Death of a Burrowing Mole

12

Disappearance of the Hired Help

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Mowbray had enough to keep him busy. Accompanied by Laura and Detective-Sergeant Harrow, who drove the car, he took Fiona to her home. The house was still empty, but there were letters on the doormat which she picked up, glanced at, and placed on a side table in the hall. She had not uttered a word during the journey.

‘Now, miss,’ said Mowbray, ‘it is not that I don’t believe you, but you will appreciate that I have my duty to do. People have given various accounts of how they spent the weekend and I need to check their statements very carefully in view of the serious nature of my investigations. Perhaps you will kindly take me to look at the painting and decorating you claim to have done in this house.’

‘Yes, well, all right,’ said Fiona. She led the way up the stairs. A door on the second-floor landing was wide open and was kept so by a wooden doorstop in the form of a black cat. A strong draught which blew into the faces of the investigators showed that the window was also wide open. There was a strong smell of paint.

Leaving the others on the landing, Mowbray entered the room. The window frames and ledges had been freshly painted, but the wallpaper had not been stripped, although there was a large can of emulsion on the floor. Mowbray looked about him.

‘How much time do you reckon you spent on the job, miss?’ he asked. Fiona shrugged shoulders which would not have disgraced the Village Blacksmith and came into the room.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I did a bit and then got myself a meal or sat in the garden and read, and then did another bit. I’m not awfully good at it, so it took me a long time to do what I have done. I’ll probably get a man in to finish it before my parents come back.’

‘I see, miss. Right. Thank you. After you, miss.’ As she made for the door he delicately touched the window ledge. The paint was still tacky. ‘Do you think it’s safe to leave a window wide open with nobody in the house?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want the window frame to stick,’ she said.

‘Your insurance company wouldn’t be very happy if you were burgled under these circumstances, miss.’

‘No, I suppose not. I never thought of that.’ She did not close the window, however, but descended the stairs. The others followed.

‘I can’t congratulate the young lady on her attempt to bolster up her alibi,’ said Mowbray, when he met Dame Beatrice. ‘That paint was never put on all that time ago. Of course, there’s nothing to prove she didn’t stay in her home for that weekend, but she certainly didn’t spend the time painting window frames and ledges. I regret it, but I shall have to keep her on my list.’

‘What about the other student, Miss Yateley?’

‘What indeed? She stays on the list, too, in spite of what I said about her. I’ve still got to see those farm people, but she claims to have joined in some sort of protest march in London. I’ve been in touch with the Metropolitan boys and there was no protest march anywhere in their area – and, as you know, ma’am, it’s a wide one – nothing at all that weekend. If she did go to London, she isn’t telling the truth of what she did there, at any rate not in that one particular. I think you will agree, ma’am, if there is one tile out of place, the whole roof probably needs inspection because it can no longer be considered weatherproof, and, in my book, that goes for this alibi of hers.’

‘The young hardly seem to come out of this with untarnished truthfulness, do they?’

‘Well, we’re certainly back to square one with Mr Monkswood and Mr Hassocks, ma’am. Besides, the Saltergates and Mr Tynant and even Dr Lochlure are also anything but in the clear. What to do about them I don’t know, although I’m inclined to dismiss Dr Lochlure from my considerations. I’ve combed through the staff at the Holdy Bay hotel and there’s no doubt she and Tynant booked out on the Sunday evening separately, the way they had booked in, although they shared a table in the dining-room, and there’s no doubt Dr Lochlure came back shortly afterwards with the story that her car – she does not appear to have mentioned Tynant, neither did anybody see him again that night – that her car had broken down and she would be glad of a bed for the night.’

‘And, so far as is known, she occupied it.’

‘Yes, and got them to ring up a taxi for her in the morning. Tynant may have brought her back to the Holdy Bay hotel, but he did not go in that Sunday night.’

‘What about the Saltergates?’

‘Same old story. They came back to the Horse and Cart when they said they did, went up to their room and appeared at the usual time for breakfast before preparing to go off to the castle for their morning’s work on the ruins, only to be stopped by a phone call from Tynant informing them of Veryan’s death. What they did or where they went between about midnight and breakfast time, with that fire-escape so safe and handy, is anybody’s guess. My trouble is that they don’t fit the picture.’

‘In what way?’

‘I can imagine Saltergate getting sore enough with Veryan to throw him off the tower and hurl his telescope after him, but I can’t imagine him wiping his own fingerprints off the telescope. I don’t believe it would have occurred to him to take those sort of precautions.’

‘So we are dogs chasing our own tails. There is just one source of information we might tap, although I doubt whether we shall get much help from it. I wonder what the arrangements were in respect of giving permission to three separate parties to go to work on the castle ruins?’

