Ian came running across the common, through the turnstile and into the house where Mollie was just taking Andrew’s breakfast tray in to him. Andrew heard Ian shouting for Mollie. She dumped the tray on his knees more abruptly than usual, went out on to the landing and called, ‘What is it?’
Andrew heard Ian call back, ‘The police! I’ve got to phone them! I found—I found—’
But there he seemed to gag. There was silence for a moment, then there came the tinkle of the bell on the telephone as it was lifted. Andrew put his tray aside, got out of bed, put on his dressing-gown and went out on to the landing.
He overheard Ian say, ‘Yes, by the bridge … Oh yes, dead, no question of it. I wouldn’t have left her if there’d been any doubt, would I?… Yes, straight away, and you’ll meet me there … Yes, I understand … In the reeds by the bridge, you’re sure you know where I mean?… All right, but come as quickly as you can.’
He slammed the telephone down and seemed about to go straight out of the front door again when Andrew called out, ‘What’s happened, Ian?’
Ian paused in the doorway, looking up at him on the stairs.
‘It’s Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Lying in the lake, dead. Drowned, I suppose. I was out early, looking for some waders, but what I saw was Eleanor. I don’t know how long she’s been there, but I’m going straight back. The police are coming. Will you come with me?’
‘I will, if you’ll wait a moment till I get into some clothes,’ Andrew answered.
That morning the coffee on his tray, the toast and marmalade and the cheese were left untouched. It was only a few minutes before he was downstairs with Ian, unwashed, unshaved, but at least decent in trousers, a shirt and a pullover. They went out together while Mollie stayed in the doorway, watching them go.
They strode across the common towards the lake as fast as they could. There was no one else about. The morning felt colder than the day before, and there were low-hanging dark clouds in the sky, as if it might rain soon. Ian began to mutter something about the bridge and the reeds, but then gave up the attempt to speak, and led the way up to the little hump-backed bridge and pointed down.
There, almost under it, with reeds bowing over her, was the still body of Eleanor Clancy. She was on her back, with her small deep-set eyes staring strangely at the sky. Her clothes were only a sodden shroud, but it looked as if she was wearing her black jeans and tartan shirt. Her cap of brown hair swam in the water like a dark halo round her head. Her face was blue-white. Ian had certainly been right. She was dead and probably had been dead for hours.
Andrew wondered if the cold of the morning came from those threatening clouds and a feeling of moisture in the air, or mostly from the stiff figure below them. He looked around him. He looked at the narrow lane that curved off to the right on the far side of the bridge. There were hedges on either side of the lane, so that he could not see where it led, but he thought that it ran about parallel to the main road behind most of the houses of the village. On the morning when he had walked as far as the bridge, then round the lake and back to the children’s playground, he had not paid much attention to the lane, but now he found himself gazing up it, wondering if it had been along it that death had come.
Ian was leaning on the brick coping of the bridge.
‘Could it have been an accident?’ he asked, not sounding hopeful.
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Andrew said. ‘Accidents have a queer way of happening. But she was athletic. She’s certain to have been a good swimmer. If she’d somehow fallen into the water she’d surely have been able to save herself. Anyway, the water doesn’t look very deep.’
Though there was mud along the rim of the lake, where the stream flowed out the water was so clear that he could see pebbles on the bottom of it.
‘So she was unconscious when she fell in,’ Ian said.
‘Or dead already.’
‘You’ve made up your mind it was murder?’
‘Thank God, it isn’t for me to do that. That’s a job for Inspector Roland.’
‘But it is what you think, isn’t it, Andrew?’
Andrew did not reply immediately. He stood gazing down with a horrified kind of interest at the figure in the water below them.
Then he said, ‘Why did she come here? To meet somebody? And why here?’
‘Couldn’t it have been by chance? I mean, suppose she was out jogging, which was the sort of thing she used to do, and just happened to meet someone who—well, who wanted her dead?’
‘Why should anyone want that? Of course, I know what you’re going to say. Someone she saw give the cyanide to Singleton. Or someone she knew had arranged it somehow. But wasn’t meeting her just a too lucky chance for whoever it was? I think it’s more likely she met someone by appointment.’
