‘When she came in and told us Sir Bathy was lying out there in the road with a knife in his back,’ said Mrs Shurrock. Dame Beatrice looked at the gipsy, who nodded, her black eyes expressionless.
‘Well, of course, I went along to see,’ said Shurrock, ‘and there he laid, not half-a-dozen yards from the big door where Sukie had let him out. So I says, “Well,” I says, “us can’t leave him there. Get my house a bad name, and the police, and all”, I says. “Best put him where he belong.” But the wife says, “Not just yet. Drag him inside again till you know all’s quiet and he’s done bleeding.” So Sukie and me, we drag the poor old fellow in through the big door again and then, round about one, when we think all’s quiet, I get out the car and we dump him in the back and take him to his home. Worst part was having to carry him the last bit of the way and chuck him over the wall. Then Sukie starts in to bellow, because we hear him hit a tree, but I shut her up and drive her back to the More to Come and at first light we have a good scout round for any traces, but there don’t seem to be nothing on the road where us found him because he’d been stabbed in the back and there wasn’t much blood, anyway, I don’t reckon, on account the knife was still in the wound, and he’d fell on his face, poor old sod, and what blood there was had soaked into his clothes, I reckon. There wasn’t nothing on our floor. Then I looked at the car and sponged it over where we’d crammed him on to the back seat, but there wasn’t no mess, so far as I could see, and that, honest, is all we done, and that’s as much as I know.’
‘Did you come to any conclusion as to the identity of the murderer?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘The wife and me, us talked it over and decided one of Sukie’s relations had laid for him, that’s all, though Sukie, her said not, being she’d left her own folks for good and all. Wasn’t our business, anyway. All we thought of was getting him off our ground and on to his own. Wasn’t as if we could do anything for him. He was as dead as the dodo when we found him.’
‘What made you think of going outside to see what had happened, Mrs Lee?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘It wasn’t your usual practice, was it?’
‘No,’ replied the gipsy, ‘but it was Saturday night and when I got back to my room I looked for the usual little present he give me and it wasn’t there, so I thought I’d slip out after him in case, the next week, he swore he had left it. Well, it was moonlight – that’s how whoever stabbed him could see just where to put that knife, I reckon….’
‘But what a fearful risk to take!’ exclaimed Fenella. ‘Anybody who happened to be about could have seen it done!’
‘Nobody about in Seven Wells our end of the village that time of night,’ explained Shurrock. ‘We’re on the outskirts and to get back to the manor he was walking away from all the cottages, you see, taking his way round the village instead of through it. Just a precaution, like. Exceptin’ for the manor house itself, there’s nothing that side of the village but Pikeman Hill, and them that’s buried up there won’t tell no tales!’
‘Did you never suspect anyone in the village of murdering Sir Bathy?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘These here,’ replied Shurrock, jerking his head towards the police officers, ‘asked me that. What I thought at the time was one of Sukie’s lot had taken a jealous fit, like I just told you, and didn’t like her being friendly in that sort of way with a gorgio.’
‘No,’ said the gipsy, shaking her head, ‘I lost my man when I was twenty. Only four years we were married and then he got ill and he died. I went gorgio myself after that, and took service and never knew my own people no more. It wasn’t a Romani killed Sir Bathy, that I know, but I don’t know who it was, unless it was his son.’
‘It was common knowledge they never got on after Mr Jeremy left college,’ said Mrs Shurrock, ‘but it couldn’t have been Mr Jeremy, if he was in India at the time, as we heard.’
‘He was in India at the time,’ said Callon. ‘That much we’ve established beyond doubt. But this isn’t the end of the story, Dame Beatrice.’
‘No, of course it is not,’ she replied. ‘What caused your flight from the More to Come and your resignation of your position as landlord, Mr Shurrock?’
‘I got scared, and the wife and Sukie was even more frit than me. We had an anonymous letter. That was the first thing. Somebody knew what we’d done with Sir B’s body.’
‘The murderer, most likely,’ said Dame Beatrice.’ Did you not think of that?’
‘But you didn’t keep the letter,’ said Callon, ‘and that’s a pity, you know.’
‘Keep a letter like that? Of course us didn’t. It was dynamite! Us put it behind the fire and decided to quit. Us couldn’t leave straight away, but we was in a lather to go, and our holiday was due, anyway, so that made a good enough excuse to get away. Wrote my resignation as soon as we got to London, but didn’t post it from where we was staying, of course, because of the postmark. I don’t know how you rumbled us. We laid low enough.’
‘Oh, we have our methods,’ said Callon. ‘It seems to me that you quit pretty easily, though. I should have thought a man of your type would have stuck it out and chanced his arm
