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‘Is it now? That’s interesting. I wouldn’t put it past Connie Crimp to have done that. She’s an odd sort of woman altogether. Well, sorry I’ve got to go. Stay as long as you like, so long as you shut the front door behind you so the cows won’t get in.’

‘Oh, we’re ready for off,’ said Sebastian.

During its short course from the centre of the island down to the sea, the river—dignified by this title simply because it happened to be about twice as wide as the brooks which flowed to the east side of Great Skua—dropped four hundred feet from its source to its mouth. It rushed, yelled and tumbled down the narrow gorge which it had cut for itself and at first, as they followed the narrow path along its bank, the walkers felt that there was no sound in the world except the roar of falling water.

Margaret and Sebastian, therefore, did not attempt conversation. Not only would it have involved shouting at one another, but the path, in any case, was too narrow to allow them to walk abreast. To begin with, it was almost at water level, but soon it ran high above the river, which then appeared to be a thread of brown and silver, almost hidden from view by the trees which clothed its banks.

The trees thinned out as the river approached the sea, and gave place to short, brown, springy turf, and while, far below them, the river poured itself towards the sea in a series of small waterfalls, the brother and sister found themselves on top of the magnificent cliffs which formed the west or Atlantic seaboard.

A footbridge over the small ravine gave access to the northern end of the island, but the walkers turned southwards along a footpath which followed the line of the cliffs and led towards the hotel. On their way they came to the second of the disused lighthouses which had been supplanted by the two modern ones.

‘Somebody up on the gallery,’ said Margaret.

‘One of the blasted bird-watchers, I expect,’ said her brother.

‘He’s seen us. What does he want?’ asked Margaret.

The man had come to the shoreward side of the gallery and was engaged in violent gesticulation.

‘It can’t be us he’s signalling. Probably spotted one of his mates and wants to show him the snake-headed sharktail or something equally ridiculous,’ said Sebastian.

‘No,’ said Margaret, ‘it’s us he wants. I think he’s coming down.’ The man had disappeared from the gallery. In a few moments he came galloping over the turf towards them.

‘Hi! Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Hi! Just a minute! Hi!’

‘Swing low, sweet chariot!’ muttered Sebastian. ‘Better stop and see what he wants, I suppose.’

The man, middle-aged and breathless, was dressed in tweeds and a deerstalker cap. Waving a pair of binoculars, he came charging up to them, spluttering out his message.

‘Could you come?’ he panted. ‘Something on the rocks out there. Doesn’t look right. Come and look. Please!’

‘Not particularly interested in sea-birds, I’m afraid,’ said Sebastian, recoiling. ‘Wouldn’t one of your own lot…?’

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. Please do come. I can’t spot any of the club members and I’ve got my wife with me. She is most upset. If we investigate—and I think we must—another lady—to be with my wife you know. You see—well, I rather think it’s somebody drowned out there. A body. Washed up, you know. Do please come and see, and then we can decide what to do.’

chapter eight

The Usual Routine

‘Skilful anglers hide their hooks, fit baits for every season;

But with crooked pins fish thou, as babes do, that want reason:

Gudgeons only can be caught with such poor tricks of treason.’

Thomas Campion

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Sebastian accompanied the agitated bird-watcher to the lighthouse and Margaret followed. Unlike the first of the disused towers which they had seen on a previous excursion, this one, midway along the turbulent Atlantic coast, was accessible to visitors, a fact explained by the guide as they climbed the steps to the lamp-room and the gallery.

‘We got permission to use it as a lookout,’ he said. ‘Our society, you know. Here, take my binoculars and have a look. Out there, between two rocks. What do you make that out to be?’

Sebastian, with a nod to a middle-aged, trousered woman who had turned from the gallery rail at their approach, trained the very powerful binoculars towards black and green rocks against and over which a spiteful sea boiled and fretted.

‘Difficult to be sure,’ he said, ‘but it does look like a person. The coastguards are the people to deal with this. They’ll get a boat round there and look into things.’

‘May I see?’ asked Margaret. She took the glasses and gazed long at the heaving object which the rollers were flinging about in a cloud of spume and fury. ‘It is somebody. It’s a woman. I think …’ she handed the binoculars to their owner. ‘I think it might be Aunt Eliza.’

‘Good Lord! Whatever makes you say that?’ exclaimed Sebastian, appalled. ‘You’ve nothing whatever to go on!’

‘Only the fact that Aunt Eliza is unaccountably missing,’ said his sister composedly. ‘Will you go for the coastguards or shall I?’

‘Oh, but there aren’t any coastguards on Great Skua,’ said the woman.

‘Well, we’d better let Farmer Cranby know,’ interrupted her husband. ‘He’ll arrange for something to be done.’

‘Cranby? All right, we’ll go,’ said Sebastian. ‘You stay here and keep an eye on things. We’ll get there quicker than you will.’

Before the two bird-watchers could argue about the matter, he seized his sister by the elbow and drew her towards the stairs, and in a minute or two they were running towards the farm.

‘Why didn’t you let that man go?’ asked Margaret, as they reached Ransome’s cottage and saw him at the bottom of his garden.

‘What I said. We’re quicker. Besides, we don’t want to get mixed up in anything if it is Aunt Eliza. Not that you’ve any proof.’ He halted at the gate and called out to Ransome, who leisurely put down the saw he had been using and strolled towards them.

‘Anything up?’ he asked.

‘There’s a body in the sea. Looks like a woman. Some birdwatchers spotted her.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Not far from that old lighthouse on the east cliff. We think she’s caught up among the rocks, but you can’t see much because the rocks partly hide her.’

‘All right, I’ll get some of the men. It will have to be Dimbleton’s boat. Must be one of the visitors done something foolish, I reckon. Dangerous they are, the currents round and about, but it’s no good telling people. They all think they know, better than we do, where it’s safe to bathe, and all that.’

‘It isn’t a bather. This woman is fully dressed. We’re afraid it’s Aunt Eliza,’ blurted out Margaret.

‘My mam? Oh, no!’ Ransome vaulted the gate and ran towards the farmhouse. Sebastian said:

‘Well, we’ve done what we can. Better get back to the hotel. If, by any chance, it is Aunt Eliza, father may like to have us there when the news is brought to him.’

It took time and skill to rescue the body from the rocks and get it on board the boat and back to the only landing-stage. The word had gone round and those who had watched the operation from the lighthouse gallery and the top of the cliffs raced along to the jetty to see the dead woman brought ashore. All that there was to satisfy their morbid curiosity, however, was wrapped in a tarpaulin. The cart used for the transport of luggage to the hotel had been requisitioned and the patient nag between the shafts pulled all that remained of the woman up the steeply-mounting road to the hotel.