Death of a Burrowing Mole

Tom, we slept in the tent or in the car and we finished up on the Sunday night in your paddock. We went for breakfast at the William Rufus in your village and landed ourselves on you for lunch.’

‘And that is still your story?’

‘That is still my story, Dame Beatrice.’

‘Very well. Ask Miss Yateley to come in.’

Priscilla, given the chair which Bonamy had vacated, took off her spectacles, blinked nervously at Dame Beatrice, put them on again and said, ‘All right, I’ll come clean. No, I didn’t go to my friends. I went to London.’

‘Yes? Why was that?’

‘I wanted some fun.’

‘Did you get it?’

‘No.’

‘Did you go with Miss Broadmayne?’

‘No. I went alone by train on the Friday evening. I got beastly drunk on Saturday evening and spent the night in the waiting-room at the station. I came back on the first train on Monday morning.’

‘Sunday is the important day, so far as this enquiry is concerned.’

‘I had Sunday breakfast in the station restaurant and then I joined a march. Some marchers took me home with them and we all spent the night on the floor of the house where they were squatting.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Somewhere in Battersea, I think. I crept out at first light on Monday and caught a workmen’s bus to Paddington and Fiona was waiting for me with Tom’s car at this end, so we came back to the caravan together, as we had arranged.’

‘I see. What made you decide to change your story?’

‘I didn’t want to embarrass my friends at the farm. They would either have had to tell lies for me or to have given away the fact that I did not visit them. When we first knew of Professor Veryan’s death it never occurred to any of us that one of our party might be blamed for it, so I suppose we all told the police what we ought to have been doing instead of what we actually did do. We had no idea that our statements would be challenged, especially by anybody like you, but now I expect the truth will come out because we are all scared.’

‘Not always a state of mind in which truth prevails. Thank you, Miss Yateley. Please ask for Mrs Saltergate.’

Lilian came straight to the point.

‘I was on the top of the keep with Malpas from about ten o’clock until eleven-thirty,’ she said. ‘When I left him up there he was alive and well.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘No, I cannot, but I assure you it was so.’

‘Are you interested in astronomy?’

‘To the extent that every intelligent person is interested in it. After all, one lives in the Space Age.’

‘Did the suggestion that you should join him come from Professor Veryan or yourself?’

‘From me, of course, prompted by Edward. Edward wanted an hour in which to survey the trench without interruption.’

‘So you were a decoy.’

‘Yes, and a peace-offering after the quarrel. Anyhow, I managed to find a number of stars and planets which necessitated Malpas’s having to look away from the outer bailey and answer my questions.’

‘Could your husband carry out a survey in the dark?’

‘Certainly not. He had two storm lanterns on iron rods which could be fixed in the ground and a very powerful electric torch. The conditions were not ideal, but at least he had uninterrupted access to the excavation without Malpas’s being down there.’

‘Can you prove that you left the keep at approximately eleven-thirty?’

‘I think so. We had told the hotel porter that we should be back late, but before midnight, and he was there, ready to lock up, when we went in. I am sure he will remember.’

Tom came next.

‘They don’t let us communicate with the people you’ve spoken to,’ he said, ‘so I have no idea what Bonamy has said. Has he displayed gentlemanly feelings?’

‘I suppose that, as the unusual occupants were not there, you two slept in the caravan on that Sunday night.’

‘Oh, Lord! So Bonamy has let the cat out of the bag!’

‘No, he told me nothing. Foolish of him and due only, I fancy, to the misplaced sense of chivalry you have queried. Who were the two girls?’

‘If he didn’t tell you, I don’t understand how you know.’

‘Perhaps because, like Campbell of Kilmhor, I have a large experience of life, and that means of human nature. I