I remembered the twig that had cracked in the garden.
I had had an inkling then that danger was about.
I had acted upon it at the moment, and afterwards it had seemed to me that my suspicions had been melodramatic and unreal.
On the contrary. I should have realised that this was murder, that whoever committed murder had endangered their neck, and that consequently that same person would not hesitate to repeat the crime if by the way safety could be assured.
Perhaps Magda, but some obscure maternal instinct, had recognised that Josephine was in peril, and that may have been what occasioned her sudden feverish haste to get the child sent to Switzerland.
Sophia came out to meet us as we arrived.
Josephine, she said, had been taken by ambulance to Market Basing General Hospital.
Dr Gray would let them know as soon as possible the result of the X-ray.
"How did it happen?" asked Taverner.
Sophia led the way round to the back of the house and through a door into a small disused yard.
In one corner a door stood ajar.
"It's a kind of wash house," Sophia explained. "There's a cat hole cut in the bottom of the door, and Josephine used to stand on it and swing to and fro."
I remembered swinging on doors in my own youth.
The wash house was small and rather dark.
There were wooden boxes in it, some old hose pipe, a few derelict garden implements and some broken furniture.
Just inside the door was a marble lion door stop.
"It's the door stop from the front door," Sophia explained. "It must have been balanced on the top of the door."
Taverner reached up a hand to the top of the door.
It was a low door, the top of it only about a foot above his head.
"A booby trap," he said.
He swung the door experimentally to and fro. Then he stooped to the block of marble but he did not touch it.
"Has anyone handled this?"
"No," said Sophia. "I wouldn't let any one touch it."
"Quite right.
Who found her?"
"I did.
She didn't come in for her dinner at one o'clock.
Nannie was calling her.
She'd passed through the kitchen and out into the stable yard about a quarter of an hour before.
Nannie said,
'She'll be bouncing her ball or swinging on that door again.'
I said I'd fetch her in."
Sophia paused.
"She had a habit of playing in that way, you said?
Who knew about that?" Sophia shrugged her shoulders.
"Pretty well everybody in the house, I should think."
"Who else used the wash house?
Gardeners?"
Sophia shook her head. "Hardly anyone ever goes into it."
"And this little yard isn't overlooked from the house?" Taverner summed it up. "Anyone could have slipped out from the house or round the front and fixed up that trap ready.
But it would be chancy..."
He broke off, looking at the door, and swinging it gently to and fro.
"Nothing certain about it.
Hit or miss.
And likelier miss than hit. But she was unlucky. With her it was hit."
Sophia shivered.
He peered at the floor.
There were various dents on it.
"Looks as though someone experimented first... to see just how it would fall... The sound wouldn't carry to the house."
"No, we didn't hear anything.