Death of a Burrowing Mole mb-62

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Well, you are quite right, of course. Mowbray found the telescope at some distance from the body and his men automatically tested it for prints to check against those of the deceased whom they did fingerprint “just for practice”, the detective-sergeant who did the job told us, and, to Mowbray’s surprise and, I am bound to add, pleasure (for a case of wilful murder seldom comes his way) the telescope had been wiped quite clean. As this could not have been done by the dead man, unless, for some reason known only to himself, he did it before he died and then went to some trouble to keep the telescope untouched, it opened up an interesting avenue to explore.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And there is something more, is there not?’

  ‘Yes, there is, and this is where we need your help. Nearly everybody who pleaded an alibi for the night of Professor Veryan’s death has retracted it. The exceptions are the two lads Monkswood and Hassocks, but exceptions is not a viable expression in their case, since they produced no convincing alibi in the first place.’

  ‘That is so. The rest of your statement is of the greatest interest. What do you suggest that I should do?’

  ‘Go through the lot of them with a small-tooth comb. Deal with the nits and, with any luck, you may find us a bug or two.’

  ‘I cannot congratulate you upon your choice of metaphor, but your meaning is plain. Why do you think the members of the party have changed their previous statements?’

  ‘Well, I think you may compliment yourself on that. We believe it was your appearance on the scene which caused panic in the henhouse. Anyway, confessions and retractions have been pouring in and we can do with all the help you can give us.’

  ‘You would like me to interview them all?’

  ‘The whole boiling, if you will, and one after one, as my great-aunt used to put it. I expect they’ll kick a bit, but no doubt you’re used to that kind of reaction.’

  ‘My private patients are all volunteers, but this is scarcely a private matter. Very well, I will do as you ask. Is there any way of keeping them segregated until I have seen them all?’

  ‘I’ll tell Mowbray to see to that. We don’t want them swapping news and views until you’ve finished with them. The easiest way to make sure they can’t get together is to hold the interviews at the police station. Would you object to that?’

  ‘Certainly not, in principle; in practice, however, there is the difficulty that I have no idea how long each interview may take. We can scarcely lock them in separate police cells for the night. However, we must hope for the best. What are Mrs Veryan’s plans? She will have to be one of my victims, I suppose, although I have already seen her.’

  ‘You might like to see her first, then.’

  ‘Very well. After that I should like the others in this order: my godson, Miss Priscilla, Mrs Saltergate, Tom Hassocks, Miss Fiona, Mr Tynant, Dr Lochlure, Mr Saltergate.’

  The Chief Constable wrote the names in a column, showed them to her and then mentioned the two workmen.

  ‘I do not intend to talk to them at present,’ she said. ‘Later on I may see them, but only if all other approaches fail.’

  ‘Oh, I agree. It is most unlikely that they can contribute anything. Whatever Saltergate may have said to Veryan (and vice versa) would not have been said in front of the men.’

  Nobody else but Laura was present at the interviews. She was there to take shorthand notes and was placed at a table a little apart from Dame Beatrice and whoever Dame Beatrice was questioning.

  Grace Veryan this time was composed and businesslike. She said she had been told that everybody was to be interviewed and that she was afraid she was going to be of very little help as a source of information. No, she had no idea that Malpas had been interested in astronomy. He must have taken it up after they had parted. He had never mentioned it when they met.

  ‘How often did you meet?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘I assume that you refer to meetings after the divorce.’

  ‘Oh, off and on, quite a number of times. It was always when other people were present, but we had many mutual friends and we made it clear that neither of us would find it in the least embarrassing to meet at their houses. There was no animosity between us. As a matter of fact, Malpas asked me to join him on this dig, but I had already accepted Martha Gwent’s invitation to cruise on her yacht.’

  ‘Would you have joined him but for that?’

  ‘No. I should have found another excuse.’

  ‘Professor Veryan died on Sunday night. When did you say you heard the news?’

