Death of a Burrowing Mole mb-62 Read online

  ‘Of his flanking-towers, no doubt.’

  ‘His? I was under the impression that, if they belong to anybody, it is to my cousin, the owner of the Holdy estate.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I meant only to refer to the work he intends to carry out.’

  ‘And I meant only a rather clumsy pleasantry. Mr Saltergate was not very coherent. This is the sketch-plan he left with me. Perhaps you can explain it better than he did.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Veryan, taking a chair and picking up the sheet which Saltergate, at leaving, had torn off his scribbling pad, ‘it is simple enough and is what I hope to talk to you about.’

  ‘Before you begin, I had better repeat what my position is here. I am nothing more than a caretaker. Portia (if I remember my schoolmasters and their attempts to get me to read Shakespeare and, what was worse, to get some of him by heart) could not alter a decree established. I find myself in exactly the same circumstances. I have been through all the relevant correspondence very carefully and it seems to me that my cousin has granted you and Mr Saltergate equal rights. There is also another candidate in the field, someone called Hassocks.’

  ‘Oh, he can be ignored. He and his companion are undergraduates with a thesis to write. They are glad to learn from Saltergate and myself, and have put themselves at our disposal. They are charming boys and will be a great help when it comes to all that digging.’

  ‘Digging? Digging for what?’

  ‘Obviously Saltergate did not explain very clearly what our object is. We certainly are not digging for gold or diamonds, although young Hassocks may have some such idea. We are excavating a Bronze Age burial ground. Unfortunately the trench – here it is on Saltergate’s plan – is likely to touch (no more than touch) the foundations of one, or, at the most, two of the flanking-towers. This sketch he has left with you exaggerates the scope of my dig.’

  ‘He seemed greatly concerned.’

  ‘A bit of a dog in the manger, I am afraid. I cannot allow him to override me. I am engaged upon an important piece of archaeological research which I hope to record, along with other such projects, in a book which I have in preparation. I cannot allow my work to be truncated because of some fantastic objections on his part.’

  ‘I see the difficulty, yes, but I don’t see how I can help either of you. I will get in touch with my cousin, if you like, and find out whether he has anything to suggest. It does seem to me, though, that you are in a stronger position than Mr Saltergate is. You are in a position to undermine his work; he can hardly retaliate by damaging yours.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know so much,’ said Malpas, knitting his brows and then giving a rueful smile. ‘He has a determined wife and four feckless undergraduates on his side. I would trust Saltergate himself not to step outside the bounds of fair play and civilised behaviour, but I would hesitate to go bail for the others.’

  ‘Four undergraduates, Professor?’

  ‘Certainly. There are the two boys, Hassocks and Monkswood, and Saltergate has brought along two girls. There is also the woman lecturer from the girls’ college, but, of course, I am sure she would never join in any mischief.’

  ‘But what mischief could the others do?’

  ‘They could rough up my excavation and, in doing so, destroy all sorts of most valuable evidence.’

  ‘But you don’t believe Mr Saltergate would be a party to anything of that sort?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but he is in a very angry mood and I think this might inflame the others in his party, particularly his wife.’

  ‘Well, I can only suggest you keep an eye on them, Professor. Meanwhile I will get in touch with my cousin. Is it possible for me to come along at some time and see how the work is progressing?’

  ‘Oh, by all means. I shall be delighted to take you round and explain what we are doing.’

  ‘Well,’ said Veryan, joining Tynant in the car, ‘he says there is nothing he can do.’

  ‘What did you ask him to do? After all, to be perfectly fair, we are more of a menace to Saltergate’s towers and walls than ever he is to our excavation. Couldn’t we—’

  ‘No, we couldn’t. My work is all-important. His is mere play by comparison. If my trench impinges upon his walls, well, that is just too bad, but it cannot be helped, and I shall have to tell him so.’

  ‘What kind of fellow is this bailiff?’

  ‘He is a cousin of the owner and, I should guess, a poor relation at that. The servants are all on board wages except (he told me) one gamekeeper who has had to remain at work because of the young pheasants, and—’

  ‘I thought a big chap in a green baize apron let you in. That wasn’t this cousin, was it?’

