‘You mean that they may have thrown in their lot with the Shurrocks and gone off with them? I still find that hard to believe.’
‘Well, no doubt they’d found an anchorage with the Shurrocks, ma’am.’
‘I could easily believe that of the two women, but I am not nearly so certain that it is true of Bob. A rolling stone usually finds it almost impossible to settle down for long at a time, or to make permanent attachments. You appear to have made very thorough enquiries, though, Superintendent.’
‘Oh, we do our homework, ma’am, you know. It’s what we’re paid for. Nothing spectacular; just the constant dropping that wears away the stone, that’s what most police-work is like.’
‘The next move,’ said Callon, ‘is to the post-office to interview those two women and find out what they can tell us – if anything – about the message which was sent to India to announce Sir Bathy’s death before he was actually murdered, but that will wait until the morning. There is no need to worry the good ladies by calling there tonight. The shop will be shut and by this time they may even have gone to bed. We’ll say good night to you, then, Dame Beatrice and we’ll meet you at the post-office at ten tomorrow morning, if that will be a convenient time for you. We’d like to have you with us when we talk to the two ladies. For one thing, you’ll be able to give them the psychological once-over and, for another, you’ll inspire confidence and so, in front of you, they may speak more freely than they might to the two of us. Maiden ladies of that age in a place like this are apt to be suspicious of men, I’m afraid, and terrified, anyway, of being mixed up with the police.’
Dame Beatrice promised to meet the two police officers at the appointed time, saw them off from the inn and then went up to the room which she had taken over, as it happened, from Fenella, although she did not know this when it was allotted to her. She went to the window and studied the contours of the hill-fort. The time was a quarter to nine and the sun was beginning to set, but the sky was clear and the hill stood out, bold, black and menacing, against the greenish heavens.
It was a thought-provoking scene and a thought-provoking hour, and the more she thought, as she stood at the window, the more extraordinary it seemed to her that the communal grave of the Bitton-Bittadons should have been opened yet again.
Ever since she had first met them she had not been predisposed in favour of the new baronet or of Lady Bitton-Bittadon. For one thing, their mutual antagonism was embarrassing, and not only because it made meal-times almost unbearable. She felt that it was a disguise for other emotions and might be a cloak for a very different kind of relationship from the one they were attempting to display.
Apart from this, she was deeply suspicious of the meekness with which Lady Bitton-Bittadon had accepted the surprising (surely?) determination of the police to introduce a psychiatrist into the manor house ménage. If there had been nothing to conceal, would not Lady Bitton-Bittadon have regarded the presence of the psychiatric adviser to the Home Office as an affront and a most undesirable encumbrance? Had Lady Bitton-Bittadon so much to fear from the police that she was ready to allow them to ride rough-shod over her rather than offend them or appear to want to interfere in their plans for discovering her husband’s murderer? Her invitation and her welcome had been too effusive to be genuine, Dame Beatrice felt.
Cogitating thus, while the evening darkened and the hill-fort became nothing more than a silhouette against the evening sky, Dame Beatrice decided that a visit to the open tomb might resolve some of her doubts. On each of the occasions on which it had been left open during the night, something mysterious had happened, and with the disappearance of the skeletons from the crypt it was possible, she thought, that some measure of history might repeat itself.
She put on a coat, transferred her torch to one of the pockets and returned to the church. The lych-gate, she discovered, was locked, but a perambulation around the outside of the churchyard brought her to a small iron gate which opened on to a narrow path so overgrown with grass and weeds that in the fast-fading light it was almost indistinguishable. Dame Beatrice pushed the gate open with some difficulty and made her way to what proved to be the north side of the church.
The north door had no porch in which she could take shelter and remain hidden, and this was a disadvantage, as from the doorway she could just obtain a glimpse of the crane and its appurtenances, but fortunately there was a tall marble angel presiding over a grave near at hand. She took up a position behind it and shone her torch on to her watch. There was nothing to suggest that the tomb of the Bitton-Bittadons would be visited again that night, but, as there was no doubt that advantage had been taken of its previous opening, she decided to wait and hope.
She
