Death of a Burrowing Mole mb-62

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Does the walk need to be taken at night?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. The time factor is all-important and progress by night is likely to be slower than in daylight.’

  ‘I concede that. Show me the route you propose to take.’

  Laura unfolded the Ordnance map and, when she had indicated the path by which she proposed to travel, she drove over to the cottage in which Tom and Bonamy were still staying and, having given Bonamy his instructions, she drove back to Holdy Bay with Tom beside her.

  At the hotel they gave Tom dinner and at half-past eleven he and Laura drove a short distance out of the town, halted for five minutes and then went to the all-night garage. Here she arranged to have the car checked and to pick it up in the morning at about lunchtime, then she and Tom set out.

  The first stage of their journey took them to a railway bridge. The branch line was out of use and had been so for many years. They climbed a fence and scrambled down the bank. Alongside the rails it was comparatively easy walking. The line followed a valley between hills. After about forty minutes they climbed the bank at a point where Laura thought that the railway would no longer serve them, and came on to moorland. Soon they found the footpath she expected. It crossed the heath in more or less a straight line for about two miles and was undulating but nowhere was it overgrown. The luminous summer night made it easy enough to follow the way and, in single file, they made good progress.

  Then glimmering silver birches appeared like tall ghosts among the heather, the path began to climb and then it passed through an eerie pinewood full of whisperings.

  ‘I’m quite glad I didn’t come alone,’ said Laura; but the pines soon thinned out and after a time the path ended at a stile. The two walkers climbed this and found themselves in the main street of Holdy village. ‘Better step it out now,’ said Laura, as they heard the sound of the little waterfall, ‘because we shall have to slow up to pick our way through all that mess the vandals have made between the gatehouse and the keep, and that may make a difference to the time we take.’

  ‘I’ll climb that newel stair, not you,’ said Tom. ‘How long do I stay at the top?’

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ said Nicholas, looking, chiefly because of the elf-lock, much like Richard Coaker in The Farmer’s Wife, and also like a more handsome Lewis Dodd.

  ‘And time, too,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is more than time, in fact, that that unfortunate business was cleared out of the way. Then, perhaps, we can get down to the other murders.’

  ‘You know what I have to tell you?’

  ‘I imagine so, but pray ease your bosom of the perilous stuff which troubles you.’

  ‘It was I who wiped the fingerprints off Veryan’s telescope.’

  ‘Well, it had to be either you or the murderer, unless you and he are the same person.’

  ‘You did suspect me, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, especially when it came to my notice that Professor Veryan was attracted to Dr Lochlure.’

  ‘I did not worry about that, I assure you, and of course I knew that Susannah had been on the tower with him to look at the stars. How did you know that it was I who wiped the telescope?’

  ‘Because you were the person who found the body. I was told that when Professor Veryan was not at breakfast on that Monday morning and that he had not been to bed all night, you went straight to the castle. Nobody else seems to have been there until the police arrived.’

  ‘I always thought that the broken parapet was dangerous, especially in the dark, so I feared he had met with an accident.’

  ‘I should be interested to know why you wiped the telescope. Did you think you were protecting Dr Lochlure?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean. For one thing, I knew she couldn’t have been on the tower with Veryan on that particular night. She was tucked up in bed in the hotel at Holdy Bay. My idea, when I cleaned up the telescope, was to make sure her prints were no longer on it after the last time she was on the tower. I didn’t want tongues wagging about her being up there at night alone with Veryan. It was nothing to do with his death.’

  ‘But if he had not been killed, you would never have thought about fingerprints.’

  ‘Of course I shouldn’t, but once the police had been told of the death and there had been the questioning and the inquest and its adjournment—’

  ‘But you wiped the telescope before the police were called. You must have done.’

  ‘Yes, but it was I who called them and I knew there would have to be an inquiry. There always is in such cases. The death was quite unexpected and had to be accounted for, and I wasn’t going to have Susannah’s name mentioned, even though she couldn’t possibly be connected with it.’

