CHAPTER 24

Mrs Oliver had ensconced herself at a table in the window of the Black Boy. It was still fairly early, so the dining-room was not very full. Presently, Judith Butler returned from powdering her nose and sat down opposite her and examined the menu.

‘What does Miranda like?’ asked Mrs Oliver. ‘We might as well order for her as well. I suppose she’ll be back in a minute.’

‘She likes roast chicken.’

‘Well, that’s easy then. What about you?’

‘I’ll have the same.’

‘Three roast chickens,’ Mrs Oliver ordered.

She leaned back, studying her friend.

‘Why are you staring at me in that way?’

‘I was thinking,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Thinking what?’

‘Thinking really how very little I knew about you.’

‘Well, that’s the same with everybody, isn’t it?’

‘You mean, one never knows all about anyone.’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Mrs Oliver.

Both women were silent for some time.

‘They’re rather slow serving things here.’

‘It’s coming now, I think,’ said Mrs Oliver.

A waitress arrived with a tray full of dishes.

‘Miranda’s a long time. Does she know where the dining-room is?’

‘Yes, of course she does. We looked in on the way.’ Judith got up impatiently. ‘I’ll have to go and fetch her.’

‘I wonder if perhaps she gets car sick.’

‘She used to when she was younger.’

She returned some four or five minutes later.

‘She’s not in the Ladies’,’ she said. ‘There’s a door outside it into the garden. Perhaps she went out that way to look at a bird or something. She’s like that.’

‘No time to look at birds today,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Go and call her or something. We want to get on.’

Elspeth McKay pricked some sausages with a fork, laid them on a baking dish, put it in the Frigidaire and started to peel potatoes.

The telephone rang.

‘Mrs McKay? Sergeant Goodwin here. Is your brother there?’

‘No. He’s in London today.’

‘I’ve rung him there—he’s left. When he gets back, tell him we’ve had a positive result.’

‘You mean you’ve found a body in the well?’

‘Not much use clamming up about it. The word’s got around already.’

‘Who is it? The au pair girl?’

‘Seems like it.’

‘Poor girl,’ said Elspeth. ‘Did she throw herself in—or what?’

‘It wasn’t suicide—she was knifed. It was murder all right.’

After her mother had left the Ladies’ Room, Miranda waited for a minute or two. Then she opened the door, cautiously peered out, opened the side door to the garden which was close at hand and ran down the garden path that led round to the back yard of what had once been a coaching inn and was now a garage. She went out at a small door that enabled pedestrians to get into a lane outside. A little farther down the lane a car was parked. A man with beetling grey eyebrows and a grey beard was sitting in it reading a newspaper. Miranda opened the door and climbed in beside the driving-seat. She laughed.

‘You do look funny.’

‘Have a hearty laugh, there’s nothing to stop you.’

The car started, went down the lane, turned right, turned left, turned right again and came out on a secondary road.

‘We’re all right for time,’ said the grey-bearded man. ‘At the right moment you’ll see the double axe as it ought to be seen. And Kilterbury Down, too. Wonderful view.’

A car dashed past them so closely that they were almost forced into the hedge.

‘Young idiots,’ said the grey-bearded man.

One of the young men had long hair reaching over his shoulders and large, owlish spectacles. The other one affected a more Spanish appearance with sideburns.

‘You don’t think Mummy will worry about me?’ asked Miranda.

‘She won’t have time to worry about you. By the time she worries about you, you’ll have got where you want to be.’

In London, Hercule Poirot picked up the telephone. Mrs Oliver’s voice came over.

‘We’ve lost Miranda.’

‘What do you mean, lost her?’

‘We had lunch at The Black Boy. She went to the loo. She didn’t come back. Somebody said they saw her driving away with an elderly man. But it mightn’t have been her. It might have been someone else. It—’

‘Someone should have stayed with her. Neither of you ought to have let her out of your sight. I told you there was danger. Is Mrs Butler very worried?’

‘Of course she’s worried. What do you think? She’s frantic. She insists on ringing the police.’

‘Yes, that would be the natural thing to do. I will ring them also.’

‘But why should Miranda be in danger?’

‘Don’t you know? You ought to by now.’ He added, ‘The body’s been found. I’ve just heard—’

‘What body?’

‘A body in a well.’

CHAPTER 25

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Miranda, looking round her.

