Death of a Burrowing Mole mb-62

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘And who is to arbitrate?’ asked Malpas.

  ‘The owner of the property or his secretary or bailiff. They will be able to tell us which of us has the prior claim to the site.’

  ‘Whose letter got there first, you mean?’ said Nicholas. ‘That seems reasonable. What do you say, Veryan?’

  ‘That my work is of greater importance than his. Finding out whose letter got to the landowner first is not going to solve any problems,’ replied Veryan, turning away.

  ‘Look,’ said Tynant, before he followed his leader, ‘I’ll try to persuade him to leave undermining your walls until the very last. If we find secondary burials during the earlier part of our dig, it may not be necessary to touch your foundations at all. How would that be?’

  ‘Thanks, but you won’t be able to persuade him to delay any part of his work if he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Then I’ll get Susannah to have a try. It would be difficult for any man to refuse her anything, and I know he finds her very charming.’

  Dinner at both hotels that evening was an unusually dull meal, Veryan appeared to be brooding, the two boys were tired and Tynant found it hard work to promote any conversation at all. At the Horse and Cart the usually mild Saltergate was sufficiently incensed by Veryan’s intransigent attitude to discuss it bitterly with his wife in front of the two girls and Susannah. Susannah, who had a foot in both camps, was silent for almost the whole of the meal and as soon as it was over she collected the two young women and the three went straight back to their caravan.

  A little later Bonamy and Tom left the Barbican and went in Bonamy’s car to the pub they had discovered in Stint Magna. Fiona heard the car drive off and said she wished she were going with them.

  ‘I thought you despised their company,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘It would be better than that of the Saltergates tonight. What a dismal dinner! There has been a row. That was obvious. Even Susannah could not cope.’

  ‘Everybody was tired, that’s all,’ said Susannah, ‘and when people are tired they magnify trifles.’

  ‘I heard what Edward Saltergate was saying to Lilian,’ said Fiona. ‘He was hot under the collar and no mistake about it. No name was mentioned, but he was talking about Professor Veryan. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘There was bound to be trouble sooner or later, I suppose,’ said Priscilla. ‘There has been a clash of personalities. I imagine Professor Veryan will win. He is the stronger character.’

  ‘I am going out for a walk,’ said Susannah abruptly. ‘It is much too early to go to bed.’

  ‘She won’t be walking alone, that’s for sure,’ said Priscilla, when the door of the caravan had closed. ‘She has a date with Nicholas Tynant. I thought you might be tactless enough to offer to go with her.’

  ‘Not I. I’m aching with fatigue. All that navvying is no joke when it goes on day after day. I shall cry off soon and go and spend a weekend with my family. Oh, no, I can’t. They will be away. I shall cry off, all the same. I’m not only tired; I’m still most terribly bored.’

  ‘I wish I knew why Bonamy and Tom are here. I’m sure they’re not really interested in either architecture or archaeology.’

  ‘No, and they don’t seem to have picked up any girls,’ said Fiona, ‘so that’s not why they are staying.’

  ‘They take that car out every evening, you know,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Only to do a pub crawl, I expect. Let’s play Beat Jack Out of Doors for fivepenny pieces, or shall we go up to the keep while the boys aren’t there and make them apple-pie beds?’

  ‘I thought you were tired.’

  ‘I am. All right, then, let’s hit the hay.’

  ‘Well, dinner proved us to be four strong, silent men,’ said Bonamy.

  ‘Funeral bakemeats was more like it,’ said Tom. ‘Something has happened. Something has fouled up the works. I wonder whether Susannah is at the bottom of it?’

  ‘How your mind does run on that pulchritudinous wench!’

  ‘Veryan has got his beady eye on her, and Nick Tynant knows it. That’s my reading of the situation. They didn’t say a word to one another at dinner.’

  ‘But Veryan is married, isn’t he?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? Probably divorced, like everybody else nowadays. I’ll tell you what, though. I shall put in a few more days of this sweated labour and then I’m going on strike for the weekend.’