  ‘Why have you decided, after all this time, to confide in me?’

  ‘You yourself have answered that question. Now that these other murders have taken place, it was time Veryan’s death was – well, not forgotten, but cleared out of the way.’

  ‘You thought very quickly about fingerprints when you found the body.’

  ‘I thought quickly about Susannah.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’

  ‘I have a feeling that you don’t altogether believe me.’

  ‘My dear Mr Tynant, how very perceptive you are!’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ He asked the question without heat, but in a detached, academic manner. ‘Surely, now that two real murders have been committed, we can write off poor Veryan’s death as the accident it undoubtedly was?’

  ‘You still have to account for one or two small matters.’

  ‘If you mean why didn’t I stay at Holdy Bay, as Susannah did, when my car broke down, I’ve already explained that. We thought it better not to come back together on the Monday morning. After all, she was supposed to have spent the weekend in Fiona Broadmayne’s home, not with me.’

  ‘So you walked all the way back from Holdy Bay and ended up exhausted at the Barbican—’

  ‘Much too late to have killed Veryan. I refer you to the medical evidence given at the inquest.’

  ‘My secretary tells me that Holdy Castle is surprisingly close to Holdy Bay as the crow flies.’

  ‘I’m not a crow. By road, the way I had to come, it’s all of twelve miles. My car broke down soon after eleven-thirty. I left it and escorted Susannah back to the hotel, then I went to the all-night garage to get them to tow the car to their repair shop and see to it first thing in the morning, then I foot-slogged it all the way back to the Barbican and sat there until the outdoor staff arrived and then I went in with them. The police checked that my car was at Holdy Bay all Sunday night and wasn’t returned to me until Monday afternoon, by which time Veryan had been dead for at least twelve hours and possibly longer.’

  ‘Yes, it is a good story, but there is something I ought to add to it. I agree that it is at least twelve miles by road—’

  ‘And even I, fit though I am, am not a marathon runner. I do not even manage four miles an hour on average over such a distance.’

  ‘I am a competent reader of Ordnance maps, Mr Tynant.’

  ‘Meaning what, Dame Beatrice?’

  ‘The railway line to Holdy Bay has not been in use for some years. By following the track for a couple of miles and then taking footpaths, the distance to be covered between Holdy Bay and Castle Holdy is less than five miles and the footpaths are well maintained for the benefit of holiday-makers. I think you could have managed to get back to the castle in time to push Professor Veryan off the tower before he had finished his star-gazing, and he would have been entirely unsuspicious of you. I also suggest that, when you had had a friendly little talk, he handed you the telescope and invited you to look at the night sky. It was your own prints that you wiped off, not those of Dr Lochlure, was it not?’

  ‘But you can’t prove any of this. Besides, why should I want to kill Veryan?’

  ‘There were two reasons, Mr Tynant, and both of us know both of them.’

  ‘We shall never get a con
viction, ma’am,’ said Mowbray. ‘He’s quite willing to admit he wiped the telescope clean, but he’s sticking to the reason he first gave you. For his own sake he’s now willing to have Dr Lochlure’s name mentioned in court. Our problem is that nobody can say there was any outward sign of bad blood between him and Veryan and, even if there had been, the boot would have been on the other foot, from what he told me when I arrested him. He’s got a book due to be published which, he claims, demolishes some pet theories held by Professor Veryan.’

  ‘I doubt whether Professor Veryan knew of this book, but whether or not he did hardly matters now. As for the reason Tynant gave for cleaning the telescope, it was incredible to the point of being ridiculous. Nevertheless, he is not our man.’

  ‘But you agreed to the arrest, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes. The news of it may reassure the murderer of Stickle and Stour.’

  ‘Well, Dr Lochlure certainly wasn’t up on the tower on the night of Veryan’s death, ma’am. Naturally I re-checked at that Holdy Bay hotel when I’d heard what everybody had to say, and not only do they remember that Dr Lochlure came back there, but they had a false alarm of fire at half-past two in the morning and Dr Lochlure was there all right, calming an old lady who was trying to have hysterics.’

