Death Among the Sunbathers Read Free Page B

don’t know that that follows,’ Mitchell objected; ‘it might have been done some time before – she might have been lying unconscious till the shock of fall and fire brought her back to life for a moment just before the end came. For life’s a rum thing, Ferris, and I’ve read stories of men having been executed by beheading and the head showing signs of consciousness afterwards, as if life still clung to it. Anyhow, I’m certain there was life and meaning in that poor creature’s eyes for just the moment when she looked at me, and I’ll swear she was asking what I meant to do about it.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ agreed Ferris, slightly in the tone of one humouring a child’s fancies, while to himself he thought that after all Mitchell must be getting near the age limit and no doubt his years were telling. He went on, ‘I sent Jacks to find out at the pub up the road if they had heard anything like a shot. I thought we had better inquire before they got to know about the pistol, or half of them would most likely be ready to swear they heard the report and believe it, too. People will swear anything, you know, sir, once they let their imaginations go.’
    Jacks came up and saluted.
    â€˜No one at the George and Dragon seems to have heard anything, sir,’ he said, ‘not even the sound of the smash. Anything they did hear, they just thought was something on the railway; they seem sort of trained not to notice noises on the line. But it seems a lady driving a Bayard Seven stopped there this afternoon to ask the way to Leadeane Grange. I don’t know if you would like to speak to Mr Ashton yourself, sir.’
    Mitchell nodded acquiescence. Ashton, interested and busy, was not far away. He remembered the incident clearly. He was certain the car had been a Bayard Seven. To the driver of the car, however, he had apparently given less attention. That she had been a woman, and young, was about all he could say.
    â€˜She wanted to know if she was right for Leadeane Grange,’ Ashton said. ‘I told her all she had to do was cross the bridge and keep straight on.’
    â€˜Leadeane Grange far? Who lives there?’ Mitchell asked.
    Ashton permitted himself a grin.
    â€˜No one don’t live there,’ he said. ‘Not more than three miles or it might be four, but there’s no one lives there.’
    â€˜How’s that?’ Mitchell asked. ‘How do you mean?’
    â€˜It’s a place for them sun bathers,’ Ashton explained. ‘Sit out there on the lawn without any clothes on, they do, and if there ain’t any sun, there’s rays instead. A fair scandal I call it.’
    Mitchell asked a few more questions and gathered that Ashton cherished a faint grudge against the sun-bathing establishment, partly on those high moral grounds which make us all disapprove of the activities of others, and still more because, though since it had come into existence it had greatly increased the traffic passing by, none of that traffic ever stopped at the George and Dragon except to ask the way.
    â€˜I get fair fed up,’ he admitted, ‘telling ’em to cross the bridge and keep straight on – a poor skeleton lot if you ask me, that look as if a good glass of beer would do ’em more good than sitting in the sun dressed same as when they were born. Only I will say I seem to remember she looked better than most, and so did the fellow on the motor-bike that caught her up.’
    Ferris interrupted suddenly. He exclaimed:
    â€˜Leadeane Grange? Of course, I thought I knew the name – it’s where Lord Carripore said he was the other day, where he caught his sciatica most like, though he wouldn’t admit it.’
    â€˜That’s right, I remember now,’ agreed Mitchell. He turned back to Ashton. ‘Fellow on a motor-bike caught her up?’ he asked. ‘Do you mean he stopped her?’
    â€˜Yes,