  ‘No. That’s a manservant called Wicklow. The other reason I have for thinking that the cousin is a poor relation is not his clothes, threadbare though his jacket was. Half the population goes about looking like tramps and nobody thinks anything of it nowadays—’

  ‘I thought that was only the young. How old is this fellow?’

  ‘Forty, perhaps. Anyhow, what struck me most forcibly was that manservant’s attitude towards Sandgate.’

  ‘He needed a good setting-down and he did not get it? Obviously he has no respect for his master’s poor relation, which is what you take Sandgate to be.’

  ‘The man behaved to Sandgate as though he recognised no difference in their social standing.’

  ‘Perhaps he is resentful at being left on duty while the other servants are absent.’

  ‘I suppose that could be so. All the same, although Jack may be as good as his master and, in some cases, very much better, I am a stickler for the old values and I think that dependants should pay lip-service to their employer and not attempt to bridge the gap which custom and usage have placed between them. It is better and more convenient for both sides to have it so.’

  ‘But this Wicklow chap probably sees the two of them as fellow workers in the same vineyard.’

  ‘But even in a vineyard there are the supervisor and the supervised.’

  ‘I am sorry you went, as you obtained no satisfaction from the visit,’ said Lilian Saltergate, ‘and I am sorrier still that your car passed Malpas’s on the road back and so he knows you went. What kind of man is the bailiff?’

  ‘I did not care for him. I received the impression that he has some axe of his own to grind and that the rift between Malpas and myself fits in with his plans.’

  ‘It would be interesting to know whether Malpas got any more satisfaction from him than you did.’

  ‘Tynant was in the car with Malpas, but I don’t know whether he went into the house with him.’

  ‘Probably not. Malpas prefers to play a lone hand unless he is in need of help. Do you think there is anything between him and Susannah?’

  ‘Between Malpas and Susannah? I thought she and Tynant—’

  ‘I am not so sure. I have seen glances exchanged and a hand brushed against another hand.’

  ‘You scandal-mongering woman!’

  ‘It’s all very well to laugh, but Susannah is very lovely; very intelligent, too.’

  ‘And Veryan is a married man.’

  ‘Not any more. Oh, dear, my head-in-the-sand old ostrich, you are behind the times! They divorced each other ages ago. It was kept very quiet, but it happened.’

  ‘One sees their names as attending the same conferences. They are listed as Professor and Mrs Veryan.’

  ‘What of it? She goes as a delegate in her own right, the same as she always did. It only means that she hasn’t married again, that’s all. Is the Holdy estate a large one?’

  ‘I should think so, but probably not of very much value. There would not be rich grazing or prosperous large farms around here. The size of the estates in this part of the country was achieved because the local nobility and gentry intermarried and added one estate to another and, of course, in England the property is not divided up when the father dies. The younger sons often come off very badly.’

  ‘But th
is – what was his name?’

  ‘Sandgate. No, he is not a younger son. He is the owner’s cousin.’

  ‘Why didn’t you like him?’

  ‘Perhaps because his name is reminiscent (to him) of mine. He suggested that we ought to get on well together. Somehow I felt there was something behind the remark.’

  ‘ “As I came through Sandgate I heard a lassie sing”,’ said Lilian, turning to go up to change for dinner.

  As she came from the bathroom into the bedroom, Edward said, ‘Even if I have to stand at my flanking-towers with a shotgun, Malpas is not going to touch them. His wretched dig could do irreparable damage and I won’t put up with that.’

  ‘Stop worrying yourself, and don’t envisage situations which will probably never arise. Do you think the Horse and Cart will improve on last night’s offering of stewed steak and dumplings, followed by rice pudding and very sour plums? I suppose in the depths of winter they serve cold chicken and salad, followed by an ice-cream sundae. This is a loathsome little inn.’

  ‘We could always move to the Barbican.’

  ‘And have you and Malpas throwing crusty rolls at one another? Anyway, I’ve made Malpas and Nicholas feed those two boys and get them an occasional bath. Nicholas is your best bet, you know. If anybody can restrain Malpas, he can.’

