Eighteen
In next to no time Taverner and I were racing¹ in a fast police car in thedirection of Swinly Dean.
I remembered Josephine emerging, from among the cisterns², and herairy remark that it was “about time for the second murder.” The poorchild had had no idea that she herself was likely to be the victim of the“second murder.”
I accepted fully³ the blame that my father had tacitly ascribed to me. Ofcourse I ought to have kept an eye on Josephine. Though neither Tavernernor I had any real clue to the poisoner of old Leonides, it was highly pos-sible that Josephine had. What I had taken for childish nonsense and“showing off” might very well have been something quite different.
Josephine, in her favourite sports of snooping and prying⁴, might have be-come aware of some piece of information that she herself could not assessat its proper value.
I remembered the twig⁵ that had cracked in the garden.
I had had an inkling then that danger was about. I had acted upon it atthe moment, and afterwards it had seemed to me that my suspicions hadbeen melodramatic and unreal. On the contrary, I should have realizedthat this was murder, that whoever had committed murder had en-dangered their neck, and that consequently that same person would nothesitate to repeat the crime if by that way safety could be assured.
Perhaps Magda, by some obscure maternal⁶ instinct, had recognized thatJosephine was in peril⁷, and that may have been what occasioned her sud-den feverish⁸ haste to get the child sent to Switzerland.
Sophia came out to meet us as we arrived. Josephine, she said, had beentaken by ambulance to Market Basing General Hospital. Dr. Gray wouldlet 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 ina small disused yard. In one corner a door stood ajar.

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