  ‘Not until first thing on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Will you ask the policeman on the door to send my godson Monkswood in?’

  Bonamy was on his best behaviour. He called his godmother “Dame Beatrice” throughout the interview, sat up straight in his chair, did not so much as glance in Laura’s direction and had even put on a formal suit and a tie.

  ‘Now, then,’ said Dame Beatrice briskly, ‘I have others to see, so let us despatch you and yours in as short a time as possible. You appear to have no alibi for the night of the murder.’

  ‘Murder? So it’s called that openly, is it?’

  ‘Do you care to amend your previous statement?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Why should I?’

  ‘First, because it may not be the truth.’

  ‘Oh, look, Dame Beatrice! I mean – well, I say! You don’t think I’d lie to the police!’

  ‘Second, because you are exposing yourself to a certain amount of suspicion and, in any case, are not following the general trend if you do not supply me with a better story.’

  ‘I can’t help that.’

  ‘I suppose a girl is involved.’

  ‘Oh, well, dammit, no! You mustn’t take any notice of that blighter Tom.’

  ‘I am sure that she would prefer to be involved in what might be called her private capacity, than in the full glare of a public appearance in the witness-box.’

  Bonamy took his time. He stared thoughtfully at the table-top, looked across at his godmother, looked down again and then laughed.

  ‘No, Dame Beatrice,’ he said, ‘you don’t bluff me like that. I’m sticking to what I said. I cruised around with Tom, we slept in the tent or in the car and we finished up on the Sunday night in your paddock. We went for breakfast at the William Rufus in your village and landed ourselves on you for lunch.’

  ‘And that is still your story?’

  ‘That is still my story, Dame Beatrice.’

  ‘Very well. Ask Miss Yateley to come in.’

  Priscilla, given the chair which Bonamy had vacated, took off her spectacles, blinked nervously at Dame Beatrice, put them on again and said, ‘All right, I’ll come clean. No, I didn’t go to my friends. I went to London.’

  ‘Yes? Why was that?’

  ‘I wanted some fun.’

  ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you go with Miss Broadmayne?’

  ‘No. I went alone by train on the Friday evening. I got beastly drunk on Saturday evening and spent the night in the waiting-room at the station. I came back on the first train on Monday morning.’

  ‘Sunday is the important day, so far as this enquiry is concerned.’

  ‘I had Sunday breakfast in the station restaurant and then I joined a march. Some marchers took me home with them and we all spent the night on the floor of the house where they were squatting.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Somewhere in Battersea, I think. I crept out at first light on Monday and caught a workmen’s bus to Paddington and Fiona was waiting for me with Tom’s car at this end, so we came back to the caravan together, as we had arranged.’

  ‘I see. What made you decide to change your story?’

  ‘I didn’t want to embarrass my friends at the farm. They would either have had to tell lies for me or to have given away the fact that I did not visit them. When we first knew of Professor Veryan’s death it never occurred to any of us that one of our party m
ight be blamed for it, so I suppose we all told the police what we ought to have been doing instead of what we actually did do. We had no idea that our statements would be challenged, especially by anybody like you, but now I expect the truth will come out because we are all scared.’

  ‘Not always a state of mind in which truth prevails. Thank you, Miss Yateley. Please ask for Mrs Saltergate.’

  Lilian came straight to the point.

  ‘I was on the top of the keep with Malpas from about ten o’clock until eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘When I left him up there he was alive and well.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘No, I cannot, but I assure you it was so.’

  ‘Are you interested in astronomy?’

  ‘To the extent that every intelligent person is interested in it. After all, one lives in the Space Age.’

  ‘Did the suggestion that you should join him come from Professor Veryan or yourself?’

  ‘From me, of course, prompted by Edward. Edward wanted an hour in which to survey the trench without interruption.’

  ‘So you were a decoy.’

  ‘Yes, and a peace-offering after the quarrel. Anyhow, I managed to find a number of stars and planets which necessitated Malpas’s having to look away from the outer bailey and answer my questions.’

