Death of a Burrowing Mole

15

A Body in the Woods

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But why on earth didn’t the little silly stick to the truth she told in the first place? Why go to the lengths of inventing a weekend in London and getting drunk and joining a political march and all that rubbish?’ asked Laura, reverting to the subject some time later.

‘Oh, as it states in the hymn, because of “the very wounds that shame would hide”. She has a great admiration for Dr Susannah and was beside herself to think of Fiona and the beloved object alone together for the weekend.’

‘So you got her to tell you why she went to the house – which is, after all, further from Castle Holdy than her friends’ farm – on that Sunday night?’

‘Oh, no. I told her and then gave her the best advice I could.’

‘Which was? – not that I’m trying to break the bond of secrecy between doctor and patient.’

‘There is nothing secret about it. I told her that she should continue to write the obsession out of her system. She had shown me some poems. I commended them and suggested that the remedy is in her own hands. She replied that she saw herself as a most ineffective person, so I pointed out that, whereas a grand passion seldom lasts a lifetime, poetry can be immortal.’

‘Is hers really any good?’

‘She thinks it is and, at present, that is all that matters. The real wish of Priscilla’s heart is not to captivate Dr Susannah, but to see herself as the author of a slim volume. I encouraged her and promised to put her in touch with some helpful people when she has assembled an appropriate array of stanzas.’

‘Does she really stand any chance of publication?’

‘Oh, I have seen worse verses than hers in print. She is not afraid to experiment and, although at present it is not difficult to see whence she derives her images and ideas, she will find her own voice in time and I think she will have something pertinent to say. She has a poem which she calls ‘Castle Holdy’. It shows a mature grasp of her own present state of mind. It goes:

‘When all our defences were down, the bastions abandoned and broken;

When from shattered portcullis the word – the word of surrender – was spoken,

Then, throwing away his long sword, the emblem of battle and danger,

There stepped from the ranks of the foe a courteous and soft-spoken stranger.

He asked neither captives nor gold; he set no proud carillons pealing;

He gave us the choice of two gifts and cunningly offered them, kneeling.

One was for peace, one for love, and easy it was to confuse them.

His gifts were two-edged as his sword – but we chose, for we dared not refuse them.

‘Anybody capable at Priscilla’s age of analysing her own emotions as successfully as that is not entirely negligible.’

‘You sat down and memorised the thing?’

‘I read it twice. A combination of rhyme and rhythm, when both are conceived on simple lines, is readily assimilated. But to our more immediate concerns.’

‘That phone call just now from Mowbray? He wouldn’t say anything when I took it. He just asked me to put you on if you were available. Is there something he wants us to do?’

‘Not at present. There is no reason why I should not tell you what was said. It was only that he wanted me to receive the news direct from him. It will all be public property by this evening.’

‘That must mean he has taken a step forward in the enquiry, I suppose.’

‘He does not appear to think so.’

‘Oh? Not a setback, I hope?’

‘He has received a report of a body found in the woods on the Holdy Castle estate.’

‘Any connection with that motorbike and sidecar?’

‘He has yet to get the body identified. He would not say more over the telephone.’

‘Bonamy and Tom did start something when they opted to dig for buried treasure, didn’t they? What’s the betting that this woodland corpse is that of one of the missing workmen?’

‘That is a certainty, I fear.’

This proved to be the case. At the inquest the body was identified formally as that of Stickle. Humus had been heaped over the corpse, but there had been no attempt at a more permanent burial. According to the forensic experts, the man had been dead since the time which coincided, more or less, with the vandalism at the castle.

‘Well, ma’am,’ said Mowbray, when he met Dame Beatrice after the inquest, ‘I would say that this man and his mate Stour had a bust-up, probably after getting drunk together, and that Stour did for Stickle. Wherever he was killed, the medico has no doubt about the method used. He died from a blow on the head from a pickaxe, probably while he was stooping down or kneeling. Well, my next job is to find Stour. They disappeared, so far as anybody can tell, at the same time or near enough. They did their morning’s work, pushed off and haven’t been seen since, but I reckon they were responsible for wrecking the dig.’

‘Has Mr Tynant found two workmen to take the place of these two?’

‘Mr Tynant says he is packing up. The damage to his careful work has discouraged him. That, and Veryan’s death, and now the murder of this workman, have convinced him that there’s a jinx on the castle.’

‘I can well understand his feelings. I doubt, though, that the death of Stickle was the result of a drunken quarrel,’

‘I can’t see much doubt about it,’ said Laura. ‘Couldn’t it have been just that? – both of them in their cups and what began, most probably, as a mere argument developing into a bloody battle?’

‘That does not correspond with the theory that the deceased was stooping down or kneeling when he was attacked,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘There is no evidence to show where the murder was committed, I take it?’ she said to Mowbray.

‘Some dirt found in the wound – a very nasty one – is being analysed, but, of course, there’s difficulty because of the woodland humus with which the body was covered. Some of that is bound to be mixed up with any other. I’m hoping the science boys will come up with something, because, if we can find out where, it could give us a clue to finding out who. On the face of it, it looks as though Stour and Stickle were almost certainly the vandals, but then there’s this third man of yours, ma’am, though I don’t know how you come to deduce him.’

‘I will go further. I will suggest that there were at least four men, and possibly five, who wrecked Mr Tynant’s work, and that they included Stickle and Stour. You remember, perhaps, a report from Tynant that the trench (not the ditch) had been deepened overnight and then the earth replaced in an attempt to hide what had been done? I think that was the work of Stickle and Stour. They had heard the stories about buried treasure and were looking for it, but were not prepared to do any damage until the real vandals came along. As to who actually murdered Stickle, I keep an open mind. It is as likely as not to have been Stour, I suppose, and it need not have been at the castle, although there is plenty of dust and rubble there to hide any bloodstains.’

