‘I say!’ shouted Mark. ‘Do you mean it?’ He rushed off at once, and brought his father back with him. The parental blessing was evoked, and the Torbury aerodrome hopped one calm, one excited and one puzzled passenger to Northolt. There a specially commissioned police car rushed them to Heath Row.
‘But I can’t see what all this is in aid of,’ said Laura plaintively to the driver, who happened to be her fiancé, Detective-Inspector Gavin of Scotland Yard. ‘What’s cooking?’
‘Mrs Croc. did not confide in us. She said she was tired of the Faintley case. We’re not in on it officially, but off the record we’ve made a few inquiries about the Faintleys, as they used to live in London —’
‘Anything interesting about them?’
‘Damn-all. Just an ordinary suburban family respected if not loved. Bombed out in 1941. Pop was a shop steward, daughter trained as a teacher. Otherwise, as we say in our patois, nothing known.’
‘What do you make of it?’
‘I’d have said cosh and grab, but the fact that the handbag and that expensive watch were left behind by the murderer effectively disposes of that theory, and there was no attempt at funny business, according to the medical evidence at the first inquest… just the one clean thrust of the Commando knife. The chap was no bungler, I’ll say that for him. He just took a dislike to her, apparently, and she’d had it. I wish we knew why. I imagine your boss has rumbled something, but she’s not likely to tell us what it is until she’s pretty sure. Where’s she actually making for?’
‘Lascaux. The caves, you know.’
‘Oh, ah? Tells us a lot, doesn’t it? Still, we’ve got standing orders from the high-ups to afford her any facilities she wants, and apparently she wants Air France, and here we are!’
‘I’ve decided to leave you to your own devices for a few days, dear Laura,’ said Mrs Bradley, as they stood waiting for the aeroplane. ‘Don’t get into mischief. Remember that I place a high value upon your services. Oh, and our good Gavin, who has acquired a short term of leave of absence, may occupy my room at Cromlech while I’m away.’
‘He can’t. He’s going to drive me back to-night and stay the night, and then I’m pushing him off to Scotland to visit his mother. I can’t have him around while I’m so busy.’
‘Well, be reasonable in carrying out your plans. I realize that nothing will keep you away from that cliff-top house where you found the body. Now that the police have concluded their investigations there, I have an instinctive feeling—’
‘You’re right, at that. I did think of infesting the place again when I get back. I don’t suppose there’s a thing to find out, and, even though the police pretend to have given up crawling all over it, I daresay some of them have been told to check the visitors. One thing, it’s such a brute of a climb to get in the only way one can… because they’re sure to have filled up that gap that young Mark and I made with our battering ram… that I don’t suppose many people will trouble themselves to go there, especially as the exact locality hasn’t been made too public.’
‘Well, I do not propose to fuss, but I would like to point out that the house may have been empty the last time you went there, or it may only have seemed empty. It is possible that you might be recognized.’
‘And you think it won’t be healthy up there for snoopers? I know. I’ll look out for myself, so you need not worry.’
‘I have no intention of worrying, child. Good luck to your hunting. Not that I think there will be very much to find out.’
Laura was greatly attached to her boat, the Canto Five, and spent half an hour or so in messing about checking petrol, oil, stores, and the engine before she took in her anchor, so that it was a quarter to three on the following afternoon before she got away from her anchorage. Her scheme was twofold. She had a desire to see the picturesque little village of Wedlock, which lay about two miles in from the coast, and she also had a theory that, once she had rounded the tremendous headland on which the mystery house was built, it might be possible to find a way up to the house without the fatiguing climb which had taken her and Mark to the house when she had discovered Miss Faintley’s body. There must, she argued, be an easier way up than either of the paths they had used. Fuel and provisions had had to be taken to the place when it was used as a school. Therefore there must be a road.
It was pleasant cruising weather. She put out to sea and gave the rocky headland a wide berth. Then as she came round the great bend, she began to edge in towards the shore. As she had expected from her study of map and chart, the headland sloped down on the north-east side to a sandy bay. She made for the middle of this, felt her way in, and, at three fathoms, paid out plenty of chain to hold on the sandy bottom, took to the dinghy and rowed herself ashore. She beached the little boat well up on an incoming tide, and took careful stock of her surroundings.
There were a good many people on the beach, and there was another cabin cruiser anchored some distance off, too far away for Laura to be able to take stock of it. A low seawall bounded the sand, and, from it, a steep road, possible, however, for cars, went up from the sea towards some pleasantly-situated houses. Half-way up this road another branched off at right-angles and was marked: Cromlech Down School Only. Private.
‘This is it,’ thought Laura. Firmly grasping the ash-plant which she had brought with her in the dinghy, she began to ascend the slope. The surface was good, and a series of serpentine windings kept the gradients at about (she judged) one in nine. The bends made the walk a long one, and she decided that she must have covered the better part of six miles before she came in sight of the house she was looking for. On this side it was fenced in with iron palings in which were set the main double gates. A derelict lodge, with vacant windows and part of the roof off, flanked these and had obviously been unoccupied for years, but the gates, although they were locked, offered no obstacle to the tall and agile Laura. She put her ash-plant between the bars and then climbed over, aware that if anyone happened to be looking out, she was in full view from the house. She picked up her stick and sauntered forward.
The gardens, if such they could be called, were, like the part of them that she and Mark had already seen, very much neglected. She perambulated unkempt paths, keeping the house in view but circumnavigating it, until she came round to the side where she had made entrance to find the body. There was the straight path which, when she had seen it last, had been carefully smoothed and sanded. It was much trampled now, probably, she thought, by policemen’s boots. She wondered whether the police had discovered any clues to the identity of Miss Faintley’s assailant, and she left the path to inspect the bush beneath which Miss Faintley’s head had been thrust. It was likely that the woman had been struck down on the path, and then the path resanded to obscure footprints and perhaps to cover up blood. The painstaking police no doubt had swept the path, taken a sample, and put the sand back.
She turned away, walked back to the path and followed it up to the house. At the great front door she knocked. The reverberation of emptiness came booming at her. She listened intently, but, once the sound of her own knocking had died, the silence, except for screaming gulls whom the noise, most likely, had disturbed, and the far-off sound of the sea on the headland rocks, settled down again even as, after a minute or two, the gulls returned to their fastnesses, the ledges and clefts of the cliff.
Laura went on round the house and found the window which (presumably) the police had broken in order to force an entrance. The catch was temptingly exposed. Laura was not the person to ignore a challenge. She pushed back the catch, opened the window and inserted her head. In a very loud voice she called out: ‘Hullo, there! Anybody in?’ There was no answer. A sudden breeze blew past her ear and shut an open door with a bang which sounded loud enough to bring down the house.