  ‘Could your husband carry out a survey in the dark?’

  ‘Certainly not. He had two storm lanterns on iron rods which could be fixed in the ground and a very powerful electric torch. The conditions were not ideal, but at least he had uninterrupted access to the excavation without Malpas’s being down there.’

  ‘Can you prove that you left the keep at approximately eleven-thirty?’

  ‘I think so. We had told the hotel porter that we should be back late, but before midnight, and he was there, ready to lock up, when we went in. I am sure he will remember.’

  Tom came next.

  ‘They don’t let us communicate with the people you’ve spoken to,’ he said, ‘so I have no idea what Bonamy has said. Has he displayed gentlemanly feelings?’

  ‘I suppose that, as the unusual occupants were not there, you two slept in the caravan on that Sunday night.’

  ‘Oh, Lord! So Bonamy has let the cat out of the bag!’

  ‘No, he told me nothing. Foolish of him and due only, I fancy, to the misplaced sense of chivalry you have queried. Who were the two girls?’

  ‘If he didn’t tell you, I don’t understand how you know.’

  ‘Perhaps because, like Campbell of Kilmhor, I have a large experience of life, and that means of human nature. I will add another remark made by Campbell in that immortal one-act play. He said that, speaking out of his experience, he had decided that only fools and the dead never change their minds. I hope you have changed yours, Tom, and are prepared, as Laura would put it, to come clean. I want to clear you two boys out of the way.’

  ‘We can’t land the girls in a mess. They were great sports.’

  ‘A term I would hesitate to attach to Miss Priscilla and Miss Fiona, so I deduce that they are not the girls in question.’

  ‘These were two girls who are staying at the pub in Stint Magna where Bonamy and I take our refreshment. Students from London University on holiday while they do some reading. We paved the way with gin and conversation – the pub doesn’t run to vodka – and when we settled for this weekend off duty we collected them up, took them round and about and bedded them down in the caravan. We drove them back to the pub in time to have breakfast on the Monday morning, and then we drove over to you at the Stone House for lunch. When we got back in the afternoon the caravan and my car had been moved and we heard what had happened to Veryan.’

  ‘I will not be so indiscreet as to ask who bedded down with whom, but do I understand that, if it ever came to what Laura calls the crunch, your alibis could stand up to the strictest investigation?’

  ‘Our alibis, well, it would depend how broadminded people are. But, I say, you won’t involve the girls if you can help it, will you? I mean, it was all a bit of innocent fun and, by God! – we needed it after all that slog, and, anyway, we didn’t sleep with them.’

  ‘Ask Miss Broadmayne to come in, please.’

  Unlike her predecessors, Fiona was defiant to the point of belligerence.

  ‘So why shouldn’t I?’ she demanded.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you do what, my dear?’

  ‘Take Susannah home with me for the weekend.’

  ‘So long as your parents did not object—’

  ‘They couldn’t. They weren’t there. I knew the house would be empty. It was a chance to get Susannah to myself for a bit.’

  ‘Is that why Miss Yateley went to London and got drunk?’

  ‘No. She’s now got a “thing” for Tom Hassocks but, of course, Tom and Bonamy had their own fish to fry and when they offered me Tom’s car free of charge for three days – I’ve been renting it, you know – in exchange for the caravan for three nights, I asked Susannah if she would mind if I lent them my key.’

  ‘Three nights? Not merely for Sunday night? But never mind. Did your weekend with Dr Lochlure come up to expectations?’

  ‘No, of course not. Things never do, in my experience. We found we had nothing to say to one another.’

  ‘I am sorry the gilt fell off the gingerbread.’

  ‘There was never a chance of anything else. When, near the end of term, Susannah sent for me and asked me whether I would like to join in this castle thing, she made it perfectly clear that she was choosing me only because I have big muscles and don’t snore.’

  ‘The former are obvious and I congratulate you on them. How did she know about the latter?’

