‘Come, now, Shurrock,’ said the superintendent, ‘it’s no use you holding out on us. Do yourself a bit of good, man, and tell us what we want to know.’
‘I can’t,’ said Shurrock doggedly. ‘I can’t do nothing to help. I’ve lost my living and seems I’ve lost my liberty, and nothing won’t bring them things back.’ He turned to Fenella. ‘A bad day it was for me when you first stepped into the More to Come’ he said. ‘I suppose it was you as thought you’d spotted her ladyship up there in the lounge. I knew you meant trouble soon as I saw you, and I wish to the Lord I’d never tooken Mr Pardieu’s money to keep you the night.’
‘I have never met Lady Bitton-Bittadon,’ said Fenella, ‘and it isn’t my fault you’re in trouble. I’d help you if I could, and I don’t see why on earth you won’t help yourself.’
‘But you have met Lady Bitton-Bittadon in a manner of speaking,’ said Callon. ‘That is, if Dame Beatrice is right, and she was Pisces.’
‘It is the merest guess that she was Pisces that night,’ admitted Dame Beatrice, ‘but when you mentioned her voice, Fenella, and that her headdress was in the form of a salmon, it occurred to me that the body of such a large fish could easily have concealed the policeman’s truncheon which I think she purloined from the museum at the same time as she took the knife with which her husband was stabbed to death. An enquiry will readily establish when, and how often, Lady Bitton-Bittadon visited the folk museum, will it not?’
‘You mean she’s a murderess!’ exclaimed Mrs Shurrock. ‘Then, Jem, we’ve got nothing to lose by telling what we know.’ She turned to Callon. ‘She did come here that night. She took Sir Jeremy’s place by a special agreement with the others – or so she told me when she give me money to let her upstairs on the quiet with nobody knowing. I told Jem, of course, but nobody else knew – not Bob or Clytie or Sukie, I mean. Sir Jeremy was Pisces, only he was in India.’
‘So Sir Jeremy was a member of the band,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Our jig-saw puzzle begins to fall into place.’
‘I haven’t charged you,’ said the superintendent to Shurrock, ‘and I’m willing to forget this little conversation if matters are settled to our satisfaction. I’ll forget that you and Mrs Lee threw Sir Bathy over the wall; I’ll forget how obstinate you’ve been about answering questions – only. …’ he paused and looked straight at the ex-landlord…. ‘if I do, you’ll have to answer one more question and answer it straight.’
‘Answer it to your liking, I suppose you mean,’ said Shurrock. ‘Well, that I don’t promise to do, but go ahead.’
‘Where could the bodies of young Pitsey and two others – Clytie and Bob, I’m very sorry to say – where could they have been hidden away before they were put into the Bitton-Bittadon tomb?’
‘Bob and poor little Clytie? – don’t cry, Liz, my old dear! Well, I’ll tell you. You know them tumble-down cottages opposite the More to Come? That would have been the handiest place, I reckon. Nobody go in there ’cepting maybe an old tramp, and us don’t get many of that sort through the village. Nothing for ’em, you see. Nobody wouldn’t think of lookin’ in there. Been falling down for donkey’s years, I reckon.’
‘But what about children playing hide-and-seek or cops and robbers?’ suggested Fenella. Shurrock shrugged his shoulders. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘Don’t suppose they thought about that.’
‘I imagine young Pitsey was killed on Mayering Eve, after the bonfire-burial,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘He was killed before the other two, the doctor thinks,’ said Callon, ‘but the post-mortem will confirm it.’
‘But wouldn’t he have been missed?’ asked Fenella.
‘He was a real bad lot, by all accounts,’ said the superintendent. ‘I reckon them as missed him were glad of it. Anyway, no enquiries came our way, so far as I know. What about Bob and Clytie, though? Did you really think they were going to blackmail you when you received that anonymous letter?’
‘Didn’t know what to think,’ said Shurrock. ‘Just set on getting away, and taking Sukie with us, her being a party to you know what, and that letter naming her as well as me.’
‘You mentioned that the knife had been left in Sir Bathy’s body,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Didn’t think we was going to leave our prints on it, did you? Far as I know, it was still in the body when us chucked him over the wall.’
‘But it wasn’t in the body when he was found,’ said the superintendent, ‘and it was returned to the museum.’ It looks as though whoever returned it took the policeman’s truncheon and hasn’t dared to put that back.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Lady Mother
‘It is not that Lord Lindsay’s heir
Tonight at Roslin leads the ball,
But that my lady mother there
Sits lonely in her castle hall.’
Sir Walter Scott – Rosabelle
‘Well, our immediate course seems clear,’ said Dame Beatrice, when the Shurrocks had been dismissed.
‘We can’t make an arrest on present evidence, ma’am,’ said the superintendent.
‘We may be able to produce a little more. I think we must make sure that we know what happened about the knife with which Sir Bathy was killed.’
‘We made every enquiry about that, and the whole neighbourhood was searched,’ said Callon. ‘We impounded all the knives in the museum collection, at your suggestion, Dame Beatrice, so it was up to the forensic people to identify the one that was the murder weapon, and they haven’t any doubt, as you know. Trouble is as there’s no way of finding out who took it.’
‘Yes, we have to establish who returned it to the museum and who removed the ancient truncheon.’
‘The last person to ask for the key, barring yourself, ma’am, was Lady Bitton-Bittadon, and one of the truncheons is still missing,’ said the superintendent.
