Dance to Your Daddy

'You mean she murdered him?'

'Well, someone did, and, so far as we know, she was the only person with a motive.'

'I see that now, ma'am, but you seem to have seen it all along.'

'By no means. It did not dawn on me until it was clear that Mr de Maas could not be Romilly Lestrange. When, however, I realised that not one of my younger relatives was able to expose him for the impostor that he was, I began to wonder why, on the two occasions on which he held a house-party, the same two young men were not invited. Hubert, of course, on both occasions, must have been abroad, but that did not apply to Willoughby.

'At the house-warming I understand that Dora made an issue of it, and insisted that neither brother was to be invited. The maid Amabel told me that there had been a quarrel and that the girl had tried to run away. On the second occasion Romilly seems to have put his foot down, obtained their addresses from her, and added them to his list of guests. He wanted to be sure that all the younger members regarded him as their uncle. As, of course, Willoughby would have been in a position to expose Dora as soon as he saw her, she abstracted the two letters from the pile before Luke took them down to the post-box, not realising that he had already counted the envelopes and read their superscriptions.

'Well, with Dora it was in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose. She wrote her own letter to Willoughby, and arranged to meet him. What she said in it we shall probably never know for certain (although I can guess) but, whatever it was, it was sufficiently threatening or persuasive to bring him to this part of the world. Realising that so long as he was alive her impersonation of Rosamund was a source of danger to herself, she met him, treacherously stabbed him to death and rolled the body down the cliff at or near Dancing Ledge.'

'We'll have a job proving it, ma'am.'

'I know, but I found bloodstains on her coat, and she would have known of the sword which was found. It had been used to cut the cake. I accept the cook's evidence as to that. She purloined it...'

'How did she manage to stab him with it, though? He was a tall young fellow and she's only a slip of a thing.'

'I think she stood at the foot of the steepest and most tricky part of the descent-you will know the bit I mean-called to him, and then, as he came bounding and sliding, in the usual careless, young-man sort of fashion, down the sharp and awkward slope, she picked up the sword from where she had hidden it in the grass, and spitted him on it,' said Laura. 'That's what I should have done.'

'Taking a big chance, Mrs Gavin,' said Kirkby critically. 'Suppose it had only grazed him, or bounced off a rib or something?'

'Well, the plain fact is that it didn't,' said Laura. 'Then, I suppose, she put her foot on the corpse-he'd have fallen backwards, most likely, if that's the way it was done, because of the force with which he was careering downhill-pulled out the sword, wiped it clean, got the corpse to the edge of the cliff and tumbled it over, leaving the sword in the grass, where Romilly (de Maas) found it.'

'Yes,' said Kirkby doubtfully, 'but we spoke to the people at the farm and they had seen nobody.'

'The chances are that there was nobody to see, because you can reach Dancing Ledge without going through the farmyard at all, so long as you don't mind a long cast round. You can reach the coast by various tracks over those hills,' argued Laura. Kirkby turned to Dame Beatrice.

'What I'd really like to know, ma'am, is what took Mr de Maas and Miss Judith there, the day they found the sword,' he said.

'Maybe nothing but chance, you know,' said Dame Beatrice. 'And, in spite of Laura's dramatic reconstruction of the event, I doubt very much whether it was the sword which killed Willoughby. I think he would have seen a thing that size in time to avoid it. I think Dora left it there as a blind, knowing perfectly well that if it was traced to anybody it would be traced to de Maas, as, of course, it was. Besides, although I greatly admire Laura's spirited picture of Willoughby galloping down the hill and spitting himself on the sword, I cannot help realising that, from the spot Laura means, to get to the edge of the cliff would involve a considerable effort if one were burdened with the corpse of a man considerably taller and heavier than oneself.'

'What is your theory, then, ma'am? I see the difficulty of accepting Mrs Gavin's reconstruction. What is yours?'

'Oh, I feel certain that they met on the cliff-top itself. No other theory is half as likely.'

'But what argument could she have used to persuade him to meet her there? It's a wild and desolate spot in mid-February.'

'He may not have known that until he got there. I think she probably wrote him to the effect that she was in durance vile and in fear of her life, and that old Felix Napoleon had given her a considerable sum of money before he died instead of mentioning her in his will. I think she may have told him that she was willing to share her gains with him in return for his help in getting free from Romilly, as she would have called him. She does not know, even now, that he is Groot de Maas.'

'Do you think that, when she wrote, she claimed to be Rosamund?' asked Laura.

'No, because I have an idea that she thought Willoughby knew quite well where Rosamund had gone when her grandfather turned her adrift, and that it was not to Galliard Hall. Of course, Dora could not meet Willoughby there, where she was masquerading successfully as Rosamund, but it was safe enough to assume her own identity at an assignation during which she knew she was going to kill him. As she saw it, so long as he was alive, he was a threat to her safety.'

'If he wasn't killed with that sword, Dame Beatrice, we shall have to find the weapon she used. Have you any theories about it?'

'Only that it was something short and handy. A fairly broad-bladed kitchen knife is the likeliest thing, unless she could get hold of a dagger. She denied ever having had a weapon as part of a fancy dress, but that assertion may well be disregarded, I think. I know that an eighteenth-century horse-pistol was in her possession, and we both know that there was at least one sword in the house. I think we may venture to say that you will trace the weapon in time, unless she flung it far out to sea, as well she may have done.'

'I can see why she decided to kill Willoughby,' said Laura. 'She was safe only so long as he never came to Galliard Hall. But she need not have given de Maas Willoughby's address. How did she know it, anyway?'

'I'll ask her,' said Kirkby. 'It's clear they must have kept in touch after the old gentleman's death.'

'She probably got it from the lawyers,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Willoughby is almost certain to have kept in touch with them in the hope that Felix Napoleon had left him some money.'

'Could he expect that, when he had caused so much trouble for his cousin, the real Rosamund?' asked Laura.

'Well, Felix Napoleon kept him on as his secretary after he had turned the girl out.'

'Yes, but that seems so unaccountable.'

'Not if you allow for Felix Napoleon's mentality. A pregnant unmarried granddaughter was one thing-a problem and an acute embarrassment, no doubt. A young man on whom he had grown to depend and who had done no more than take a leaf out of his own book, was quite another. However, we shall know more about all this when I have made contact again with the Reverend Hubert.'

'If Felix Napoleon had turned the real Rosamund adrift, you'd think he would have cut her out of his Will,' said Laura.

'May have meant to do it, but never got around to it,' said Kirkby. 'People do tend to put things off.'

'It is another point to which Hubert may be able to furnish an answer,' said Dame Beatrice. 'However, we have at least made sure that the scoundrelly de Maas will not carry out his former plan of murdering Dora after the twenty-ninth of May.'