Death of a Burrowing Mole

‘Ah, yes, of course.’

‘I have a feeling that you don’t altogether believe me.’

‘My dear Mr Tynant, how very perceptive you are!’

‘Why don’t you?’ He asked the question without heat, but in a detached, academic manner. ‘Surely, now that two real murders have been committed, we can write off poor Veryan’s death as the accident it undoubtedly was?’

‘You still have to account for one or two small matters.’

‘If you mean why didn’t I stay at Holdy Bay, as Susannah did, when my car broke down, I’ve already explained that. We thought it better not to come back together on the Monday morning. After all, she was supposed to have spent the weekend in Fiona Broadmayne’s home, not with me.’

‘So you walked all the way back from Holdy Bay and ended up exhausted at the Barbican—’

‘Much too late to have killed Veryan. I refer you to the medical evidence given at the inquest.’

‘My secretary tells me that Holdy Castle is surprisingly close to Holdy Bay as the crow flies.’

‘I’m not a crow. By road, the way I had to come, it’s all of twelve miles. My car broke down soon after eleven- thirty. I left it and escorted Susannah back to the hotel, then I went to the all-night garage to get them to tow the car to their repair shop and see to it first thing in the morning, then I foot-slogged it all the way back to the Barbican and sat there until the outdoor staff arrived and then I went in with them. The police checked that my car was at Holdy Bay all Sunday night and wasn’t returned to me until Monday afternoon, by which time Veryan had been dead for at least twelve hours and possibly longer.’

‘Yes, it is a good story, but there is something I ought to add to it. I agree that it is at least twelve miles by road—’

‘And even I, fit though I am, am not a marathon runner. I do not even manage four miles an hour on average over such a distance.’

‘I am a competent reader of Ordnance maps, Mr Tynant.’

‘Meaning what, Dame Beatrice?’

‘The railway line to Holdy Bay has not been in use for some years. By following the track for a couple of miles and then taking footpaths, the distance to be covered between Holdy Bay and Castle Holdy is less than five miles and the footpaths are well maintained for the benefit of holiday-makers. I think you could have managed to get back to the castle in time to push Professor Veryan off the tower before he had finished his star-gazing, and he would have been entirely unsuspicious of you. I also suggest that, when you had had a friendly little talk, he handed you the telescope and invited you to look at the night sky. It was your own prints that you wiped off, not those of Dr Lochlure, was it not?’

‘But you can’t prove any of this. Besides, why should I want to kill Veryan?’

‘There were two reasons, Mr Tynant, and both of us know both of them.’

‘We shall never get a conviction, ma’am,’ said Mowbray. ‘He’s quite willing to admit he wiped the telescope clean, but he’s sticking to the reason he first gave you. For his own sake he’s now willing to have Dr Lochlure’s name mentioned in court. Our problem is that nobody can say there was any outward sign of bad blood between him and Veryan and, even if there had been, the boot would have been on the other foot, from what he told me when I arrested him. He’s got a book due to be published which, he claims, demolishes some pet theories held by Professor Veryan.’

‘I doubt whether Professor Veryan knew of this book, but whether or not he did hardly matters now. As for the reason Tynant gave for cleaning the telescope, it was incredible to the point of being ridiculous. Nevertheless, he is not our man.’

‘But you agreed to the arrest, ma’am.’

‘Yes. The news of it may reassure the murderer of Stickle and Stour.’

‘Well, Dr Lochlure certainly wasn’t up on the tower on the night of Veryan’s death, ma’am. Naturally I re- checked at that Holdy Bay hotel when I’d heard what everybody had to say, and not only do they remember that Dr Lochlure came back there, but they had a false alarm of fire at half-past two in the morning and Dr Lochlure was there all right, calming an old lady who was trying to have hysterics.’

‘Mr Tynant will not be convicted and perhaps he will be of some use while he is in custody. One never knows. It was my reason, as I said, for his arrest.’

‘Of course there is still Saltergate to be considered, ma’am, I suppose. He’s the one, according to all I hear, that Veryan was having a fight with. We can’t altogether ignore that.’

‘It may, like Tynant’s arrest, prove to be a valuable red herring, I suppose.’

‘Meanwhile, there are two more murders to settle, ma’am. It seemed simple at first, when we found Stickle’s body in those woods, but now we know the fellow we thought must be the murderer has been murdered, too, it’s altered everything.

That destruction of the trenches no longer looks like what it seemed at first. Whoever killed Stour had to find somewhere to hide the body to make things look to us as at first they did look.’

‘That Stour had killed his uncle—’

‘And had done a bunk. I don’t see what else there was to think at the time. It seemed so obvious. Anyway, you didn’t lose any time in getting that ditch cleared.’

‘Going back to Mr Tynant for a moment, there was never any need for him to have cleaned the fingerprints off the telescope. It was the act of a man with a guilty conscience.’

‘Makes me wonder why he did it, though, let alone why he confessed to it. Anyway, I had to arrest him.’

‘He did it in a panic. He confessed to it because he now realises, as we do, that he need not have done it at all. There was every chance that he had handled the telescope under completely innocent circumstances and so left his fingerprints on it.’