‘The one who saw the white horseman?’
‘Precisely.’
‘But what can she tell us? From what you say, I gather she was gibbering with fright.’
‘A more tranquil state of mind will have intervened. Subconsciously she may have noticed something that will prove of value.’
‘Such as?’
‘Whether the horseman was tall, short, thin or stout.’
‘Good heavens! You mean it might have been Mrs Coles, and not a man at all!’
‘I mean it may have been Mrs Coles and a man.’
‘Talk about my imagination! But, if it was Mrs Coles and a man, why the elaborate get-up? Why the whiteness? Why go out of the way to make yourselves conspicuous on a dark night? And, another thing, it would prove it couldn’t have been an abduction.’
‘Nobody has mentioned such a word, child, and my own opinion is, and always has been, that the girl went willingly; but, even if that were not so, the lack of a struggle would not necessarily mean that the abducted party was a willing participator in the affair. “I was stiff with terror… I could not utter a word to save my life… I thought I might fall off if I struggled… I was so taken by surprise that I didn’t know what was happening”… all psychologists and all police courts have heard such remarks, and, the point is, in many cases they are true, so far as the plaintiff knows.’
‘Oh, yes; the old bromide about the subconscious mind. Her conscious mind may have been horrified, but her mad, bad, cave-woman subconscious was really making whoopee all the time. You’ll never get me to believe it, you know.’
‘The Scots are an inhibited race.’
‘And a jolly good thing, too! At least we’re respectable, hard-working, thrifty, courageous, patriotic, reliable, canny, proud, dour, invincible, kind-hearted, poetic, strong-minded, tough, well-educated, religious, zealous, generous—I could go on for hours. Anyway, nobody can call the kilt an inhibited garment. You forget the kilt. And what about the bagpipes?’
‘The kilt, or philabeg, came into being because the Scots would not trouble to learn to sew. The bagpipes came to Scotland from Ireland, as did poetry, whisky and religion.’
‘You can’t prove a word you say!’
Dame Beatrice cackled.
‘Touchée,’ she said pacifically. ‘Please ring up Miss McKay and find out when it will be convenient for us to talk to Miss Good.’
Miss McKay would have liked to name the Thursday free afternoon as the most appropriate time for the visit, but she was a just and fair-minded woman, and she knew how resentful Miss Good would be if her weekly date with the lecture-cutting Mr Cleeve were cancelled. She suggested the following Tuesday morning, and invited Dame Beatrice and Laura to lunch.
‘I am truly sorry to come bothering round again,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they arrived, ‘but I have a fine new theory about Miss Palliser, as I suppose she will continue to be referred to by the college, and, although I do not expect my interview with Miss Good to do much, if anything, to support it, I must try to clear her out of the way first.’
‘You’ll be a change from the police, at any rate,’ said Miss McKay. ‘We’ve had them morning, noon and night. Did you know that they have decided to keep an open mind as to whether the dead girl really was Mrs Coles? It seems there’s a doubt.’
‘No, but I thought they might do so. Shall we see Miss Good before lunch?’
‘Yes, I think that would be best. She is on practical work this morning, but has an essay this afternoon. Let me see, now… yes, she will be down at the piggeries with Mr Lestrange. I am sure he’ll be pleased to see you.’
Miss Good was also pleased to see them. Carey had just concluded an exposition, with demonstration, of the way to introduce a newcomer into a pen which already held a settled group. He had caught and anointed three pigs, the newcomer and two others, with pig-oil powerfully scented with aniseed, and Miss Good and three other students were each to take a pig of the remaining four and copy his method.
‘And, of course, the pigs are all right—quite sweet, actually—but the smell of aniseed makes me retch,’ said Miss Good. ‘But if it’s about that ghost I saw… and there’s nothing else you’d want to see me about… well, I did realise afterwards that it might be Highpepper being silly, but, as I didn’t think of that at the time, I didn’t take any notice except to scram.’
‘As who would not?’ said Laura, who had been briefed by Dame Beatrice on the way down. ‘But I do wish you’d tell me a bit more. I’m interested in ghosts, and this may have been a real one, after all.’