‘Three separate parties, ma’am?’

‘Certainly, and each had to get permission from the landowner. The Saltergates wanted to tidy up and, to some extent, to restore the defences of the castle; Professor Veryan, assisted by Mr Tynant, wanted permission to excavate, as I understand it, a late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age burial mound; and my godson and his friend had heard rumours of treasure hidden in one of the castle wells. Each party must have asked permission and none seems to have been refused it.’

‘You regard that as significant, ma’am?’

‘Yes, indeed I do. The interests of the various parties were bound to clash and it is my opinion that, if the owner is away from home, permission may well have been granted only by the caretaker and to give three separate permits seems extremely strange unless there was some very good reason for it, don’t you think? It seems to me that if the owner is absent he may not even have been consulted. I am told that the caretaker has visited the ruins, yet, from what I have gathered, one would hardly suspect him of taking an interest in mediaeval fortifications or prehistoric burials. What kind of man is the owner? Is anything known about him?’

‘Bought the estate only a couple of years ago. Not a native, as they call it in these parts. Made money and is a bit jumped up. Not exactly out of the top drawer, so to speak. He wouldn’t care tuppence whether the castle is a historical monument or a broken-down cowshed, so far as I can make out from the local people. A good enough chap in his way, by all accounts, charitable and a good landlord and all that, but your view that the caretaker gave permission for the tidying-up and the dig is very interesting.’

‘Would you describe the owner as a wealthy man?’

‘Made his money on the stock market, so I’m told, ma’am.’

‘Go and see whether he has returned. If not, contact the agent or whoever is in charge. Ask which of the three parties was first in getting permission to carry out a survey of the castle ruins. Somebody must have had priority and that may be the answer to our problem of why Veryan was killed and who killed him.’

The next development was unexpected but occasioned no particular surprise. It was reported by Bonamy to Dame Beatrice.

‘I say, you know,’ he said, ‘those chaps who are supposed to do most of Tynant’s digging, well, they don’t turn up any more and Tom and I are getting a bit cheesed off at lugging our guts out. It’s not as though we are ever going to get anywhere with the wells. If the treasure is in one of them, there it’s likely to stay and, that being so, our real reason for being here and using up the vac has gone.’

Dame Beatrice responded sympathetically, but offered no advice as to his and Tom’s future procedure. She was far more interested in Mowbray’s attempts to confirm or discredit the rest of the alibis. His next move had been to check with Tynant exactly what had happened concerning the breakdown of the car on the night of Veryan’s death, but made no headway against a practised debater, particularly as the outdoor staff at the Barbican were fully prepared to confirm Tynant’s story that they had found him waiting patiently to be admitted to the hotel before breakfast time on the Monday morning.

Susannah proved equally obdurate. The car had broken down, Tynant had escorted her to the hotel, they had provided her with a bed and she had asked them to ring up a taxi after she had had an early breakfast on the following morning. The all-night garage consulted their records at Mowbray’s request and confirmed that they had had the car, adjusted what had proved to be a very slight fault and had returned the car at midday to the Barbican hotel, where Tynant, ‘in a tizzy because he had found the other gentleman dead’, had paid for the repairs and got a receipt for the money. Tynant produced the receipt.

Mrs Veryan stuck to the story she had already told Mowbray.

‘I told you,’ she said somewhat peevishly, ‘I was on a friend’s cruiser for the whole weekend. We were off the Suffolk coast and did not land until Tuesday morning, when I read of the death. Of course I can prove it. You said yourself that my friends had backed up my story. Besides, why on earth would I want to kill Malpas? He was generous and understanding and much more use to me alive than dead. It has now been confirmed that the income his money will bring me in is a good deal less than the alimony which he most faithfully paid and, as my lawyers have told you, I can’t touch the capital. That remains in trust until I die and then it will go to archaeological research. I’ve told you all this. Why do you go on badgering me?’ Mowbray left it at that.

‘So I still don’t understand, sir,’ he said to Tynant, ‘why, having taken Dr Lochlure back to the hotel, you did not commandeer a bed for yourself as well as one for the lady, after you had telephoned the garage.’

‘Do I have to keep spelling it out?’ demanded Tynant irritably. ‘Susannah and I were resolved not to return to Holdy village together. I am deeply concerned for her reputation. We were not supposed to have spent the weekend together. She was supposed to have stayed at the home of Fiona Broadmayne and nobody cared a damn what I did on my own, but there soon would have been wagging tongues if it was known – as it is now, unfortunately – that we spent the weekend together at Holdy Bay. I may add that I have made a formal proposal of marriage to Susannah.’

‘So all’s well that ends well, sir.’

