‘But what is all this about the students?’ Deborah enquired. ‘I mean, if you really want to study the local geography, what’s the matter with the Ordnance Survey?’

‘Nothing, but it doesn’t give quite the kind of detail we’re looking for.’

‘What are we looking for? … I mean, what shall we be looking for? Clues of some sort, do you mean?’

‘I’m going to ask to be allowed to keep that to myself for the moment. I already have one important clue which, needless to say, I have shared with the police. Well, now! Beaters make a very loud noise to frighten the quarry, do they not? Very good. We will have such a noise. By the time I have enlisted the geography class and any other student volunteers, we shall see what the College can do for us in the way of obtaining not clues so much as reactions.’

‘What I can’t understand,’ said Deborah, ‘is why the body wasn’t discovered before. How could it have lain there unnoticed for so long?’

‘If you saw the place I think you would understand,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘It was in that deep dip about three quarters of a mile beyond the field where they’ve cut down those elm trees. There are brambles at the bottom of the dip and nobody ever goes there in winter. I should imagine it is an old stone quarry.’

‘But hasn’t she been searched for by the police?’

‘Yes, but their enquiries have been at railway stations and along bus routes. Nobody thought of her not even reaching the station.’

‘No, of course not. Shall you go to the resumed inquest?’

‘Yes, I would not miss it for the world.’

‘To every principal of an Emergency Training College,’ stated Miss Hughes, ‘is granted a sum of money to be spent on outside lectures, therefore why should you come for nothing? If you come to us as an outside lecturer we shall be gratified. This would also account for your rambling with the students over the hills. Now what do you want to find out?’

‘Primarily, why Mrs Dalby Whittier should have selected the most dangerous way to get to the main road from the Fullaloves’ bungalow. Could the students be told that this is an experiment in local geography, or something of that kind? And could they make sketch-maps, do you think?’

‘They’d love that. They are most earnest, and append sketch-maps automatically, likewise diagrams, explanatory drawings, underlinings in coloured inks, and all types of fancy paper-fasteners, to distinguish and to present everything they send us in.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘Then I’ll come and lecture as soon as you like.’