  ‘Mr Tynant will not be convicted and perhaps he will be of some use while he is in custody. One never knows. It was my reason, as I said, for his arrest.’

  ‘Of course there is still Saltergate to be considered, ma’am, I suppose. He’s the one, according to all I hear, that Veryan was having a fight with. We can’t altogether ignore that.’

  ‘It may, like Tynant’s arrest, prove to be a valuable red herring, I suppose.’

  ‘Meanwhile, there are two more murders to settle, ma’am. It seemed simple at first, when we found Stickle’s body in those woods, but now we know the fellow we thought must be the murderer has been murdered, too, it’s altered everything.

  That destruction of the trenches no longer looks like what it seemed at first. Whoever killed Stour had to find somewhere to hide the body to make things look to us as at first they did look.’

  ‘That Stour had killed his uncle—’

  ‘And had done a bunk. I don’t see what else there was to think at the time. It seemed so obvious. Anyway, you didn’t lose any time in getting that ditch cleared.’

  ‘Going back to Mr Tynant for a moment, there was never any need for him to have cleaned the fingerprints off the telescope. It was the act of a man with a guilty conscience.’

  ‘Makes me wonder why he did it, though, let alone why he confessed to it. Anyway, I had to arrest him.’

  ‘He did it in a panic. He confessed to it because he now realises, as we do, that he need not have done it at all. There was every chance that he had handled the telescope under completely innocent circumstances and so left his fingerprints on it.’

  ‘Well, I suppose Veryan could have shown it to him at some time, and then, of course, when he went to the castle on that Monday morning and found Veryan’s body, he could have picked up the telescope in all innocence, as you say. But if that was all, why not have told us? Why wipe his prints off it? Wasn’t that the action of a guilty man?’

  ‘Not of a guilty man, but of a man with a guilty conscience, as I said.’

  ‘What’s the difference, ma’am?’

  ‘Don’t you think that Tynant has often wished that Veryan was dead?’

  ‘As to that, I couldn’t say, but I shall never get him convicted, that I do know.’

  ‘Then let us turn our attention to the other matter, the deaths of the two workmen.’

  ‘There, again, Tynant comes into it, ma’am. He knew of those woods. Mr Saltergate told me that he, Veryan and Tynant (who was with Veryan in the car) had all been up to the manor house and to get to the house you have to take the road through the woods. I’ve checked all that. One thing I’m left wondering about, though, is that, after we found Stour’s body, you insisted on the fact being kept quiet and you also made my fellows shovel back all the soil and stuff into the ditch. Are you going on that old saying that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime?’

  ‘No, not in the sense which is meant by that unlikely theory. I think that, so long as we all maintain silence, there is every chance that the guilty parties will see a necessity for removing Stour’s body from where they buried it and taking it to a safer place. They have no guarantee that, at some time in the near future, work will not be resumed at the castle and, although there may be nothing to connect them with the corpse, I think they will be anxious to move it before it is discovered. Let us make it public that the castle project has been abandoned and then keep watch. The apple, with any luck, should fall not, like Newton’s, on to your head, but right into your waiting hand.’

  ‘My mind still runs on Tynant and Saltergate, ma’am. As I said, they both knew those woods.’

  ‘But there were those who knew the woods better than any stranger could do.’

  ‘Could bring us to that sleazy gamekeeper Goole, I suppose, but I don’t see him as a murderer. Of course, he could have been an accomplice. Even so, two – say him and Saltergate, or even him and Tynant – would have had a bit of a problem against two tough fellows like Stickle and Stour.’

  ‘Not if Stickle and Stour were partners with the murderers and then, having served their turn, were inconveniences which had to be got out of the way.’

  ‘Out of whose way? You give me the impression that you could name names, ma’am.’