‘No. If you must know, she turned me down. If you really want something useful to do, you might find me another couple of stalwarts to help on my dig. You remember them, Stickle and Stour? Well, I’ve enquired at the hostel in Pureford where they were living, but they seem to have walked out from there without giving notice and it’s three days now since anybody has seen them.’

‘Pureford seems a long way off from here, sir. It’s all of fifteen miles, isn’t it?’

‘They came in on a motorbike and sidecar every morning and rode back to the hostel at midday. We don’t work in the afternoons because of the weather and the women. We paid the men a generous petrol allowance. They were not permanent residents, I believe, but itinerants who usually picked up jobs on building sites or any other casual labour they could get. They were glad enough of this job here, I thought, because it offered steady work for a couple of months or even longer. I can’t see any reason why they should have walked out on me.’

‘Had they asked for better wages and been refused, sir? Had there been discontent?’

‘Not so far as I know, but, of course, Veryan engaged them in the first place, not myself. They may have got involved with something at the hostel, but on the site here I never heard of any trouble. I suppose they just got tired of the job or maybe they got to know of something where the pay was better or the work easier. I’m very anxious to replace them. My volunteers are getting fed-up at having to carry on without any extra help.’

With the assistance of Detective-Sergeant Harrow, that lissome lady-killer, Mowbray had re-checked all the rest of the evidence, if such it could be called, that he had collected concerning the availability of the fire-escape at the Horse and Cart for nefarious or legitimate entry into and departure from that hostelry. He had discovered that, on those luminous summer nights, any figure standing or sitting at the top of the castle keep was silhouetted against the sky and plainly visible from the flat part of the hotel roof. Except in respect of height, however – for instance, Priscilla could not have been mistaken for Veryan or Susannah for Saltergate – there was a less than even chance of a name being put to any person seen by night on the tower. He had tried the same experiment from the Barbican, but the church tower obstructed the view from the highest windows in the hotel and there was no flat part of the roof on which any observer or watcher could stand.

‘It comes back every time either to Tynant or the Saltergates,’ said Mowbray, ‘and that, I reckon, means him, not her. I like him and she is a very nice lady, but they did have a row with Veryan and these academics can be real nasty to each other when they roll their sleeves up and start in.’

‘They’re only nasty to one another in print, sir. They don’t do anything,’ said Harrow.

‘Saltergate is a nutter where that restoration of the castle is concerned.’

‘He wouldn’t have thought about wiping his dabs off the telescope, sir, and that’s all we’ve got to go on in thinking this is a case of murder. I reckon Tynant’s our man.’

‘So what did you get up to that weekend, miss?’ asked Harrow.

‘What I told that other policeman,’ said Fiona. ‘I took him along to my home and he saw the paint on the window frames.’

‘He also touched it, miss. In this weather, and with the window and door wide open, it ought to have dried, but it hadn’t. Come on, now, miss. Do yourself a bit of good. We know we’ve got a case of murder on our hands and it’s obvious that a fit, lovely-made young lady like yourself could have made mincemeat of a string-bean like Professor Veryan, had you felt the urge.’

‘Well, I didn’t feel the urge. I had nothing against Professor Veryan. I have nothing against anybody in our castle party which would make me want to injure them physically.’

‘I believe you absolutely, miss, so why not come clean? You must have been up to something you didn’t want known, but, whatever it was, it can’t have been as serious as finding yourself on a murder charge.’

‘I think your argument is shaky.’

‘Not as shaky as your alibi, miss. Do yourself a bit of good, like I say. We’re interested in nothing except the death of Professor Veryan. If you went out and burgled a house or robbed a bank, that doesn’t concern us in the least, but in faking an alibi you give rise to our worst suspicions, don’t you see?’

Fiona looked at his handsome, concerned and friendly young face and, although she wondered for one passing half-second what the serpent in Eden must have looked like when he overcame Eve so easily, she decided to trust her present tempter.

‘Well, I did spend most of the weekend at my parents’ house, as I said, but on Sunday night I came back to do some poaching.’

‘Poaching? Where, miss?’ Harrow was sceptical.

‘On the Holdy manor estate.’

‘Did you get anything?’

‘No. I walked slap into a keeper. He had a gun, so I didn’t argue with him. He marched me off and locked me in a little hut. After about two hours he came back and unlocked the door and made an unacceptable suggestion to me, so, gun or no gun, I bashed his face in and ran to where I had left the car.’

‘I shall have to check your story, miss.’

‘Check away,’ said Fiona calmly. ‘That dirty-minded little lecher will remember me all right and, anyway, I went poaching because I was bored and fed up, but I didn’t get a pheasant or a salmon or a rabbit and nobody can say I did.’