  ‘During which time one of the others will find our well.’

  ‘It will still be there when I come back.’

  Tom’s impression that Veryan also was attracted to Susannah was underlined by Priscilla. She voiced her sentiments as the two girls got ready for bed.

  ‘Would you call Professor Veryan a lecherous old man?’ she asked.

  ‘Ni l’un, ni l’autre,’ Fiona replied.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Not old, not lecherous.’

  ‘He must be fifty.’

  ‘You can’t call that old.’

  ‘I’ve seen him look at Susannah.’

  ‘She is well worth looking at. She ought to be painted or sculpted or something, before she begins to get a middle-age spread.’

  ‘I finished my sonnet.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Probably not. I always think I’m better than Shakespeare when I first finish a poem, but the feeling wears off later.’

  ‘I should think that’s a very hopeful sign.’

  ‘Which half of it?’

  ‘Oh, all of it; first that you think you’re good, and then that you realise you aren’t.’

  ‘But I am good,’ said Priscilla, piqued. ‘Of course I’m good. I’m not as good as I’d like to be, that’s all, but it will come in time. I know it.’

  ‘If Professor Veryan ever did contemplate a pass at Susannah, I wonder how she would take it?’ said Fiona, reverting to the more interesting subject of conversation. ‘He is more eminent than Nicholas and I believe he has money.’

  ‘I wonder how long Susannah intends to stay out tonight? I hate the door not to be locked when I’m in bed.’

  ‘ “And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted”,’ said Fiona sardonically. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t happen to the likes of us. Lock the door, though, if you feel nervous. I’ll let her in when she comes back. I’m going to relax but I’m not sleepy.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t really mind about the door, so long as I’m not alone in the caravan. You are a tower of strength.’

  ‘I feel like one when I’m heaving stone blocks and shovelling rubble. I think we shall all need a break very soon. I intend to take one anyway, whether the Saltergates like it or not.’

  ‘It does seem as though the best thing to do, after all, is to find out whether the others or you have priority,’ said Lilian Saltergate that night.

  ‘Malpas is against such a course. He thinks it would solve nothing.’

  ‘The other thing would be to take a vote.’

  ‘Susannah is attached to our party, but she would vote with Nicholas and for Malpas.’

  ‘The two boys would vote with us, surely?’

  ‘Most unlikely, if Susannah voted with the other side. They admire her very much. Besides, Veryan feeds them and you know what is said about the way to a man’s heart.’

  ‘What are the chances of Malpas picking up a germ of some kind and having to retire from the scene? You could manage Nicholas if Malpas were not there.’ Lilian laughed as she said this.

  ‘It is so unreasonable of Malpas,’ said Edward, ‘If he knew – if he were certain – I might feel better about it, but he has no proof whatever that anybody is buried under one of my fortifications. He is prepared to sacrifice my definite, actual reconstruction for some purely experimental fiddle-faddle of his own. I’ve got to do something to stop him. The question is – what can I do?’

  ‘We could always throw all our stones and dust into his precious trench, I suppose.’

  ‘You take the matter lightly.’
/>   ‘No, indeed I do not. I wonder whether we could make a bargain with him?’

  ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘That we will raise no objection to any damage he does, provided that he and Nicholas and their workmen will promise to make it good afterwards.’

  ‘Well, he should be willing to give an undertaking of that sort, but I am not willing to ask for it. I have as much right here as he has.’

  ‘Sometimes it is unwise to insist too strongly on one’s rights. That attitude can provoke a war.’

  ‘A war can have a righteous cause. Anyhow, before I try anything else, I am going up to the house. I shall say nothing about priorities or rights. I shall simply tell the owner or his representative what Veryan proposes to do, and I shall ask whether they are prepared to allow him to undermine and damage a historic monument. That ought to be enough for an injunction, I think.’

  ‘I wish Malpas would tumble into his beastly trench and do himself an injury,’ said Mrs Saltergate. ‘I hate him for upsetting you like this.’