Kilterbury ring was a local beauty spot though its remains were not particularly famous. They had been dismantled many hundreds of years ago. Yet here and there a tall megalithic stone still stood, upright, telling of a long past ritual worship. Miranda asked questions.

‘Why did they have all these stones here?’

‘For ritual. Ritual worship. Ritual sacrifice. You understand about sacrifice, don’t you, Miranda?’

‘I think so.’

‘It has to be, you see. It’s important.’

‘You mean, it’s not a sort of punishment? It’s something else?’

‘Yes, it’s something else. You die so that others should live. You die so that beauty should live. Should come into being. That’s the important thing.’

‘I thought perhaps—’

‘Yes, Miranda?’

‘I thought perhaps you ought to die because what you’ve done has killed someone else.’

‘What put that into your head?’

‘I was thinking of Joyce. If I hadn’t told her about something, she wouldn’t have died, would she?’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘I’ve felt worried since Joyce died. I needn’t have told her, need I? I told her because I wanted to have something worth while telling her. She’d been to India and she kept talking about it—about the tigers and about the elephants and their gold hangings and decorations and their trappings. And I think, too—suddenly I wanted somebody else to know, because you see I hadn’t really thought about it before.’ She added: ‘Was—was that a sacrifice, too?’

‘In a way.’

Miranda remained contemplative, then she said, ‘Isn’t it time yet?’

‘The sun is not quite right yet. Another five minutes, perhaps, and then it will fall directly on the stone.’

Again they sat silent, beside the car.

‘Now, I think,’ said Miranda’s companion, looking up at the sky where the sun was dipping towards the horizon. ‘Now is a wonderful moment. No one here. Nobody comes up at this time of day and walks up to the top of Kilterbury Down to see Kilterbury Ring. Too cold in November and the blackberries are over. I’ll show you the double axe first. The double axe on the stone. Carved there when they came from Mycenae or from Crete hundreds of years ago. It’s wonderful, Miranda, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s very wonderful,’ said Miranda. ‘Show it me.’

They walked up to the topmost stone. Beside it lay a fallen one and a little farther down the slope a slightly inclined one leant as though bent with the weariness of years.

‘Are you happy, Miranda?’

‘Yes, I’m very happy.’

‘There’s the sign here.’

‘Is that really the double axe?’

‘Yes, it’s worn with time but that’s it. That’s the symbol. Put your hand on it. And now—now we will drink to the past and the future and to beauty.’

‘Oh, how lovely,’ said Miranda.

A golden cup was put into her hand, and from a flask her companion poured a golden liquid into it.

‘It tastes of fruit, of peaches. Drink it, Miranda, and you will be happier still.’

Miranda took the gilt cup. She sniffed at it.

‘Yes. Yes, it does smell of peaches. Oh look, there’s the sun. Really red gold—looking as though it was lying on the edge of the world.’

He turned her towards it.

‘Hold the cup and drink.’

She turned obediently. One hand was still on the mega- lithic stone and its semi-erased sign. Her companion now was standing behind her. From below the inclined stone down the hill, two figures slipped out, bent half double. Those on the summit had their backs to them, and did not even notice them. Quickly but stealthily they ran up the hill.

‘Drink to beauty, Miranda.’

‘Like hell she does!’ said a voice behind them.

A rose velvet coat shot over a head, a knife was knocked from the hand that was slowly rising. Nicholas Ransom caught hold of Miranda, clasping her tightly and dragging her away from the other two who were struggling.

‘You bloody little idiot,’ said Nicholas Ransom. ‘Coming up here with a barmy murderer. You should have known what you were doing.’

‘I did in a way,’ said Miranda. ‘I was going to be a sacrifice, I think, because you see it was all my fault. It was because of me that Joyce was killed. So it was right for me to be a sacrifice, wasn’t it? It would be a kind of ritual killing.’

‘Don’t start talking nonsense about ritual killings. They’ve found that other girl. You know, the au pair girl who has been missing so long. A couple of years or something like that. They all thought she’d run away because she’d forged a Will. She hadn’t run away. Her body was found in the well.’

‘Oh!’ Miranda gave a sudden cry of anguish. ‘Not in the wishing well? Not in the wishing well that I wanted to find so badly? Oh, I don’t want her to be in the wishing well. Who—who put her there?’

‘The same person who brought you here.’