‘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
‘I knows as I goes in fear of me life, that’s what I knows.’
‘Why? Who would want to take
‘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
‘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.’
‘Do you think he would have changed his will in favour of Susannah Lochlure if he had lived?’
‘We have no evidence that he intended anything of the kind.’
‘Of course the magistrates will never commit Tynant for trial. Mowbray hasn’t a thing against him except his slightly incredible alibi. He
‘Because the only way we shall find out how Veryan came by his death is by getting a confession from the person most concerned in it.’
‘And why did you tell Mowbray not to go up to the manor house and tackle that man whom Goole seems so scared of?’
