Death of a Burrowing Mole

‘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.

‘So,’ Bonamy’s letter went on, ‘although I suppose this gamekeeper Goole could have gone to the keep and shoved Veryan off the top of it while Fiona was locked in the shed, there is no proof that he knew anything about the work being done at the castle, or that Veryan was an amateur astronomer – are there professional ones? – or, in fact, that he and Veryan had ever set eyes on one another. It’s true that Veryan had been up to the house to argue his case against Saltergate, but that had nothing to do with the gamekeeper who, hereafter, will be ignored, I’m sure, by the police. Well, I had better get to the point…’

‘I guess he better had,’ commented Laura, when, having been handed the letter, she had read the first scribbled pages.

‘The point is this,’ Bonamy had continued. ‘Last night, while we were hobnobbing in the cottage with the two girls, somebody or bodies must have been playing merry hell with Tynant’s trenches. Of course, with our removal from the keep and the caravan gone from the verge below the gatehouse, the place is a free-for-all once we’ve stopped work at lunchtime, for nobody goes back in the afternoons because of the hard work and the heat. Tom and I pick up Virginia and Sarah; Fiona and Priscilla go off in Tom’s car and find a quiet beach for sunbathing and a swim; Tynant, I have no doubt, is still pursuing Susannah; and I rather imagine that the Saltergates spend a lazy afternoon on the flat roof of the Horse and Cart because an awning has been erected, so they would be in the shade.

‘Well, when we arrived with Tynant and Susannah after breakfast – we’ve given up our early morning search for the treasure; three wells have been located and cleared, but only to a depth of about a couple of feet, which is no good to Tom and me, for, without proper equipment, we can see no way of excavating them further – where was I? Oh, yes! The devastation was immediately obvious. The village yobs had been playing a game of Up, Guards, and at ’em, I should think, and the fun has ended in sheer bloodyminded destruction.’

‘Typical of the modern young,’ said Laura, reading the last few words aloud.

‘Typical of some of them,’ amended Dame Beatrice. ‘As Mowbray telephoned to tell us two workmen are missing, I think I would like to go along and visit the scene of this devastation. I wonder whether it ties up with something the boys told us about a trench being unlawfully deepened?’

‘I’m all for it, but what is the object of the exercise?’

‘I think there must be a rumour current in the village that somewhere in the castle grounds treasure has been buried.’

‘So you don’t think there has been just plain blind vandalism?’

‘It is only a suggestion that there may have been method in the seeming madness. I have an open mind.’

‘Slightly biased by what you know of human nature and its go-get instinct, though. Oh, I still haven’t finished reading Bonamy’s letter.’

‘The damage to the site is pretty considerable,’ Bonamy had continued. ‘Everybody is certain that it is the work of village hooligans, although I’m bound to say that, although we’ve now been on the spot for some time, we have