  ‘Laura was wrong,’ said Dame Beatrice reminiscently. ‘She said that, when the public was warned off the site because scientific work was in progress, the general opinion would be either that the scientists were prospecting for oil or that something to do with nuclear fission was being planned. The plain truth is, as I repeat, that the local people saw Saltergate’s clearing-up operations and Veryan’s trenches as a search for the Royalist treasure which was rumoured to be buried somewhere in the castle precincts. What else were people to think when, knowing the legend, they saw stone and other debris being removed, three wells uncovered and partly cleared, and a great gash of a trench being dug and pegs put in to indicate that further excavation was planned?’

  ‘You made the point before, yes, ma’am. So you still believe some mastermind saw a way of getting a lot of the digging-up done for him and tried to cash in as soon as the caravan and the two cars had moved away to the village and he knew the coast was clear. But what could he expect to accomplish in one night?’

  ‘I will give you my theory for what it’s worth and then you may or may not act on it. I see it this way: there have always been rumours that treasure had been hidden somewhere in the castle or its grounds. Nobody seems to have attempted to confirm them until now. The present owner either had not heard them or did not believe them and the villagers dared not test them on what was, after all, his property.

  ‘Then, after he had gone away on holiday and installed his cousin as caretaker, along came the architects and archaeologists, and the rumours took a fresh lease of life and became current not only in Holdy village, but in the neighbourhood round about. I don’t think they spread to any extent until the work was well under way and it became clear that neither an oil-rig nor a nuclear reactor was under contemplation, but, as the site began to be cleared, wells uncovered and the digging taking its ordered course, Stickle and Stour saw, as they thought, a golden chance of a rich reward for their labours.

  ‘Like their murderers, they had to wait upon events. These were precipitated by the removal of the caravan and the cars and the disappearance of the young men from the keep.’

  ‘Somebody made a big mistake when they left that bike and sidecar in those woods, ma’am. If Stour had really murdered Stickle, as we were meant to think, he’d have made his getaway on it. Mind you, though, I suppose he could have pickaxed Stickle if they’d had a row, and then got scuppered himself, but I don’t think it’s very likely. I think Stour was stru
ck down because he’d seen his uncle Stickle murdered.’

  ‘I agree. Somebody dared not leave Stour alive.’

  ‘Well, because of the woods being used as a hiding-place, I’m going to have another go at Goole and see what he comes up with, though he’ll go on swearing he knows nothing about the motorcycle or the body in the woods.’

  As it happened, there was no need for Mowbray to lean any further on Goole. The wretched man turned up at the Holdy Bay police station and implored to be taken into custody.

  ‘And if Mr Sandgate wants to bail me out,’ he said, ‘him knowin’ I’m as innocent as the day, well, I don’t want none of it. You lock me up good an‘ proper. That way I’ll be safe, which is more’n I’ll be if you leaves me on the loose.’

  Taken to the interview room and given a seat at a table opposite Detective-Sergeant Harrow, he demanded to see Mowbray.

  ‘You tell me what you’ve come about and I’ll decide who you see and don’t see,’ said Harrow.

  ‘I’ve come about murder, that’s what I’ve come about, and, if Mr Mowbray don’t listen to me and lock me away, there’ll be another murder done and another body buried in them woods, and it’ll be mine, and so I’m tellin’ you.’

  ‘Well?’ said Mowbray, when Harrow had sent a constable to the Detective-Superintendent’s office. ‘Have you come with any useful information? I hope so, for your sake.’

  ‘As to that, I could not say, sir. All I knows is as I never put no bike and sidecar in my woods, and I never buried no bodies, sir.’

  ‘So why have you come here?’

  ‘To proclaim of my innocence, as is my democratic right, sir.’

  ‘If you’re innocent there is no need to proclaim it. What do you know?’

  ‘I knows as I goes in fear of me life, that’s what I knows.’

  ‘Why? Who would want to take your miserable life?’

  ‘Not knowin’, can’t say, but I be in mortal fear of that man Wicklow, up to the big ’ouse.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I suspicions of him, sir. It was him as got me mixed up in all this at the first of it.’