‘Would you really let me paint Harold? I’ve sketched dogs, but never a boar. And are there woods on your estate?’
‘I expect you miss the forest,’ said Jenny, ‘but we do have woods near by. We don’t own them, but we have rights of pannage, so, if any of you are short of something to do while you’re here, you can always go and gather acorns and beech-mast. The pigs love both, and I can supply baskets and clean sacks. Pigs are forest animals. Of course nowadays we don’t let them loose in the woods, which is what they would enjoy most, but we keep them in pig-houses with a shed and a large outside run, so I think they are fairly happy, especially as they’ve never known anything else. The pig-houses are a good way off, but Carey will trundle you round in the jeep and you can easily get to the woods from there.’
‘I hope Aunt Adela isn’t in danger of being murdered,’ said Carey, who had not taken the possibility seriously.
‘She told me she would still have Laura and Detective-Inspector Ribble with her,’ Hermione replied, ‘so she ought to be all right. In any case the murderer only specialises in young women. That’s why Tamsin is such a responsibility.’
‘What about you?’ retorted Tamsin. ‘Anyway, it is all to do with those dance people. None of us was in any danger.’
‘Then why was Dame Beatrice so anxious that we shouldn’t let anybody know where we were going?’ asked Isobel, looking at Erica.
‘Oh, it is a precautionary measure,’ Erica replied, ‘but she was insistent about our leaving the forest cabin, so I felt I had to agree. After all, two girls have been killed. She was right to make us leave.’
‘Oh, well, nobody knows where we are except for Mr and Mrs Lestrange and my mother,’ said Tamsin. ‘I thought somebody in the family ought to be told where we were.’
‘Quite right,’ said Jenny. ‘I should always want to know where Hermy was.’
‘ “That old-fashioned mother of mine!” ’ chanted Hermione. ‘You are way, way behind the times, darling! Parents never want to know what their children are up to nowadays in case somebody holds them responsible for whatever it is.’
‘If only the parents were held responsible there would be a lot less truancy in schools and far better behaviour all round,’ said Isobel severely. ‘As for this nonsense that a child of under ten is incapable of committing any crime, I never heard such rubbish in my life. I could tell you—’
‘Oh, head her off, somebody!‘ said Tamsin. ’You shouldn’t talk shop, Isobel, especially at table.’
‘Oh, oh!’ said Erica. ‘Is this a case of the bunny biting the stoat? What have you been up to that you turn so belligerent all of a sudden?’
‘I haven’t been up to anything. Of course I haven’t. What should I have been up to?’
‘ “Methinks the lady doth protest too much”,’ said Hermione. ‘Come clean, young Tamsin. You’ve given somebody else this address, haven’t you?’
‘Well, only John,’ admitted Tamsin, ‘and that can’t possibly hurt. He won’t pass it on, I’m sure. He would hate not to know where I am.’
‘ “Kind hearts are more than coronets And simple faith than Norman blood,” ’ said her sister. ‘What a priceless fathead you can be when you really make up your mind to it!’
‘So we visit another pub,’ said Laura, ‘but why George? I could have driven the car. Do we need a bodyguard?’
‘We may have to park outside a house while we conduct what I think will be our last interview. As I have a feeling that a back street in Long Cove Bay may not be the safest place to leave an unattended car, I decided to bring George along,’ Dame Beatrice explained.
‘I see. So the visit to the pub is not the only reason for our taking this trip across the moors.’
On their right they were passing a pine-forest which looked almost black because of its density. On their left, dreary with faded heather and sad, although colourful, with acres of gold, dead bracken, the moors rose in the distance in folds of blue, grey and dirty green, a mysterious, monotonous, nostalgic, tragic landscape, while ahead of the car there stretched, wound, mounted and fell the apparently endless ribbon of moorland road snaking its way towards the world’s end. Laura summed up the landscape.
‘Enough to give you the willies,’ she said. As the car approached Long Cove Bay the road began to descend, but very gradually and then it turned to the right, past the Youth Hostel, and made for the town.
Ribble had served Dame Beatrice well. He had named the pub in his notes and had given the address to which he had taken the girl, whose name he could give only as Marion. He had added a footnote to the effect that she had been of no help to him.
The pub was small, cosy and not particularly busy, as it was past one o’clock and its habitués had gone home or to cafés for their midday meal. Laura ordered ham sandwiches and beer for herself and George, a cheese sandwich and sherry for Dame Beatrice and then, going to the counter for a second round of drinks, she mentioned Marion’s name.
‘You know her?’ asked the barmaid.
‘Mutual friends,’ said Laura, ‘asked me to look her up. Is she working?’
‘Her? Not bloody likely!’ said the barmaid. ‘What, with the Welfare only too ready and willing? I wouldn’t work, either, if I could stick being at home all day with my old man, but I can’t. One thing about this job, you’ve always got company and you don’t have to fork out for their nosh.’
‘You don’t come from these parts,’ said Laura. ‘Neither do I. Good old London! Is Marion likely to be in this morning?’
Correctly interpreting this, the barmaid replied that Marion would not be in until the evening for her ‘usual’ and that she and the barmaid were going out that afternoon window-shopping in Gledge End.
‘Marion can borrow the tandem,’ she said, ‘on account her boyfriend has got to go to Birmingham on business by train.’
Laura returned to the table at which she had left Dame Beatrice and communicated these tidings to her. Dame Beatrice made no comment, but as soon as Laura had drunk her second half-pint she led the way out and went straight to a public call-box from which she rang Detective-Inspector Ribble, told him where he could find a tandem, and suggested that it might be the one stolen from the church hall.
‘It’s the right tandem,’ said Ribble on the following day. ‘Right make, right colour, right lamps, right accessories, as described to us by young Marton. I was allowed in to see him again. He expects to be discharged from hospital in a day or two, but, except for the description of the tandem, about which he was very clear — he and Nicolson appear to cherish the thing the same way as some young men cherish a sports car — he couldn’t help me any further. Still has no idea who his assailant was and remembers nothing of Miss Raincliffe’s bursting into the room. I suppose he’d just been knocked unconscious when she arrived on the scene. Anyway, we’ll pick up our chap for the theft of the tandem. We can hold him for that and, as there is this more serious charge of murder in the offing, we shall be fully justified in opposing bail.’
‘I don’t think you need waste the time of the Birmingham police,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘If I read his mind aright, the most likely place to find him will be in or near the village of Stanton St John. He will have found out by this time that his next victim (as he supposes) is not at her home address.’
‘If you’re right about the motive for the murder of Mrs Tyne and the murderous attack on Mr Marton, I think you’re right about Stanton St John, ma’am. As you indicated, why else would the forest warden’s records have been stolen?’