  ‘If the worst looks like coming to the worst…’ began Edward, but Lilian did not allow him to finish.

  ‘I will tell Nicholas that Malpas takes more than a fatherly interest in Susannah,’ she said, her plump, smooth face creasing suddenly into a smile, ‘then he will murder Malpas and all will be well.’

  ‘You shouldn’t make jokes about murder.’

  ‘Oh, oh! Who talked of guarding our walls with a shotgun?’

  ‘Malpas adopts an irritatingly superior attitude in comparing his work with mine. When he has satisfied himself with his Bronze Age burials, the ground will all be smoothed over again, as though nothing had ever happened to it, but my restoration of the castle defences will last a thousand years. Doesn’t that mean something?’

  ‘Nothing means anything to a fanatic except his own fanaticism.’

  ‘Perhaps that applies to me as well as to him, and he may learn that to his cost!’

  6

  Humpty Dumpty

  « ^ »

  Dear Godmother,’ (wrote Bonamy), ‘Tom and I are now the shadows of our former selves. We have moved blocks of stone which would have made Samson blench, swept up and dumped mountains of lung-corroding debris, all this at Saltergate’s behest, and for Veryan we have delved, toiled and sweated to make a vast ring round most of the outer bailey.

  ‘Now, however, we have decided to go on strike. The idea was mooted by the two girls, Fiona and Priscilla. They waylaid us after the morning’s work and told us that they were fed to the teeth with slave labour and proposed to take next weekend off. We are all for this flouting of authority and have backed the project. We shall cruise about in my car – the girls have hired Tom’s – and take the tent and the sleeping-bags and hey! for the open road.

  ‘We, all four of us, have put our point of view to our taskmasters and found it unopposed. As a matter of fact there has been what we think is a major row between Veryan and the Saltergates. There have been comings and goings between the castle and the house where the owner lives, but we gather that nothing has been settled. The owner himself is away and nobody else will take the responsibility of making a decision.

  ‘Anyway, what it comes to is that the two girls and ourselves are off the lead for the whole of next weekend. Our elders (if I can call the lovely Susannah an Elder – she was rather up against such in Holy Writ if I recollect the story correctly and, as a graduate and as Tynant’s piecie-missie she far outranks us), our elders, I think, won’t be sorry to see the back of us for a day or two in the hope that, if the work on the site is held up for a bit, things may begin to sort themselves out. There is certainly a lot of fur, feathers and bad blood about at present. Very uncomfortable and unpleasant for live-and-let-live blokes like ourselves.

  ‘What the girls propose to do I have no idea. They definitely won’t be coming with us, although a certain amount of fraternisation has taken place owing to a strong, mutual reaction against all the hard, tedious work we have been doing. In the early mornings Tom and I have also searched for our well and so put more work on ourselves. So far, we think we have located three wells.

  ‘However, we have discovered that the job of clearing them is impossible without expert help. We asked Saltergate about this, although we did not tell him our reason for asking. He said that it would need some sort of thing like the apparatus for boring for oil, he thought, and simply wasn’t worthwhile. Locating the wells was important to him, it was clear, but so long as they could be marked in on his plan he was satisfied. To us they mean nothing if they cannot be cleared, so we have almost given up hope of the treasure.

  ‘We feel bound to stay on the dig for a bit (after we have had our weekend) because Veryan has paid our expenses, but we shall get away as soon as it seems decent to do so. I rather wish we had never heard of the treasure and had gone to Greece as we planned.

  ‘Your affectionate godson,

  Bonamy

  PS Could Tom and I pop in to see you before we return to the chain-gang next week? Would Monday morning be all right?’

  Before the break from work took place, the site received its first visit from the bailiff of the Holdy estate.

  ‘So pleased you are interested enough to come and have a look around,’ said Saltergate. ‘As you say you have not seen the castle before, shall we begin with the keep and work downwards? Please be a little careful when we have climbed the newel stair. The remaining fabric is safe enough, but there is very little of the parapet left and it is, in any case, not the original termination of the tower. That was destroyed at the end of the siege during the Civil War. I’ll go first, shall I? From the top one gets a comprehensive view of the whole layout. You will then understand better what I’m talking about when we make the round of the fortifications.’

