Henrietta Who?

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

"I've got her down," said the pathologist, "as Grace Edith Jenkins. The notes that came in with her say she was identified by her daughter."

"That's right," answered Sloan. "Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins said it was her mother."

"Any doubt about the identification?"

"None that I've heard about, Doctor."

"Either, Inspector, this girl…"

"Miss Jenkins."

"Miss Jenkins has identified the wrong woman."

"… or she wasn't the daughter."

DEDICATION:

FOR ALL MY ELEVEN O'CLOCK FRIENDS, WITH LOVE.

HENRIETTA WHO?

CHAPTER ONE

Harry Ford was a postman. He was a postman of a vintage that is fast disappearing—that is to say he still did his delivery round on a bicycle. The little red vans had reached the large village of Down Martin but his own round of the smaller ones like Larking and Belling St. Peter was just as quick on two wheels as on four.

And he, for one, wasn't sorry. Gave you time to think, did a bicycle, even if it was a bit chilly at six o'clock of a dank morning in March. He was well muffled up against the cold though and he didn't mind the half dark. Besides, there were compensations. Another few weeks and he'd be abroad in that glorious early morning light that did something for the soul.

He braked gently as he coasted round the corner into Larking. He knew exactly where to brake on this road. In fact, there wasn't much of the village he didn't know after delivering its mail all these years.

An outsider would have said Larking was typical of a thousand other English villages. And, as it happened, this was true, though the people of Larking wouldn't have liked it. It had all the appurtenances of a normal village and the usual complement of important—and self-important—people: two different groups.

Spiritual leadership was provided by the Reverend Edward Bouverie Meyton (his father had been an admirer of Pusey). He lived at the Rectory on the green by the church (one Diocesan leaflet, three appeals, a Missionary newsletter, the quarterly report of the Additional Curates' Society and an interesting letter from the Calleshire Historical Association).

Secular leadership came from James Augustus Heber Hibbs, Esquire, at The Hall (an assortment of bills, two closely typed pages of good advice from his stockbroker, a wine list, a picture postcard from his cousin Maude, and a letter from Scotland about a grouse moor).

Harry Ford, postman, was not deceived. He knew as well as anyone else that real power—as opposed to leadership— was vested behind the counter at the Post Office cum General Store in the vast person of Mrs. Ricks (one seed catalogue: Mrs. Ricks rarely committed herself to paper).

Larking shared a branch of the Women's Institute with the neighbouring hamlet of Belling St. Peter (Mrs. Hibbs was president) and a doctor with a cluster of small communities round about.

And everyone thought they knew everything about everyone else.

In which they were very mistaken.

Harry Ford looked at the Post Office clock, dimly visible through the uncurtained window—though only from habit. He had done the round so often that he didn't need a clock to know that—saving Christmas and a General Election—he would finish his Larking delivery at a quarter to eight in the fartherest farmhouse, where—letters or not—he would fetch up in the kitchen with a cup of scalding tea.

Only it didn't work out that way this morning.

For ever afterwards he was thankful that he had been on his bicycle and not in a little red van. If he had been in a van, as he frequently reiterated in the days that followed, he couldn't possibly have avoided the huddled figure that was lying in the road.

"Right on the corner at the far end of the village," he said breathlessly into the telephone after he had taken one quick look and pedalled furiously back to the telephone kiosk outside the Post Office. "Lying in the road. Do come quickly," he implored the ambulance. "If anything else comes round that bend they won't be able to avoid her either."

That word "either" was full of profound significance.

"Where exactly?" demanded the man at the ambulance station. Larking was deep in rural Calleshire and the whole of that part of the county was an intricate network of minor roads. And it wasn't really light yet.

"Through Larking village proper," said Ford, "and out on the other road to Belling St. Peter."

"The other road?" countered the man on the telephone, who had been caught out by bad directions before.

"Not the main road to Belling. The back road. Come to Larking Post Office and then fork left and she's about a quarof a mile down the road on the bad bend."

"Right you are. You got back to her then." The duty man on the Berebury Ambulance Station switchboard flipped a lever which connected him with the crew room. "Emergency just come in, Fred. Back of beyond, I'm afraid. Woman lying in the road."

"Dead?"

"Caller didn't say she was alive," he said reasonably, "and he didn't mention injuries. Just that she was lying in the road."

"Dead then," said the experienced Fred.

"Or drunk," said the man in charge who had been at the game even longer.

She wasn't drunk.

Harry Ford going back to have a second, more considered look decided that beyond any doubt at all she was dead. He had been almost sure the first time by the inadequate gleam of his bicycle lamp but now with the sky growing lighter every minute he was absolutely certain.

