‘Good idea,’ said the superintendent and, Dame Beatrice concurring, the two policemen arrived at the inn at seven (Dame Beatrice having preceded them) and confronted an obviously ill-at-ease receptionist with the news that this was a formal visit.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said in a flustered tone. ‘I must see what my husband has to say.’
‘Please go and get him.’
‘He is in the dining-room. He does the wines, you know.’
‘He would be most unwise to attempt to frustrate the police in the performance of their duties,’ said Callon, in his most official tones.
‘She’ll tip him off,’ said the superintendent, when she had left them.
‘There’s nothing to tip him off about at present,’ said Callon, ‘unless they’ve moved those skeletons, and that wouldn’t be an illegal act, so far as I know.’
The landlord did not keep them waiting.
‘I’ve left the wife to look after things in there,’ he said, jerking his head towards the dining-room door. ‘What can I do for you this time?’
‘We’d just like to take another look round, sir.’
‘I can’t think what you expect to find. You gave the place a thorough going-over the other times you came, and you can’t even prove that Sir Bathy spent the last evening of his life here, and, anyway, the wife and I and our staff weren’t even in charge of the place when he was killed. Frankly, I’m getting a bit cheesed off. These visits from you chaps are not going to do my trade much good, you know.’
‘So far, unless you have told them (which I think unlikely), there would be no need for your guests to know who we are or why we are here, sir,’ said Callon urbanely, ‘so if we may just go ahead….’
‘Oh, well, of course, I can’t stop you. You might take umbrage and then perhaps my licence wouldn’t get renewed,’ said the innkeeper, affecting jocularity. ‘I suppose this doesn’t mean you’re really on the track of something?’
‘Well, it might, and it might not,’ said Callon. ‘You might let us know when the dining-room is clear. We’d like to have another look at that, too. I’m hoping this will be our last visit, so we may as well get a complete picture and then the chances are that we won’t need to trouble you again.’
‘I surely hope that’s so.’
‘Have you many guests booked in here?’
‘There’s young Mr Pardieu from the school, who is keeping on the room his wife booked, although he only dines and doesn’t stay the night. He tells me we can expect her back when she’s finished the business which caused her to leave us in such a hurry. Then there’s a couple of commercials and two people who are sharing a room without, I fancy – you can usually spot them when you’ve been in this job a few years – without being married, but that’s no crime except in the view of their other partners, as you might say – and that’s the lot, except for an elderly lady who clocked in about an hour and a half ago and who signed the register as Mrs Lestrange Bradley.’
‘And are all these guests at present in the dining-room? As you say, you don’t want to start people wondering what we’re doing on the premises.’
‘Very thoughtful of you, Inspector,’ said the landlord, with a heartiness as false as his previous jocularity had been. ‘Just help yourselves. The chambermaid has gone home – she lives out – so there’ll be nobody about to get in your way. I’ll go back and relieve my wife in the dining-room and she’ll be here in the office if you need any help or information. I’ll be as glad as you to see the business all cleared up and the guilty party found. I believe the late squire was greatly liked and respected.’
‘Well,’ said Callon, when the manager had gone and his wife had not come back to the reception desk, ‘there goes a smooth worker, if ever I saw one. Let’s get cracking, sir, shall we? Dame Beatrice will have finished her dinner pretty soon, so if we start at the top of the house and work downwards, leaving the dining-room (which won’t tell us any more than the rest of the house will) until the very last, she’ll be able to join us by the time we’re ready to take a look at the cellar.’
Meanwhile, in the dining-room Dame Beatrice was sharing a table with Jack-in-the-Green.
‘To what are we indebted?’ he asked, when she had beckoned him over. ‘Did Fenella send you here? You know, of course, that she’s decamped and gone to stay with her relatives in Douston until the end of term?’
‘Oh, yes, I am aware of that. I think she is wise,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘Quite inadvertently, to begin with, she mixed herself up with those rather strange people who held a meeting here on the eve of May-Day, and then her own curiosity took her further. I do not think the people concerned would be very pleased if they knew the extent of her activities, and one is never sure of how much these secret societies – and I call this one of them – do contrive to find out about people they think they have reason to distrust. You know the company to which I refer, no doubt?’
‘Oh, yes, of course I do, but they’re not really a secret society, you know. It’s just a lot of hooey got up by the late Sir Bathy’s brother, the previous holder of the title.’
‘Really? How do you know that?’
‘I know because he wanted to make me a founder member.’
‘But I understood that he died eight years
