‘That is the first time I have heard the hill named.’
‘Oh, I believe it was the scene of a battle during the Civil War. I don’t think it is marked on the Ordnance map, except in Gothic lettering as an ancient monument.’
‘The people who might be able to tell us definitely whether Sir Bathy went to the inn that night are the very people whom the police are trying to trace, the previous lessee of the inn and his wife and servants.’
‘I can’t think why the police did not question them before they left the place. My husband died more than five days before they left the inn to go on holiday.’
‘Leaving a message to say that they did not propose to return. That was a little strange, to say the least of it. But the police did question them, you know.’
‘You think they had guilty knowledge of my husband’s death?’
‘Oh, I would not be prepared to go so far as that, but, in a baffling case such as this one, the police are naturally interested in anything which strikes a false note.’
‘How do you mean – a false note?’
‘My great-niece stayed there on Mayering Eve, you know. There was no suggestion then that the couple had any intention of giving up their tenancy.’
‘Well, they would hardly have confided in a stranger, especially a young woman.’
‘The lessee and his wife might not, but I have a feeling that the maidservant, who seems to have been a very simple country girl, would have let something slip. After all, there was her employment to be considered. I cannot believe that Shurrock and his wife took Sukie, Clytie and Bob with them when they went on holiday, (and certainly not if they never intended to return to the village), yet the police have combed the neighbourhood in vain for them. Sukie has no relatives in the district. She lived in at the More to Come, so I suppose it is possible that she went with the Shurrocks, particularly as it seems to be rumoured in the village that she was Shurrock’s mistress, but Clytie, no doubt, would have preferred to remain in service in the village where she was known. According to police enquiries, Bob’s friends take a lighter and more philosophical view, but even they admit that they would have expected the young man at least to have dropped a hint if he had made up his mind to leave the village and seek his fortune elsewhere.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Boys can be very inconsiderate. The first I knew of Jeremy’s going off to India was when he announced it quite casually at breakfast one morning, a week before his departure. I was just as much surprised when he came home again. As for the young servant girl you mentioned, well, girls don’t always confide in their parents, do they?’
‘Clytie, I believe, is an orphan. Well, now, we have established that Sir Bathy left this house soon after dinner to go for his usual evening stroll. You have asserted (and this has been confirmed by your servants) that it was a stroll….’
‘By which you mean that he did not take the car…’
‘That is what I mean.’
‘He was fond of walking, and it is not so very far from here to the More to Come.’
‘You still think that that is where he went, but we can find no evidence of it, as I say. If he did not go there, you can suggest nowhere else which might have been his objective? You have had no second thoughts about that?’
‘None. There are half-a-dozen walks he might have taken or, of course, he need not have left the grounds at all.’
‘It is the first time you have suggested that.’
‘Is it? I don’t know why that should be. Our park is not extensive, as such holdings go, but one could easily take an evening stroll in it without ever going outside the gates.’
‘That is true. Now it is established that this evening stroll took place on the Saturday.’
‘Yes, on the Saturday. His body – we found him on Sunday morning.’
‘Yes, you sent out a search party because Sir Bathy had not appeared at breakfast and it was clear that he had not spent the night in the house. Then you sent a man for the doctor but you telephoned the police. Did you realise at once that your husband had been murdered?’
For the first time since Dame Beatrice had met her, Lady Bitton-Bittadon flushed with annoyance, and her dislike of her questioner was more obvious than ever.
‘Dame Beatrice,’ she said flatly, ‘I have been questioned by you and by the police until I am almost distracted. I deeply resent the implication I detect in your last remark. After all that I have been through at your hands, nothing has come out which will help in finding my husband’s murderer, and I don’t believe anything will. As to what I did or did not do when I had the shock of seeing my husband’s body, that cannot, surely, have any significance now.’
‘You are right, I am sure, in saying so, but tell me, Lady Bitton-Bittadon, what you know of this organisation (if such it can be called) which dresses up its members as the signs of the zodiac.’
‘The signs of the zodiac? I know almost nothing about them. I have heard of such an organisation, of course, and, as you are aware, if I suspect anybody of causing my husband’s death, it is they.’
‘May I ask the date of your husband’s birth? – not in years, but the day and the month.’
Lady Bitton-Bittadon looked surprised and, Dame Beatrice thought, perturbed.
‘His birthday? It was on the twenty-third of April,’ she said. ‘But why do you ask?’
‘Not out of mere curiosity, I assure you. When did your son arrive home from India?’
‘Oh, Jeremy came back on the third of May. He was too late for his father’s funeral, of course, but that
