The Inspector said he fancied a bit of apple himself. He found Mrs. Stone just as ready to talk as Miss Sims had been. She opened the cottage door and showed him just how she had stood with the candle in her hand showing Miss Susan out.

“And the two of them coming up the road quarrelling something dreadful.”

“How do you mean, quarrelling? Could you hear what they said?”

“Not at the first of it I couldn’t. But you don’t need to have the words to know when people are quarrelling. Proper angry, that’s what he was, and Mr. Edward isn’t the one you’d like to get that way with you. I felt sorry for the pore girl even before I knowed who she was. And she was sorry for herself too, I can tell you that. Holding on to him with both her hands she was, and crying ever so. ‘Oh, Edward!’ she says, and calls him darling. And, ‘Don’t be so angry!’ she says, and, ‘I can’t bear it!’ And ‘It frightens me!’ she says. And no good Mrs. Alexander nor anyone else letting on that she hadn’t any call to be frightened. ‘That’s as may be,’ I told her, but she thought different. ‘You frighten me when you’re like that!’ was what I heard the pore girl say with my own ears. And he tells her to leave him alone. And Miss Susan Wayne heard it all, same as what I did. She had to make up a story about Miss Dean turning her ankle, but it wasn’t no ankle she was crying for, and you may take my word for that.”

At the south lodge he found Miss Susan Wayne. From the fact that she was wearing a hat he deduced that she was thinking of going to church. Well, he wouldn’t need to keep her long.

She took him into the drawing-room, which contained no more than a couple of the cats, and said she would tell Mrs. Random. “I think she is dressing for church.”

“As a matter of fact, Miss Wayne, it was you whom I wanted to see.”

“Yes?”

Stupid to feel nervous. Stupider still to show that she was nervous. And he had gone over to the window, so that she had to stand and face the light.

“Won’t you sit down?”

He said, “Thank you,” and chose the window-seat, which made things worse.

She took the arm of one of the big chairs. She had the light in her eyes. He could see their dark unusual grey and the fine grain of her skin. He could see whatever he wanted to see. She straightened her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. “What is it, Inspector?”

“Well, Miss Wayne, I have a statement here from Mrs. Stone who lives in the end cottage before you come to the Vicarage. She says you were visiting her on Thursday evening. Do you remember what time it was when you left?”

“Oh, about a quarter past seven, I think. We have supper at half past, but it is always difficult to get away from Mrs. Stone. She likes to talk.”

“Yes, I have noticed that.” Bury’s tone was dry. “She has been talking to me. She says that when she was showing you out two people came up from the direction of the watersplash-Mr. Edward Random and Miss Clarice Dean. She says that they were quarrelling, and she has given me her version of what they said. I have come here to ask you for yours.”

He saw her colour change. She looked down at her hands. Her thoughts raced. If he had been talking to Mrs. Stone, then he knew everything that Mrs. Stone knew. It wouldn’t do any good for her to contradict it. Lies weren’t any good, really. She had a deep, quick instinct about that, and she was no good at them anyhow. She lifted her eyes to his face and said,

“It wasn’t exactly a quarrel.”

“Will you tell me just what you heard?”

She frowned a little. He saw that she was trying to remember.

“The voices at first-his voice-Edward Random’s-”

“You recognized it?”

“Oh, yes. I didn’t hear any words-only his voice.”

“Speaking loudly? Angrily?”

“Not loudly. He sounded-well, put out.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“The girl was Clarice Dean. You know that of course. She was-behaving very stupidly-making a fuss.”

“Will you explain what you mean by that?”

Susan’s fair skin had flushed.

“It sounds so horrid to say it when she is dead, but she was the sort of girl who likes to make everything into a scene. She dramatized herself, and she did her best to make other people play the kind of part she wanted them to play. She was having a pretty dull time with the Miss Blakes, and she was trying to get Edward Random to play up to her.”

“Is that what he told you, Miss Wayne?”

The flush deepened.

“It’s what I could see for myself. She was always ringing him up-trying to fix dates with him-that kind of thing.”

“Mr. Random told you that?”

He got an emphatic shake of the head.

“Of course not! He has been very busy taking over from Mr. Barr, and often very late coming home. If he was out, I had to answer the telephone. If he was in, Mrs. Random and I could hardly help hearing his side of the conversation. The telephone is in a little room at the back. He generally leaves the door open.”

He went back to the Thursday evening, taking her over what she had heard, putting Mrs. Stone’s statement to her for corroboration.

“Miss Dean was crying?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And clinging to him?”

“She was holding on to his arm.”

“Now, Miss Wayne, did you hear her use these words, ‘Edward-darling-don’t be so angry! I can’t bear it when you are like that! It frightens me!’?”

“It was that kind of thing. She was putting on an act. That was why he was angry. It was done for Mrs. Stone to hear.”

He went on with his questioning.

CHAPTER XXI

At two o’clock that afternoon Inspector Bury was talking to his Superintendent, a big man with the air of being on very comfortable terms with his world. He had a pipe in his mouth, a glass of beer at his elbow, and a pair of easy slippers on his feet. He was hoping that Bury would get on with it and get it over and leave him to his Sunday afternoon nap, but with almost his very first words the prospect receded.

“Dr. Connelly dropped in and said he’d done the post-mortem, and there’s no way out of it, it was murder. Bruise at the base of the skull. It wouldn’t have killed her, but it would have knocked her out. Someone hit her good and hard, and she either fell into the water or was dragged there and left to drown. She was alive when the blow was struck.”

Superintendent Nayler drew at his pipe.

“Nasty business,” he said.

Bury didn’t smoke, and he had refused a drink. He sat on an upright chair and leaned forward, full of what he had to say.

“It seems there was something going on between her and Mr. Edward Random. He found the body, you remember.”

The Superintendent remembered a lot more about Edward Random than that. He had been born and bred in Embank and so had his wife, and between them there wasn’t much they didn’t know about most of the families in the county. He knew all about Edward being missing for the best part of five years, and about Mr. James Random giving him up for dead and leaving the property to his brother Arnold. He had heard most of the rumours that were going too, and that Lord Burlingham didn’t believe them and had stuck up for Mr. Edward through thick and thin and given him the agency. Mrs. Nayler had actually been in the fish queue when he came over and told Mrs. Random all about it at the top of his voice for everyone to hear. He said in his placid way,

“Not much time for them to have been carrying on by all accounts. Mr. Edward Random has been off the map for the best part of five years. Thought to be dead. Turned up six months ago and been at Norbury brushing up this agency business. Well, the girl wasn’t there, because according to Dr. Croft she had only just come back from Canada when she wrote and asked him to find her a job in Greenings.”

“There was something between them all the same. They were heard quarrelling on the road coming up from the watersplash on the Thursday evening. Here’s a statement from Mrs. Stone, and Miss Susan Wayne doesn’t deny it. Later on that evening Miss Sims, who is Dr. Croft’s housekeeper, heard them talking on the telephone.”