‘I think there is very little doubt she used it on the youth Pitsey, and it could have been used on her behalf to kill the other two, Superintendent.’
‘By whom, ma’am? Not by her stepson.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re at daggers drawn. You said so yourself, if you remember, and what an uncomfortable house it seemed.’
‘Because a play was being acted there, and by actors who were on edge in case, in front of a stranger, they should fluff their lines. Far from Lady Bitton-Bittadon and Sir Jeremy being at daggers drawn, my impression is that they were carrying on a passionate and illicit love-affair. If we accept that as a starting-point, we shall go a long way towards understanding what has happened.’
‘How do you mean? The two of them plotted to put Sir Bathy out of the way?’
‘Not the two of them. I do not believe that Sir Jeremy was as much at odds with his father as Lady Bitton-Bittadon would have us believe. I feel sure that his journey to India was genuinely undertaken and that Sir Bathy Bitton-Bittadon urged it. He probably told his son that certain conduct was causing malicious gossip and that it would be as well if he and his stepmother separated for a while. Sir Jeremy may even have wished to go. After all, there is a considerable difference in age between him and his stepmother, and he may already have become slightly tired of a woman who, although of gratifying beauty, is on the verge of middle age while he himself still ranks as a young man. Well, knowing that Sir Bathy had got rid of Jeremy temporarily, I think that Lady Bitton-Bittadon, now that he knew the truth, set to work to get rid of her husband permanently. I think she followed him one night – or possibly for several nights, so that she was sure of what his movements would be – and stabbed him when he left the More to Come. She had known for months, I think, that he kept a woman at the public house, and also who she was. Therefore (so her calculations probably went) if Sir Bathy was found stabbed and lying in the road outside the inn, the inference would be that Sukie, the gipsy, had killed him. Unfortunately, the whole thing had been seen, I think, by the lad Pitsey, who must have been with a girl in one of those ruinous cottages opposite the inn. Of course Lady Bitton-Bittadon had no idea of this at the time, and actually her first and possibly worst mistake was to anticipate the murder in a letter to Sir Jeremy in a frenzied bid to have him home again.’
‘Yes, but why did she write it?’ asked Callon. ‘It seems incredible that anybody could be so foolish. When did you begin to suspect Lady Bitton-Bittadon, Dame Beatrice? Did you think of her from the very beginning?’
‘No. My first suspicions were of Sir Jeremy himself. I wondered whether he had ever been to India at all, and it was in the hope of proving or disproving this that I agreed to go to the manor house. Then you, Fenella, mentioned that one of the zodiac people spoke in an educated voice, was a woman, and had made a curious slip of the tongue.’
‘You mean she’d forgotten that Sir Bathy wasn’t there at the meeting?’
‘No. She would not have forgotten that. I think she had not counted herself. People sometimes do not, you know. It told me two things: first, that she was in a state of anxiety and, second, that she was not accustomed to making one of that particular company.’
‘Why did she join them?’
‘I think she wanted to be in close touch with an anonymous blackmailer who (she probably guessed) was one of the zodiac people. It would not have been long before the uncouth, destructive, stupid youth Pitsey gave himself away to a woman of her intelligence. I can forgive her his death, but not for the murders of Bob and Clytie, whom she got Sir Jeremy to kill, I believe. Of course she was trying to guard against those things which are better (in a murderer’s own interests) left alone. Once the murder scene appeared to have shifted from the More to Come to the manor house – it must have been a terrible shock to her when the body was discovered in the grounds – she decided that somebody had actually been a witness to the stabbing.’
‘Which, it seems, somebody had,’ said Fenella, ‘and the first anonymous letter she had from Pitsey proved it.’
‘Yes, as it happened, but if she had kept her head she need only have seen it as an attempt at blackmail which was almost certain to fail if it came to—’
‘A show-down between a yobbo like Pitsey and the lady of the manor. Well, I still don’t know whether we’d be justified in making an arrest,’ said the superintendent, ‘especially as there’s the question of the other murders still hanging in the air. We shall have a job to pin those on Sir Jeremy.’
‘I agree. There is also the anonymous letter which was sent to Shurrock at the More to Come.’
‘Who sent it? You think it was the lad Pitsey, don’t you?’
‘Yes, the lad Pitsey. He had witnessed the murder of Sir Bathy, and had seen the subsequent reactions of Sukie and Shurrock. He blackmailed Lady Bitton-Bittadon….’
‘But the worm, meaning her ladyship, turned. It