‘Well,’ said Mowbray, when Harrow reported the interview, ‘it’s the sort of story which, given that type of modern young woman, could very well be true. I’ll check it, because it will give me an excuse to do as Dame Beatrice has suggested, and ask some questions which may prove to be important if the answers are what I’m hoping they will be. If that gamekeeper is the chap I think he is, I’ll twist his tail until he comes clean. There was a nasty case of alleged rape against him a couple of years back – nothing could be proved and he produced what apppeared to be a foolproof alibi, but I knew the girl and I reckon she was telling the truth.’ Meanwhile, you had better have another go at that hostel in Pureford and find out whether they have any news of Stickle and Stour. They couldn’t help us when we first questioned them, but this scarpering without a word to anybody is beginning to look very suspicious.’

‘Yes, sir, I agree. These chaps with no obvious roots are often on the fringe of the criminal world and if they had seen any advantage in getting rid of Veryan—’

‘Yes, but that advantage hasn’t shown up yet, has it? Tynant tells me that when Veryan engaged them and two others – that was before he knew that young Monkswood and young Hassocks were prepared to work on the site – he took it for granted that they were all men from Holdy village. Two of them were; they were the ones Veryan put off. I begin to wonder whether perhaps he sacked the wrong couple.’

‘I can’t see what possible motive two itinerant labourers could have had for murdering him, sir. Surely Tynant would know if there had been a dispute of any sort.’

‘I wonder if they had found out about Veryan’s stargazing. In that case they might have climbed the tower to get him on his own and take him by surprise with a demand for better wages, and when he refused them—’

‘It doesn’t seem likely, does it, sir, on the face of it? What did you make of them when you had a word with them before the inquest?’

‘There was nothing special about them at all. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear they’d done porridge, but neither would it surprise me to hear that they had always kept just the right side of the law.’

‘Were they Irishmen, would you say, sir?’

‘No, Geordies come south to pick up what jobs they could.’

‘Well, we shall have to track down those two fellows. Find out the last time anybody saw them at work.’

‘I thought Mr Tynant said they had been missing for three days, sir.’

‘Check with the rest of the party. I’m not too keen to take Tynant’s word for anything at present. Find out whether there has been any kind of dispute. In these hard times men don’t pass up on a regular job just for the hell of it.’

Harrow’s report bore out Tynant’s assertion. It was three days since anything had been seen of the two workmen.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Mowbray. ‘Veryan is dead and, if these chaps have any knowledge, guilty or otherwise, of how he came to his death, either they’ve scarpered or somebody has laid for them and anything may have happened to them.’

There was a further bit of information to come Mowbray’s way and again he checked it for accuracy, this time taking the onus on himself. Tynant came to him and asked abruptly why ‘that detective-sergeant of yours has been pussyfooting around and harassing the girls and young Tom Hassocks’. Mowbray dealt with him sternly.

‘So many lies and half-lies have been told me and there has been so much wriggling and squirming since Professor Veryan’s death, sir, that I am very anxious to find out whether any of your party can lead me to the truth, or at any rate can give me a clue to the disappearance of these men, Stickle and Stour.’

‘Oh, I appreciate that, but nobody here can possibly account for their knocking off work. There is one other thing, though, and you can check this with the others if my word is not good enough for you. I had my suspicions the first day those fellows did not turn up. Yesterday, while your sergeant was busying himself with the young people, I made a more detailed inspection which fully confirmed what I have been thinking for some time.’

‘Oh, yes, sir?’

Tynant became impressive. He swept back the dark elf-lock from a noble forehead, raised an arm towards his trench and said,

‘On several nights since Professor Veryan’s death somebody has been here, dug deeper into my trench and then tried to make the soil look as though nothing had been disturbed.’

‘No damage, then, I take it, sir.’

‘Could easily come to damage if it goes on. If amateurs begin messing about on the site, they may do irreparable harm and bring my whole project to a point where it is useless for me to continue here.’

‘Looks to me,’ said Detective-Sergeant Harrow, when Tynant had gone, ‘as if those two chaps have given up daytime work in favour of doing a night-shift.’

‘But why on earth should they do that?’

‘All the neighbourhood thinks Tynant is digging for buried treasure, not prehistoric graves, sir.’

‘Oh, that poppycock! I thought Veryan had had a reporter from the Holdy Bay Messenger and had explained to him what the dig was all about.’

‘A newspaper article wouldn’t alter local opinion, sir.’

‘That’s obvious, I suppose, if some jokers have been sneaking along by night and having a go at Tynant’s trench for themselves.’

‘Stickle and Stour, don’t you think, sir?’

‘Oh, well, if so, it’s up to Tynant to catch them at it, although I don’t see what he could charge them with. They don’t seem to have done any damage, and it isn’t his property, anyway.’