‘Mrs Gavin was born in the west of Scotland,’ explained Dame Beatrice, ‘where there is a long history of extra-sensory phenomena.’
‘Oh, yes? I wouldn’t know. But, if Mrs Gavin is interested in ghosts, as such, she’s come to the wrong shop, I’m afraid. You see, what I saw couldn’t have been a ghost. I know that perfectly well now. The proof is that the ghost’s horse trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts. Looking back, it was obviously Highpepper. I can’t see the point, all the same. I should think something came unstuck and the boy had to make a getaway. I mean, no rag was carried out, so far as we know.’
‘Just a moment,’ said Laura. She was carrying a brief-case and from it she produced a stiff-covered, shiny notebook of rather impressive size and very impressive thickness. It was nearly half-full of notes and weird drawings which she had manufactured on the preceding day in preparation for the visit. She skimmed through the notebook—they were in the Principal’s sitting-room—as fine and private a place as the grave once the telephone had been disconnected and the door locked—and found a lurid picture of a headless rider and a headless dog in the middle of what looked like the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. ‘You see, the horse may have been a real one.’
‘The horse?’
‘Well,’ said Laura, temporising, ‘we all know about the Gytrash, don’t we?’
‘I—I don’t see the connection.’
Neither did Laura, but she continued, sternly:
‘So you may as well describe the ghost to me. It was tall, you say?’
‘I don’t know. Anyone on horseback looks tall.’
Broad?’
‘Well, I couldn’t really say.’
‘Did it look like a man or a woman?’
‘I was so scared, I just turned and ran.’
‘It followed you, didn’t it?’
‘I don’t think it followed me. I mean, I don’t think it saw me at all.’
‘Look here, said Laura, upon inspiration, ‘where are those brussels sprouts? I mean, you spotted the horse and rider at the head of the drive, I gather. Where had they been before that?’
A look of intelligent interest replaced the former expression of slightly puzzled distaste on the student’s face.
‘You know, I never thought of it that way before,’ she said. ‘Miss Gonsidine told me about the sprouts being trampled just to prove to me I hadn’t seen a ghost. The sprouts are in the kitchen garden, and that’s about the most unlikely place you can think of for anybody to go riding. It’s right round by the butler’s pantry that was, and all that sort of thing.’
‘Ah, that’s if the person knew the layout here. Try to imagine a person having an assignment with somebody here, but having no knowledge of the geography, so to speak.’
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at.’
But Laura, inspired with a truly magnificent notion, was not prepared to explain. She said:
‘I wish you could remember the size of the rider. Haven’t you any idea?’
Thus prompted, Miss Good replied reluctantly:
‘Well, you know Anne Boleyn?’
‘The apparent headlessness of the apparition, you mean?’
‘Yes, so why should I suddenly think of Henry the Eighth?’
‘Her husband, and responsible for the headlessness aforesaid?—No, by thunder!’ Laura got up, smote the astonished and slightly resentful student a congratulatory b
low between the shoulder-blades, and said urgently, ‘The kitchen garden, my girl, and quick about it, before my brain has time to cool. As the barrow-boy remarked when he looked at an alligator’s teeth, you said a mouthful, cocky.’
Dame Beatrice, with an alligator’s smile, watched them go. She had been visited by a wild idea, too. She waited. The kitchen garden, as Laura had anticipated, was unusually vast. A strip of lawn separated it from the back of the house, and then it stretched far and wide, beautiful and austere. At that time of year it was given almost wholly over to brussels sprouts and cabbages, and these spread, downhill slightly, to a couple of ponds, a disused cottage and, finally, a gate which opened on to a lane.
Laura, nosing about like a hound which has picked up the scent, made rapidly for this gate and opened it.
‘Nobody except the dustmen ever come in that way,’ volunteered Miss Good, obviously on the defensive.
‘And are the dustcarts horse-drawn?’
‘No, not nowadays.’
‘But a horse has been here. Look at the hoof-prints.’
‘It must have been somebody from Highpepper, as I said.’