  ‘Some water came through the ceiling of my room at college, so for three nights running I occupied the settee in her sitting-room.’

  ‘Is she well liked by the college?’

  ‘She’s out of place there, in a way. You stop listening to her lectures and concentrate on her looks. If she doesn’t take you that way, you write her off as a bitch and don’t bother to attend her lectures at all. She’s a frightfully dull talker.’

  ‘You speak for the Junior Common Room. What about the Seniors?’

  ‘Mixed, like us, I guess. Of course, she never lacks a lecture room full of men students. Anyway, the weekend was a disaster and I’m pretty sure the mouse was a put-up job. I mean, we never have had mice in my home. She made it an excuse to telephone Tynant. He came at once and took her away. After that, I was alone in the house and drove myself back to Castle Holdy early on Monday morning.’

  ‘So you still have no alibi for the time of Professor Veryan’s death.’

  ‘Why should I need one? If I could have broken Nicholas Tynant’s neck, that would have been a different thing. I had nothing whatever against Professor Veryan.’

  ‘I suppose you have discussed his death with the others?’

  ‘Not a lot. I don’t see that there is anything to discuss. I can’t see any reason for adjourning the inquest when it’s perfectly obvious what must have happened.’

  ‘Tell me about the mouse.’

  ‘There wasn’t one. I knew Susannah wasn’t pleased when I introduced her to an empty house. She said she had been looking forward to meeting my parents again. They had been to college and met her and I had not told her they would be away. I’m afraid I didn’t consider her at all. All I thought about was getting her to myself without Priscilla. Three is a very unmanageable number, don’t you think?’

  ‘Four is a more agreeable one. Did you and Priscilla never think of teaming up with Bonamy and Tom?’

  ‘Those baby boys? Anyway, they had picked up two girls at that pub they go to and, in any case, I don’t think we were their cup of tea any more than they were ours. No, there wasn’t any mouse. Su wanted an excuse to have Nicholas come to the house and take her away. I’m sure they spent the next nights in the same bed, although you’ll never get them to admit it. I was an awful fool. I can see now that she only
came with me to my home so that she could throw dust in the Saltergates’ eyes. She meant all along to spend the weekend with Nicholas.’

  ‘And you spent the time alone when she had gone?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I got some paint and emulsion on Saturday and spent the whole of Sunday redecorating my bedroom. Rather fun, actually. Thank God there’s always something one can do.’

  10

  Edward, Nicholas and Susannah

  « ^ »

  Well!’ said Laura when, the door having closed behind Fiona, nobody else had been summoned. ‘What do we make of that lot? Their new alibis don’t seem of any more use than their old ones.’

  ‘Nor, perhaps, much nearer the truth, but we shall see. I will change my mind about the sequence of our visitors. I will see Edward Saltergate next.’ Laura went to the door and asked the policeman to summon him. Edward entered and was seated. Laura closed the door and went back to her chair at the smaller table.

  ‘Well,’ said Edward, ‘I would like to know what my wife has told you before I answer any questions.’

  ‘Why do you think the police are going to so much trouble to keep those who have been interviewed completely segregated from those who have not, so far, entered this room?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I have no idea. It seems a totally unnecessary proceeding.’

  ‘A man has died mysteriously, Mr Saltergate.’

  ‘There is no evidence of any mystery.’

  ‘Oh, but do you think I would be here in my official capacity if there were no evidence of it? There is a very strong presumption indeed that Professor Veryan was murdered. I am not at liberty to give away information which is known to the police, but you may take my word for it that they now have suspicions that the death may not have been an accident. You stated that you spent the Sunday night in question at the Horse and Cart hotel with your wife. Do you wish to enlarge upon that statement?’

  ‘Enlarge upon it?’ Edward’s expression changed. He ceased to look like an affronted sheep and merely blinked at Dame Beatrice before resuming his usual appearance of giving courteous attention to the person with whom he was in conversation. ‘No. You have told me what I wanted to know. Veryan’s death was no accident.’