‘What did the police think of what various people told them? Were they satisfied with it?’ asked Laura.
‘We don’t know. Of course, at first nobody let on that there had been a disagreement between Veryan and Saltergate. It wasn’t all that serious, anyway, I’m sure. A compromise would have been reached if Veryan had lived. Until the little skirmish about the trench, the two sides had always got on perfectly well together and were sharing Tom and me and the two navvies in the most amicable fashion – at least, I thought so. Anyway, the police got to know about the quarrel, but we don’t know who blew the gaff.’
‘Probably nobody did, in that sense,’ said Laura. ‘The police are pretty good at deducing that sort of thing.’
‘Whatever people want to think, I don’t believe Veryan’s death was an accident,’ said Tom.
‘Oh? Why?’ asked Laura.
‘Too many alibis floating around.’
‘Your own being one of them, of course.’
‘Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, no. You can only swear that we were with you from about ten on Monday morning until after lunch, and that’s no help at all,’ said Bonamy.
‘I bet the coroner brings in death by misadventure,’ Tom went on. ‘Is that quite the same as “accidental death”?’
‘Whether it’s the same or not, it makes no difference from a practical point of view,’ said Bonamy. ‘Either verdict takes the police out of the picture, but I agree with you. I’m sure the police are not satisfied and I’m sure they have something specific to go on in their not being satisfied.’
‘Suspicious of all those alibis,’ said Tom, ‘and I don’t blame them.’
‘Granted, but I think they’ve got hold of something else. Wish I knew what it was.’
‘Tell me all that you can about your weekend,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘You think you have no alibi, but one never knows.’
‘As we indicated, we’re not at all sure we want to produce an alibi when all the others are so sketchy.’
‘Are they, indeed? Perhaps we will examine them in detail later. What about your own adventures?’
‘We didn’t have any. We left the castle as soon as the Friday morning work was finished, had a snack and a beer at our usual pub at Stint Magna and then went wherever the car took us. We collected up bread and cake and cheese and beer, so that, if we couldn’t find anywhere to have an evening blow-out, we wouldn’t go hungry or thirsty and at about six in the evening we began looking about for somewhere to pitch the tent. As we were by the sea, we decided to sleep on the sands. There are worse beds’than a soft, dry sand-dune.’
‘Go on,’ said Laura sceptically. ‘Such as what?’
‘Sometimes Tom had the wheel and sometimes I did,’ said Bonamy, ignoring the question and also avoiding his godmother’s suddenly enlightened eye. ‘We did not go far on the Friday afternoon – about eighty or ninety miles. On Saturday we stopped in the afternoon to watch a village cricket match—’
‘ “Caught at point by a man in braces”,’ murmured Laura.
‘— and then we drove on to the moors, but up there it was so windy that we didn’t attempt to put up the tent. The heather was quite dry and beautifully springy, so we tried that in turns while the other one had the back seat of the car. But, of course, those are not the nights that matter. It was on the Sunday night that Veryan either fell or was pushed, and that’s the night we slept in your paddock with never a soul to know we were there.’
‘You ought to have come up to the house and let us give you some supper,’ said Laura. ‘Then we could have given you a cast-iron alibi.’
‘It was too late to disturb you. We didn’t get here until after eleven. Your Dobermanns would have torn us to bits if we’d come up to the house at that time of night.’
‘They wouldn’t tear anybody to bits. They would be very menacing and kick up the devil of a shindy, but they wouldn’t savage anybody who was not threatening Dame B. or myself.’
‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘you certainly have not furnished yourselves with an alibi, and your simple, unembroidered story rings so false that it must be conceded that you could have pushed Professor Veryan off the tower, driven here during the night and appeared daisy-fresh at my front door on Monday morning. Let us abandon this sad scenario and concentrate on those alibis which do appear to exist.’
‘I suppose the two girls’ statements will hold water,’ said Laura.
‘Yes,’ said Bonamy. ‘Fiona’s parents will vouch for her, I suppose, and Priscilla’s friends ditto.’
‘What of Mr Tynant and Dr Lochlure?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘Are their alibis equally sound?’
‘Hardly. It seems to me that Tynant’s has great big holes in it,’ said Bonamy, ‘and I’ll tell you why. When we got back to the castle on Monday afternoon, the police wouldn’t let us park my car at the foot of the mound, but sent us to the village car park. Tynant’s car was there. I recognised it. It couldn’t have broken down late on Sunday night. He could not have got a garage to salvage it, repair it and get it back to the village in so short a time.’
‘You would have to prove that,’ said Laura. ‘You did not see the car until nearly teatime, remember. It could have been put right in an hour or so. It would depend on what was wrong with it and how busy the garage was.’
‘I’ll bet the two of them spent the night in Holdy Bay, all the same,’ said Tom, ‘and came back in the car on Monday morning.’
‘Under the suspect names of Mr and Mrs Smith?’ asked Laura, grinning. ‘Surely not, in this day and age!’
‘Actually it would strengthen their alibi if they did spend the night at a Holdy Bay hotel, I suppose,’ said Tom, ‘because the hotel staff could swear to them. If you accept Tynant’s version, it seems to put Dr Lochlure in the clear, but to make his alibi the weakest of all, except—’
‘Except for the Saltergates,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out. ‘Not only were they still in the village, but they are the people who are known to have quarrelled with Professor Veryan. But I think it is premature to talk about suspects. We must hear the coroner’s verdict before we jump to too many conclusions. There were injuries to the head and the spine, you tell me.’
‘So Tynant told us,’ said Tom. ‘Veryan landed on a pile of masonry which Saltergate’s party had cleared out of the keep. It wasn’t all that far to fall, and I suppose, if he’d landed on grass, the fall would not have been fatal, but he couldn’t have stood any chance if he hit his head on those jagged blocks of stone.’
‘I shall attend the inquest. Has either of you a reputation for practical joking?’
‘If you think that in a playful spirit we tilted Veryan over the edge of the keep, you’re wrong and you know it,’ said Bonamy. ‘Good Lord! You don’t think somebody will pull that one on us, do you?’
‘Well, we haven’t an alibi,’ said Tom, ‘but who on earth would have known we would need such a thing? Mind you—’
‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Elsie and Lacey, or was there Tillie as well?’
‘You rotter!’ said Bonamy to Tom. ‘We said we wouldn’t mention them.’
8
Interested Parties
« ^ »
Except to those directly concerned and but for the fact that the deceased was an eminent man of letters, the inquest was as dull as Dame Beatrice had predicted it would be. A fairhaired woman wearing a black hat and a black band around the left sleeve of a light summer coat told the coroner that she was Grace Veryan, the former wife of the deceased, and that she identified the body as being that of her divorced husband.
The medical evidence followed. The spinal injury would have resulted in paralysis; the injuries to the head had caused death. The inference was that Professor Veryan had been seated on a low part of the wall and, in elevating his telescope, had overbalanced backwards on to the lethal collection of broken stones below. The time of death was put at between midnight and two in the morning.