to it and watched it burn.
I went down to the basement and through the old kitchen to the lab. I had not entered it since early Wednesday morning, after returning from the Gratten, when Bill had come downstairs and found me making tea in the kitchen. The rows of jars and bottles, the monkey's head, the embryo kittens and the fungus plants held no menace for me now, nor had they done so since the first experiment. Now, with their magician gone, never to return, they had a wasted, almost a forlorn appearance, like puppets and props from a conjurer's bag of tricks. No ebony wand would bring these things to life, no cunning hand extract the juices, pick the bones and set them fermenting in some bubbling cauldron brew.
I took the jars which held various liquids and poured the contents down the sink. Then I washed the jars out and put them back on the shelf. They could have been used for preserving fruit or jam, for all anybody would ever know; there were no distinctive marks upon them — only labels which I stripped off and pocketed. Then I fetched an old sack which I remembered seeing in the boiler-house, and set about unscrewing the remaining jars and bottles that contained the embryos and the monkey's head. I put them all in the sack, having first poured down the sink the liquid that had preserved them, taking care that none of it touched my hands. I did the same with the various fungi, putting them also in the sack. Only two small bottles remained, bottle A, containing the remains of the drug I had been using myself to date, and bottle C, untouched. Bottle B I had sent to Magnus, and it was lying empty in my suitcase upstairs. I did not pour the contents of either down the sink. I put them in my pocket. Then I went to the door and listened. Mrs. Collins was moving about between the kitchen and the pantry — I could hear her radio going.
I swung the sack over my shoulder and locked the door of the lab. Then I went out through the back door and climbed up to the kitchen garden behind the stable block, and into the wood at the top of the grounds. I went to where the undergrowth was thickest, straggling laurels, rhododendrons that had not bloomed for years, broken branches of dead trees, brambles, nettles, the fallen leaves of successive autumn gales, and I took one of the dead branches and scraped a pit in the wet, dank earth and emptied the sack into it, smashing the monkey's head with a jagged stone so that it no longer bore any resemblance to a living thing, only fragments, only jelly, and the embryos slithered amongst the fragments, unrecognisable, like the stringy entrails flung to a seagull when a fish is gutted. I covered them, and the sack, with the rotting leaves of years, and the brown earth, and a heap of nettles, and the sentence came into my mind, 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust', and in a sense it was as if I were burying Magnus and his work as well. I went back into the house, through the basement, and up the little side-stairway to the front, thus avoiding Mrs. Collins, but she must have heard me entering the hall, for she called, 'Is that you, Mr. Young?'
'Yes,' I said.
'I looked for you everywhere — I couldn't find you. The Inspector from Liskeard was on the telephone.'
'I was in the garden,' I told her. 'I'll ring him back. I went upstairs to the dressing-room, and put bottles A and C in my suitcase along with the empty bottle B, locked it once again, put the key on my ring, washed, and went downstairs to the library. Then I put a call through to the police-station at Saint Austell.
'I'm sorry, Inspector,' I said, when they got him on the line. 'I was in the garden when you telephoned.'
'That's all right, Mr. Young,' he said. 'I thought you would like to know the news to date. Well, we've made some headway. It was a goods-train that caused the accident, that seems to be clearly established. It passed through Treverran tunnel, going up the line, at approximately ten minutes to ten. The driver saw no one near the line as he approached the tunnel, but these goods trains are sometimes of considerable length, and this one carried no guard in the rear, so that once the engine had entered the tunnel there would be no one to observe whether anybody came on to the line and was struck by one of the passing wagons.'
'No,' I said, 'no, I appreciate that. And you think this is what happened?'
'Well, Mr. Young, everything points to it. It would seem as though Professor Lane must have continued up the lane past Trenadlyn Farm, but before he got to the main road he turned off into a field they call Higher Gum, well above Treverran, and crossed it in a diagonal direction towards the railway. It is possible, by climbing through the wire and scrambling up a bank, to get on to the line, but anyone doing so could not have failed to notice the goods train. It was dark, of course, but there is a signal just outside the tunnel, and a goods train is far from silent, quite apart from the warning hoot of the diesel engine, which is routine procedure before entering the tunnel.' Yes, but six centuries ago there were no signals, no wire, no lines, no warning hoots sounding on the air…
'You mean', I said, 'that anyone would have to be blind or stone-deaf not to be aware of a train coming up that valley, even when it is some distance off?'
'Well yes, Mr. Young. Of course, it is possible to stand at the side of the line as the train goes by — there is plenty of room on either side of the double tracks — and it would seem that this was what Professor Lane did. We have found marks on the ground where he slipped, and up the bank where he dragged himself to the hut.'
I thought a moment, and then I said, 'Inspector, would it be possible for me to go and see the exact spot myself?'
'As a matter of fact, Mr. Young, it was what I was going to suggest, but I was not sure how you would feel about it. It could be helpful, not only to you but to us.'
'Then I'm ready whenever you are.'
'Shall we say eleven-thirty outside the police station at Tywardreath?'
It was already eleven. I was backing my car out of the garage when Vita came down the drive in the Buick with the boys. They scrambled out, clutching baskets filled with provisions.
'Where are you going?' asked Vita.
'The Inspector wants me to see the spot near the tunnel where they found Magnus,' I told her. 'They think they know what did it — a goods train that passed there around ten minutes to ten. The driver would already have been in the tunnel when Magnus walked, or slipped, into one of the rear wagons.'
'Run along,' said Vita sharply to both boys, who were hovering. 'Take those things up to Mrs. Collins,' and when they were out of earshot, 'But why should Magnus have been on the line? It makes no sense at all. You know what people are going to say? I heard it in one of the shops, and I felt dreadful… That it must have been suicide.'
'Complete and utter drivel,' I said.
'Well, I know… But when anyone is well known, and there is a disaster, there's always such talk. And scientists are supposed to be peculiar anyway, border-line cases.'
'So are we all,' I said, 'ex-publishers, policemen, the lot. Don't wait lunch — I don't know when I'll be back.'
The Inspector took me to the site he had described over the telephone on the lane above Treverran farm. On the way he told me that they had got in touch with the senior man on Magnus's staff who had been unable to throw any light on the disaster.
'He was very upset, naturally,' the Inspector went on. 'He knew Professor Lane was intending to spend the weekend with you, and was looking forward to it. He concurred with you in stating that the Professor was in perfect health and excellent spirits. Incidentally, he did not seem to be aware of his interest in historical sites, but agreed that it could undoubtedly be a private hobby. We took the Treesmill road out of Tywardreath and turned right at the Stonybridge lane, past Trenadlyn and Treverran, and drew up near the top of the lane, parking beside a gate leading into a field.
'What is difficult to understand', observed the Inspector, 'is why, if Treverran Farm was the place that interested Professor Lane, he did not call there, instead of walking across these fields some distance above the farm.'
I threw a quick glance around me. Treverran was to the left, above the valley but in a dip, with the railway running below it; and beyond the railway line itself the land sloped down again.
Centuries ago the contour of the land would have been the same, but a broad stream would have run through the valley below Treverran Farm, more than a stream, a river, which in high autumn spate would flood the low-lying ground before it entered the waters of Treesmill creek.
'Is there a stream there still?' I asked, pointing to the valley base.
'Still?' repeated the Inspector, puzzled. 'There is a ditch at the bottom of the hill, below the railway — you might call it a stream, rather sluggish — and the ground is marshy.