‘But whom would she have agreed to meet in a lonely spot like this when she knew she was a fearful danger to that person? Wouldn’t she have been too afraid of him?’
‘Or her.’
‘Could a woman have done it?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t know yet what they did, do we?’
‘I still think it’s extraordinary she should have agreed to meet whoever it was, if she really knew something about the murder of Luke.’
‘It is extraordinary. Perhaps a little too extraordinary to have happened just like that.’
Ian gave Andrew a puzzled look. ‘You seem to think they didn’t meet by chance, but not by appointment either. Then how did they meet?’
‘Oh, by one or the other,’ Andrew said. ‘But perhaps not for the reason we’ve been talking about.’
‘What other reason could there be?’
‘I know too little about her to do any guessing. Perhaps her chutney gave someone indigestion. Or perhaps one of her photographs displeased someone … Sorry, Ian, I’m not really being flippant, I’m just stressing the fact that she’d led a life before the dinner in honour of Parson Woodforde.’
They were interrupted then by voices on the common and saw several men coming towards them, with Inspector Roland at the head of them.
Andrew and Ian came down from the bridge to make room for Roland to go up on to it. He stood staring down.
‘Christ!’ was all he said for a moment.
Then he came down and spoke to Ian. ‘It was you who found her, was it?’
‘Yes,’ Ian said.
‘How did that happen?’
‘I came out to take a look at the birds round here, and what I found was …’ He gestured at the reeds.
‘You often come out as early as this?’ Roland asked.
‘Did you see anyone else around here?’
‘No.’
‘I’m not thinking of someone who might have done this thing, but another witness.’
‘No, there was no one else about.’
‘You assume it was murder, do you, Inspector?’ Andrew asked.
‘We’ll know more about that later,’ Roland said. ‘But there’s something about her neck, the angle of her head, that suggests … Well, we’ll leave that to the experts. Meanwhile, Professor, I think you and Mr Davidge might go home and I’ll come in to see you later. I don’t think you can give us any help here now.’
Andrew was very glad to be sent away. He and Ian walked down to the turnstile in silence and crossed the road to the house, the door of which still stood open. Two police cars were parked in the road, and as they crossed it an ambulance drew up there.
As soon as she heard them on the path leading up to the door, Mollie came out of the kitchen and stood still in the middle of the hall with a look of horrified questioning on her face.
‘It’s really Eleanor, is it?’ she said in a whispering voice.
‘Yes,’ Ian said.
‘And she’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Drowned?’
‘I thought so,’ Ian replied, ‘but Roland seems to have his doubts. I got the impression he thinks she may have been dead already when she went into the water. Didn’t you, Andrew?’
‘He was considering it, certainly,’ Andrew said.
‘You mean it was murder, not an accident or suicide? Who would want to murder Eleanor?’ Mollie’s white face was taut with shock.
‘The person whom she knew murdered Luke,’ Ian said.
‘But how could she know that? I know she was sitting near him, but all the same …’ She stopped, still staring at them incredulously, then suddenly she said, ‘You haven’t had any breakfast. Andrew, you didn’t touch yours. I’ll make some more coffee.’
She turned and went hurriedly back into the kitchen, moving as swiftly as if she was running away from them and their information.
While she was making the second pot of coffee, Andrew went upstairs, had a quick, casual wash and shaved, and seeing the breakfast tray that he had ignored on the bed, picked the portion of cheese off it and, chewing it, went downstairs again. Mollie had brought coffee and toast and marmalade on a tray into the sitting-room where the electric fire was alight.
‘I thought we could do with a bit of warmth this morning,’ she said. ‘It’s turned quite cold, hasn’t it?’
Her voice was back to normal and her face, though a little pale, had lost its look of horrified blankness. She appeared merely thoughtful.
‘You must be right,’ she said, ‘but I still can’t make any sense of it.’
