The subject was dropped. Lunch passed pleasantly and early in the afternoon the young men took their leave and drove back to the castle. There was a policeman at the gatehouse and another was on duty on top of the hill. The caravan and Tom’s car had disappeared and there was nobody on the site, although that in itself was not strange. It was the presence of the police which was disconcerting.
‘Something wrong, sergeant?’ asked Bonamy.
‘Who are you, sir?’
‘My name is Monkswood. My friend and I have been away for the weekend since Friday afternoon. Up to that time we’ve been helping out here at the castle. What’s been happening? Why are you here?’
‘You will find the Superintendent at the Barbican hotel in the village, sir.’ He took out a notebook, added, ‘He will be glad to see you two gentlemen,’ and then inscribed Bonamy’s name after he had asked for the initials. He then asked for Tom’s full name, wrote that down, too, and asked where they had come from.
‘Not your home address, but where you were last night, sir?’
‘We camped near the Stone House, Wandles Parva, in Hampshire, the home of my godmother, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.’
‘The Superintendent will certainly wish to see you, sir. You had best go along at once. He will have interviewed the rest of your party by now.’
‘What has happened to the caravan and the car which were parked here?’ asked Tom.
‘They have been removed to the village car park, sir. You will have no difficulty in locating them.’
‘Can’t you tell us anything about what has been going on?’
‘No, sir, I have no instructions to that effect.’
‘Can we go up to the keep? We’ve left some gear there,’ said Bonamy.
‘Nobody is allowed beyond this point, sir. Your property will be quite safe.’
‘Come on, Bonamy,’ said Tom. They got into Bonamy’s car and drove to the Barbican. Bonamy went up to the reception counter.
‘Mr Monkswood and Mr Hassocks,’ he said. ‘You know us, I think. We have had meals here with Mr Tynant and Professor Veryan.’
‘Which is a gentleman you won’t ever sit down at table with again,’ said the receptionist.
‘What!’
‘Found dead first thing this morning up at the castle. Mr Tynant and the police are through here.’ She folded back the flap of the counter, led them through a room at the back of her office and tapped on a further door. ‘Mr Monkswood and Mr Hassocks are here,’ she said.
The room to which they had been admitted was small and overcrowded. All the castle party were there, with the obvious exception of Veryan. At a table sat two men in plain clothes. One of them looked round and then indicated two vacant chairs.
‘So now we have a full house,’ he said, in a tone of satisfaction. ‘All I am doing at present, gentlemen, is checking where everybody has been during the weekend. There has been a serious accident resulting in the death of Professor Veryan. He appears to have been alone on the tower of the castle and to have fallen. In all cases of this sort we have to conduct an official enquiry before the coroner takes over, so, if I could just have an account of how you two gentlemen spent your weekend, that will round out my little dossier and we can all go off and have our tea. Now, Mr Monkswood.’ The other plain-clothes policeman opened the door and the rest of the party filed out.
‘When did he – when did the accident happen?’ asked Tom.
‘The medical evidence will come out at the inquest, sir. When did you leave the castle ruins?’
‘On Friday at about midday,’ said Bonamy. ‘Professor Veryan was quite all right then. He walked with us to our car and then he and Mr Tynant went off to have their lunch and Hassocks and I drove to the pub in the village of Stint Magna, where we usually get our snacks at lunchtime, and then we toured and messed about and camped out until today, when we called on my godmother, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, had lunch with her at her home, the Stone House, and came back here.’
‘Where were you last night, sir?’
‘Last night? We slept in our tent on the edge of the New Forest. It’s a bit of rough land belonging to my godmother and adjoining her grounds, so we knew it was all right to be there.’
‘Were there other campers with you?’
‘No, of course not. It’s private land belonging to Dame Beatrice, a sort of paddock, in fact.’
‘This was last night. What about the night before?’
‘We slept in the car. We were up on Campdown and tried pitching the tent, but it was too windy.’
‘Thank you, Mr Monkswood. I’d just like a word with Mr Hassocks, and then I’m through for the time being. Now, Mr Hassocks, what made you two gentlemen come to the hotel at this time of day? I was told that you were not due here until just on time for your evening dinner and never came here earlier then seven o’clock.’
‘We drove back to the castle to unload our sleeping-bags and take them up to the keep, but the police sergeant at the gatehouse said you were at the hotel and wanted to see us. Look here, it’s been a bit of a shock, you know. Veryan dead? How did it happen? I mean, how did he come to fall off the tower?’
‘That is the object of our investigation, sir, to find out how it happened. All we know at present is that Professor Veryan’s body was found at the foot of the castle tower by Mr Nicholas Tynant and it is presumed that he had fallen from the top on to a heap of broken stone below. So the two folding camp-beds and other items which we found inside the tower are the property of you and Mr Monkswood, are they?’
‘Yes. We’ve been sleeping there, but we only took sleeping-bags for this weekend’s camping.’
‘For how long, sir, have you been sleeping in the castle tower?’
‘Ever since Professor Veryan and Mr Saltergate began work in the castle grounds. We’d got the gear, you see, for sleeping out and it saved hotel bills. Using the keep saved us the trouble of putting up a tent.’
‘Were you aware that Professor Veryan was in the habit of taking a telescope up to the top of the tower at night to study the stars?’
‘He couldn’t have done that. We should have heard him, unless he sneaked up while we were at the pub. Even so, you know, we should have heard him when he came down, and we never did. I don’t suppose he stayed there all night, did he?’
‘He was wearing tennis shoes when he was found and young gentlemen like yourselves are sound sleepers. He had a key to the hotel front door and the staff had instructions not to shoot the bolts. He secured them after he had let himself in each night.’
‘So the hotel staff knew about him and his telescope,’ said Tom.
‘The receptionist and the porter knew. The manager did not know. It was left to the discretion of the desk clerk to give the key to any guest who expected to be out after eleven-thirty at night because the hotel does not employ a night-porter, so it was quite in order for the girl to let Professor Veryan have the key, although it was unusual for the same person to have it night after night.
‘What would have happened if somebody else had wanted the key?’
‘I have no information, sir. Apparently the question did not arise. There are no evening entertainments in the village and after dinner it would be too late for people to get to the pictures, or whatever, at Holdy Bay. I understand that in the evenings you two gentlemen left the hotel after dinner and did not join Professor Veryan and Mr Tynant again until breakfast on the following day.’
‘We’d been with them all the morning and at dinner, so for their sakes as well as ours we found this snug little pub in Stint Magna and we used to have our lunchtime snack and our evening drinks there.’