  Meanwhile Bonamy and Tom had become acquainted with two girls who were staying at the pub in Stint Magna.

  ‘Now that we’ve found corn in Egypt,’ said Tom, ‘I am a good deal less keen than I was on sweating away on that job at Holdy Castle. The story about the treasure is probably a myth, anyway – something for the local yokels to speculate upon when the telly goes wrong on some dark winter evening. Let’s pack the job in and disport ourselves with Virginia and Sarah. What a real bit of goose that they should be staying at a pub where the beer is excellent and our welcome assured by such a pleasant landlord as Sam.’

  ‘It’s going to be a bit sticky telling Saltergate we’re packing the job in. He’s got nobody else except his wife and the wenches to help him,’ said Bonamy.

  ‘I thought he was co-opting Veryan’s two workmen.’

  ‘There’s a fuss-up going on between the parties. I fancy all good feeling has died the death. Anyhow, we can’t opt out straightaway. Give it another week or so. We only work in the mornings, anyway, and Virginia and Sarah need that time for their holiday reading. They’re going to be third years and say they’ve got a lot of leeway to make up. Everybody slacks off in their second year and those two have had to listen to some more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger remarks from their tutor. We’ve got every afternoon and evening free to sport with Amaryllis. Be content with that. We’d have to buy them a proper lunch each day if we had them all day long, and think of the price of petrol! As it is, we buy them a drink and a packet of crisps and lie out on Sam’s back lawn resting from our labours all afternoon and then take them out to tea.’

  ‘Where they shovel away enough jam and cream to—’

  ‘Never mind to what. Chivalry deplores these excessive comparisons. We stick to Saltergate, then, with an occasional switch to Veryan when he needs a hand, but only for the next fortnight. After that, we’ll see what the options are. Right? Agreed?’

  ‘Just as you say. Lord, though! How I do ache!’

  5

  Attempts to Get Arbitration

  « ^ »

  Do I go with you?’ asked Lilian, at the end of lunch at the Horse and Cart next day.

  ‘I think,’ replied Edward, pushing back his empty cup and saucer and wondering, as usual, why he ever drank what the hotel called coffee, ‘that perhaps one voice may be more effective than two, so I will go alone.’

  ‘I wonder whether Malpas also has the intention of visiting the manor house?’

  ‘Oh, now it has come to words between us, I have no doubt that Nicholas will persuade him to do so. That is why I am anxious to get my say in first.’

  He and his wife went up to their room and he changed his clothes before going downstairs to the reception desk to ask for the best route by car to Holdy manor house.

  The route was short, not more than seven miles, but pleasant. Hill folded into hill, one green, one wooded, another covered in bracken and heather, and the narrow road wound among them through the valleys until it reached wide-open iron gates whose stone gateposts were surmounted by flower-sculptured urns. There was a lodge just inside the gateway and Edward pulled up, but nobody came out, so he concluded that the lodge was untenanted and drove on.

  A long lane, bordered by rhododendrons past their time of flowering, later passed beside deciduous woods, heavy, dark and still, for there was no wind and, but for the shade of the trees, the heat would have been that of a desert. Edward encountered the full glare of the sun again when, having come out on to a broad expanse of open parkland, he drove up to the mansion, pulled up and got out of the car.

  A very large man wearing a green baize apron answered the door. Before Edward could speak he said, ‘Family ain’t at home. Servants be on board wages. There’s only me and the bailiff.’

  ‘It is the bailiff I wish to see. I have business with him. Will you take him my card?’

  He was admitted to a handsome Georgian entrance hall from which a straight staircase with wrought-iron banisters led up to a broad landing supported on classical columns in the Corinthian style. The floor of the hall was of black and white large tiles, and the general impression was of spacious elegance.

  The manservant disappeared along a corridor which opened off the right-hand side of the hall and Edward spent the ten minutes he was kept waiting in looking, without much pleasure or interest, at what appeared to be ancestral portraits on the walls.

