“It may be the right one. Let us keep it in mind.”
“If the dagger was intended for Bourton, it’s easy to see who benefits by his death, unless it was an act of revenge?”
“From what I hear, Mrs Bourton becomes a rich widow, yes, indeed. It seems that Donald Bourton left a considerable amount of money and all of it goes to her.”
“An amende honorabile for all his philandering?”
“Maybe, or maybe he had nobody else he desired to benefit. Well, we still have two unknown quantities to deal with and, except for the fact that both were in the play and that they are brothers and bachelors, we have no information about them whatsoever.”
“You mean the Woolidges, Tom and Peter,” said Laura, referring to the programme. “Tom Woolidge played Lysander and Peter Woolidge was the most enterprising and athletic Puck I’ve ever seen. My heart warmed to that lad. Moreover, Rosamund has announced her intention of marrying him.”
“The older brother breeds bloodhounds.”
“Is that significant?”
“No.”
“Well, we’ve lined up a few of the characters. Now there is this business of Jasper Lynn. You do think he went off with a girl, don’t you?”
“It is difficult to imagine that he would have exchanged one set of male companions for another without telling his parents of his change of plan. The fact that they know nothing of where he went, or with whom, does suggest the need for secrecy on his part.”
“So what do we actually know about him? He was illegitimate and he was adopted. Beyond being given a good education and, I suppose, a start in life when he left University, what had he to expect from Marcus Lynn? We know he bought the rapier, we know somebody turned it into a dagger, and we know that dagger killed Bourton. Where is the tie-up? I can’t see one, unless—”
“Unless?”
“Unless the girl he went off with was either Caroline Frome or Susan Hythe. If one of them had got it in for Bourton, she might have talked a young hot-head of Jasper’s age into doing something very foolish and very wrong, and then dared not leave him alive to tell the tale later. Well, if we cut out Tom Woolidge—oh, we can’t, though. On Rosamund’s evidence he was inclined to sport with Amaryllis in the shade. In other words, he and Barbara Bourton met for what the innocent little snooper called ‘rehearsals’ in the woods.”
“Oh, yes, Mr Woolidge must remain on our list and so must Mrs Bourton. Jonathan comes next in the programme, but I think we may ignore him.”
“Also the nine-year-old Yolanda Yorke. That brings us to the workmen and you’ve more or less dealt with them privately, you told me, so we need not go over them again, need we?”
“There remain Helena, Hippolyta and Titania. Deborah is out of it for the same reason as Jonathan, and we may ignore, I feel, Mrs Yorke and also Mrs Lynn.”
“Brings us back to Barbara Bourton and really it does seem as though she had the strongest motive of all. To get rid of a faithless husband and come in for all his money must have been a great temptation to an ambitious woman.”
“Yes, you are right. The difficulty in her case, though, is the same as in all the other cases. When would she have had any opportunity to change over the daggers?”
“When all the clearing-up was done after the second performance, perhaps.”
“Marcus Lynn appears to have kept a jealous eye on the costumes and properties, but there may be something in what you say. I am still convinced that the daggers were changed over before the third performance began.”
“Well, we don’t seem to have cleared the decks, do we? I wonder what happened to the lower half of that rapier? The rest of the blade must be somewhere, as we said before. Suppose Jasper Lynn was stabbed with it by whoever sent him into the shop to buy the rapier? Is that a far-fetched idea?”
“Not in the least, and I have already considered the suggestion. However, I think Jasper bought the rapier on his own behalf, as the antiques dealer thought at the time. Still, if we could find the rest of the blade it might help.”
“I have a hunch that I know where it is. What’s wrong with having a look round Castle Island?”
“Nothing is wrong with it, if that will please you.”
“I think the locals are right and the body was dumped from a boat.”
“I suppose that is as likely as my own theory that it was taken by car to the spot where it was found.”
“Islands are always fun. Do let’s go. By the way, isn’t there a suspect we haven’t mentioned?”
“Is there? Of whom do we speak?”
“Didn’t you tell me there was an Indian chap who brought his little boy to be the changeling child?”
“I dismissed Narayan Rao from my calculations when I discovered that he left the scene long before Rinkley’s illness and Bourton’s death. It is true that he was in sight of the tables which held the properties, but I see no way in which he could have tampered with the daggers without being seen to do so. Moreover, he had seen neither of the previous performances and could not possibly have known which belt held the theatrical dagger, neither could he have provided a lethal weapon which resembled it, since he could not have known beforehand what it looked like.”
“I am greatly impressed by your metal detector,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to test one of these things. This island will be the very place.”
The boat which they had hired, ran gently into shallow water. Laura stepped over the side into a couple of feet of rippling, innocent little waves and held out her arms to Dame Beatrice and carried her ashore before the placid local boatman could offer his help. She returned to the boat for the metal detector. Her shoes were round her neck. She sat down on deep dry sand, unfastened the laces and put on the shoes.
Behind the dunes the land rose a little and soon they were among trees. In clearings they came upon two very shallow but fairly extensive ponds and around these were traces of footpaths. Laura followed one of these, Dame Beatrice another. Their paths crossed and they met again after they had passed each other at the side of a small wood. They then found themselves in sight of the dunes and the mainland again.
“This,” said Dame Beatrice, “is opposite the road which runs between the Old Town and the ferry.” She led the way down the sandy slope to the shore. “Go to your left and I will go to the right.”
Laura demurred. The deep, soft, dry sand made very heavy going. She said:
“No point in both of us ploughing through this stuff. I’m going to make for that belt of trees. I’m all agog to try the metal detector up there. I shouldn’t think it could locate metal down here. I don’t really expect to find anything worth while, but I must say that this is rather fun.” She ploughed upwards. Dame Beatrice seated herself on the warm, dry sand and gazed at the opposite shore. A constant procession of cars was using the road over there, coming and going between the town and the ferry, and she realised, even more clearly than she had done before, the risks that would have been run by anybody planting a body on the strand at any time before about one o’clock in the morning, for not only was the traffic to and from the ferry very heavy, but the road passed through one of the most desirable residential districts of the place, and even though the ferry closed down each evening, the local cinemas, theatres and concert halls, as she had known previously, did not, so there would be cars along the road until after midnight. There were also the numerous houses, flats and bungalows which overlooked the bay. During the small hours, however, anybody prepared to take a chance might have driven on to the grass verge and tumbled a dead body down on to the mud, hoping, perhaps, that the receding tide would carry it away. Tyre marks, if any had been left, would count for nothing. On grass the treads would be indistinguishable from those of other cars which had used the verge as a parking place. There were two cars standing on the grass verge already and a third was pulling up alongside them.