Death of a Burrowing Mole (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Wouldn’t Sandgate have noticed that a lot of extra digging had been done? On the other nights, I mean, when, presumably, he and Wicklow turned up at the usual time to do their own treasure-hunting?”

  “No, because he did not know how much digging had been done legitimately under Tynant’s supervision during the day. He did not care to appear on the site too often during the morning working hours, I fancy. He probably left his car in the village and sent Goole ahead to reconnoitre. What caused the row with the navvies in the first place I do not know, but nothing makes a man so doubtful of his associates as a lust for wealth.”

  “Well, it will be a big help if I can catch them in the act of trying to dig up a body which is no longer there.”

  “I think so. Incidentally, I was interested in Goole’s kindly suggestion to you. Laura knows where to procure a hazel twig.”

  “Oh, you mean Goole and his dowser. You don’t really think there’s treasure buried in the castle grounds, do you?”

  “Everybody else seems to think so, but if it is at the bottom of a well there is no way of telling whether the hazel twig is signalling water, precious metals, or both. May I ask whether you are keeping watch on the castle tonight?”

  “All my plans are made, ma’am. Now that we’ve got Goole there’s no time to be lost if you are right, and I feel sure you are right. Goole was mixed up in the business in some way, that’s clear.”

  “Are we in on the act?” asked Laura.

  “I’d rather you weren’t, Mrs. Gavin. It may be a violent, messy sort of business. Gentlemen who use pickaxes and spades to despatch people who get in their way are not going to be too squeamish if it comes to a hand-to-hand fight with the police.”

  “The hazel twig,” said Dame Beatrice, “will, I hope, provide you with cleaner, better fun than the hand-to-hand fighting which Detective-Superintendent Mowbray predicts, my dear Laura.”

  “I’d have liked a ringside seat, all the same,” said Laura. “However, hazel twig, here I come!”

  The police vigil was not a long one. As Dame Beatrice had predicted and Mowbray had accepted, the murderers were only too anxious to find another resting-place for the second victim before the police had a chance to act on any information which Goole might have given them.

  Mowbray had put a couple of men in the empty lodge with a fast car discreetly hidden among the trees. Their orders were to follow any vehicle which passed by the lodge, since there would be little doubt about who would be in it.

  Mowbray himself, with Sergeant Harrow and four men in uniform, climbed the castle hill from the side nearest to the village. It was a steep scramble, but it avoided approaching the keep from the gatehouse where he had posted two more men with orders to remain hidden unless they were called into action. His own posse went under cover in the partially restored guard-tower at the entrance to the inner bailey. Here they could remain hidden from anybody who approached the ditch by the obvious route.

  The action, when it came at close on midnight, was short, sharp, and successful. Mowbray allowed the two men who had entered the outer bailey about a quarter of an hour of frenzied digging before he and his squad pounced on them.

  “So what’s all this, then?” he said, when, to nobody’s surprise, Sandgate and his henchman Wicklow had been apprehended. At the station, confronted by Goole, Wicklow made a determined attempt to throttle him. Sandgate demanded to have his lawyer present before he replied to any charges.

  “Goole will shop the other two,” said Mowbray confidently. “My bet is that Wicklow used the pickaxe on Stickle and that Sandgate took the body to the woods in that sidecar. Goole, I reckon, was only co-opted to help with wrecking the place, but he’ll tell us which of the other two slapped a spade against the side of Stour’s head. My guess is Wicklow for both the murders.”

  Over a discoloured patch which Laura, from the top of the keep, reported she could descry in the centre of Veryan’s circle, the hazel twig in Dame Beatrice’s yellow claw bent and twisted like a live thing.

  “That must be Veryan’s primary grave,” said Tom. “Can’t be another well, can it? Let’s play resurrectionists. I’ve always admired Burke and Hare.”

  In the cist grave which he and Bonamy uncovered were the bones of a man who had been dead four thousand years, but in the angle between his pelvis and his knees, and mounting well above his grinning skull, were leather bags partially but not wholly perished by the passing of time. They contained a number of Renaissance and early Stuart gold rings and pendants, gold and silver hat-badges of Elizabethan date, a necklace of gold and pearls, a collection of gold coins, an Armada medal by Nicholas Hilliard, silver spoons and tankards, two covered cups, a small silver ewer, silver beakers, a silver-mounted drinking horn, a pair of silver candlesticks, and a silver-mounted mazer.

  Dame Beatrice surveyed the spoil and picked up a silver-gilt plate decorated with lapis lazuli.

  “‘She brought him butter in a lordly dish,’” she said.

  “The coroner is going to have a rare gloat over this lot,” said Tom. “There’s bound to be a reward, I suppose. Shall we come in for anything, do you think?”

  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.