It was thirty miles to Cridley and the police car covered them in forty minutes. At the police station Dame Beatrice found Callon and the superintendent with the Chief Constable.
‘We’re obliged to you, Dame Beatrice,’ said the latter, ‘for bringing this frightful business to our notice. Identification is going to be difficult enough as it is, but if much more time had passed before the bodies were discovered, it would have been well-nigh impossible to say whose they are. There isn’t so much as a rag of clothing among the three of them. The bodies had been inserted starkers into those suits of armour. Whoever closed the grave again must have removed those sheets you saw. Of course, they’re not really suits of armour. They consist of a breastplace and leg and arm pieces-halfpieces, so to speak, because they are just shells placed over the limbs – and laid over the faces were masks in the shape of a helmet with vizor. Just a family conceit, as it were, I suppose.’
‘ “Sheathed in his iron panoply.” Yes, I see,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Identification should not be too difficult, however, if two of the bodies are those of Mr and Mrs Shurrock, for one assumes that, at some time or other, they had consulted a dental surgeon.’
‘Yes, maybe that’s the line we’ll have to take,’ agreed Callon, ‘if we can’t find any quicker way. Trouble is that the Shurrocks and the gipsy were comparative strangers in the place. I mean, in a village, nobody reckons to take much stock in people who’ve only been there three years. Still, the brewers will be able to put us on the track, no doubt, because they’ll know where Shurrock came from.’
‘To begin with, your police surgeon – or I myself, come to that – can determine such matters as the sex, stature and probable age of the bodies, and could also estimate the general colouring of skin, eyes and hair, unless – particularly with regard to the eyes – decomposition is sufficiently advanced to change the original colour of the iris.’
‘Well, we’ll get on to it, ma’am,’ said the superintendent. ‘There’s little doubt in any of our minds, I take it, as to who two of these people are, but we’ve got to have proof to give the coroner. It don’t do to be airy-fairy about the identity of persons who’ve met with a violent death.’
‘I only hope it was a quick one,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and I wish we knew how and where the deaths took place. I imagine we know the means….’
‘A good old clonk on the base of the skull,’ said Callon, ‘seems to have been the method employed, and I think I see what you mean, Dame Beatrice. To lay out one person would have been easy enough, but to account for three, and all in the same way, would have taken some planning, wouldn’t it?’
‘If all were killed at the same time, but the medical evidence will establish that, no doubt.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Recapitulation
‘And were this world all devils o’er
And watching to devour us,
We lay it not to heart so sore;
Not they can overpower us.’
Martin Luther – A Safe Stronghold
trans. Thomas Carlyle
‘Well, now,’ said Dame Beatrice, who had taken herself off to Douston Hall to meet her great-niece, ‘as soon as our dear Nicholas arrives I think we will begin at the beginning of this bizarre affair, include the middle and (if I have read the runes a-right) proceed to the end.’
‘Proceed!’ mimicked Fenella, whose spirits had risen appreciably since she had heard that Nicholas was to be summoned to the conference. ‘Anybody can tell that you’ve been working with policemen!’
‘And very good, intelligent policemen, too,’ said Dame Beatrice serenely.
‘Because they’ve kept off your neck and given you a free hand?’
‘Yes, if you care to put it that way. They also have paid careful and courteous attention to what they must have regarded in the beginning as my wild theories and are now gracious enough to concede that I was on the right lines almost from the beginning.’
‘Almost?’ said Fenella cheekily.
‘Only the Pope, and, at that, only, I believe, in his official capacity, is infallible,’ said Dame Beatrice, benignly disregarding Fenella’s impudence. ‘But I wish to check my findings. After that, I think we may expect two immediate arrests.’
‘Two? But I thought….’
‘Ah, but that is exactly what you did not do, dear child. What is more, I am not asking you to think, even now. It is your memory, not your intelligence, which I wish to invoke. But nothing can be concluded until Nicholas gets here, because there will be gaps in your narrative which he will be prepared to fill in. At least, I hope he will. However, we shall begin and we will find out how far we can get before we need him.’
‘Fire away. I suppose it will be question and answer, won’t it? You think so poorly of my intelligence that you’d better lay down some guide-lines.’
‘The method I shall use is that practised in courts of law and in B.B.C. interviews, dear child. It is not a question of intelligence, but of economy and clarity. May we begin?’
‘I’m on the qui vive. Is this viva voce going to be embarrassing and intimidating?’
‘I hope not. Now, then: what, in the very first place, made you decide to take the turning to Seven Wells?’
‘Nicholas says it was Fate. I think it was merely a whim. The point was, you see, that I was much later, at that point, than I expected to be. I spent far too much time at Romsey Abbey, and then I was held up in Evebury, so that, by the time I got to this turning which said Seven Wells 7. I was not only thirty miles from Cridley, where I had planned to get some lunch, but desperately hungry. I knew there was nothing
