‘Is the house stone-built?’
‘No, it is built of mellow brick. It is called the Stone House because in its vicinity is a Stone of Sacrifice, so called.’
‘Human sacrifice?’
‘I perceive a gleam in your eye. Yes, human sacrifice, if local legend is founded on fact.’
‘May I use that in my article?’
‘Why not? The legend is current around my area of the New Forest.’
‘Is there any story of haunted woods, sacred groves – anything of that sort?’
‘Not so far as I am aware, but embroider as you will.’
‘Well, that’s marvellous.’
‘For good measure, throw in that a distant ancestress of mine was reputed to be a witch.’
Dunlop looked at her sharp black eyes, beaky little mouth and clawlike, yellow hands and smiled.
‘Maybe the ancestry wasn’t all that far back,’ he said, ‘if what I’ve heard of you, both as a psychiatrist and a solver of murder mysteries, is true. Well, now, you said there was something I could do for you. I’d be glad to have a try.’
‘It is something well within your scope. It concerns this death by drowning which we mentioned earlier, that of the young woman named Camilla Hoveton St John.’
‘Oh, yes, I know. We covered the story pretty thoroughly and were lucky enough to get a snap of the girl which her friends took when they first got to Saltacres. Our photographer who was here a while ago blew it up and we gave it front page treatment.’
‘Ah, then you know the details so far as these are known, and you know what conclusions were arrived at by the coroner.’
‘You don’t mean the verdict wasn’t correct? You don’t mean it was suicide? – not – I say! I say! You don’t think it was murder, do you?’
‘Her friends think so. For myself, I have formed no opinion up to the present. I am merely conducting an investigation on their behalf. You will say nothing about all this?’
‘Dumb as an oyster, I promise you.’
‘I have had it suggested to me that, on the day she spent here, Miss St John picked up some man whom she met again, without her friends’ knowledge.’
‘And he drowned her? Could be, I suppose. The chances are that he was one of the summer visitors, a yachtsman, perhaps. He may be anywhere by now.’
‘A yachtsman? The police wondered about that. In that case, other yachtsmen may know of him.’
‘What makes her friends think that the verdict on the girl was wrong?’
Dame Beatrice explained and Dunlop whistled. ‘They might have something there,’ he said. ‘The undertow on an outgoing tide is notorious all around these coasts, but you say the girl knew about the tides and wouldn’t have taken any risks.’
‘I know only what I have been told.’
‘Well, I’ll see what I can find out. Thanks very much for seeing me and letting me in on this. Silent as the grave until you give me the all-clear.’
‘Yes, silent as the grave,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘ “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.” ’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The girl had no discretion in some matters.’
‘Oh? Oh, I see. Well, there are plenty like her in this day and age.’
‘How much I deplore that overworked expression!’
‘Eh? Oh, me, too. One hears the words so often, though, that they trip to the tip of the tongue.’
‘We are all lazy in some way or another. If we were not, people could not live with us. We should be too much for them. I myself have an intense repugnance to gardening. “When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”, my reaction is to let them go on doing so.’
‘All the same, you’re prepared to use your time and energy to do quite a bit of weeding in the case of this drowned girl. Why?’
‘Curiosity. It killed the cat, Mr Dunlop, and in the end it will probably kill me.’
Dame Beatrice drove over to Saltacres on the following morning with the intention of inviting the Lowsons to lunch with her at The Stadholder. Cupar had already arranged to go sailing with a yachtsman friend, but Morag accepted the invitation with an eagerness which indicated that she was glad not to be alone for the day. As it was she and not her husband whom Dame Beatrice really wanted to talk with, the arrangements suited all parties.
Seated side by side on the back seat of Dame Beatrice’s car, the two women exchanged casual chat and then Morag said,
‘We had some good news by this morning’s post. I don’t know whether we told you that Cupar’s father took him into partnership when he qualified? He died a few months ago and Cupar has now sold the practice and is going in for research, as he has always wanted to do.’
‘How interesting. Research into what?’
‘Heart surgery. He thinks another breakthrough is on the way, and he wants to be one of the team.’
‘How interesting.’
‘Yes. It means moving from London to Lancashire, but I don’t mind that.’
The dining room at The Stadholder was full and in the general buzz of conversation there was little likelihood, Dame Beatrice thought, of her conversation with Morag being overheard, although she doubted whether anybody who did manage to overhear anything would make much out of it.
Morag had refused a cocktail in the lounge, so they went in fairly early to lunch and when they had ordered and the wine had been brought, Dame Beatrice abandoned polite chit-chat and settled down to business.
‘Have you heard from the Kirbys?’ she enquired.
‘Only a short note from Miranda to say that they had been to see Camilla’s flat-mates. A good thing they did, as those girls had heard nothing about her death.’
‘They had not seen a newspaper report?’
‘They don’t read the papers much, I gather. Anyway, I expect, in the London dailies, an accidental death by drowning would only have rated a small paragraph tucked away somewhere. It’s not as though the poor child was anybody important.’
‘I have been interviewed by the Stack Ferry press.’
‘About the drowning?’
‘Well, that was not the original purpose of the interview, but I have invoked the reporter’s help. He suggested that Miss Hoveton St John may have been taken for a sail in somebody’s yacht on the day she came here with Mr Kirby and, at my request, the reporter is following up his own suggestion.’
‘I can’t see that it would help, even if somebody did take her sailing that day. It was long before she was drowned.’
‘Yachtsmen belong to sailing clubs and their boats are registered with such. Yachtsmen can be traced. Whether one of them can tell me anything which will help my enquiry I do not know.’
‘Dame Beatrice, you seem to be taking all this very seriously. Do you think Camilla was murdered? Are you saying that some crazy yachtsman took her out to sea and pushed her overboard?’
‘I am saying nothing of the kind at present. I know that she met her death by drowning, but I know nothing about what happened to her beforehand.’
‘I can tell you one thing, for what it’s worth,’ said Morag. ‘It’s about the suitcase.’
‘Yes? You mean you know where it is?’
‘No, I don’t mean that.’
‘It might help a great deal if we knew where she had deposited it, because we should at least know where she went when she left the cottage.’
‘Well, I haven’t a clue about that. All I know is what I expect people have already told you. Whenever she took her suitcase to wherever it is, she didn’t leave the cottage with it on the night she went off and did not come back, and that was also the night on which Colin Palgrave left us.’