‘Would you know how the two young ladies spend their evenings?’
‘Not a clue. They are always in by the time we get back from the pub. We hear their voices, so we know they’re there, but we don’t fraternise. They are no more enthralled with the arrangements than we are. Veryan’s death has upset everybody.’
Mowbray nodded and strolled over to where Edward Saltergate, seated on a chunk of what had been part of the castle wall, was sketching with a stick of charcoal on the top sheet of a thickish block of cartridge paper. He looked up as Mowbray loomed over him.
‘Ah, Detective-Superintendent!’ he said in amiable greeting. ‘Are you on duty or are you merely taking the air?’
‘Both, sir. How is the work going?’
‘Oh, nicely, very nicely. Come and see what we have done in the keep and the hall.’
‘Some other time, if you don’t mind, sir. I’m glad everything is going well. You remember two workmen who were helping with Mr Tynant’s trench?’
‘I have good reason to remember them. I had to warn them to keep clear of my flanking-towers. They were beginning to threaten my walls with their abominable trench.’
‘When did you issue this warning, sir?’
‘Oh, a few days ago. I took the matter up with Tynant, too. He had promised me that his trench would be continued in a clockwise direction, to take it away from my walls, but he must have broken his promise or misdirected them and they reverted to anti-clockwise, as they had been doing under Veryan’s instructions.’
‘Some men find it easier to trench from right to left, I suppose, sir, and others from left to right. Anyway, they seem to have taken your words to heart, in a way. They’ve passed up on the job altogether.’
‘I know. Tynant was not very pleased when I told him. He thinks it’s my fault that they have decided to leave.’
‘Were you very severe on them?’
‘Not at all. I reminded them of the arrangement I had made with Tynant and insisted that they respect it. They apologised and agreed to work away from my foundations. I thought that was the end of it, because they turned up on the next two mornings; so obviously they had not taken offence.’
‘Will you spare Miss Broadmayne from her labours for a few minutes, sir?’ Without waiting for an answer, he walked up the steepest part of the castle mound, passed by the wall of the inner bailey, or what remained of it, and accosted Fiona, who was contemplating a semicircular bulge which had been part of the main defences to the entrance to the keep. ‘Could I have a word, miss?’ he said.
‘Anything to knock off work for a bit. What is it?’
‘When you’ve had your lunch, miss, I’m going to drive you over to the gamekeeper’s cottage.’
‘Good Lord, I don’t want to meet that oaf again!’
‘You will be safe with me and my driver, miss. Perhaps you would care to have another of the ladies to accompany you.’
So, at just after two o’clock, Mowbray and a detective-constable in the front seats, Fiona and Lilian at the back, the party of four drove to the manor house, passed in through open gates beside the untenanted lodge and made for the woods.
The gamekeeper’s cottage was on the edge of them and the gamekeeper himself was stretched out in a long wicker chair with the dancing flecks of sunshine and the shifting shadows of leaves making patterns on his shirt and the cushions.
‘Rouse up, Goole,’ said the Detective-Superintendent. The man swung his legs over the side of the chair and stared at the visitors. ‘You know this young lady, I think,’ Mowbray went on.
‘She was all amongst my pheasants I be rearing against the autumn shoot. I thought as how she were a poacher.’
‘When was this?’
‘Couple o’ weeks back, I daresay. Yes, and on a Sunday night, too! No time for a young female to be walkin’ alone in the woods.’
‘You had no business to lock her up,’ said Lilian Saltergate severely.
‘I on’y meant to scare her a bit. I soon let her go, and if she says I laid a finger on her, she’s lying.’
‘You threatened me with a gun,’ said Fiona.
‘What time was this?’ asked Mowbray. The detective-constable fished out a notebook. The gamekeeper eyed it apprehensively.
‘That old owl had just screeched for the second time that night. Good as a clock he is. That would have been about midnight, near enough,’ he said.
‘And you thought the young lady was setting snares?’
‘ “Them rabbits ain’t game,” ’ she says, “so you can’t poach ’em,” she says. “But my pheasants is game,” I says, “and you be all among ’em, disturving of their night’s rest,” I says, “so you come along o’me,” I says.’
‘And you threatened me with your gun and locked me in that beastly smelly shed for two hours. I’ve got a luminous watch, so I timed you,’ said Fiona, ‘and when you let me out you made a filthy suggestion to me.’
‘That were only a joke, sir,’ said Goole, appealing to Mowbray.
‘Do you agree with the young lady’s estimate that she was locked up for two hours?’
‘I only wanted to teach her a lesson and the smell was only my ferrets.’
‘They nearly scared me to death,’ said Fiona. ‘I heard them moving about. I thought the beastly shed was haunted.’
‘It might not be a bad idea,’ said Mowbray to his driver as they were returning Fiona and Lilian to Holdy village, ‘to have a look round that fellow’s place. I don’t like the cut of his jib. I’ll tell Harrow to take you and a couple of the uniformed branch along. If the agent challenges you, tell him in a polite way to go to hell. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with Goole. He will let you into his cottage without a warrant and you won’t find anything there, but have another look at that shed where the young lady was locked up. I’ve no idea what you may find there but, if it’s been inspected once, he won’t think we’ll go to it again, so if he has got anything to hide—’
‘Such as a motorbike and sidecar, sir?’
‘No. I was only thinking of a pick and a couple of shovels.’
‘Dear Godmother,’ (wrote Bonamy), ‘I don’t want to telephone you because I think the police are now tapping all calls that go out from the village and I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to be incommunicado so far as the outside world is concerned, so I’m sending you this letter. Fun and games are still going on here. It’s all very uncomfortable for us, but nobody can say it’s dull.’
There followed an account of Fiona’s adventures, for she had broken the barrier at the cottage and, waylaying Bonamy as he and Tom left the Barbican after dinner, she said, ‘Could you bear to have a confab with us when you get back this evening? Things are hotting up and we could do with some support from our contemporaries.’
‘Sure,’ said Bonamy. ‘We would invite you to join us at the pub in Stint Magna, but it would make an awkwardness. We’ve—’
‘Got a couple of birds there,’ said Tom, ‘and we wouldn’t want to give them a false impression, if you see what I mean.’
‘See you later, then,’ said Fiona.
‘Have you two got wind-up about something?’ asked Bonamy.
‘Not exactly, but we’re not very easy in our minds.’
‘Oh, well, we’ll be back soon after eleven. Our pub’s got an off-licence. We’ll bring back something to drink and make it a party.’
The party broke up at midnight because, after her third gin, Priscilla began to cry, but, before that, the young men had received a graphic account from Fiona of the night excursion to the woods, the encounter with the gamekeeper, her incarceration in the shed with the ferrets, and, finally, of her second visit, this time in the company of Lilian and Mowbray.