Andrew was very grateful for the hot coffee. Having finished his cheese, he helped himself to toast and marmalade and presently to a second cup of coffee. None of them talked much, though once or twice Mollie started what sounded as if it was going to be a question, but which she did not finish. Andrew thought that they were all waiting for something to happen, probably the arrival of the police, though it might be of one of the Davidges’ neighbours, who would have seen the police cars arriving and parking outside their house. Meanwhile, all three of them wanted to ask the same questions to which none of them could give any answers. It had become almost impossible to talk.
It was over an hour before they heard footsteps on the paved path outside the door and Ian, going quickly to it, brought in Inspector Roland and the young sergeant. Roland expressed satisfaction on seeing the glowing red bars of the electric fire, went up to it and held out his hands to the warmth. If he had had anything to do with moving the body in the water, they might well be chilled.
Rubbing them against one another, he remarked, ‘Soon be Christmas.’
‘Good heavens, Inspector!’ Mollie exclaimed. ‘This is only September.’
‘Yes, but time flies,’ he said. ‘Flies faster and faster the older you get. I get the feeling that chap Singleton has been dead for a week or two, but it was only a couple of days ago that it happened. It may interest you to know, by the way, that the Bartlett sisters have been traced in London. They’d gone, as we thought they might, to the house of their widowed sister, and were simply hiding when the first inquiries were made there. But they showed up yesterday evening.’
‘Are you telling us that that gives them an alibi for this murder this morning?’ Ian asked.
‘Absolutely watertight,’ Roland answered. ‘But though we haven’t any definite facts yet, our impression is that the murder wasn’t done this morning, but at least twelve hours before you found her. We’ll know more about that later when the forensic people have had time to do their stuff. That twelve hours is only a rough guess.’
‘But have you found how she died?’ Andrew asked. ‘You presumably got her out of the water pretty quickly.’
‘Again, we’ve nothing official,’ Roland said. ‘Our surgeon is there, and he agrees with me that probably she was throttled from behind by a strong pair of hands, then tipped off the bridge into the water.’ At a gesture of invitation from Mollie, he had sat down, and all the others except Ian, who remained standing at the window, watching what might be happening in the road, had found chairs. ‘It looks as if her neck’s broken.’
‘But twelve hours ago,’ Andrew said, ‘that makes it seven o’clock or so, and it’s dark by then. What was she doing out there on the common in the dark with someone who she knew had committed a murder?’
‘It isn’t really dark by seven,’ Roland said. ‘It’s dusk. If you turn on the lights indoors it looks dark outside, but if you’re out, it’s still almost daylight.’
‘All the same, it’s a bit strange to go out for a walk in semi-darkness to meet a murderer,’ Andrew said. ‘Why did she trust him?’
‘She might have met him by chance,’ Roland said. ‘It was a fine evening, and even murderers may sometimes feel like a breath of fresh air.’
‘That’s what I suggested to Professor Basnett,’ Ian said, ‘but he thought it was more likely she’d met someone by appointment.’
‘Any reason for that, Professor?’ Roland asked.
Andrew considered it. ‘Not really. Just that I find it unlikely that our murderer should be so lucky as to meet his second victim, who happened to be threatening him, when he was out all by himself on a lonely common. I know it could happen, but it doesn’t feel likely.’
‘It might not have happened quite like that,’ Roland said. ‘She might have gone off for a short walk across the common just before it got dark—she was the sort of person who might do that, mightn’t she?—and the murderer was coming along this road here when he saw her start off and quietly followed her. I was going to ask you if you’d seen anyone pass the house, going in either direction about that time. Anyone of any kind. It doesn’t necessarily have to have been someone who was at that dinner. It’s natural to think it probably was, but that could be a mistake. It could be a mistake to assume that the two murders have any connection. She could have been killed by the sort of pervert who happens to like killing lonely women. There were a couple of murders of that kind in Rockford a year or two ago, and we thought we’d got the killer, but we could have been wrong and he’s still about, or there could be another.’
‘Was she raped?’ Mollie breathed.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘That’s to say, her clothing wasn’t disarranged. We haven’t been able to examine her yet.’
‘But it’s true the two crimes are remarkably unlike,’ Andrew said. ‘The one’s extremely subtle and complicated, the other’s straightforward and brutal. It could be two different minds at work.’