‘Exactly, ma’am. As you probably know, Mr Tynant’s pick and shovels have been kept in the keep and that’s where we found them. There are no fingerprints on the pick and no bloodstains that anybody can see, but none of that was gone into at the inquest. We’ve asked for an adjournment, as everybody expected.’

‘No fingerprints and no bloodstains once again hardly indicates that the murder was the result of a drunken quarrel,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but, of course, another pick may have been used.’

‘Exactly, ma’am. You will recollect, though, that there were no fingerprints on Professor Veryan’s telescope either.’

‘Anyway, the presence of the motorcycle combination in Goole’s woods may be accounted for,’ said Laura. ‘The sidecar could have been used to transport the body, and that doesn’t sound much like a drunk, either. It’s too calculated and opportunist, I would think. Anyway, where was the bike that it came to be so handy for the murderer’s purpose if he wasn’t Stour? He must have been Stour.’

‘I know, Mrs Gavin. I wish I’d had some acquaintance with the two fellows beyond just the routine questions everybody was asked following Professor Veryan’s death.’

‘I would still like to know why two men living at a distance were preferred to two men who live actually in Holdy village,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I think I will make it my business to find out. Probably it was a question of thews and sinews, or superior skill in using the tools provided. The point is probably of no importance unless the village men took umbrage and seized an opportunity of liquidating Stickle, but it seems most unlikely.’

‘I hope it didn’t happen like that, I’m sure, ma’am, because, if it did, the next body to turn up could be that of Stour. As it is, I shall have to do a house-to-house enquiry in the village and then round up all the chaps who were staying at the hostel the last few weeks. There may have been trouble there. The bike and sidecar turning up in those woods is very mysterious unless Stickle was murdered either on the vandalised site or at the hostel and then brought to the woods by night.’

‘But why bring the body to the woods when it would have been far less dangerous to have dumped it somewhere on the heath or even on one of the beaches?’ said Laura. ‘Besides, would men coming from the hostel have thought of woods on the estate? I doubt whether itinerants like these hostellers would have known about the woods, or even of the existence of the estate itself, come to that. Those grounds and the house are a good way out of the village.’

‘You may have something there, Mrs Gavin. Well, thanks to Dame Beatrice’s handling of little Miss Yateley, I can leave that young lady out of my calculations with respect to Veryan’s death, not that she was ever seriously in my mind. Miss Broadmayne, too, thanks to that cloth-head Goole, is also out of it, but I can’t eliminate the two young chaps Monkswood and Hassocks, I’m afraid, and there is nothing, so far, to exonerate the Saltergates and Tynant. Even Dr Lochlure will have to remain on the list, although I really can’t visualise her tipping a man off a tower. So far as motive is concerned, my mind hasn’t changed. Saltergate had had some pretty hot exchanges with Veryan, and Tynant was his partner and may have been his rival. As for the young men, I don’t think malice would have entered into it, but I still think of horseplay, or else that Veryan made some commotion on top of the tower which disturbed them. I can see them going aloft to see what was happening, grappling with Veryan before they realised who he was, and then, with the broken coping and all the rest of it, sending him over the edge without the slightest intention of doing so.’

‘Well, I certainly do not think they had any previous knowledge that he was interested in astronomy,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I wish they could produce an alibi for the Sunday night, although I do not believe for an instant that they were in the keep when Professor Veryan was killed.’

‘Of course, there remain the two workmen,’ said Laura. ‘Who is to say that, instead of two men, Veryan and another, on the tower that night, there were not three? Suppose Stickle and Stour had a grievance against the boss of the outfit over pay or conditions or all the other things the so-called workforce is always beefing about? One or both of them fling Veryan off the tower and then find out that they’ve killed him and, later on, fall out between themselves and Stour does for Stickle in case he should grass?’

‘It’s plausible, Mrs Gavin.’

‘Besides, they had got wind of the Castle Holdy treasure and thought Veryan’s dig was being carried out to find it. I’m certain about that. It would account for everything.’

‘The treasure is only an old wives’ tale, ma’am. It’s about as credible as the belief that the bones dug up at Glastonbury were those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. I’m a Somerset man myself and was told the story at school, but who’s to tell one skeleton from another, except to distinguish a male from a female?’

‘Would you be prepared to detail a couple of young constables to clear that deep ditch which, until it was filled in by whoever did fill it in, formed part of the defences between the outer and the middle bailey?’

‘I could do that, yes, ma’am. Any particular reason?’

‘Call it a whim of mine. You see, to fill in that ditch was the only bit of really tidy work the marauders did, so I cannot help feeling that there must have been some special reason for it. What do you think?’

‘Only that they began with tidy minds and then went berserk, ma’am.’

‘You are probably right.’

‘I’ll get it cleared,’ said Mowbray firmly. ‘A nod is as good as a wink, they say.’

‘But only to a blind horse, and, so far as I know, your eyesight is excellent.’

‘So now what?’ asked Laura, when they had parted from Mowbray.

‘Nothing, so far as we are concerned, until that ditch is cleared and some more tidying-up done. Oh, I think we had better extend our booking at the hotel. I should like to be in at the death, so to speak.’

‘I know what you’re thinking, and so does Mowbray, I fancy, but would the murderer have been such a fool?’

‘He is not altogether a fool. While he can persuade the police that Stour murdered Stickle he is safe. He probably guesses that the work on Castle Holdy is going to be abandoned because of the damage and no doubt he has planned to be far enough away by the time the site is tidied up later on. I do not expect Tynant will ever come back, but I think the Saltergates will continue the work of restoring the castle defences, especially once that ditch of theirs is cleared, and Mowbray has promised to do that and I hope he will do it discreetly and without loss of time.’