‘Because he would get nothing from the man and his master except stout denial. It would only be necessary for the master to back up the man, and Mowbray’s visit to them would be profitless. What he must do is to keep a nightly watch on the castle ruins, as I have suggested to him.’
‘Why? Do you expect the murderer to return to the scene of the crime? I thought you said that was an old- wives’ tale.’
‘Not in this case, I think. There is no doubt that Goole has guilty knowledge of some sort. Now that he is in custody and will be under pressure to tell what he knows, the onus is on the murderer to remove Stour’s body from the ditch where, so far as he knows, it still lies buried. With any good fortune, Mowbray should be able to catch the man when he comes along to dig it up with the expectation of transferring it to a safer place, a place unknown to Goole.’
‘It’s a long shot, though, isn’t it?’
‘If it falls short, Mowbray can then go up to the manor house and confront master and man. Meanwhile, do you remember getting out of the car on our first visit to the castle and finding me a spray of hazel nuts and leaves? Hie you thither again and bring back, if you can find one, a forked hazel twig for a divining rod. There was a time when I had some gift for rhabdomancy, as I claimed.’
Laura was about to depart on this errand when Mowbray called. He looked worried and dissatisfied.
‘Whether Tynant walked the roads or whether he took the short-cut across country hardly seems to matter, because we shall never prove which way he chose to come. My guess still is that he pushed Veryan off the tower and that his pretended anxiety about him, when the professor didn’t come down to breakfast and had not slept in his bed, was nothing more than an excuse to get along to the castle and wipe his own fingerprints off the telescope. What do you say to that, Dame Beatrice? Can you fault it?’
‘I think Mr Tynant was genuinely anxious about Professor Veryan’s safety. Everybody knew how dangerous the top of that tower was. I think the first thing Tynant found was the telescope. I think he picked it up from where it lay on the ground and then I think he saw Veryan’s body lying on that heap of stones. He went over to it, ascertained that Veryan was dead and then panicked. He had every reason to know how much the death of his senior colleague would benefit him, and he knew also that the professor had been casting a more than fatherly eye on Dr Lochlure. Then, because of his unnecessarily quixotic action in leaving Dr Lochlure to come back alone to the caravan, he was left without an alibi from midnight onwards and to remove his fingerprints from the telescope seemed to him the logical thing to do.’
‘But the fact that he and Dr Lochlure were both in his car when it broke down, ma’am, proves that, in the first place, he had had no intention of letting her come back alone.’
‘Ah, but he expected to return her to the caravan when, if you remember, he fully believed it to be empty because of the weekend leave which the caravan party and the others had taken. To return her there under cover of the night could be done secretly. To bring her back on the Monday morning when, for all he knew, the two girls would have returned, was a different matter entirely. He seems to hold old-fashioned views about the necessity to protect a lady’s good name.’
‘But Miss Fiona knew they were together, ma’am. She knew that Dr Lochlure had telephoned Tynant to come and take her away from Fiona’s home.’
‘Yes, and there was strong presumptive evidence that Dr Lochlure and Tynant spent the weekend together. I allow that. However, there would be no proof so long as Fiona was able to find Dr Lochlure in the caravan and alone on the Monday morning. It would not be difficult for Dr Lochlure to cook up a story about how she had spent the weekend, had she felt any inclination to offer explanations. I do not think she would have bothered, or that either Fiona or Priscilla would have been ill-natured enough to gossip.’
‘Tynant and Dr Lochlure would have been in for a bit of a shock if they
‘And realised that he had imposed his own fingerprints on the telescope. There was no secret about his chance to step into Veryan’s shoes at the university, nor about the amount of Veryan’s money which would be freed for archaeological research if the professor died without changing his will.’
‘Then, if he didn’t push Veryan off the tower, who, in your opinion, did, ma’am?’
‘Well, there is somebody who ought to be allowed to clear herself, since she almost, but not quite, confessed earlier on that she—’
‘Not Mrs Saltergate, that nice motherly lady?’
‘She had her husband’s interests very much at heart, and there is no doubt that Veryan was spitefully determined to undermine Saltergate’s walls.’
‘Spitefully, ma’am?’
‘Oh, yes. From the beginning, there was no reason whatever to suppose that there would still be traces of a Bronze Age burial under one of those flanking-towers. A grave in such a place would have been utterly destroyed centuries ago. Veryan was incensed because Saltergate had been given equal permission with himself to work at the castle, that is all.’
‘These scholars, ma’am!’
‘Some are giants, others are the pettiest of men, but that is a summary of character, not of attainment.’
‘But the two young fellows also seem to have been given permission to root about in the castle grounds, yet neither of the other parties seems to have had any hard feelings towards them.’
‘Ah, but they had been sensible enough to disarm both the major parties by helping with the reconstruction and also with the digging.’
‘But Mrs Saltergate? I can’t believe it, Dame Beatrice!’
‘She will come forward, I am sure, now that you have arrested Tynant. I will also tell you the story
‘Yes, but she said they went back to the hotel at about eleven-thirty and I’ve checked that. According to the
