‘Please. Well, now, do I understand that there are certain aspects of your story which you wish to amend?’
‘You know, Dame Beatrice, I do think this is rather unfair. You hear everybody else’s account and then you ask me for mine. Suppose mine does not tally with what you have been told already? What are you going to think?’
‘That someone is lying, but that the someone need not be yourself.’
‘I suppose Fiona Broadmayne has been making mischief.’
‘She certainly gave a somewhat different picture of her weekend from the one she gave to the police. I shall be glad to have your version.’
‘Oh, well, if I must! Fiona invited me to spend the weekend at her home. I had met her parents and naturally I expected them to be there when we arrived. I was surprised and, I must confess, very much annoyed when I discovered that she and I were to spend the weekend alone together, particularly as I had already had to decline an invitation from a friend because I had promised Fiona. Under the circumstances I saw no reason why I should let myself in for an intolerably boring weekend, so, when I discovered that I had been taken to a house which had not even a servant in it to prepare the meals, I telephoned the Barbican hotel.’
‘And the ever-attentive Mr Tynant rescued Childe Rolanda from the dark tower. What is the story of the mouse? Surely you will tell me.’
‘Oh, that! I helped Fiona get tea ready – she had brought with her various stores to last the weekend – and then I was in a quandary. I wanted a reason for insisting upon taking my departure before nightfall without giving her the crude explanation which would have been the true one, so, in desperation, I invented the mouse and insisted that I am so allergic to rodents that I could not possibly stay in a house which harboured them.’
‘She did not believe your story.’
‘No, I don’t think she did. There was a stormy scene and at the end of it I rang Nicholas Tynant, knowing that I could catch him before he went fishing on the Saturday, and asked him to come in his car and collect me.’
‘His, I take it, was the invitation you had had to refuse.’
‘Yes, it was. When I had to turn it down, he said he was going to spend the Saturday fishing.’
‘But the two of you spent the weekend in the other hotel here in Holdy Bay.’
‘In separate rooms, as the chambermaid can certify.’
‘Of course, and you booked separately and in your own names.’
‘Certainly. There was no reason to do otherwise.’
‘We now come to the heart of the matter. Will you give me an account of how you spent the night on which Professor Veryan died?’
‘It will not differ in any particular from the one I have given to the police.’
‘Are you sure you will not change your mind?’
Susannah got up from the table.
‘Have you finished with me?’ she asked.
‘Not quite. Please sit down again. Tell me exactly what you did after dinner on that Sunday evening.’
‘You are trying to find discrepancies in my story. There may be some slight alterations, but absolutely nothing of any significance.’
‘Did you know that your caravan was occupied during your absence?’
‘Fiona told me that the two boys, Bonamy and Tom, wanted to borrow the key, so I assumed they slept there.’
‘Did you raise any objection?’
‘No, I don’t think so. They promised to leave everything perfectly tidy. Besides, I was – oh, well, never mind that.’
‘Besides, you were not so invulnerable yourself that you could afford to question the behaviour of your juniors.’
‘Oh, they had girls with them, had they?’
‘And you had Nicholas Tynant with you.’
‘I did not! I did not! – in the sense you mean.’
‘You may be asked to swear to that in a court of law, and that might come very hard on Mr Tynant. He does not appear to have much of an alibi for the Sunday night. You had better give him any help you can, for your own sake, as well as his.’
‘How dare you threaten me!’
‘That is not a threat; it is a friendly warning. I cannot disclose matters which, so far, are known only to myself and the police, but there is no longer any doubt in their minds that Professor Veryan was murdered.’
Susannah’s face registered no emotion. All she said was that she had not realised that there had been so much bad feeling among the party.
‘For, of course,’ she added, ‘it must have been one of us. Nobody else would have known he was up on top of the tower.’
‘I would still like to have an account of your own Sunday evening.’
‘Well, I had no idea, and neither had Nicholas, that we would need an alibi. We agreed that it might be better if we did not arrive together on the Monday morning, so we arranged that he would take me to the caravan after dinner on Sunday night but that he would leave me to turn the boys out, if they were there, while he sneaked off and spent the rest of the night at the Barbican. He had told Malpas he was going to spend Saturday and Sunday fishing and this would have been true if I had not telephoned him to take me away from Fiona’s home on the Friday while he was still at the Barbican. Malpas would have suspected nothing when Nicholas came down to breakfast on the Monday morning, you see. He would have concluded that Nicholas had returned from his fishing-trip while he was still on the tower on Sunday night. Of course, everything went wrong when the car broke down at Holdy Bay.’
‘I think I must see Mr Tynant again. Will you ask the policeman to recall him?’
Nicholas came in jauntily.
‘This is an unexpected honour,’ he said. ‘I concluded that you had finished with me. Has Susannah been ruining my reputation?’
‘Far from it. She has dismissed you without a stain on your character.’
‘I hope you didn’t believe her. If she had been right, you would see me in a very poor light. I have already indicated that I slept with her. I hope you are not expecting details.’
‘Of another kind and on another matter. In your first statement you said that, soon after leaving Holdy Bay after dinner on the Sunday night, your car broke down and you were obliged to escort Dr Lochlure back to the hotel. If the breakdown was of such a nature that you could not cope with it yourself, how were the repairs done so quickly? Your car, I understand, was back at the Barbican on the Monday when Professor Veryan’s body was found.’
‘Oh, after I left Susannah at the hotel I went to the all-night garage in Holdy Bay and told them where to pick up the car and where to deliver it when they had put right whatever was wrong. They knew me because I’ve had dealings with them before, and I made a special point that I needed the car urgently.’
‘I see. And the rest of your story, the long walk back to the Barbican, the waiting for the outdoor domestic staff to turn up—’
‘Perfectly true.’
‘Thank you, Mr Tynant. Is it also true that you have come to an agreement with Mr Saltergate and that the argument about the trench is settled?’
‘Oh, yes. Malpas was very stiff-necked about the completion of our trench, but, as Saltergate points out, any secondary burial under his walls would most likely have been destroyed when the walls and towers were built. All the bad blood has now been drained away.’
‘Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, considering all the circumstances.’
‘Well, Beatrice, can you give Mowbray a lead?’ asked the Chief Constable.
‘I can advise him to find the two girl students who shared bed and board in the caravan with my godson and young Tom Hassocks.’
‘Aha. Who are they and how can they help?’
‘I don’t know that they can, but there is just the chance that they may be able to confirm the approximate time of Professor Veryan’s death. The medical evidence was not conclusive on that point. They can also give the young men an alibi if they were with them in the caravan when Malpas Veryan was killed. Personally I am not at all sure that they were – not so far as the Sunday night was concerned, at any rate.’