‘Well, at least you substituted gazelle for goat.’
They grinned at one another, and Godfrey saw that they had the ease of long and familiar friendship, and felt exceedingly glum. He risked a quick glance at Oliver, but the professor’s expression was unreadable.
‘You weren’t the tethered anything,’ said Inspector Curran. ‘We simply didn’t expect the killer to still be around.’
The killer. Antonia shivered, and then said, ‘Do you know who she is? I thought all the time it was a man, but just before she knocked me out, she spoke to me.’
‘If you could remember the exact words, Miss Weston.’
Antonia said, ‘She said that what she was doing was for Don–to punish me for killing Don.’ She looked round the room. ‘I did kill Don,’ she said, defiantly. ‘The charge was perfectly justified and the verdict was right. But he had just killed my brother and I thought he was going to kill me as well.’
Jonathan started to say something, but it was Oliver who said, ‘Self-defence. And if you’ve just seen someone you love very much brutally killed—’
‘I didn’t actually see it happen,’ began Antonia.
‘Don’t be so incurably honest. Inspector, you were about to tell us if you know who this woman is. Presumably she killed Greg Foster, as well?’
‘We’re working on that assumption,’ said Curran in answer to Oliver. ‘We aren’t absolutely sure who she is yet, but we do know Don had a sister.’
‘A sister? Are you sure? He said he had no family at all,’ said Antonia. ‘I thought–we all thought–he was completely on his own.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Curran. ‘There’s a sister. Donna.’
‘Will you be able to find her?’ asked Antonia. ‘To–to question her?’
‘We’ve found her already. We haven’t questioned her yet, but we will.’ Curran looked at Antonia. ‘We don’t always get things right, Miss Weston, and we didn’t with this. Your attacker talked about punishing you for Don Robards’ death, but to my mind you were punished very heavily for that. An eight-year sentence, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I only served five.’
‘Whatever you served, I’m very sorry indeed that you had to go through this second ordeal in Amberwood.’
‘It allowed Kit to play knight errant,’ said Antonia, and Kit, curled into a corner of the window seat, Raffles next to him, both of them eating sandwiches with industrious pleasure, smiled.
‘Did the woman think Antonia would suffocate down there?’ asked Oliver. ‘Did she know the old drying floor was concreted over?’
‘No idea yet,’ said Curran. ‘I’d guess that she did think Miss Weston would suffocate, though. It was only because of Twygrist’s tumbledown state that you didn’t actually do so, Miss Weston.’
‘The chimney shaft,’ said Antonia, remembering. ‘Part of the brickwork had fallen away. I tripped over some of the bricks while I was down there.’
‘Yes. We’ve still to examine the place more closely, but it’s a fair bet that the collapse of the bricks allowed air down into the room.’
‘Well, thank God for a collapsed chimney,’ said Jonathan.
‘How about the body Antonia found in Twygrist?’ said Oliver. ‘Is it ever likely to be identified?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s a very old skeleton. Eighty to a hundred years old, forensics think. A man in his late thirties or early forties. There’s a slight depression to the skull, and that’s the only clue to what might have killed him. They think, though, that he was a sufferer from…’ He frowned and reached for his notebook.
‘He suffered from acromegaly,’ said Antonia.