  The servant did not reappear, but from the corridor came a florid man with a petulant mouth and hooded eyes. Differently dressed, he might have sat for one of the portraits at which Edward had been looking. The likeness was explained, perhaps, when he spoke.

  ‘Mr Saltergate? I am Mr Mathew’s cousin. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but I spent a moment of time in looking up your letters.’

  ‘My last one received no answer.’

  ‘I should have acknowledged it, of course, but I put off a reply in the hope that my cousin would have answered my own letter on the subject. I’m standing in for him while he is away. Do come along and take a glass of something, won’t you? Wrong time of day, I know, for alcohol, but perhaps something long and cool—?’

  He led the way and they went into a white-painted room with a plain ceiling and a modernised fireplace. From the circular table in the centre of the room and the straight-backed but upholstered chairs against the wall, Edward took it that he was in the dining-room. There was no sideboard, but a small occasional table stood against the wall at one side of the fireplace. On the opposite side was the only armchair in the room. The owner’s cousin drew it forward, indicated to Edward that he should seat himself and then added, ‘Shan’t be a minute. Can’t rely on Wicklow to fix a decent drink. Now,’ he went on when, having returned with two tall glasses, he had pulled forward a chair for himself, ‘what can I do for you? My name is Sandgate, by the way. Sandgate and Saltergate, eh? We should get on well together. You health!’

  ‘I will come to the point,’ said Edward. ‘I wrote, some months ago, as you know, to ask permission to attempt some reconstruction work at Holdy Castle. I was granted that permission, but, now that I have begun work, I find that other parties have been granted equal facilities.’

  ‘But not, I understand, to carry out the same kind of work.’

  ‘That is a fair observation, but my difficulty is that I am now faced with a case of encroachment. May I explain?’ He took out a scribbling pad from the briefcase he had brought with him and made rapid sketches with a BB pencil, explaining as he went along. ‘Here is the keep – no problem there – and here is the hall next to it. We shall get them both cleared of rubble and, later on, we hope to repair the top of the keep sufficiently to render it safe. It is secure enough in itself, but the parapet is so much broken away as to leave only a few inches of walling at one place. We can collect enough broken stone to build it up.’

  ‘And you have my cousin’s permission to do this, I know. I have not visited the ruins myself. So what exactly is your pr
oblem?’

  ‘This,’ said Edward, sketching in his flanking-towers. ‘The other party has permission for an archaeological dig. It is being carried out scientifically and is based, I understand, on a survey previously made from the air as well as on another from the ground. Unfortunately, if Professor Veryan is permitted to carry out his ideas, this is what will happen.’ He traced out a broad circle which cut into the sketch-plan of the walls and towers. ‘You see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Most unfortunate, but what can I do about it? There are letters from Professor Veryan, too. He has equal rights with yourself. I don’t see anything for it, Mr Saltergate, but for the two of you to come to some amicable agreement between yourselves. My position here is merely that of a bailiff. I can’t alter decisions made and permissions given by the owner of the property.’

  ‘There must surely be a question of priorities. Didn’t my application arrive before that of Professor Verya.n?’

  ‘Even if it did, he has an established right to work on the site, just as you have. My cousin also filed a letter from someone who signs himself T. V. M. Hassocks and the filed copy of my cousin’s reply gives this person permission to attempt to locate the castle wells. What interest he can have in them I do not know, but there it is. My cousin seems to have strewn permissions all over the place.’

  Profoundly dissatisfied, Edward drove back to the Horse and Cart to seek what consolation he could obtain from Lilian and he was even less pleased when, just beyond the manor house gates, he passed Veryan’s car with Tynant seated beside the owner-driver.

  ‘Professor Veryan?’ said Sandgate. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I have just had a visit from a Mr Saltergate, whom I believe you know.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I thought he might have been here. I passed his car on the road. Not to beat about the bush, I have reason to think that my visit may not be unrelated to his.’

  ‘Come and sit down and let us talk things over. He left some sketch-plans with me.’