‘And it might be your ghost of Henry VIII. Well, I must away and write up my report. Many thanks for your invaluable assistance. Sorry to have taken up your time. Of course,’ she added, as they walked back to the front door together, ‘there is nothing to show that the ghost didn’t come from Highpepper. That needs to be borne in mind. I do agree with you there, and that something caused him to sheer off before there was any ragging.’
‘Well?’ said Dame Beatrice, when they returned to Miss Considine’s room. ‘Did the brussels sprouts enlighten you, I wonder?’
‘Yes and no,’ Laura replied. ‘You know you had an idea that the ghost may have been two people? Well, that’s exactly what it was. It reminded Miss Good of Henry VIIL’
‘You couldn’t call that proof,’ said Miss Good. But Laura wagged her head solemnly.
‘I call it proof,’ she said. ‘Of course, if we could have seen the hoof-prints the morning after you saw this apparition, we might have been able to show that the horse was more heavily laden when it left by the front gate than when it appeared at the back, but that’s past praying for now.’
They took their leave of Miss McKay, and, when they were in the car, Dame Beatrice, with a leer, congratulated Laura on her detective work.
‘I think we may take two things for granted,’ she said. ‘The horse was carrying two persons, neither of whom had to be recognised, and the collaborator with, or abductor of, Mrs Coles did not come from Highpepper.’
‘Did not?’
‘Nobody who knew anything about the environs of Calladale would have trampled Miss Considine’s brussels sprouts, and any Highpepper student who had planned to abduct Mrs Coles would certainly have taken pains to familiarise himself with the topography, if he did not know it already.’
‘Yes, but, if secrecy was the main object, surely the ghostly get-up was a bit noticeable?’
‘Yes and no. You must realise that the effect on most of the students would have been the same as the effect on Miss Good. There is a legend here of a haunting.’
‘Sudden and unreasoning panic? Oh, I see. No hanging about to investigate the phenomenon, but the hasty sauve qui peut? Something in that, no doubt. So what do we get? Somebody carried off Mrs Coles…’
‘And, most probably, with her own consent, although not, I venture to think, upon horseback.’
‘With her own consent? I don’t altogether see the point. If it wasn’t with her own consent she would have kicked up devil’s delight, unless the horseman had some mental or moral hold over her, and so could force the issue? You indicated the possibility, didn’t you?’
‘Did I really? Pray continue your exposition.’
‘Somebody didn’t intend (we think) to betray his presence, but he did so by trampling all over the kitchen garden, not knowing the geography of the college. That rules out the Highpepper youths, who must know it remarkably well. I say, though, there’s something else we ought to consider. In fact, we ought to do more than actually consider it.’
‘Ah! I wondered whether that might occur to you. You refer, no doubt, to the difficulty of actually identifying the pillion rider, if, by any chance, it was not Mrs Coles. After all, she had disappeared some five to six days earlier, don’t forget.’
‘Not Mrs Coles after all? What a sell if it wasn’t! Anyway, this is where I make a noise like Fleet Street and go and see this young husband. Incidentally’—Laura looked suspicious — ‘you seem very pleased about something.’
‘I was very pleased to note Miss Good’s remark about the position of the butler’s pantry, child, that’s all.’
chapter ten
Phantom Holiday
‘Ernest discovered on the borders of a little marsh, a quantity of bamboos, half buried in the sand. We pulled them out…’
« ^ »
Laura had given considerable thought to an age-old problem. What, she wondered, would be the best things to wear for the interview with the bereaved husband. That it might turn out to be a meeting of extreme importance to the enquiry she was well aware, and she knew that both men and women, particularly young men and young women, were influenced, even if unconsciously, by the clothes worn by interlocutors.
Tweeds and brogues?—Reassuring? Maybe not. Mutton dressed as lamb?—Apt to arouse suspicion. Careless-artistic? —Always of doubtful value with either sex. Trousers?— Depended on the man. Some could put up with them on a large and handsome Amazon; some could not. Laura settled for a well-cut suit with matching accessories.
‘You look very nice,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘One visualises the card-case and detects the slight, unmistakable odour of Debrett.’
