‘Not if Stickle and Stour were partners with the murderers and then, having served their turn, were inconveniences which had to be got out of the way.’
‘Out of whose way? You give me the impression that you could name names, ma’am.’
‘Laura was wrong,’ said Dame Beatrice reminiscently. ‘She said that, when the public was warned off the site because scientific work was in progress, the general opinion would be either that the scientists were prospecting for oil or that something to do with nuclear fission was being planned. The plain truth is, as I repeat, that the local people saw Saltergate’s clearing-up operations and Veryan’s trenches as a search for the Royalist treasure which was rumoured to be buried somewhere in the castle precincts. What else were people to think when, knowing the legend, they saw stone and other debris being removed, three wells uncovered and partly cleared, and a great gash of a trench being dug and pegs put in to indicate that further excavation was planned?’
‘You made the point before, yes, ma’am. So you still believe some mastermind saw a way of getting a lot of the digging-up done for him and tried to cash in as soon as the caravan and the two cars had moved away to the village and he knew the coast was clear. But what could he expect to accomplish in one night?’
‘I will give you my theory for what it’s worth and then you may or may not act on it. I see it this way: there have always been rumours that treasure had been hidden somewhere in the castle or its grounds. Nobody seems to have attempted to confirm them until now. The present owner either had not heard them or did not believe them and the villagers dared not test them on what was, after all, his property.
‘Then, after he had gone away on holiday and installed his cousin as caretaker, along came the architects and archaeologists, and the rumours took a fresh lease of life and became current not only in Holdy village, but in the neighbourhood round about. I don’t think they spread to any extent until the work was well under way and it became clear that neither an oil-rig nor a nuclear reactor was under contemplation, but, as the site began to be cleared, wells uncovered and the digging taking its ordered course, Stickle and Stour saw, as they thought, a golden chance of a rich reward for their labours.
‘Like their murderers, they had to wait upon events. These were precipitated by the removal of the caravan and the cars and the disappearance of the young men from the keep.’
‘Somebody made a big mistake when they left that bike and sidecar in those woods, ma’am. If Stour had really murdered Stickle, as we were meant to think, he’d have made his getaway on it. Mind you, though, I suppose he could have pickaxed Stickle if they’d had a row, and then got scuppered himself, but I don’t think it’s very likely. I think Stour was struck down because he’d seen his uncle Stickle murdered.’
‘I agree. Somebody dared not leave Stour alive.’
‘Well, because of the woods being used as a hiding-place, I’m going to have another go at Goole and see what he comes up with, though he’ll go on swearing he knows nothing about the motorcycle or the body in the woods.’
As it happened, there was no need for Mowbray to lean any further on Goole. The wretched man turned up at the Holdy Bay police station and implored to be taken into custody.
‘And if Mr Sandgate wants to bail me out,’ he said, ‘him knowin’ I’m as innocent as the day, well, I don’t want none of it. You lock me up good an‘ proper. That way I’ll be safe, which is more’n I’ll be if you leaves me on the loose.’
Taken to the interview room and given a seat at a table opposite Detective-Sergeant Harrow, he demanded to see Mowbray.
‘You tell me what you’ve come about and I’ll decide who you see and don’t see,’ said Harrow.
‘I’ve come about murder, that’s what I’ve come about, and, if Mr Mowbray don’t listen to me and lock me away, there’ll be another murder done and another body buried in them woods, and it’ll be mine, and so I’m tellin’ you.’
‘Well?’ said Mowbray, when Harrow had sent a constable to the Detective-Superintendent’s office. ‘Have you come with any useful information? I hope so, for your sake.’
‘As to that, I could not say, sir. All I knows is as I never put no bike and sidecar in my woods, and I never buried no bodies, sir.’
‘So why have you come here?’
‘To proclaim of my innocence, as is my democratic right, sir.’
‘If you’re innocent there is no need to proclaim it. What do you know?’
‘I knows as I goes in fear of me life, that’s what I knows.’
‘Why? Who would want to take your miserable life?’
‘Not knowin’, can’t say, but I be in mortal fear of that man Wicklow, up to the big ’ouse.’
‘Why?’
‘I suspicions of him, sir. It was him as got me mixed up in all this at the first of it.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Bein’ as he had drove Mr Sandgate a time or two to the castle to see ’ow the diggin’ was gettin’ on. I reckon as it were ’im what put that bike and sidecar in my woods to put suspicions on me, like, us never ’avin’ got along what you might call matey.’
‘Are you accusing Wicklow of murder?’
‘Oh, no, sir! Oh, dear me, no! If I knowed anything o’ that nature, sir, I would be in dead trouble for not a-tellin’ you, sir.’
‘Well, what are you supposed to be telling me now?’
‘Only as I knows nothink of no bodies nor of no motorbikes in my woods, sir.’
‘That’s as may be. Anyway, I’m going to charge and arrest you as an accessory after the fact. I don’t think you have the guts for murder, so that won’t come into it, but, if the judge finds you guilty as charged, you’ll get ten years, I shouldn’t wonder. You are not obliged to say anything when I charge you, but if you do…’
‘And did he?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when she heard Mowbray’s report.
‘Yes, indeed, ma’am. First he said, “Well, even if the judge do give me ten years – and I ain’t proved guilty yet – at least I’ll be alive at the end of ’em, and I’m much obliged to you, guv’nor, for lockin’ of me up. You done me a favour and now I’ll do you one. You get ’old of a dowser to go over them ruins.”
‘I told him three wells had been located already and there wasn’t likely to be a fourth.’
‘ “I knows all them old stories, for all I’m not a native of these parts”, he said, “and I knows as a dowser with the ’azel twig can find sommat bettern water. You take my tip, sir, and try a dowser with the ’azel rod.”
‘Well, I’ve been thanked occasionally, Dame Beatrice, for one thing and another, but I’ve never been thanked before for taking a man into custody and promising him ten years hard. I’m going to put a red ring round the date in my diary.’
‘And what about the dowser?’ asked Laura. ‘Are you going to try to get hold of one?’
‘Not me, Mrs Gavin. All poppycock, except they can sometimes find water. I make you a present of Goole’s idea for what it’s worth, which, in my opinion, is absolutely nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘Metal detectors have come under official disapproval but I myself used to manipulate a hazel twig.’
18
Lordly Dishes
« ^
We’re still left with the death of Professor Veryan,’ said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone together. ‘If Mrs Veryan couldn’t prove that she wasn’t even on dry land when her husband died, I think Mowbray would have arrested her.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, yes. She gains by the death.’
‘Not so much, apparently, as if he had remained alive. She cannot touch the capital and the interest, I understand, is less than the alimony she has been receiving.’