  ‘Good of you to offer to take so much trouble, but I really only came along to get a general idea,’ said Sandgate. ‘I don’t intend to waste your time, you know.’

  Edward, however, was adamant and insisted upon a complete survey. When they reached the gatehouse Malpas Veryan was there.

  ‘Ah,’ he said to Sandgate, ‘nice to see you. I’m afraid I have nothing much to show you except a partly dug trench, but, when we get to what we’re looking for, it will be a great deal more interesting.’

  Sandgate looked at the excavations and then at his watch and said that he would be interested to be kept informed of the progress made, but that he was pressed for time that morning. All the same, he walked back with Malpas to the castle ditch.

  ‘You didn’t dig this,’ he said. ‘There’s grass growing on the sides.’

  ‘Yes, but it gave us our very first clue and certainly is a very important item. It has been deepened considerably since the Bronze Age, but its position and its otherwise strange curvature are our clues to the extent of the original burying-place.’

  ‘Ah! The original burying-place? I hope to be along again when you locate that,’ said Sandgate eagerly.

  ‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice in the middle of the following Monday morning, ‘so you have taken weekend leave of absence.’

  ‘Playing hookey, I call it,’ said Laura.

  ‘Have a heart, Mrs Gavin,’ said Tom, ‘and don’t mock the sultry toilers. You see before you two exhausted and broken men.’

  ‘You both look extremely well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘even if, apart from your labours, you have found yourselves in the centre of the maelstrom of dissension which you have described to us.’

  ‘We have also had a visit from the representative of the lord of the manor. Our work was inspected and received a nod from an obviously ignorant and, I thought, rather repellent individual who came in a car and gave our work supe
rcilious approval,’ said Bonamy. ‘I am sure he didn’t understand a word of what Veryan was telling him about our trenches. Obviously he had never heard of Bronze Age barrows and I should say that the last thing he thought Veryan and Tynant were looking for was just a cist grave and some mouldy old bones and a beaker or two.’

  ‘And who was this representative?’

  ‘Chap named Sandgate. We were introduced to him, but I doubt whether I shall ever put him on my visiting list. He’s cousin to Mr Mathew, the owner of the estate, and is acting as bailiff while Mr Mathew is on holiday. I noted that his car was chauffeur driven, but the chauffeur looked more like a plug-ugly to me than a discreet and respectful manipulator of gears and accelerators. Sandgate has promised – some would say threatened – to pay us further visits.’

  ‘I thought he was unhealthily interested in our doings,’ said Tom. ‘I hope he hasn’t heard about the treasure. There was an acquisitive gleam in his fishy eye, I fancy.’

  ‘Veryan and Saltergate were on best behaviour after their skirmishing,’ said Bonamy. ‘There had been wars and rumours of wars. How do you really think we look?’

  ‘Sunburnt, cheerful and fit,’ said Laura. ‘Do tell us about the row at the castle. I love other people’s quarrels. They are the stuff drama is made of.’

  ‘Oh, this is one of those polite, frosty affairs. There is nothing dramatic about it. Veryan’s henge and ditch are likely to encroach on Saltergate’s wall defences, so both sides have suspended operations pro tem while they thrash out the rights and wrongs. Tom and I are preserving a strict neutrality, but the distaff side (as, saving your presence, Mistress Gavin, is its wont) has waded in up to the neck. Susannah Lochlure is championing Veryan because she is by way of being Nicholas Tynant’s fancy, and he, of course, has to be on Veryan’s side. Lilian Saltergate, as in honour bound, speaks up forthrightly for her spouse, and there is division of opinion between Fiona Broadmayne and Priscilla Yateley. Fiona supports Susannah, who supports Tynant, who supports Veryan. But Priscilla is on the side of the Saltergates.’

  ‘And hold you no brief for either party?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘Even neutrals often have opinions.’