‘Meanwhile, you haven’t answered my question,’ Roland said. ‘Did you happen to see anyone at all going along this road towards evening? Someone walking or someone in a car?’
Ian turned from the window. ‘We couldn’t have seen anyone, I’m afraid, because by then we’d have drawn the curtains. But even if no one walked past, I should say it’s certain that a number of cars went by. There isn’t much traffic on this road, but sooner or later something comes along.’
‘And were you in this room at that time?’
‘Ah, you’re asking us for our alibis,’ Ian said. ‘Yes, we were all in this room, drinking sherry. Then about eight o’clock we went into the kitchen for supper. And earlier than that time we were together here, watching the television news. Is that sufficient?’
‘Inspector, if you’re right that Eleanor Clancy’s murder might have been some random pervert,’ Andrew said, ‘doesn’t that destroy the Bartletts’ alibis for Luke Singleton’s murder? Not that they actually have alibis for that. However, if Miss Clancy was killed because she knew who’d done that murder, then their alibi for yesterday evening makes it fairly impossible that they could have had anything to do with poisoning Singleton. You needn’t look for someone who used them to do the killing, which would have meant it could have been someone anywhere in Lower Milfrey or Rockford or London, or anywhere you choose. You’re back to looking for someone who was in that room at that dinner. And why need this second murderer of yours have come along this road? Isn’t it a good deal more likely that he came along the lane that comes down to the bridge?’
‘Of course, of course, Professor,’ Roland said, giving a sardonic little smile. ‘You’re right on all points. And you’ve probably made up your mind that I haven’t much faith in the existence of this second killer. I only consider that he has to be borne in mind. But I might have guessed you’d see through me. I think the Bartletts are blameless, and God knows how, we’ve got to find Singleton’s killer in that dining-room.’
‘Miss Clancy made a curious remark the last time I saw her,’ Andrew said. ‘I can’t remember her exact words, but what she meant was that she had quite a bit of a gift for recognizing people. Or that’s how I took it. And of course, she did recognize Mrs Waldron, although it was years since they’d met. And she recognized Luke Singleton immediately. But what perhaps makes that unimportant is that in both cases she knew the person’s name in advance. She knew whom she was going to meet. All the same, there may have been someone else in that room whom she recognized, someone she knew a little too much about for that person’s comfort, and whom she could envisage committing a very complicated murder.’
‘And that suggests someone who came from Rockford,’ Roland said. ‘She’d probably have met all the Lower Milfrey guests already and they’d have known that she’d recognized them and wouldn’t have taken risks with her there. Of course we’re questioning all the Rockford people, but we haven’t got anywhere so far.’
‘Have you tried the Lady Mayoress? She was there that evening,’ Ian remarked. ‘She quite often gets her picture in the local paper. Eleanor would have recognized her.’
‘Mr Davidge, this is a serious matter,’ Roland said reprovingly. ‘This matter of recognition may turn out to be important.’
Ian went abruptly into one of his sullen moods. ‘Any bloody thing that happened during the last three days may turn out to be important, mayn’t it? It’s a whole waste-bag of events. And everything you pull out seems to have something against it. And probably there’s something that’s been staring us in the face all the time that would solve the whole business—Oh God, what’s this now?’
He has been interrupted by the sound of running footsteps on the path up from the road.
The doorbell was strenuously rung.
Ian went to answer it. A young uniformed constable came bounding into the room. He was carrying a package of some sort, wrapped in transparent plastic. He thrust it out to Roland.
‘One of the divers found this,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Merry weather told me to bring it straight to you, sir.’ He added warningly, ‘It’s wet.’
Roland took it, but he held it between his hands, touching it as little as possible.
Looking at it through the plastic, he stated, ‘It looks like a handbag.’
‘And it’s got money in it,’ the constable said.
‘I suppose you’ve all been handling it,’ Roland said. ‘Any fingerprints on it won’t mean a thing.’
‘Sergeant Merry weather looked inside it, sir,’ the constable said, ‘then put it in this sheeting. But he said there wouldn’t be any prints left after the soaking it’s had.’
‘You found it in the lake, did you?’
