‘Give me by a charitable lady what’s husband had died soon after he bought it, sir. “Do for the winter,” she says, “being pure wool,” she says. I put it on special to come and see you, sir.’
‘Oh, ah? Well, I believe you, although some wouldn’t. I can’t see you going into a shop and buying a shirt of that quality. Just watch your step, though, that’s all.’
He dismissed the poacher and then looked across at the sergeant, whom he had called in as soon as he realised that Adams had something to tell. The sergeant stood up.
‘Shall I type out my shorthand, sir?’
‘Oh, yes. It might come in useful later on, although I’m hanged if it tells us much at present. What did you make of his yarn?’
‘I reckon it was the truth, sir, as far as it went. I don’t think he’s capable of making up a story like that. The only thing I’d be doubtful about — ’
‘Don’t tell me. Give me three guesses.’
‘I think you’ll make do with one, sir.’
‘Here goes, then. You think he does know who took that dog for a walk that morning.’
‘Well, that’s what I would bet on, sir. He came here for what he could get, but those Rant ladies are good customers of his and he wasn’t going to give one of them away.’
‘Right. Well, I shan’t tackle him about that at present, but I wouldn’t mind hearing what the ladies themselves have to say.’
‘Might perhaps ask whether anything is missing from the house, sir.’
‘They would have reported that.’
‘Where do you think he set his snares for the rabbits, sir? There are burrows in that bank by the woods that border the river. Could he have been at Watersmeet that morning and seen something? I got the impression that he reckons one of the parties murdered the other. If so, he may have something to go on. He did say he thought the parties were having an argument in the garden.’
‘If every argument led to murder there would be precious few of us left alive. One major point strikes me, but it is one I may be able to check with the Rant ladies.’
‘Whether the morning Adams took the rabbits round to Crozier Lodge was the day the kennel-maid found the dead man in the river? Depends upon how fresh the rabbits were when one of the ladies found them in the postbox, I suppose.’
‘I wonder if they’d know a fresh-killed bunny from one that had gone a bit niffy. They probably wouldn’t bother much. I don’t expect those hounds would object to a bit of a high flavour.’
‘Anyway, in this weather, rabbit would begin to go off pretty soon, wouldn’t it? Wonder whether he skinned and cleaned them before he took them round there?’
‘Hardly likely, if he went to Crozier Lodge directly he’d taken them out of the snares. Ladies that breed dogs wouldn’t burke at skinning and gutting a few rabbits. Very likely kept the liver and heart and kidneys to make soup for themselves.’
‘I had a Boxer once and the handbook said to give the rabbit, skin and all, to him, occasional like. It made it more interesting for the dog.’
‘Oh, well, it takes all sorts,’ said Burfield. ‘Let me have a copy of that as soon as you’ve typed it out. There may be something in it that, so far, we’re missing.’
7
Trouble at Crozier Lodge
« ^ »
Laura was walking her two dogs, so Dame Beatrice herself took the call. It was Bryony Rant on the telephone.
‘Sorry to bother you again,’ she said, ‘but we are having an awful time. At least, poor Susan is, and if it’s not Susan, it could be one of us, and if it’s not one of us, it must be somebody else, and that’s worrying, too, because we have no idea who it could be. Of course, the man who went to the police may be lying. There are people in the village who don’t like us because of father, and I daresay they don’t like Susan because she works for us and tends to keep herself to herself.’
‘Would you care to come over this afternoon to tell me more of the matter? In a nutshell, what is at the root of it?’
‘I don’t want to speak the word over the telephone. We’ll be with you at half-past three.’
When Laura came in, Dame Beatrice told her about the telephone call.
‘Well, there is only one word she wouldn’t like to say over the telephone,’ was Laura’s comment, ‘and that word is murder.’
‘You jump to conclusions, do you not?’
‘In this case I hardly think so. I can’t wait to hear what the Rants have to say, but perhaps they panic easily.’
‘Perhaps they do. We shall soon know what is troubling them and then we can make up our minds whether their panic is justified. Bryony certainly sounded agitated.’
The Rant sisters arrived to time and the story was unfolded.
Police had called at Crozier Lodge, having notified their intention of doing so and requesting that Susan be there with the sisters and that the hounds should be under strict control during the visit. A man in plain clothes, accompanied by another, had identified himself as Detective-Inspector Harrow and his companion as Detective-Sergeant Callum. They had been polite, but their questions were penetrating and they had been persistent in checking and re-checking the answers they had been given.
The three women had been questioned separately and that, said Bryony, was frightening in itself, since it was clear, in every case, that the police did not intend to allow the other two to hear what the third one had to say, although all had consulted together after the police had gone. They had exchanged stories and it seemed that the questions to the Rants had followed the same pattern.
‘On the morning when your kennel-maid found that man in the river, at what time did you first see her?’
‘At about a quarter to seven, ’ said Bryony. Morpeth put it at nearer half-past six, but this slight difference of opinion could be ignored.
‘Was it her usual time?’
‘Yes. She came regularly at about that time.’
‘How long had you been up and about?’ It turned out that Morpeth had been up first and had already begun to prepare breakfast when Bryony came downstairs.
‘Did you go into the garden before Miss Susan arrived?’
Separately, both sisters had denied having crossed the threshold until they had heard from Susan that the Labrador bitch was missing from her shed and did not appear to be anywhere in the grounds.
‘Were you aware that a man had spent the night in the room above your garage?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Bryony, but when it came to Morpeth’s turn to answer the same question, she said she wondered whether that would account for the prowler.
‘Prowler? Yes, miss, we’ve heard mention of this prowler. Can you tell us anything about him?’
‘He creeps up to the house at night just before we go to bed and taps on the window of the room where we are and runs away when we look out to see who it is.’
‘How do you know it’s a man? You have a doctor’s brass plate on your front gates, we noticed. Could it not have been a woman seeking medical advice — a summer holiday visitor who did not know that a doctor no longer lives at Crozier Lodge? — your late father, wasn’t it?’
Morpeth admitted that this was so, but she doubted whether the window-tapper was a would-be patient because, in that case, surely the caller would have knocked on the door or returned in the morning to ask for help, whereas nothing of the kind had happened and they had had to put up with the nuisance for several nights in succession. Bryony had also rejected the suggestion that the unwanted visitor was a woman.