‘Fortunately we’ve got a man in Edinburgh whom the Scottish hotels are asked to contact if anything untoward happens. He ’phoned me this morning to tell me what steps he had taken.’
‘So you are prepared for emergencies?’
‘It is in case of a road accident or the driver or one of the passengers being taken ill. Well, the Edinburgh chap got the Scottish Tourist Board on the job and they sent a coach to collect our passengers and take them to their hotel in Perth. Meanwhile we shall have to take another driver up by car to the hotel at Saighdearan to collect our own coach, drive it to Perth and bring our passengers home. There’s been no more sign of Knight than there was of the other two drivers and we’re particularly anxious about him because he had been on sick leave, as I said, for some time, and only came back to take this Scottish tour out of loyalty to us because he knew how short-handed we were after losing Noone and Daigh.’
‘So we go to Scotland,’ said Laura, pleased.
‘After we have visited Dantwylch again,’ amended Dame Beatrice.
The Cathedral Close at Dantwylch was walled around like a city and much of the stone walls was still standing. Originally there had been four fortified entrance-gates, for the mediaeval bishops either mistrusted or did not rely upon the hill-top castle which had been built to protect them. The gatehouse to the palace itself, which Laura had found walled off from the ruined chapel, had been an extra defence, but not the only one.
The way by which visitors now approached the Cathedral and the ruins had been one of the original ways down into the dip in the hills where the buildings were situated, but the path had lost its gatehouse and was now no more than a gap in the walls from which the public descended, by means of a long flight of steps and a steep slope, to reach the West Door of the Cathedral.
Opposite the West Door a further path ended in the narrow bridge crossed by Laura and Dame Beatrice on their previous visit, and beyond the bridge a rougher path led to the gatehouse.
Dame Beatrice attached little importance to the police inspection of its roof. Had some of the former entrances to the palace courtyard been open to the public, she might have had hopes of its gatehouse, but, except for one which led only to the archdeacon’s house, which was almost on the perimeter of the Cathedral Close, there was no entrance wide enough to take a car or a motor-coach or anything else in which a body could have been transported unseen.
The gatehouse which gave access to the archdeacon’s lodging was in poor repair, but was still standing and was only about twenty yards from the town highway. Thus it was a likelier hiding-place than the archbishop’s ruins. However, it offered no admission to the public and was firmly labelled PRIVATE.
‘I imagine that the archdeacon would be glad to have a body removed from the top of his gatehouse if, indeed, a body is there,’ said Dame Beatrice, gazing from the approach road and through the archdeacon’s iron gates at the crude and partly ruinous little structure.
‘No doubt, lady
‘The gatehouse which is still standing at the entrance to the ruins of the bishop’s palace?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Yes, but it would have been a dangerous and difficult proceeding to carry a body so great a distance from the road. It is not as though a vehicle could have been used.’
‘All those steps, you mean. True that is, then, but we will take a look, all the same, just to make sure. My men will be along with an aluminium ladder.’
His men trundled the extending ladder on a two-wheeled truck down the public steps and the subsequent incline and then across the bridge which spanned the stream. There was nobody about, as it happened, to see the sergeant climb to the top of the gatehouse. To nobody’s surprise, his activities had no result.
‘Never mind, boyo,’ said the inspector. ‘You did your best. Thorough we are, see?’
‘All right with the archdeacon, then?’ asked the sergeant, adding a belated ‘sir’ as an afterthought.
‘All right with the archdeacon, boyo,’ the inspector responded, ‘though a surprise for him, of course, to think of a body on his property, perhaps. Nothing here, then? No surprise about that. We will now take the short cut past the Cathedral, look you, and follow the archdeacon’s private little path up the hill. The entrance to the old tower – nearly in ruins it is, but strong enough still, I am told – is on the side away from the town, on the inside of the gateway.’
With the two constables pushing the light trolley with the ladder and the cortege reinforced by Laura, who had been taking another look at the remains of the bishop’s palace, they made their way to their objective.
The archdeacon’s gatehouse was an ugly, clumsy little building consisting of one octagonal and one round tower bridged by what had been the watchman’s room. A low, narrow doorway in the octagonal tower proved to be the only obvious means of entrance, but the door itself was locked. The inspector produced the key which had been supplied at the archdeacon’s residence. It was a heavy iron affair about seven inches long.
‘I think, if you don’t mind,’ the inspector said, as he inserted it, ‘I will take first look, just in case, you know. Do not wish to upset ladies by seeing dead men, do we, then?’
The others waited below while he mounted a stair so narrow that he could scarcely thrust his broad shoulders between the walls. They could hear him stumbling on the newel treads. Even from where they stood they were aware of a horrible, sweetish odour which came wafting down into the open air. Automatically they moved back from the doorway.
The inspector came down immediately, blew his nose vigorously and then gulped in some deep breaths of the mild, fresh air which came in over Ramsay Sound.
‘He is there, oh, yes, indeed,’ he said. He stepped well back from the tower and then, accompanied by Dame Beatrice, who was followed by Laura, he went out to the archdeacon’s gate to look up at the building from the side which faced the approach-road from the town.
The octagonal tower had windows on three of its faces. These had been boarded up. The porter’s room, which formed the connection between it and the lesser round tower, also had windows, but only one of these was obscured. The other was open to the air and was not more than ten feet from the ground.
The inspector called to his sergeant and pointed to the aperture.
‘Bring the ladder,’ he said. ‘We shall need to carry him down through the window. Did you bring a sheet with