‘One of the divers found it, just about a yard or so from where the body was lying. And it’s got a thousand pounds in it, and a cheque-book with Miss Clancy’s name on it, and a purse with some change in it, and a comb, and a diary, and a handkerchief and a latchkey and a car key.’
‘And a thousand pounds?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In what form?’
‘Fifty-pound notes, just in a bundle with a rubber band round them.’
‘You’re sure about that cheque-book?’
‘So Sergeant Merry weather said, sir.’
‘So the handbag is Miss Clancy’s.’
Ian had drawn near enough to Roland to be taking a look at the package on his knee.
‘It’s Eleanor’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen her carrying it.’
Roland handed the package back to the constable.
‘You’d better take this in to the station. Hand it over to the forensic people and tell them how it was found. Try not to handle it more than you can help, though the sergeant’s probably right, with the soaking it’s had there won’t be any prints left on it.’
The young man took it and left as speedily as he had come.
‘Now why should anyone throw a handbag with a thousand pounds in it into the lake?’ Roland demanded.
‘An accident,’ Andrew suggested. ‘She was carrying it when she was attacked and simply had it jerked out of her hand and let it go and it fell in the water.’
‘That thousand pounds has the smell of blackmail to me,’ Roland said.
‘But who was blackmailing who?’ Andrew asked.
‘Had she just been paid it by her attacker, or was she going to pay it to him?’
‘But it isn’t blackmail!’ Mollie said angrily. ‘I’m sure Eleanor’d never done anything in her life for which anyone could blackmail her, and she wouldn’t try to blackmail anybody. I believe, if she really had that sort of money in her handbag and went up on the bridge to meet someone, then she was taking the money to help them in some way.’
‘And so he killed her,’ Roland observed drily.
‘Anyway, I don’t believe she’d have been able to scrape together a thousand pounds just like that,’ Mollie said. ‘She was pretty hard up.’
‘But one can be so wrong about people,’ Andrew murmured.
‘Who’s being wrong now?’ she asked.
‘I’ve a feeling it’s you, my dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t see Eleanor Clancy as an example of all the virtues. She may have been a fairly worthy woman, but if the possession of some dangerous knowledge came her way, and as you say, she really was hard up, then I don’t think it’s impossible she might try to use it.’
‘And she was fool enough to go up to a lonely spot like that bridge at twilight to meet this person she was blackmailing and so just happened to get murdered.’ Millie was scornful. ‘Why didn’t she get them to come to her cottage?’
‘I believe that’s a rather important question,’ Andrew said.
‘And it makes me think,’ Roland said, ‘that my next step will be to go to that cottage and take a look round. Her latchkey was in that handbag they found in the lake.’ He looked at Ian. ‘Have you by any chance got a spare? You’re her landlord, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, we’ve a spare set of keys to her front door, her back door and her garage. Wait a moment, I’ll get them.’
He left the room and was back almost at once with some keys on a ring.
Standing up, as did the sergeant, Roland looked suddenly at Andrew and said, ‘Care to come with us?’
That the invitation was meant for Andrew only and not for Ian or Mollie was very clear. He looked at them questioningly, feeling that as their guest it was only courteous to obtain their permission for his suddenly leaving them, but as he had expected, both nodded at him, sending him off. He followed the Inspector out of the house and started along the road with them to what had been Eleanor Clancy’s cottage.
But before they reached it the Inspector paused, looking towards the common. A small procession of men was coming towards them, and between them they were carrying something. It was a stretcher covered with what looked like a blanket. It was loaded on to the waiting ambulance, which was then driven away. Most of the men who had accompanied the stretcher then got into the police cars parked in the road, though two or three paused at the turnstile, then returned the way they had come.
Roland leant his elbows on the fence, peering up musingly across the common.
‘How long have the Davidges been living here?’ he asked after a moment.
‘I think it’s about two years,’ Andrew answered.
‘And before that?’
‘In a flat in Holland Park.’
‘Holland Park—that’s an expensive area, isn’t it?’
‘I believe so.’
‘And their car’s a BMW.’
‘Yes.’
‘So they aren’t what Mrs Davidge called hard up.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Nor really wealthy?’
