‘Your great-aunt? Not Laura Gavin’s boss? Not the great Dame Beatrice?’
‘Yes, of course; and, if she can’t help us, my Uncle Ferdinand will.’
‘Who’s he? What could he do?’
‘He is Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, Q.C. Appearing for the defence is his main line of country. He loves getting people off, whether they’ve done it or not.’
‘I don’t call that ethical.’
‘When did ethics have anything to do with the law?’
‘Be that as it may, how very well connected you are!’
‘We may be glad of it, especially me. I only hope my great-aunt is at home.’
The telephone call was taken by Dame Beatrice herself, for Laura was still in Scotland and not expected back for a day or two. Hermione recognised at once the beautiful voice and said, ‘Oh, darling! Thank goodness it’s you. Great-aunt, I’m in trouble.’
‘What have you done — burnt down the woodland nook of which Laura speaks so highly?’
‘Much worse than that. The police think we knocked a girl cyclist down with our car and not only left her dead, but tried to hide the body.’
‘Dear me! Is there any substance at all in the story?’
‘Of course there isn’t. We’ve never knocked anybody down, let alone killed her. We even went straight to the police and reported finding the body. We should hardly have done that if we were guilty, would we?’
‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all.’
‘That’s what the police think. They think that, after we’d hidden the body, we panicked and went racing off to them to unburden ourselves.’
‘Do they suspect simply because you reported the accident?’
‘We didn’t have any accident. The whole thing was nothing to do with us at all.’
‘But the police must have some good reason for suspecting you.’
‘That’s the worst of it. When I was on my way through the woods to park the car that evening, it skidded and hit a tree.’
‘Misfortunes never come singly. You marked the car, I suppose.’
‘Yes, not much, but of course it’s given the police something to take hold of. Oh, darling, do please come and support us! You couldn’t manage to get here by Monday, could you?’
‘You may expect me on Sunday afternoon. I shall have George to drive me down. Book two rooms at the hotel nearest to where you are staying and when we meet you must tell me the whole story in detail. Did you yourself see the body?’
‘No. The two older ones left Tamsin and me in the car while they went over to look at the bicycle. Then they cast around on the moor in case the girl had wandered off.’
‘Why did they think of that?’
‘Oh, darling, I don’t know. People do wander around when they’ve had a shock, don’t they?’
‘People vary in their reactions. However, I suppose your friends’ intentions were commendable.’
‘She’s coming,’ said Hermione, emerging from the telephone kiosk and addressing Isobel, who was waiting outside. ‘We shall be all right now.’
‘Famous last words ! ’ said Isobel. ‘Come on and let’s see if we can find this tree of yours.’
The Trent’s holiday finished on the Saturday, so while Isobel and Hermione were searching for the marked tree, John Trent came to the cabin on a neighbourly visit, probably the last, he explained.
‘I hope you’ve had no more trouble with that lad,’ he said.
Oh, no, thanks,‘ said Erica, who had answered the door.
‘Good. One wondered, because one spotted a police car here.’
‘Come in and we’ll tell you about it.’
‘I don’t know whether we are at liberty to do that until the police release the story to the press,’ said Tamsin.
‘Oh, it will come out today. The police haven’t told us to keep quiet about it. Besides, that poor girl’s friends will be making enquiries by now,’ Erica said. ‘The fact is we found a girl’s body on the moors when we were out yesterday. The police had to be told, so we went to the police station yesterday and they came this morning to ask us a few more questions.’
‘Good Lord! The girl was not anybody you knew, I hope.’
‘The body? Oh, no. Hermione saw a bicycle through the window of the car and then Isobel and I got out to have a look in case somebody was ill or had had an accident, and a bit further off we found her.’
‘How beastly for you!’
‘Yes, it was. You see, until the police got this idea that we’d run her down with our car, we thought the escaped convict must have done it, although, if so, it seemed odd that the front wheel of the bike was so badly buckled. Still, he must be desperate for money and food and there was no sign of her handbag or anything else she might have had with her. The police asked whether we had ever seen her before, which I thought was rather a silly question. Tamsin thought she might have come from the Youth Hostel at Long Cove Bay, but it was only a suggestion. Considering that the bike was lying in a slanting position with the buckled front wheel pointing away from our car, either she was cycling on the wrong side of the road or she was going towards Long Cove Bay, not away from it.’
‘If she’d been hit by a car, the bike could have been knocked clean across the road, I suppose, so you can’t prove much by the position of the front wheel.’
‘That’s true, so it’s not much use worrying about the bike. They will have got a doctor to look at the body and if he says the girl was knocked down and killed by a car, I expect that’s what happened. The trouble is that they think it was our car.’
They surely don’t think so just because you reported finding the body?’
‘Unfortunately there’s more to it than that,’ said Tamsin. ‘Hermione parked the car after we got back and on the way to the carpark from unloading me here because of my wretched ankle, she had a skid and hit a tree and marked the car. She and my sister are out now, trying to find the tree.’
‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘I don’t think so, thanks,’ said Erica. ‘Do you mind not mentioning any of this to anybody at present?’
‘Trust me.’
‘Well, I hope we can,’ said Tamsin, when he had gone. ‘We don’t want the story to be passed round until we know where we stand, do we?’
The other two came back with mixed tidings. The skidmarks were impossible to find because so many cars had used the road to the carpark that any evidence of the kind which Hermione had hoped for was destroyed. Apart from that, she and Isobel had failed to locate a damaged tree.
‘I thought I remembered pretty well where I had the skid,’ she said, ‘but I was only thinking about the bicycle and you two finding the body, so I may be wrong about where the skid took place, and, of course, there are scores of trees.’
‘We’ll all have another look later on,’ said Isobel. ‘Anyway, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is coming on Sunday, so with her at our side the police won’t dare to bully us.’
‘There’s only one trouble about that tree,’ said Erica. ‘Even if you do find it, I can’t see how we can prove that it was Hermione’s skid that marked it. I don’t suppose she’s the only driver to have had her wheels slip sideways on wet leaves.’
After this pessimistic observation, lunch was a somewhat silent meal. At one point Tamsin said, ‘Are you beginning to wish we had never come to this place?’ To this Erica replied with equal pessimism:
‘I bet Hermy begins to wish she had never met us.’
‘Well,’ said the superintendent to Detective-Inspector Ribble, ‘the ball is in your court now, Bob. The medical evidence — and Forensic are dead certain to back it up — is that the girl didn’t receive fatal injuries by being knocked down by a car. She may have been knocked down, but that she was actually killed by repeated blows on the head is the official verdict. Probably struck from behind with a stone first of all, and then, when she tumbled down, there must have been a frenzied attack on her. Somebody wanted to make quite sure she was dead. We may know more about that when we know who she is. One of those four girls suggested she might have come from the Youth Hostel. Anyhow, the murderer made off with her gear, we think. She must have had at least a handbag, but we searched a wide area and found absolutely nothing, so, up to now, we haven’t a clue to her identity.’