Unlike the valley, in which the rocks made deep pools of shadow, the path, all along, was in full sunshine. There were gulls, the sea was glittering with silver, and on the landward bank there were the slender-flowered thistle, the rest-harrow, low-growing gorse and even, Laura discovered, the upright clover, an exile from Cornwall or Jersey. There was also a wood vetch, no stranger to rocky cliffs, which had attached its tendrils to a small bush of hawthorn.
She did not hurry. Now and again she met holidaymakers or was overtaken by them, but they were few. At a bend in the path there was a bit of flat rock which offered a seat. She accepted the invitation and gazed out to sea, then let her eyes rest on a big patch of thrift which was growing a few feet down the cliff. Near it was a tangle of brambles and caught up in the brambles was a brown object which was certainly not a paper bag tossed away by some litter-lout.
Laura looked at this object until curiosity got the better of her. The cliff was not precipitous at this point, and she was tall, with long arms. There was nobody else about, so she spreadeagled herself on the short, dry grass and stretched downwards. She could not reach the object, so she hoisted herself forward and tried again, this time with success.
Wriggling her way backwards from the edge of the cliff, she returned to the stone seat to examine her find. It was a roll of soft leather fastened by a narrow strap of the same material. Laura unfastened the strap and unrolled the little hold-all. Its contents were three scalpels — all, so far as she could see, clean and polished. The blades were less than two inches long and their shapes differed from one another according to the function each was designed to perform.
Conscious that her find might be of importance to the police, she looked with some excitement at the scalpels, but did not touch them. She rolled up the little bundle, fastened the strap, dropped the prize into the case from which she had removed her binoculars, slung the binoculars, separately from their case, by their own safety strap, around her neck, got up and decided to return at once to the hotel. She was hardly on her feet, however, when round the bend came two sand-coloured hounds followed by Morpeth Rant. They were heading towards the village, apparently on their way home.
Laura walked towards them, greetings were exchanged and Morpeth asked what Laura was doing in the neighbourhood. ‘Have you heard any more about Ozymandias?’ she enquired. ‘It was I who recognised the picture in the paper, you know.’
‘Dame Beatrice is interested in the police search for the murder weapon. We’re staying tonight at the Headlands.’
‘You would think his friends would have come forward by this time, wouldn’t you? Oh, well, I had better be getting back. There are the runner beans to do for lunch. Bryony is so wasteful when she strings them that I don’t like leaving them to her.’
‘Where does this path bring me out?’ asked Laura, who had changed her mind about going straight back to the hotel with what she had retrieved from the cliff.
‘Oh, into the valley, and about halfway along it. You may meet Susan. She is walking Isis and Nephthys, but I expect they are out on the open moor, so you may not see them if you are going back to the hotel when you reach the valley.’
They parted, and Morpeth appeared to have taken it for granted that Laura would be continuing her walk; for she made no suggestion that they should go together as far as the cliff railway. In any case, Laura was not in the mood for Morpeth’s or anybody else’s company. She wondered, but only idly, why Morpeth had chosen to take the cliff path. It was not the ideal location in which to exercise fairly large and extremely active dogs, for it was a favourite walk for visitors. Laura glanced at her watch and began to stride out. The binoculars’ case now contained the leather bundle and the binoculars bounced against her chest on their short strap, so she unhitched the longer strap, that which was attached to the leather case, and swung it from her hand.
The cliff path ended with a view of the most spectacular outcrop in the valley. It was the Witch’s Cauldron, and from where she stood, Laura thought she could see why it had been given that name. Between two crags, cut as clear as stencils against the morning sky, the blue gap looked like a hag with a sharply pointed profile wearing voluminous skirts.
As Laura walked on, the figure vanished and the rock presented the appearance of battlements. Below her, there was an area of grass, an oasis in a wilderness of rocks, bracken and heather which, from the evidence of a carefully mown patch in the middle of it, appeared to be the local cricket pitch.
Laura descended into the valley by a steep, rough path and found, on her right, a slope of grass which formed a kind of amphitheatre for cricket spectators. Whether the grass was natural or had been lovingly provided by the devotees of a game once played in gentlemanly and sporting fashion without the aid of bouncers, facemasks and illogical appeals for l.b.w., Laura did not know. The cricket ground was a small one, all that could be conjured out of that otherwise inhospitable and arid valley, but it was a tiny miracle in such a setting.
Above it, opposite Laura, was a fortress of rock pinnacles, and below her was the stony road traversing the valley.
Descending to it, she set a brisk pace towards the village, but when she came to the place where the hiker had found the murdered body, she slowed down. The caravans and the Guides’ tents had gone, but the signs of police-trampled grass and bracken still marked the spot.
Laura did not come to a halt. There was a knot of sightseers who had heard the news of the murder and she had no intention of joining them. She swung the strap which held the camera case and its contents and got into her stride again.
There was time for a drink before lunch. She had it in the hotel bar, went to her room to change her shoes and then joined Dame Beatrice in the garden.
The afternoon was a busy one. Having been shown the scalpels in their leather case — this in the privacy of Laura’s bedroom — Dame Beatrice decided to take the bundle immediately to the police station and hand it over.
‘The things all look clean enough,’ said Laura.
‘A stream runs through the valley, I noticed,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and I have no doubt the crime was premeditated and that the murderer had come with materials to clean the-weapon. However, present-day methods of testing for bloodstains are well advanced and if there is the slightest trace of them the forensic experts will find it.’
The detective-inspector accompanied them up to Abbots Crozier and, while Dame Beatrice remained in the hotel, Laura guided him to the spot at which she had seen the little leather case. He asked whether she could be certain, so she indicated the flat outcrop upon which she had seated herself and directed his attention to the clump of beautiful pink thrift and the tangle of bramble runners.
‘Careless of the chap,’ he said. ‘Anybody could have spotted it if they had happened to take a seat on that ledge, as you did. Why on earth didn’t he chuck it further down the cliff where nobody could have seen it either from above or below?’
‘I think he thought he had,’ said Laura. ‘If he and the murdered man had arranged to meet in the valley when no holidaymakers were about, it must have been almost dark. I imagine the murderer was in a great hurry to get back to wherever he had come from and chose this cliff path so as not to go into Abbots Crozier past any of the cottages. From the top of the cliff railway it’s no distance to the zigzag path down to Abbots Bay. Goodness knows where he went from there.’