‘How long have you known them?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember. I’ve known Davidge twenty or twenty-five years.’
‘But his wife not so long?’
‘She’s his second wife, you know. His first wife died some years ago, and about three years after it happened he married Mollie. She was his secretary.’
‘Happy marriage?’
Only a few days ago Andrew would have answered, ‘Very.’ Now he hesitated, and having hesitated, did not know in the least how to go on. His pause would inevitably have been noticed by Roland, so it hardly seemed worthwhile to say anything.
‘Not so very, then,’ Roland said; a statement, not a question.
‘Is it relevant?’ Andrew asked.
‘Maybe, maybe not. Just something in that rag-bag of events your friend was talking about. They hadn’t known the Clancy woman long, had they?’
‘No.’
‘But some of the things Mrs Davidge was saying about her made sense.’
‘I suppose they did.’
‘For instance, why did this victim of her blackmail, if that was what he was, want to meet her up there by the bridge and not come to her cottage? Of course, the answer’s pretty obvious. He didn’t want to risk being seen going past your house about the time he meant to kill the woman in case you recognized him and remembered it later. And it needn’t have been only passing your home that he was afraid of. Just being seen walking through the village might seem suspicious. So he agreed to meet her, but insisted it should be on the common, which he reached by that lane on the far side of the lake. A very quiet lane. It’s not much used. But he may have been unlucky and met someone, and this, naturally, is the first thing we’re going to try to find out. We’ll be working on that in the lane itself this afternoon. If anyone passed that way they may have left some traces of themselves. Meantime, we’ll want a lot of alibis. But at least the Bartletts are off our list.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘For tonight, of course. And as I see it, that crosses them off too for Singleton’s murder. I don’t really believe we’ve two murderers on the loose. We haven’t the beginnings of an answer to that. Now let’s go in the cottage.’
They turned towards the cottage.
There was no need for a key to get into it. They discovered that the lock was broken. Inside it was dark, for the curtains were drawn. It took Roland a moment to find the light-switch as they entered. When he did and the light came on in the little hall, both men stood still, staring incredulously at what they saw. A small bookcase had had all the books that had been on it thrown to the floor. A rug had been kicked to one side. A candle-shaped light bracket on the wall had been twisted round and now hung down by its flex. It was the same in the sitting-room. Pictures, including the photograph of the girls’ cricket eleven at St Hilda’s School that had beaten the girls from Etchingham, had been torn down. Cushions had been ripped open. What books there were had been scattered on the floor. A few small china ornaments had been thrown down and looked as if they had been ground to fragments underfoot. A television had had its screen smashed. A telephone had been pulled away from the wall and lay on its side on the floor. A bowl that had had flowers in it, that stood on a little round table, had been overturned, and the flowers and the water that had been in the bowl lay in a damp puddle on the carpet. The table was on its side.
The two men stood silently taking it in. Roland was the first to speak.
‘Curtains drawn,’ he observed.
‘That doesn’t tell us much,’ Andrew said.
‘No, but it must have happened after Miss Clancy left the house, so it was probably dark by then and they needed light to do the job. But it’s true it could have happened at any time during the night. Looks as if someone was searching for something.’
‘It was a bit more than that, wasn’t it?’ Andrew said. ‘Vandals at work, or else someone simply in a blind rage. The sort of rage that perhaps killed Eleanor Clancy. Who’s going to find anything in a bowl of flowers? Shall we look at the rest of the house?’
‘Yes, but don’t touch anything. We’ve got to get the photograph and the fingerprint people in on this.’
Andrew did not need to be told not to touch anything, yet he was almost automatically about to lay a hand on the banister rail, mounting stairs having been something he had become cautious about during the last year or two, when he recollected himself and went up with his hands hanging by his sides.
The scene of destruction upstairs was the same as it was below. There were two small bedrooms with sloping ceilings and one small window each and a small bathroom. In the two bedrooms mirrors had been smashed, mattresses rolled back and slashed, pillows ripped, with their feathery contents scattered everywhere, drawers pulled out and their contents spilled on the floor. In the room that Eleanor Clancy herself had obviously used, clothes had been torn off their hangers and dropped on the floor. In the bathroom the mirror on a cabinet on the wall above the handbasin had been smashed and the contents of the cabinet, packets of aspirin, laxatives, rolls of sticking-plaster and a bottle of disinfectant, all tumbled in the basin. The odour of the disinfectant was strong in the air.
