‘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.