‘Yes. She brought the truncheon to the zodiac meeting and used it after the ceremony on the hilltop in lieu of paying the blackmail money, I think. No doubt she and young Pitsey, who were both at the zodiac meeting, had an arrangement to meet in one of those ruined cottages when the ritual burial was over and the young people were chasing one another all over the hillside so that she could pay him the money.’
‘But she must have taken somebody else’s place in the zodiac meeting,’ said Fenella, ‘mustn’t she, not Sir Jeremy’s. I mean, when Sir Jeremy went to India I don’t think they would have left his place empty.’
‘If you make enquiries, I think you will find that Sukie had been made a member of the band by Sir Bathy when his son went to India. But when Sir Bathy was killed, Sukie was probably willing enough to yield her place in return for a small sum of money, never realising that Lady Bitton-Bittadon was Sir Bathy’s killer.’
‘But wouldn’t Leo and the others have objected? He, in particular, seemed a very tough character,’ said Fenella, ‘and Lady Bitton-Bittadon wasn’t born under Pisces, anyway. She had a birthday in September. Nick’s school had a half-holiday for it every year.’
‘I doubt whether they were aware of the substitution. It was only for that one meeting, I feel sure,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘But the voice! Wouldn’t that have given her away?’
‘I doubt whether they had ever heard Sukie, as Pisces, utter. She never came into the bar, but always remained in the kitchen. Also, you must remember, they had serious business in front of them that night – business which you yourself interrupted.’
‘You mean how they were to provide themselves with more skeletons.’
‘Exactly. And Lady Bitton-Bittadon did not speak until you had entered the room and distracted everyone’s thoughts. Well, Superintendent, I think my next move is to visit the manor house again.’
‘Not alone, Dame Beatrice. I have to get a search-warrant, but Mr Callon, I am sure, will wish to go with you if your intention is to confront Lady Bitton-Bittadon with your findings.’
‘I think it right to give her the chance to refute them.’
‘Or to force a confession from her,’ said Callon, with a slight smile. ‘Well, I shall certainly be in the offing, Dame Beatrice. If her ladyship has committed two murders and instigated two others – Sir Jeremy, you say, killed the girl Clytie and the lad Bob….’
‘I imagine so. Pitsey and Bob were friends, and Clytie was involved through Bob, who was her fiancé. No doubt Pitsey had informed Lady Bitton-Bittadon that he was not the only person who was aware of what she had done, and she prevailed upon Sir Jeremy to silence the other two for her sake.’
Arrived at the manor house, Dame Beatrice did not beat about the bush, although Lady Bitton-Bittadon received her with what struck Dame Beatrice as relief.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ she said. ‘Is there any news?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘I have come to you for information and before I put my questions I should wish to make it clear that I neither expect nor desire you to answer them if you consider that they border on the personal. They are about your son and his visit to India.’
‘Jeremy is not my son. He is the son of his father by his first wife. I thought you understood that.’
‘I did understand it, of course. You do not seem old enough to have a son of Sir Jeremy’s age.’
‘I am forty-one. Jeremy is thirty.’
‘As he is not your son, my questions may not surprise or wound you.’
‘Wound me? Nothing in connection with that young man could upset me emotionally in any way. What do you want to know.’
‘You did not write to him while he was in India?’
‘Only at the very end. He had to know about his father’s death.’
‘And he did not write to you, or communicate with you in any way?’
‘Certainly not. I did not expect or wish it. It was a relief when he took himself off. We had nothing in common and I think he always resented me. Stepmothers tread an uneasy, thankless path, Dame Beatrice. If I had known Jeremy when he was a very young child, it might have been different, but he was twenty years old when I married his father and from the very beginning he was antagonistic to me.’
‘How soon after his mother’s death did you marry his father?’
‘Oh, she died when Jeremy was fourteen, just the age when a boy begins to get sentimental about his mother and to think of her as a woman, if you know what I mean. When I married it was not too difficult, because Jeremy was at college and spent the vacation travelling or with reading-parties. It was only after he left college that I realised how difficult it was all going to be.’
‘How did he get on with his father?’
‘Not at all well at that stage. I knew this hurt Bathy very much, because, apparently, up to the time of our marriage, Bathy and Jeremy seem to have been on particularly friendly terms. Jeremy never forgave his father for marrying again. Goodness knows we both did our best to placate him, but he wouldn’t come round and I think the situation soured on him, and year by year the relationship between him and his father deteriorated. I could watch it happening. It was dreadful.’
‘I suppose – and this is the crux of the matter – I suppose Sir Jeremy did go to India?’
‘Go to India? Why, of course he did!’
‘You have no proof of it, though, have you?’
‘But all his kit! All the money he was given for travel and special equipment! Besides, his father went with him to the airport to see him off. What are you saying?’
‘I am not saying anything. I am merely enquiring. Did his father