Her Majesty's Mails being his prime concern he poppedhis bicycle safely in the deep hedge that same deep hedge that made this a blind corner, then he came back and stood squarely in the middle of the road. He would be seen by anyone coming now. Not, he decided, that there was ever likely to be much traffic on this road-still less so early in the morning.

This line of thought proved productive.

Not only, now he came to think of it, would there be almost no vehicles using this road first thing in the morning but it was equally unlikely that anyone would be walking along it either.

Still less a woman…

A man, perhaps, walking up to one of the farms to do the milking, but not a woman.

He considered in his mind the houses beyond. There were about six of them before you could say you were really out of Larking and then there was a two mile stretch with just three big farms, then Belling St. Peter.

Harry Ford advanced a little.

He might know her himself come to that—he knew most Larking people.

But he hadn't taken more than a step when he heard somecoming. It was too soon for the ambulance; besides the direction was wrong. He cocked his head, listening. It wasn'ta car either, he decided, getting out into the middle of the road ready to wave anything on wheels to a standstill. Quite suddenly the oncoming noise resolved itself into a tractor which pulled up to a quick halt as the driver saw him.

"Accident?" shouted the man at the wheel above the engine noise.

" 'Fraid so," shouted back Ford.

The tractor engine spluttered and died and there was a sudden silence.

"She's dead," said Ford.

The young man got down from his high seat. It was one of the sons of the farmer from farther down the road, by the name of Bill Thorpe.

"I found her," said Ford.

Not that it looked as if she'd been hit by a bicycle.

"She's from one of the cottages, isn't she?" said Thorpe, peering down. "You know, Harry, I think I know who she is."

Ford, who to tell the truth, hadn't been all mat keen on having a really close look on his own, was emboldened by the presence of the young man and bent down towards the cold white face. "Why, it's Mrs. Jenkins."

"That's right," said Thorpe.

"Boundary Cottage," responded the postman automatically. (The odd letter, no circulars, very few bills.)

Thorpe looked round. "Hit and run," he said bitterly. "Not even a ruddy skid mark."

"It's a nasty corner," offered Ford.

Thorpe was still looking at the road. "You can see where he hit the verge a bit afterwards and straightened up again."

Ford didn't know much about cars. 'Too fast?"

"Too careless."

"You'd have thought anyone would have seen her," agreed Ford.

"Walking on the wrong side, though."

"Depends whether she was coming or going,"said Ford, who was the slower thinker of the two.

"I should have said she was walking home myself," pronounced Thorpe carefully. "Last night."

"Last night?" Ford looked shocked.

"If that mark on the grass is his front tyre after he hit her when she was walking along the left hand side of the road towards her home."

"But last night," insisted Ford. "You mean she's been here all night?"

Thorpe scratched an intelligent forehead. "I don't know, Harry, but she isn't likely to have been walking home this morning in the dark, is she?"

Harry Ford shook his head. "A very quiet lady, I'd have said."

"And," continued Thorpe, pursuing his theory, "if she'd been going anywhere very early she'd have been walking the other way. No, I'd say myself she was going home last night."

"Off the last bus, perhaps," suggested the postman.

"Perhaps."

"Her daughter's not at home then," said Ford firmly. "Otherwise she'd have been out looking for her."

"No, she's away still. Back at the end of term." He looked down at the still figure in the road and said, "Sooner now."

"I rang the ambulance," said Ford, for want of something to say.

Thorpe moved with sudden resolution. "Well, then, I'll go and ring the police. Don't you let them move her until they come."

"Right."

Thorpe paused, one foot on the tractor. "Poor Henrietta. No father and now no mother either."

Police Constable Hepple came over from Down Martin on his motorcycle and measured the road and drew chalk lines round the body and finally allowed the ambulance men to take it away. He, too, knew Mrs. Jenkins by sight.

"Widow, isn't she, Harry?" he said to the postman.

"That's right. Just the one girl."

He got out his notebook. "Does she know about this?"

"She's away," volunteered young Thorpe. "At college."

"Do you know her exact address?"

But young Thorpe went a bit pink and said rather distantly that he did not So P.C. Hepple made another note and then measured the tyre mark on the grass verge.

"I'd say a 590 X14 myself," offered Thorpe, who was keen on cars. "That's a big tyre on a big car." Now that the body had gone he could talk about that more freely too. 'Those were big car injuries she had."

P. C. Hepple, who had reached much the same conclusions himself, nodded.

"Tisn't what you'd call a busy road," went on Thorpe.

"Busy!" snorted Harry Ford. "I shouldn't think it gets more than a dozen cars a day."

"Even the milk lorries all go the other way," said Thorpe, "because it's a better road."

"Did you have any visitors at the farm last night?" Hepple asked Thorpe.

"Not a soul."

"Perhaps it was someone who'd taken the wrong turning at the Post Office." That was the postman.