‘Oh, Lord! All I aimed at was to appear neat but not gaudy.’ Laura ostentatiously consulted a small and extremely elegant gold wristwatch, her husband’s birthday gift. ‘Well, see you soon, and with lots of gen, or so I anticipate. By the way, if I’m to impersonate a reporter, what’s my pseudonym?’
‘I leave that to you, child. Your imagination, resourcefulness, choice of language, personality, courage, and sense of responsibility, coupled with your total inability to write shorthand, far surpass my own. Be you who you will. Perhaps, for the proper recording of your feats of derring-do, I had better be told, though.’
‘You know,’ said Laura suddenly. ‘I don’t believe I think much of this reporter business, after all. He may shy away if he thinks I represent a newspaper, especially if he’s got a guilty conscience. Couldn’t I be an old friend of the deceased? Ah, I’ll tell you what! Couldn’t I have been her Sunday-school teacher? How old is she supposed to have been?’
‘Mrs Coles was twenty-two, I believe, although the body was so strangely mature that it is difficult to see how it could be hers, although medical science is not infallible.’
‘So I could easily have been her Sunday-school teacher! You can become one at about fourteen, I believe.’
‘You don’t look like a Sunday-school teacher.’
‘Oh, they come in all sizes,’ said Laura, easily. ‘The hunt is up! Suspect, here I come!’
‘Which of you is the suspect?’ asked Carey, who was visiting his aunt. Laura looked through him. ‘I mean, if you go attempting to pass yourself off as a doer of good works, looking like that, you’ve a nasty surprise coming to you, my girl.’
Laura glanced down at her suit.
‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. ‘You don’t have to look like Frau Frump to teach in a Sunday School. Besides, I shan’t pretend I still do.’
‘How are you supposed to know that she was married? Don’t forget it was a deep, dark secret.’
‘Oh,’ said Laura airily, ‘she will have told her old Sunday-school teacher, if nobody else. What are old Sunday-school teachers for?’
‘I’ve never enquired. Oh, well, go ahead and do it your way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘You
go and feed the pigs,’ retorted Laura. ‘You’re neglecting your duties.’
‘My duty is to escort you to wherever it is you’re bound for, and make sure you don’t run into trouble.’
‘Who says so?’ demanded Laura, looking haughty.
‘Aunt Adela, so don’t fuss. This fellow may be the murderer, for all we know. You can’t go and visit him alone. Gavin would have our blood, and quite right, too.’
‘How do I explain you?’
‘I’ve very kindly given you a lift up to Town. You thought you would do some shopping, then you remembered that poor dear what-was-her-name had told you her husband was at this art school in London, so you felt you must look him up. Then I shall suggest giving you lunch and include him in. All right?’
‘All right, then, but I don’t suppose I’ll get much out of him with you hanging around.’
‘Yes, you will, girl. Besides, didn’t you notice I’ve shaved? What did you think that was for? I’m not going to waste it on the pigs?’
They drove in Carey’s car to his home in Stanton St John as soon as his work was over for the day. Laura stayed the night there, and they set off early next morning for southeast London. The art school was separated from the road by a short gravel drive at the end of which it was possible to park the car. Carey remained seated at the wheel while Laura went exploring. She soon located the secretary’s office, tapped on the glass panel and asked at what time it would be possible for her to speak to Mr Coles.
‘He’s in Life,’ said the secretary. A little taken aback, Laura remarked that she hoped so.
‘Life-drawing,’ the secretary explained. *You can go in, if you don’t mind the nude. Oh, it’s a male model this week, so he won’t be. Room 24. There’s a rude drawing on the door. You can’t miss it. Up there.’
With a presentiment, unusual with her, that she was going to muff the coming interview, Laura traversed the corridor indicated by the secretary and discovered Room 24 without difficulty. She knocked, but there was no answer, so, after waiting a moment, she went in. There were eight or nine students in the room, also the professor of life-drawing and the model. The latter, astoundingly reminiscent of the Olmec Wrestler statue from Mexico, was in position on a small dais. The students did not look up as she entered, but the professor, who had been standing behind the shoulder of one of the girls, came forward.
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