'He was looking at me curiously. 'You thought you saw bloodstains here, eh, lady?'

'I nodded.

'That is very curious, that is very curious. We have got a superstition here, lady. If anyone sees those bloodstains -'

'He paused.

'Well?' I said.

'He went on in his soft voice, Cornish in intonation, but unconsciously smooth and well-bred in its pronunciation, and completely free from Cornish turns of speech.

'They do say, lady, that if anyone sees those bloodstains, there will be a death within twenty-four hours.'

'Creepy! It gave me a nasty feeling all down my spine.

'He went on persuasively. 'There is a very interesting tablet in the church, lady, about a death -'

'No, thanks,' I said decisively, and I turned sharply on my heel and walked up the street toward the cottage where I was lodging. Just as I got there I saw in the distance the woman called Carol coming along the cliff path. She was hurrying. Against the grey of the rocks she looked like some poisonous scarlet flower. Her hat was the colour of blood…

'I shook myself. Really, I had blood on the brain.

'Later I heard the sound of her car. I wondered whether she, too, was going to Penrithar, but she took the road to the left in the opposite direction. I watched the car crawl up the hill and disappear, and I breathed somehow more easily. Rathole seemed its quiet sleepy self once more.'

'If that is all,' said Raymond West as Joyce came to a stop, 'I will give my verdict at once. Indigestion, spots before the eyes after meals.'

'It isn't all,' said Joyce. 'You have got to hear the sequel. I read it in the paper two days later, under the heading of 'Sea Bathing Fatality.' It told how Mrs. Dacre, the wife of Captain Denis Dacre, was unfortunately drowned at Landeer Cove, just a little farther along the coast. She and her husband were staying at the time at the hotel there and had declared their intention of bathing, but a cold wind sprang up.