‘The part of the valley where the hiker found the body is no longer cordoned off, we were told. I think that tomorrow we will drive over there and look at — ’
‘The spot marked with a cross?’
‘The police were not sufficiently informative to make certain that we can do that, but I would like to obtain a general view of the setting.’
‘Fancy Morpeth’s having the guts to take action without first consulting Bryony!’
‘You mean that, on her own initiative, she went to the police? It was an impulse she may live to regret.’
‘Why?’
‘I do not like this disappearance of the coat, hat and bag from that loft.’
‘There doesn’t seem much doubt about who had those. The poacher Adams knew of that room, so did the tramp he found asleep there, so, possibly, did the prowler they talked about and, if one tramp, why not others? It would get around that the Rants are on their own at night and that there is no lock on the front gates — and none, so far, on the door to the loft. All these points have come out in conversation at various times and, I thought, were emphasised today.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dame Beatrice, ‘but there is one point which you appear to have overlooked. There are three other people, in addition to those you have listed, who knew what the loft contained.’
‘Four,’ said Laura. ‘I suppose Dr Mortlake would have known. He lived in the house long enough and didn’t move out until after Dr Rant’s death. He doesn’t seem to have left until the will was proved and he knew he could go into practice on his own. He may even have helped the Rants to clear up their father’s things and get rid of his clothes. The doctor’s bag is missing, Morpeth told us. Who would want it except another doctor? Mortlake, beware! “There’s a porpoise close behind you and he’s treading on your tail!” Oh, I’m not serious,’ Laura added hastily as she caught Dame Beatrice’s eye.
‘“Dare to be a Daniel,” ’ responded Dame Beatrice. ‘ “Dare to stand alone, dare to have a porpoise firm and dare to make it known!” Your powers of imagination have rendered me, as usual, faint but pursuing. Dr Mortlake? You open up strange and terrifying vistas.’
Laura spread out shapely hands and opened up another vista, or thought she did.
‘If they would let you see the body, ’ she said, ‘could you tell whether the throat had been cut with a doctor’s scalpel?’
‘I am not a forensic expert and I have no intention of asking to see the body,’ Dame Beatrice replied.
‘Throat-cutting must be a very messy business. Wouldn’t the murderer have got smothered in blood?’
‘Perhaps not if, as the police seem to think, the victim was seized by the hair from behind, his head pulled back and one swift and deadly slash made across his throat.’
‘With a scalpel?’ persisted Laura.
‘The police did not offer a suggestion as to the nature of the weapon, as you know. They merely said that they had not found anything with which the lethal wound could have been inflicted.’
‘Perhaps the hiker who found the body spotted a knife and pocketed it. Seems unlikely. Oh, well, they say all murderers make at least one mistake. What interests me is the fate of the doctor’s bag. Bryony told us that the three scalpels Dr Rant possessed were rolled up in a soft leather hold-all rather like some manicure sets people take when they’re travelling. Where do you think the doctor’s old waterproof and his tweed hat have gone? Morpeth says she found them missing when she went to clear up that loft. Did they go at the same time as the bag, I wonder?’
‘I am going on the assumption that the person the poacher saw talking to the tramp outside Sekhmet’s kennel that morning was wearing them, but no mention was made of a bag, so I may be mistaken. However, Adams’ somewhat inadequate description of the clothes the person was wearing coincides quite interestingly with Morpeth’s account of the missing raincoat and hat.’
‘You say “person”. I notice that you don’t commit yourself as to sex.’
‘The poacher himself admitted that he was unable to guess whether the stranger was a man or a woman,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder what light the inquest will throw on this second unnatural death?’
‘Yes, Abbots Crozier is fast becoming a hissing and a byword for a danger spot. As for the inquest, perhaps it will tell us whether Robin Goodfellow was the man’s real name. My own view is that it was as much of an alias as Ozymandias. Still, parents have the weirdest flights of fancy when it comes to naming their children, as poor Morpeth Rant knows to her cost. Fancy naming a baby after a folk dance!’
‘Morpeth is as pleasant a name as Elspeth,’ remarked Dame Beatrice, ‘if it is taken on its own. As for the inquest, well, I have no wish to seem ghoulish, but I am looking forward to it.’
The death at Watersmeet had attracted very little attention outside the immediate neighbourhood of Axehead, Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier and would hardly have merited more than a few lines in the local paper had it not been for the bizarre incident of Sekhmet and the dead man’s trousers. Unless or until they could prove their theory that the man had been murdered and his trousers stripped off him and given to the dog before the body had been put into the river, the police were keeping very quiet about the whole Watersmeet affair.
The valley murder, as it came to be called, was a very different matter. The big dailies ran it as front-page news and the London Postmark devoted its double centre page to a set of photographs of the area. Broadcasts and television coverage followed, and Abbots Bay and Abbots Crozier, together with Axehead, where the inquest was opened, swarmed with reporters and cameramen. Accommodation in both the villages and the town was stretched to its limits and there was even an overflow into Castercombe.
The medical evidence indicated that the victim had been attacked from behind and his head pulled back. One slash had severed the jugular vein. The identification of the body posed a problem for the police because it threw more open the vexing business of discovering who the murderer was.
The corpse was identified by a smart London policeman neither as Ozymandias nor Robin Goodfellow, although the man had been known for some time under the latter name. He turned out to be a very shady private eye known also to the Metropolitan Police as Hillingdon. The media had done their work and the pictures of the dead man had been compared with those in police files, for Ozymandias had done time for larceny. The inquest was then adjourned pending further police enquiries and the search for the weapon responsible for Hillingdon’s death.
‘I think, ’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that this murder ties up with the death at Watersmeet.’
This opinion was endorsed by Detective-Inspector Harrow to his sergeant.
‘Ten to one,’ he said, ‘this Hillingdon, as we’ve now got to call him, knew something about that Watersmeet business, and died because of what he knew.’
‘So if we knew who the Watersmeet killer was — and we’re still convinced that was murder, not accident — we could spot the valley murderer, sir.’
‘All sorts of trouble about that, the way I see it. As there’s a London end to this business, we could be looking for a needle in a haystack unless the Metropolitan Police come in and help. If only we could get a clear identification of that Watersmeet corpse it might help.’
‘The two deaths were, of course, quite unlike. Murderers usually repeat their effects.’
‘Oh, well, we must just soldier on with this Rocky Valley business. That place has got itself a bad name locally. It’s a queer sort of landscape and not a bit like anywhere else in that neighbourhood.’
‘According to what I’ve heard, sir, nobody goes that way after sunset if they’re cycling or on foot, and motorists prefer the coast road, although it’s the longer way to Castercombe from Axehead.’