‘It never gets really dark when the skies are clear at this time of year,’ she said. ‘We saw him run off and he ran like a man. Besides, I don’t believe a woman would come prowling round the house and tapping on windows. It isn’t the kind of thing women do unless you know them very well and are prepared to let them use such informality. We are on no such terms with anybody, not even Susan.’
Harrow had remarked, at this point, that it was not possible to estimate, particularly in these days, what women would or would not do, or to state categorically whether a woman running away with her back to the watchers could be distinguished from a man, particularly if the fugitive was wearing trousers and disappearing into the darkness of the garden bushes.
‘Well, none of the village women would venture to enter the grounds, even by daylight,’ said Bryony. ‘As for Susan, why should she come and haunt us at bedtime?’
‘She is in your mind, though, miss, or you wouldn’t have mentioned her. As for anybody else, man or woman, I suppose they would take it for granted that your dogs would be shut away by night.’
‘Why should they? Lots of people have guard dogs which are let loose to roam the garden at night. We don’t, because our hounds are too valuable for us to risk having them stolen. There’s only Sekhmet left loose and she is hardly worth stealing and certainly would be no use as a guard dog. She’s a fool and trusts everybody.’
‘Yet, according to the story we heard before the inquest and, again, at it, somebody may have made an attempt to steal her, miss, and that brings me to my next point. Our information is that somebody took the Labrador out very much earlier than usual on the day in question and the inference is that, when your kennel-maid reported the dog was missing, it had been gone for only about an hour or less, and had been taken out for a run, it seemed, by a so-far unidentified person.’
‘Well, I can assure you none of us took her out that morning.’
‘Are you sure you did not take her out yourself that morning, miss, and leave her at Watersmeet and get yourself back to the house before the kennel-maid showed up?’
Both sisters had been firm in denying that they had left the house before breakfast that morning. Bryony dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous; Morpeth had asked plaintively why anybody should think either of them would depart so far from custom as to take that particular dog out at all.
‘Poor old Sekhmet hardly ever gets a run like the hounds,’ she said. ‘She has all the grounds to roam and we take it in turns to play with her, throwing sticks or a ball. She never lacks exercise and we all go miles with the hounds each day and really couldn’t do with any more walking.’
When the police had done with the Rant sisters it had been Susan’s turn. Bryony reported to Dame Beatrice what Susan had told them of the interview.
‘They asked Morpeth and me in turn to show them our hats,’ said Bryony, ‘but, of course, neither of us ever wears a hat. A headscarf is the most we ever aspire to. Perhaps we would have hats if we ever went to church, but we never do go to church. I daresay Susan goes to early service on Sundays because she was brought up in Axehead vicarage and she is never here before about half-past nine every Sunday. We, Morpeth and I, have a long lie-in on that day of the week, but Susan’s adoptive father was the vicar of Axehead, Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier, so she may have formed a childhood habit of Sunday churchgoing that she can’t break. On the other hand, she also may think a long lie-in is her due on Sundays, as she is up so early during the rest of the week. We have never asked any questions. We give her breakfast when she turns up, having had ours a little earlier. As a matter of fact, Morpeth is usually out with a couple of the hounds when Susan gets here on Sundays, so I sit in the kitchen and chat with Susan while she has her bacon and egg.’
‘And you do not possess a hat of any kind?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘Neither of us does, and I can’t imagine Susan ever wears one, even for church. Customs have changed over that sort of conventional thing. I am told that some of the holidaymakers turn up in trousers, although the present incumbent has had a strong word to say in the parish magazine about shorts and bras.’
‘Do the summer visitors read the parish magazine?’ asked Laura, who was also present at the conference.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Bryony admitted, ‘but perhaps they get the message in other ways. Anyway, the vicar can hardly preach a sermon about such women’s matters, although he did nip a nudist colony in the bud down at Abbots Bay last summer.’
‘The vicar couldn’t preach a sermon about women in bras and shorts?’ said Laura. ‘I bet he would if he dared. I could give him his text, too. How about the seventh chapter of Proverbs, verse ten?’
‘We don’t know much about the Old Testament,’ said Bryony.
‘You’ve missed a treat. Great stuff. I was brought up on it. May I quote?’ Without waiting for the consent or otherwise of her hearers, Laura continued, ‘Authorised Version, of course. To my mind, there is no other worth reading. “Behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot.” My word! What wouldn’t I give to be in the pulpit with a text like that under my belt with which to wallop the ungodly! But perhaps, if the vicar used a text like that to rebuke the female holidaymakers, he might stir up the disapproval of another Jeanie Deans.’
‘People don’t bring their own stools to church nowadays,’ said Morpeth.
‘There are always hassocks,’ returned Laura.
‘We began by mentioning hats,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What had hats to do with the visit from the police?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say. They didn’t really tell us anything. They asked very politely whether we would allow the sergeant to inspect the whole of the house. They admitted they hadn’t got a search warrant. I don’t know what Morpeth thought — ’
‘It scared me,’ said Morpeth. ‘It looked as though they though I was telling a lie when I said I didn’t possess a hat. Anyway, it was better not to put obstacles in their way, so I said that, if Bryony agreed to it, I had no objection whatever to letting them search the house.’
‘I said the same,’ said Bryony. ‘I wasn’t exactly scared, but I was a bit worried. Surely they couldn’t really have been looking for hats? I thought they were after something else, although I had no idea what it could be. However, the sergeant came back after what seemed a long time and spoke to the other officer, so the police must doubt the verdict given at the inquest and are following up a clue of some sort, I suppose.’
‘Did you hear what was said after the sergeant had searched the house?’
‘No. They moved apart from me and spoke in undertones but I think it was to the effect that the sergeant had not found hats or anything else he had been looking for. They went away after they had seen Susan, but I don’t believe they were satisfied. I watched them out of the window and they went in the direction of the garage. It wasn’t on their way to the gate, so I don’t know what they wanted with it. We keep it locked, but they didn’t ask for the key.’
‘Do you think they had come upon some information which had caused them to visit you?’
‘Well, of course, it was not our first visit from the police. We had an inspector called Burfield after Susan found the body. He was in uniform, but these two plain-clothes men were detectives and we didn’t like that at all. As for the information, so-called, we realised where that must have come from when we remembered the five rabbits in the postbox.’
‘Rabbits in the postbox? ’ exclaimed Laura.
‘Oh, dead ones, of course, ’ said Morpeth. ‘ Adams, the village poacher, had put them there, the day Sekhmet disappeared. We told Susan to give him his money if he called while we were out. He must have come up to the house with them early in the morning, I suppose, and thought it was too early to knock us up.’