The Circle of Sappho Read Online Free PDF

used to cover part of the uneven earthen floor. On what pretext had the girl come across to the island with her teacher, knowing it was forbidden. For the moment Swann had to imagine it was through her own free will. It was therefore a harmonious scene, or had at least started that way. Perhaps an argument or a disagreement had taken place and they began to fight. The girl had grabbed one of the stones that lay about the temple and hit out at her teacher, making the cut Swann had observed in the chapel. The teacher then stabbed the girl, killing her instantly. Possibly out of remorse or through the realisation that she would no doubt hang for the crime, she took out the bottle of poison and drank it. There was no suicide note, so he assumed it was not premeditated. Swann opened his eyes and began to apply his ‘system’ to the scene; a method of investigation which relied on a series of ‘givens’ and the ‘assumptions’ deduced through them.
    ‘I shall begin from here,’ Swann said to himself as he stepped outside.
    Given that the island could not be accessed by swimming and the boat Tom rowed them across in was the only one in the grounds, or so he had been told, it had to be assumed that no one else was involved. And yet, despite the difficulties and danger swimming entailed, Tom had done exactly that to enable him to discover the bodies. After searching the grounds for the two missing women and finding the boat missing from its usual mooring, on the house side, he had been ordered across by Miss Jennings on her return, with the rest of the school, from church. He had swum across and then managed to haul himself up into the boat, to get onto the jetty. If someone else other than Tom had swum over though, why had they not returned in the boat?
    It was still a possibility that someone else was involved in the deaths, but given that a knife and a bottle of poison had been found near the bodies, the assumption had to be made that, whether or not Miss Leigh had decided to kill the girl before coming across to the island, she was certainly prepared for that eventuality. Given that there was no note, Swann was left to assume it had been a spontaneous act. He went back inside the temple and crouched down to look more closely at the bloodstains on the floor and surrounding rocks. They seemed to be conducive with the sequence of events he imagined had occurred. Only one bloodstain seemed out of place. This was near the back of the temple, upon a large rock. It appeared to Swann to be a bloodied handprint, or at least part of one. From what he could determine from its size, it belonged to the girl. Perhaps she had not died straight away but had staggered to the back of the temple before succumbing to her wound. The bodies had been found together on the mat, according to Tom, but perhaps the teacher had brought the girl back there, before killing herself.
    Swann’s attention was now caught by an object near to where the bodies had been found. It lay discarded, in the shadows. As he picked it up he saw it was a small wooden cup. Had the teacher used it to drink the poison? He lifted the cup to his nose and thought he smelt a familiar aroma of almonds. If it had been used for that purpose, she had sweetened its bitterness with red wine. He placed the cup in his pocket, took another look around the interior and then went to go outside. As he passed through the opening, he saw there was an inscription above the doorway. It was in Latin and he recognised it as being from Virgil’s Aeneid . It read Procul, o procul este, profani – ‘Be gone, be gone you who are uninitiated’.
    Swann made his way back to the boat, where Lady Harriet, Miss Jennings and Tom were waiting. The return journey across the lake was undertaken in silence. Once back on the other side, Swann requested to see where the teacher and pupil had slept. The girl, Grace, had been in a dormitory with seven other girls, and a quick glance at her possessions revealed