard, where the garages are. There’s a covered passage to the basement stairs, and the warden’s office is quite near the top of the staircase. The front’s all gilt and carpeting and ashlar, but the back stairs is a little spiral affair. Pity,” said Dominic, “about the light. But there’s a huge torch in the glove-pocket here.”
“I want to take a look at the marks to-night, lift a sample, if possible. It’s going to rain before morning.”
“He covered them,” said Tossa, promptly and proudly.
“I should hope so,” said George; but he smiled.
They swept round the dramatic bend in the drive, and the house rose superb and staggering in the bone-white moonlight to take their breath away. The long range of the drawing-room windows blazed with light, flooding the lowest of the terraces; the class was still in session.
Dominic drove round the wing of the house and into the courtyard, and there they locked the station wagon and left it, taking the torch with them. The whiteness of moonlight on the pale, complex shapes of stone here was hard and dry as an articulated skeleton, the windows glared like empty eye-sockets. Dominic led the way down to the footbridge, and in the spectral, half-fledged woodland he switched on the torch. The great, gaunt gate towered in its inadequate fence, a few yards beyond the redwood tree. They came out on the blanched greensward by the grotto. The noise of the river, more deadly than by day, reached for them, a humming, throbbing, low, ferocious roar, a tiger-cat purring, and just as dangerous and beautiful.
Carefully Dominic circled his ring of rhubarb leaves, and lifted them. The little pool of the torch’s light moved in deep absorption all around the area, an eye of warmer pallor in the cold pallor of the moon.
“All right, cover them again,” said George at length. “Where’s this stuff that may be blood?”
The two heavy drops seemed to have shrunk since early evening, but even by this light they were there, clearly visible. They had no colour now, only a darkness without colour; but they had a clear form. Liquid had dripped, not directly, but in flight from a body in motion. One was flattened on open stone, immovable; but the second was on hard ground. George took a pen-knife to it, patiently and carefully, and pared it intact out of the ground, while Tossa held the torch for him. He had brought pill-boxes with him for such small specimens as this.
“To-morrow morning, early, I’ll go over all this open ground. Maybe Mr. Marshall can find me a tarpaulin, or something to drape over this. Now where was this medal and chain you found? Yes… I see.”
Behind them the river roared as softly as any sucking dove, and they felt it there, and were not deceived into believing it harmless. The sound had a curious property, it seemed to be one with the vast outer silence which contained it. At night, in the grounds of Follymead, Pan and panic were conceptions as modern and close as central heating, though what they distilled was a central chill. Dominic folded his arm and his wind-jacket about Tossa, and felt her turn to him confidingly. She wasn’t afraid; she only shook, like him, with awareness of chaos, braced and ready for it.
“All right,” said George, in a soft, surprised and gentle voice. “Let’s get back to the house and talk to Mr. Marshall.”
“We must have tests made, of course,” said George, installed behind the desk in Edward Arundale’s private office at the top of the back stairs, “but I think I ought to say at once that this is almost certainly blood.” The little pill-box with its pear-drop shape of dull brown on fretted gravel lay in his palm; he shut the lid over it and laid it aside. “I needn’t tell you that blood in that quantity could come from the most superficial of injuries. But we’re faced with the fact that Lucien Galt has not reappeared or sent any message. Those who know him say he wouldn’t cheat on a commitment. I regard this as good evidence. They know what to expect of him; they didn’t expect this, and they don’t accept it. He was regarded as in many ways a fiendishly difficult colleague; but he didn’t give short weight once a bargain was struck. We must also face the fact that the Braide in flood ran a yard or so from where these tell-tale marks were found. If there was a struggle there, as appears to be the case, then the loser may only too easily have gone over the weir and down the river. I am putting, of course, the gravest possible case, because we can’t afford to ignore it. We must take into account all possibilities.”
Henry Marshall licked his dry lips and swallowed arduously. “Yes, I realise that. I… may I take it that you will assume responsibility for whatever inquiries are necessary? I want, of course, to co-operate as fully as possible.”
“I should prefer to keep this inquiry quiet, as long as that’s possible. I gather you feel the same way. Let me have this office for my own use, and keep the course running. Can you do that? I’ve already talked to Professor Penrose, he’s quite willing to work them as hard as possible, and it looks as if they’re enjoying it. Concentrate on helping him, and keep the course afloat between you, and we ought to be able to get them out of here on Monday evening none the wiser about what’s been occupying us. They’ll have enough to think about.‘’
“I shall be very grateful,” said Henry Marshall, in the understatement of the year. “You understand my position… this is the first time I’ve been left to run a course single-handed. It would be disastrous if we allowed our students to panic and the course to disintegrate. Not only for me. I’m worried about myself, naturally, I don’t pretend I’m not. But I’m honestly worried about Follymead, too. We are worth an effort, I give you my word we are.”
He was an honest, decent, troubled young man, not very forceful, not very experienced, but George thought Arundale might have done very much worse.
“I’m sure of that. I want to use discretion, too. But you understand that if there has been a tragedy here, if there has been a crime, that can’t be suppressed. The moment I’m convinced that it’s a police matter, it will become official.”
“I couldn’t, in any case, agree to anything else,” said Marshall simply. “I’m a citizen, as well as an employee afraid for his job. But there’s no harm in hoping it won’t come to that.”
“None at all. I’ve got the list of people who stayed here this afternoon, instead of joining one or other of the sightseeing parties. Tell me if there’s anyone who should be added.” He read off the list. It included four elderly ladies, all local, and therefore all acquainted with the local antiquities, and disposed to vegetate in the Follymead libraries or gardens rather than to clamber over castles; but they had booked in in pairs, and almost certainly had hunted in pairs this afternoon. With luck there would be no need to involve them. A little casual conversation – Tossa might help out here – would eliminate them. “I realise that Mrs. Arundale will have to be told, eventually, about this inquiry. Is there anyone else who stayed here?”
“Yes,” said Marshall. “Mr. Meurice should have gone with my coach this afternoon. He cried off at the last moment. I may be wrong, but I got the impression that he changed his mind because he found that Miss Palmer was staying.”
“It wouldn’t be such an unheard-of thing to do,” agreed George. “No one else?”
“Not that I can think off.”
“Then as time’s getting on, I wonder if you’d get Felicity Cope in to me first. I won’t frighten her. I believe she knows already about Mr. Galt’s disappearance.”