“And Cyril did not,” said Dame Beatrice. “In any case, these things have but the merest shred of academic interest for us now. As for the treasure, old Mrs. Carter is probably right. It was found and dissipated in about the third quarter of the nineteenth century, I think, and I very much doubt whether its intrinsic value was very great. I fancy that the shares were apportioned as indicated, and that old Mrs. Carter (Charlotte, nicknamed Charity) received the double share willed to her, and a portion of that which was willed to the sisters who died young.”
“Then I can’t see why Eustace was murdered.”
“I thought we realised that, after due cogitation, he must have confronted Cyril with the truth about Mr. Thomas’s death. Eustace was always a resolute fellow, with no regard for consequences. His war record proves that.”
“And what was Cyril doing in and around the priest’s hole when we caught him out?”
“I think he intended to murder the vicar. He had ascertained, I have no doubt, that he worked here in the evenings.”
“What?”
“I told the vicar to have a care. Mrs. Dysey was very hard up, and to sell the benefice would have afforded her some relief. What Mr. Cyril did not know was that the mechanism of the trap-door no longer functions fully, so that there is now no means of egress into the dining-room; neither had he allowed for our picketing the bolt-hole into the flanking tower.”
“And why was Thomas in flannels when he was killed?”
“It must have been stipulated, in the note of assignation which he received, that he was to be so clad so that the party of the other part would recognise him in the darkness of the keep.”
“The note having been sent by Cyril or Etta, of course, but purporting to come from whom?”
“From Mrs. Dysey’s foolish little second cousin, Peggy Wick, presumably. There had already been one amorous interlude, you remember.”
“So those two little so-and-so girls simply stayed in their bedroom playing their transistor set that night, and, her suspicions of Tom proving correct, Etta helped to murder him. She waited a jolly long time to make sure.”
“Yes, she waited for more than twenty years. I fancy she heard Time’s wingéd chariot, you know. She was past forty years of age and was desperate to live with Cyril. I imagine that she had often urged Cyril to kill her husband, and at last he agreed to do it. The theory, I think, was, first, that the death was accidental. If that did not work, then that Thomas, upon realising that Peggy was going to have a baby, had committed suicide. Unfortunately for her, the doctors were able to show that most of his injuries had been caused after death had taken place.”
“Why didn’t they leave the body in the keep, where it had fallen?”
“That would hardly have looked like an accident. A verdict of Accidental Death would have suited them very much better, obviously, than anything else.”
On the following day Laura said to her son,
“You remember your ghost?”
“Oh, rather, yes, mamma! Nobody believes in him, though.”
“Would you like to see how he managed to disappear? He was real, incidentally—possibly somebody who lived in the castle and didn’t want to leave when Mrs. Dysey let it, so he used to sneak in and steal our food and generally hang about the place.”
“Wizard! Do you mean there’s a secret panel in the dining-room?”
“Not only that, but a real, genuine priest’s hole.”
Hamish looked at her with great admiration.
“And you discovered this?” he asked her, awe-stricken by her genius.
“Well, no, I’m afraid not,” Laura admitted. “Jonathan discovered it. He was investigating your ghost story, and hit upon the thing, you see. I’m sorry it wasn’t me, but, better still, in a way it was you. Congratulations!”
“Never mind, mamma,” said Hamish handsomely. He glanced at his father. “I think you are a very companionable woman, and I’m very sorry it wasn’t you who found it.”
“Chivalry can go no further,” said Dame Beatrice.
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
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