‘A bit of a grampus when swimming, that one. Powerful, but untidy, and puffs and blows. Best on the butterfly, she informs me, and that, of course, is not the most effective stroke when one is breasting the waves. Sorry! I interrupted you.’
‘It was worthwhile. Your summing-up was admirable. Fiona has puffed and blown upon poor Priscilla until she has blown her house down and then Mowbray sent her to me. I was about to tell you that Priscilla gave Fiona (and now me) a graphic account of how simple a matter it must have been to tumble Professor Veryan off the tower of the keep. Fiona urged her to confess that she had actually seen the murder committed.’
‘Good gracious me! And had she?’
‘She says not. One thing is as certain as anything can be, though: she may have seen murder committed, but she herself could not have committed it in the way she describes; she is far too light and frail to collect even an unsuspecting man’s legs from under him and heave him over into an abyss. Fiona might have done it, but not Priscilla.’
‘Do you think she saw it done?’
‘I shall not answer that. People have now lost any of the faith in psychologists they may ever have had. I think I shall take up stamp-collecting.’
‘But what about young Priscilla?’
‘Fiona insisted that she should open her heart. Priscilla, having given one version of the way in which she spent the weekend of Professor Veryan’s death, then changed it for a much less credible one and this, it appears, has lain heavily upon her conscience. She has had nightmares and has woken Fiona up more than once.’
‘But we know that poor little rabbit couldn’t have killed a six-foot man, not even a string-bean like Veryan.’
‘True, but we have to make allowance for nerves, imagination and a guilty conscience.’
‘A guilty conscience?’
‘Because she had told lies to the police.’
‘Oh, I see, but surely she realised that she was only in the same boat as everybody else? The whole boiling of them chopped and changed their alibis as soon as they knew the police suspected murder. They’ve all told lies.’
‘True, but perhaps their consciences are not so tender as hers or their dread of the police not so great.’
‘Do you really think she knows anything about Veryan’s death? Her reconstruction of it can’t be all imagination, can it?’
‘Oh, I think so. She has chosen an explanation of how murder could have been committed, but by a method which, as I think we are agreed, she herself could not have used.’
‘So what method did she use?’
‘You are leaping to conclusions. However, I myself will leap to one. I think Priscilla spent a domestic and blameless weekend and was no nearer Holdy Castle than her friends’ farm on the night of Veryan’s death, and that Mowbray knows it.’
This conclusion was justified. On the Sunday night Priscilla had been driven to Fiona’s house by one of her friends, on the pretext of getting a lift back to the castle with Fiona. But, as there seemed to be no lights on in the house, Priscilla had returned to the car, and on the Monday morning her friends had found a note to say that she would not wait for breakfast and had borrowed the wife’s bicycle to get back to Castle Holdy and rendezvous with Fiona.
‘But she didn’t leave the farm until six on the Monday morning, ma’am,’ said Mowbray. ‘The cowman saw her go. I reckon we can leave her out of our calculations.’
15
A Body in the Woods
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But why on earth didn’t the little silly stick to the truth she told in the first place? Why go to the lengths of inventing a weekend in London and getting drunk and joining a political march and all that rubbish?’ asked Laura, reverting to the subject some time later.
‘Oh, as it states in the hymn, because of “the very wounds that shame would hide”. She has a great admiration for Dr Susannah and was beside herself to think of Fiona and the beloved object alone together for the weekend.’
‘So you got her to tell you why she went to the house – which is, after all, further from Castle Holdy than her friends’ farm – on that Sunday night?’
‘Oh, no. I told her and then gave her the best advice I could.’
‘Which was? – not that I’m trying to break the bond of secrecy between doctor and patient.’
‘There is nothing secret about it. I told her that she should continue to write the obsession out of her system. She had shown me some poems. I commended them and suggested that the remedy is in her own hands. She replied that she saw herself as a most ineffective person, so I pointed out that, whereas a grand passion seldom lasts a lifetime, poetry can be immortal.’
‘Is hers really any good?’
‘She thinks it is and, at present, that is all that matters. The real wish of Priscilla’s heart is not to captivate Dr Susannah, but to see herself as the author of a slim volume. I encouraged her and promised to put her in touch with some helpful people when she has assembled an appropriate array of stanzas.’
‘Does she really stand any chance of publication?’
‘Oh, I have seen worse verses than hers in print. She is not afraid to experiment and, although at present it is not difficult to see whence she derives her images and ideas, she will find her own voice in time and I think she will have something pertinent to say. She has a poem which she calls ‘Castle Holdy’. It shows a mature grasp of her own present state of mind. It goes:
‘When all our defences were down, the bastions abandoned and broken;
When from shattered portcullis the word – the word of surrender – was spoken,
Then, throwing away his long sword, the emblem of battle and danger,
There stepped from the ranks of the foe a courteous and soft-spoken stranger.
He asked neither captives nor gold; he set no proud carillons pealing;
He gave us the choice of two gifts and cunningly offered them, kneeling.
One was for peace, one for love, and easy it was to confuse them.
His gifts were two-edged as his sword – but we chose, for we dared not refuse them.
‘Anybody capable at Priscilla’s age of analysing her own emotions as successfully as that is not entirely negligible.’
‘You sat down and memorised the thing?’
‘I read it twice. A combination of rhyme and rhythm, when both are conceived on simple lines, is readily assimilated. But to our more immediate concerns.’
‘That phone call just now from Mowbray? He wouldn’t say anything when I took it. He just asked me to put you on if you were available. Is there something he wants us to do?’
‘Not at present. There is no reason why I should not tell you what was said. It was only that he wanted me to receive the news direct from him. It will all be public property by this evening.’
‘That must mean he has taken a step forward in the enquiry, I suppose.’
‘He does not appear to think so.’
‘Oh? Not a setback, I hope?’
‘He has received a report of a body found in the woods on the Holdy Castle estate.’
‘Any connection with that motorbike and sidecar?’
‘He has yet to get the body identified. He would not say more over the telephone.’
‘Bonamy and Tom did start something when they opted to dig for buried treasure, didn’t they? What’s the betting that this woodland corpse is that of one of the missing workmen?’
‘That is a certainty, I fear.’
This proved to be the case. At the inquest the body was identified formally as that of Stickle. Humus had been heaped over the corpse, but there had been no attempt at a more permanent burial. According to the forensic experts, the man had been dead since the time which coincided, more or less, with the vandalism at the castle.