‘But what an odd coincidence that you, of all people, should have been called Gloria.’
‘Life drips with coincidences.’
‘God bless them,’ I said. ‘Do you know something? An elderly disciple of Sprenger and Kramer told me I should meet you again.’
‘You could have done that at the lit. soc.’ There was a silence after this. I broke it.
‘I ought to have tumbled to it, I suppose,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘Tumbled to what?’
I glanced at the fine dark-brown hair which a breeze was ruffling and replied, ‘Brown hair, not really black. And you left Culvert Green almost a fortnight before the real Gloria would have done. That has rather upset my theories.’
‘Oh, it was a bit of a dump, you know, and if you wanted a drink you had to go to the local. There wasn’t even a table licence at the hotel. I used to get bottles from the off-licence and drink secretly in my bedroom. How on earth did you come to get mixed up in this murder business? How did it start?’
So I began at the beginning which, in a sense, was my meeting with McMaster outside Kilpeck church, for it was there I received my first report of Gloria Mundy, and told her the story.
‘So there was really no connection between that and your meeting the actual girl at Beeches Lawn,’ said Imogen. ‘How strangely things work together!’
‘Things don’t always work together for good,’ I said. ‘In this case, they worked together for ill. I wish to heaven I had never gone to Beeches Lawn, especially now that I’ve mucked up my end of the enquiry.’
‘But nobody asked you to make the enquiry, did they? Anyway, if you hadn’t gone to Culvert Green we shouldn’t now be heading for the ruins of a Cluniac priory.’
‘I thought it was a Cistercian abbey.’
‘Have it your way. Have you now told me all?’
‘I think so. What do you make of it?’
‘I’ll answer that next time we meet, although goodness knows when that will be. Let’s skip the ruins and go up on to the Downs. There are the remains of a hill fort and a couple of disc barrows up there. We can look at them and brood on the irrevocable past,’
‘Is it so irrevocable?’ I asked. She did not answer, so I went on, ‘You can tell me nothing I don’t know already about what is up on those hills. I’ve sub-edited a holiday booklet on this neighbourhood, don’t forget.’
The Downs, as ever, were exhilarating, if that word can be used to describe anything so sublimely peaceful as ‘here, where the blue air fills the great cup of the hills’, and as we climbed towards the top of Firle Beacon there was one prospect which made me stop in my tracks. Away to the left the softly swelling contours took the shape of a woman’s breasts. I said, looking at the hills and not at the girl beside me, something I had been longing to say to her years ago, but had been too poor, at that time, to offer her marriage.
‘Will you have me, Imogen?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll have you, but I’m going to write my book first. You ought to have asked me ages ago. I always hoped you would. Am I the reason you stopped coming to the lit. soc. meetings?’
‘Yes. I didn’t have any money for marriage in those days.’
I booked dinner at the White Hart for the two of us and a room for myself for the night. I spent all next day with Imogen, lunched and dined with her again and then drove back to my flat under a hunter’s moon. There was a heap of correspondence awaiting me. It included a letter from Dame Beatrice in answer to my telegram. She had written:
No, no, my dear Corin Stratford, I have a feeling that neither you nor Mr McMaster was wrong. I will attempt to supply chapter and verse in support of this theory and shall be very glad to know why you sent a telegram repudiating all your previous statements. Do telephone me when you have received this. As your telegram was not sent from London, I deduce that you are still on the trail, so I do not expect to hear from you immediately, but, please, when you have telephoned to say that you are at liberty, do come and see me as soon as you can and let me have all the latest news by word of mouth and face to face — so much more enjoyable and stimulating than a talk over the telephone or barren words couched in the restrained vocabulary of littera scripta.
Here there have been developments of a most satisfactory kind. I asked for and have obtained a full copy of the pathologist’s report. It is most interesting and is one of two reasons for my thinking that the news you gave me in your letter bears the stamp of authenticity. The first reason is that, if Mr McMaster was ever in a state of such intimacy with Miss Mundy as he postulates, it is in the highest degree unlikely that he mistook another young woman for her at Trends. Ghost or no ghost, I am sure he saw Gloria Mundy days after she was thought to be dead.
As for the pathologist’s report, as you will appreciate, forensic science has now reached such a stage of meticulous accuracy, due in large part to the work of Professor Keith Simpson and others, that the reconstruction of even the most maltreated corpse is not only possible but may be accepted without question.
In the case under review, the evidence is positive. Up to a point (which is to say it cannot tell us who the deceased was), it disposes of the myth that the body in the burnt-out house was that of Gloria Mundy.
You saw Gloria at Beeches Lawn and I am sure that you will endorse the views not only of Mr Wotton and his wife (asked separately for their opinion), but of William Underedge, Miss Brockworth, Miss Kay Shortwood and Mrs Coberley, with all of whom I have been in contact, that Miss Mundy was not more than about five feet five inches tall. The corpse, however, was well above that height before the fire charred off her feet. Moreover, the report gives an estimated age for the deceased of not fewer than sixty years. Is not science wonderful?
There was also a letter from Anthony Wotton. He wrote that he had telephoned my flat but had no answer. He supposed I was taking a holiday on the strength of the money I had received for the brochures and hoped I had not been spending all my time out on the tiles. When I got back, he and Celia would welcome it if I felt inclined to pay them another visit. There was a postscript:
Dame B has been here again and insisted on seeing Celia and me separately. When we compared notes afterwards, it seemed that she asked both of us to estimate the height of Gloria. Celia said that Gloria was at least two inches shorter than herself. I chanced naming an actual figure and put it at five five, which really comes to about the same thing, as Celia is five six and three-quarters.
I read this and then telephoned Dame Beatrice to say that I was back in London. She responded by saying that Coberley was up on remand in a day or two and that, in view of the evidence which was now available, there was much less chance of his ever being brought to trial unless the police could establish some connection between him and the so-far-unknown deceased.
‘Of course,’ she said in conclusion, ‘the most telling evidence against him now is the fact that he knew where he had placed that impounded dagger, but I doubt whether it will amount to much. The broken window, which nobody disputes, means that some unauthorised person forced an entry, whereas Coberley had a key. Moreover, the dagger was in a wooden box which Coberley had made no attempt to hide — I believe you yourself saw the wooden box when he let you into the old house — and there is every probability that the intruder investigated the contents of the box. Whether the long dagger which Mr Coberley had placed in it was the weapon used to kill Miss Mundy’s deputy I now have strong reason to doubt, as it appears to be beyond dispute that the murder was not committed at the old house or the body burnt there. When can you come to see me?’
‘Is tomorrow too soon?’ I asked. She answered that that would be splendid and that I was to get to the Stone House in time for lunch.