Except for muttering to himself as they went along what sounded like a long stream of disgusted obscenities, Roland said nothing, and Andrew also was silent, though from time to time, his breath caught. Going downstairs again, they explored the kitchen. It was in the same state as the rest of the cottage. Flour and sugar had been spilled on the floor and the table, coffee beans mixed up in them, what had been a saucepan full of stew overturned on the electric stove, making a foul greasy-looking pool over the top of it, the refrigerator yawned open with its light on inside but its contents in a heap in front of it.
‘Someone must have felt tired when they got to the end of doing all this,’ Roland observed.
‘What did he use?’ Andrew asked.
‘To smash the mirror and things?’ Roland turned back into the sitting-room. He pointed at a poker lying by the great old empty hearth. ‘Could have been that. But it could have been something he took away with him.’
‘We still haven’t looked in the cellar,’ Andrew said.
‘The cellar? There’s a cellar, is there? Yes, let’s get it over, then we’ll send for the other chaps to do their stuff. I’ll phone from my car. Better not touch that phone there.’
He followed Andrew down into the cellar.
The first thing that caught Andrew’s eye was that all Eleanor Clancy’s carefully hoarded photographic equipment, which by now might almost have had antique value, had been destroyed. What gave him a feeling of blind horror was that the precious negatives, which when he had seen them last had been in neat rows on a rack, and which had probably given a rare glimpse of a period that was long passed and of a country that had totally altered, had been ground into fragments that were now entirely meaningless. They had been precious to Eleanor Clancy and were irreplaceable. Andrew remembered the thought that he had had of discussing with her whether it might not be possible for him, using her photographs and the letters that had come down to her from her great-grandfather, forest officer in Burma in the mid-nineteenth-century, unknown, obscure, but leaving a piece of history behind him, to write the story of his life. But after all, he would have to stick to Malpighi.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Roland said. ‘Vandals, yes, plenty of them about. Telephone-boxes, shop windows and all that. But this systematic destruction of a person’s whole home—that’s something new to me.’
There was a sound of bitter, though carefully subdued anger in his voice.
‘There has to be a reason for it,’ Andrew said.
‘Looks to me like the work of a madman.’
‘Suppose it was someone who was looking for something and lost his temper because he couldn’t find it.’
Roland gave him a sardonic look.
‘You’ve some idea about it, Professor. Go on and tell me what it is.’
‘It just struck me …’ Andrew began, then paused.
‘Yes?’ Roland prompted him.
‘Well, we’ve been wondering what could have taken Miss Clancy up on to the common at dusk to meet someone she was blackmailing, haven’t we? A dangerous thing to do, as it turned out. But suppose she thought she’d protected herself. Suppose she told her victim that she’d left a full account of how he’d managed to murder Luke Singleton in her home, and that if anything happened to her, that account would be found and he’d be exposed. Only she’d misunderstood the man she was dealing with, someone quite ruthless and very bold. The way he handled the situation was first to murder her, then sometime in the night to come here and search the place from top to bottom for that account she’d said she’d left here. And he didn’t find it and all the violence in him exploded in a fit of blind rage and he started smashing everything he could find. Rage fuelled by fear, because that account may still be somewhere.’
‘Here in this cottage, after he’d searched it as he did?’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps with her solicitor, or in her bank. Or perhaps it never existed.’
‘She merely said it did when she began to understand the danger she was in?’
‘That’s possible.’ Andrew had managed to withdraw his gaze from the shattered negatives and was looking around the cellar. On a shelf he saw a row of neatly labelled bottles of jam and chutney. He remembered that Eleanor Clancy had said she was going to try making wine from the grapes on her own vine.
‘A woman of many hobbies,’ he observed. ‘Everyone I’ve met here seems to have a hobby. And now it looks as if someone may be making a hobby of murder.’