‘Well, I had met him. He called on us, thinking one of us was a doctor. He was quite insane, you know. I’m not a bit surprised he committed suicide.’
‘Come this way, miss.’ Morpeth and the detective-inspector had met at Crozier Lodge over the former enquiry. Harrow greeted her in avuncular fashion as soon as the sergeant showed her in.
‘Well, well, well!’ he said. ‘Sit down, won’t you, Miss Rant? So you’ve come along to help us.’
‘I don’t know how much help it will be,’ said Morpeth, ‘because I’m not at all sure that the name he gave us was his real name. He was quite mad, you see.’
‘So what name did he give you?’
‘He called himself Robin Goodfellow, but he also told us that he was Ozymandias, king of kings. When we heard that, Bryony thought he was a case for a psychiatrist and the only one we knew was Dame Beatrice, so Bryony took him to the Stone House.’
‘That would be Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, of course. I’ll have a word with her. Now, to another point, Miss Rant: the woman who acts as your kennel-maid found the body of that man in the river, didn’t she? We understand that on the morning of this Goodfellow’s death — if you are right and the dead man is the man you knew — she was out on the moor with a couple of your dogs. She met a shepherd over Cowlass Hill way, didn’t she?’
‘We always take the hounds on to the moor for a run. There’s nothing in that. Susan would naturally go there.’
‘Did she often go as far as the lower slopes of Cowlass Hill?’
‘I don’t know. We please ourselves how long we stay out and how far we go. It mostly depends on the weather.’
‘She did meet this shepherd out there, though, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, she said so. She made no bones about telling us,’ said Morpeth, beginning to panic. ‘How do you know it was Susan? She wouldn’t have given the shepherd her name, meeting him casually like that.’
‘We have our methods.’ He was careful not to add that the police had not known for certain, until that moment, which woman the shepherd had spoken with. The shepherd had proved very inept at describing a female whom he had never previously met, but he had described the Pharaoh hounds this woman was exercising, so it was merely a case of finding out which of the three from Crozier Lodge had been out on the moor that morning. Harrow felt a sense of triumph now that he knew Susan had been the one. Almost too good to be true, he thought, but it was true. She had found the first body, incriminating evidence had been discovered at her cottage, and now it was clear that she had been in the vicinity of a second man on the morning of his death.
Harrow was still in the dark as to the reason for Susan’s having left her cottage so early on the morning of the Watersmeet death. He had made attempts to get her to change her story, but she adhered to her assertion that she had been for a swim, although he had made it very clear that he did not believe her.
‘Look,’ said Morpeth desperately, ‘if the man was found in Rocky Valley and Susan met the shepherd near the foot of Cowlass Hill, she wouldn’t have known anything about what had happened until the shepherd told her. There is more than one way of getting to that hill.’
‘The valley opens out on to those hill pastures, and most people go that way, Miss Rant.’
‘But you can take the cliff path to Castercombe and bypass the valley altogether.’
‘You did what?’ said Bryony, when Morpeth got back to the carpark and showed her sister the newspaper picture. ‘Well, you have put your foot in it! Poor old Susan!’
‘Susan wouldn’t have known who the dead man was, even if she had passed beside the corpse. She was out with Isis and Nephthys when Goodfellow called on us and he never came near us again after you had taken him to see Dame Beatrice. We can both swear that Susan had never set eyes on him and wouldn’t have a clue to who he was.’
‘I’m going to ask whether we can call at the Stone House this afternoon. I think Dame Beatrice ought to know about this.’
‘I expect she does know. It’s in the papers.’
The detective-inspector had got there first. Polly, the maid who answered the door, informed the sisters that Dame Beatrice and Mrs Gavin had two policemen with them. ‘But come in, miss, do,’ she said to Bryony. ‘The ladies won’t be long, if you’d care to wait. They’re in the library.’ She showed Bryony and Morpeth into the drawing-room. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll be all that long,’ she repeated comfortingly. ‘The police hasn’t much time to waste, nor have our two ladies. You can play the piano if you want. They’ll not hear it from here.’
Bryony had preserved a long silence which had lasted for the whole of the journey. When the door had closed behind Polly, she broke into speech.
‘So the police have beaten us to it,’ she said. ‘I can’t think what made you go to the police station before you had spoken to me about that wretched newspaper picture.’
‘I did what I thought was the best.’
‘The way to hell — ! Oh, well, it’s done now. I wish, all the same, that we’d got our story to Dame Beatrice before the police arrived.’
‘I don’t see what difference it makes.’
‘Of course it makes a difference.’ She lapsed into a brooding silence again. Morpeth stood it for the next ten minutes and then she went over to the piano and began very softly to strum. This did nothing to relieve the tension. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Bryony exclaimed. Fortunately, soon after this Laura came into the room.
‘Sorry we had to park you, ’ she said. ‘The rozzers have gone, so I’ll ring for tea and then you can tell us why you’ve come.’
‘I suppose,’ said Bryony bluntly, when tea had been brought and Dame Beatrice had joined them, ‘it’s no good asking what was said between you and the detectives?’
Dame Beatrice cackled and replied that she saw no need for absolute secrecy. She proceeded to give an account of the interview. It had begun when she was asked whether it was true that she had been called upon to treat a patient named Robin Goodfellow.
‘Well,’ said Morpeth, as she and her sister drove home, ‘I hope you are not going to continue the great silence. You know how I hate it when you don’t speak to me.’
‘I’m sorry I was angry with you. Perhaps, after all, you did the right thing in going straight to the police when you saw that madman’s picture in the newspaper.’
‘Dame Beatrice told them that in her opinion — and she made it in her professional capacity — he was not a madman.’
‘I don’t have to agree. Only a madman would cut his own throat.’
‘People do that sort of thing in a fit of depression, not because they’re mad.’
‘I didn’t notice that Goodfellow gave us any impression of feeling depressed when we met him, nor in the car when I took him to the Stone House.’
Back in that Georgian domicile, Dame Beatrice and Laura were conducting their own conversation.
‘You told them you saw no need for secrecy, ’ said Laura, ‘but you withheld the most important point, didn’t you?’
‘I thought I qualified it by saying “absolute” secrecy. Are you thinking of anything in particular?’
‘You didn’t mention that the police think the throat-slitting was not suicide but murder.’
‘My dear Laura, that word was never mentioned. I am aware of what the police think, but they were careful not to say it.’
‘And you were careful not to put the word into their mouths.’
‘All they said was that they had not found the implement with which the deed was done.’
‘Well, wasn’t that tantamount to saying the man had been murdered? You can’t cut your throat and then get rid of the knife or whatever it was.’