Death of a Burrowing Mole

tell him that.’

‘From what I know of Miss Broadmayne – not very much, I admit – I find it a little strange that she should have laid herself open to being called harsh names by Miss Yateley.’

‘I fancy Miss Broadmayne is anxious to be on the right side of the law as represented by me, ma’am. After we’d left that gamekeeper Goole, I gave the young lady a solemn warning that, if Goole had not blotted his copybook by what amounted to kidnapping her and locking her up, she could have found herself in court on a charge of poaching. She was cavorting about all among his pheasants, and at night, too.’

‘Had she blacked her face? I believe that aggravates the offence, does it not?’

Mowbray laughed.

‘What she blacked was Goole’s eye,’ he said. ‘I’m having another word with him later on.’

Laura and Fiona swam; Dame Beatrice and Priscilla sat in deckchairs on the beach at Holdy Bay.

‘Are you really Bonamy’s godmother?’ asked Priscilla.

‘Well, I was present at his baptism,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Later on, I was able to delegate my responsibilities to his schoolmasters. Those long-suffering men made certain that he could get through the Catechism and recite the Ten Commandments and, in due course, they brought him before the bishop for Confirmation.’

‘People accept an awful responsibility when they take it upon themselves to promise for the baby that he will renounce the devil and all his works. I suppose somebody promised it in my name when I was christened, but I don’t think it has worked out very well,’ said Priscilla.

‘You mean you have murdered, stolen, lied in court and committed adultery?’

Priscilla said, ‘You ought to have been a priest. They always make sin sound so silly. No, I haven’t done those things – I haven’t enough courage – but I haven’t escaped the sin of covetousness.’

‘The sin which is apt to lead to all the others. I wonder why it is relegated to tenth place? It almost comes as an afterthought, one feels.’

‘Did you get what you expected?’ asked Laura when, having given the two girls tea, she and Dame Beatrice had watched them drive away from Holdy Bay to return to the cottage.

‘Priscilla began with one confession and ended with another. Neither helps to advance the enquiry into Professor Veryan’s death, so far as I can see. She confesses that she did not spend that weekend in London, but with her farmhouse friends, as she had arranged to do. Mr Mowbray, I fancy, will have no difficulty in confirming this.’

‘It’s the story she told at the beginning and then she changed it to this trip to London and all the balderdash she invented to bolster up the story. I suppose she, like the rest of them, got scared when the inquest was adjourned. What was the confession at the end, and what came between the two?’

‘She repeated an account she had given previously to young Fiona—’

‘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?’