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that cave,” Dr. Lucy said.
    “Didn’t you go near it when—when you—”
    “No, I never saw the body when it was found,” she said. “First I knew of it was a note in my pigeonhole.”
    “So?” I asked, curling into the chair by the TV, coffee warming my hands. “Did she hang herself? Can you tell?”
    Dr. Lucy took a sip of her coffee and let out a sigh. “It’s not really so cut and dried,” she said. “What I can do is present the facts to the police—and to you of course.”
    “And the facts are?”
    Another pause. “Molly Stanton—your cave body—did not die by hanging. What killed her was the water in her lungs.”
    “She drowned?” My nausea made a reappearance.
    “There are various ways to tell whether the victim was dead before or after she was put in the water,” Dr. Lucy said. “In Molly Stanton’s case, there were diatoms—microscopic algae—present in her kidneys and liver.”
    Luke and I looked at each other, then back at her.
    “In English?”
    “If she had been dead when she entered the water, then her heart would not have been beating, yes? Therefore her circulation would not have been able to carry these diatoms to other systems in her body.”
    Clever.
    “Her lungs were distended and—well, there are other things. But it was quite clear to me when I examined her that she had drowned.”
    “So why did everyone think she was hanged?”
    “Well, it might have had something to do with the rope around her neck,” Dr. Lucy said drily. “To look at her, yes, it did appear she’d hanged. The rope was made into a tight noose and tied securely to one of the hooks in the roof of the cave—”
    “What hooks?” Luke asked.
    “There were maybe half a dozen,” I said. “I guess a pulley system when it was used to take things up to the pub cellar.”
    He looked grudgingly impressed.
    “But I’m quite sure the noose didn’t kill her,” Dr. Lucy went on. “By the time she came to me the rope was tight—rope shrinks and flesh swells—and frayed, and there were claw marks around it.”
    Claw marks? I almost asked, but then I realised. “Like she’d tried to get it off?”
    “Yes. Although that can be a reflex, even in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes the victim is still trying to pry the rope loose after consciousness has been lost. But I’d say she was still conscious a long time before she drowned. There was a general lack of evidence of a hanging.”
    “So she definitely drowned?”
    “That’s what I put on the death certificate.”
    I tried to put this together. The shower seemed to have cleared more than sweat and sea water from me—my head felt clearer, like washing away a hangover.
    Molly Stanton had not been hanged, or hanged herself. She’d been suspended from a hook in the ceiling, but she hadn’t died from asphyxiation. She’d drowned.
    “ Why didn’t she asphyxiate?” I asked. “I don’t understand. If she was hanging from a hook, surely she wouldn’t have been able to breathe? I mean, that cave’s got to be…what, fifteen feet high? I don’t know how tall she was—oh, but how long was the rope?”
    “About three feet,” Dr. Lucy said.
    “Which leaves us a good six feet between her feet and the floor,” Luke said, the first time he’d spoke in a while. “Well, Soph. Looks like another murder.”
    I’d suspected as much, but that didn’t mean I was exactly pleased about it.
    Dr. Lucy declined our offer of lunch—just as well, because I don’t think there was anything to eat in the house—and walked down to her car in the harbour.
    “Oh yes,” she said, “before I leave—there was one more thing. A contusion on the back of Miss Otis’s head.”
    “Miss Otis?” I frowned. “I thought—”
    “Just a nickname,” Dr. Lucy said. “Forgive me my habits, I spend all day with dead people.”
    “Miss Otis like in the song? But she was lynched…”
    “What are you talking about?” Luke said, looking confused.
    “I’ll tell you