"Wrong turning or not," said Hepple severely, "there was no call to be knocking Mrs. Jenkins down."

"And," said Thorpe pertinently, "having knocked her down to have driven on."

It seemed to Henrietta Jenkins that she would never again be quite the same person as she had been before she stepped into the cold, bare police mortuary.

A sad message, telephoned through a series of offices, had snatched her from the Greatorex Library where she had been working. A succession of kind hands had steered her into the hastily summoned taxi and put her onto the Berebury train. She had been barely aware of them. She vaguely remembered getting out at Berebury more from force of habit than anything else. A police car had met her—she remembered that—and brought her to the police station.

Voices had indicated that there was no need for her to identify the body just now. Perhaps there were some other relatives?

No, Henrietta had told them. There was no one else. She was an only child and her father had been killed in the war.

Perhaps, then, there was someone close in Inking who would…

Henrietta had shaken her head.

Tomorrow then?

She had shaken her head again. Now.

Something like this was only possible if you didn't think about it. She heard herself say—very politely—"Now or never."

She had followed a policeman down a long corridor. She didn't think she had ever seen a policeman without a helmet on—absurd the tricks one's mind played at a time like this.

He drew back a white sheet. Briefly. And looked not at the still face lying there but at Henrietta's own live one.

She nodded speechlessly.

He laid the sheet back gently and led the way back to the world of the living. Henrietta was shivering now but not from cold. The policeman—she noticed for the first time that he was a sergeant—brought her a cup of tea. It was steaming hot and almost burnt her mouth but Henrietta drank it thirstily, gladly giving the hot liquid all her attention.

Even the sensation of pain, though, could not drive away the memory of the mortuary.

"It's the smell that upsets people," said the police sergeant kindly. "All that antiseptic."

"It is a bit dank," admitted Henrietta shakily. The detached, educated half of her mind noted how primitive it was of her to be so grateful for human company; but nothing would have taken her back into that other room again. Only if the body had been that of a stranger could she have borne that.

The sergeant busied himself about some papers on his desk while she drank. Presently she said,

"Sergeant, what happened?"

"The Larking postman found her lying in the road, miss. She'd been run over by a car on that last bad bend as you leave Larking village."

"I know the place. Why?"

"Why was she knocked down? That we don't rightly know, miss. You see, the car didn't stop."

Henrietta stifled a rising wave of nausea.

"We'll pick him up, sooner or later, you'll see," said the sergeant. "Someone will have seen his number."

Henrietta said dully, "The number doesn't really matter to my mother or me now."

"No, miss." It seemed for a moment as if he was going to explain that it mattered to the police but instead he said care"Constable Hepple found her handbag—afterwards— and there was a letter from you inside it."

"I always wrote on Sundays."

"Yes, miss. People do that are away. Sunday's the day for that sort of thing…"

"I wish I'd had time to say something before…"

The sergeant offered what comfort he could. "There's not a lot really needs saying, miss, not when it comes to the point. Families have said everything long ago, or else it's something that doesn't need saying." He paused. "What about tonight, miss?"

"I shall be all right."

"Wt'll run you home to Larking, of course, but…"

"It's something I've got to get used to, isn't it?" she said. "Being alone from now on."

CHAPTER TWO

Police Constable Hepple of Down Martin was a conscientious man. First of all he measured the tyre mark in the grass and drew a plan. Then he borrowed an old sack from Bill Thorpe's tractor and covered the imprint against damage. Afthat he began a systematic search of the area.

He was rewarded with the discovery of Mrs. Jenkins's handbag, knocked out of her hand and flung into the long grass by the roadside. He took charge of this and continued his search but found nothing else. The letter inside from Henrietta having given her address he telephoned this and his report to his headquarters at Berebury, leaving to them the business of finding her and telling her the bad news.

He himself went back to the scene of the accident and took a plaster cast of the tyre mark. He then proceeded—as he would have said himself—to Boundary Cottage. He checked that it was safely locked—it was—and then went on to visit the other five cottages. Three of these were in a short row and two others and Boundary Cottage were detached, standing in their own not inconsiderable gardens.

There was no reply from Mulberry Cottage which was Boundary Cottage's nearest neighbour—some people called Carter lived there—but all the occupants of the others and of the two other farms besides the Thorpes said the same thing. They had had no visitors the previous evening. They had heard and seen nothing.

Hepple went home and wrote out a second, slightly fuller report, and spent part of his afternoon in Larking village trying to establish who had been the last person to see Mrs. Jenkins alive.

It was because of his careful checking over of Boundary Cottage that he was so surprised to have a telephone call from Henrietta the next morning.

"Someone's been in the house," she said flatly.

"Have they, miss? What makes you think that?"

"In the front room…"

"Yes?" He had his notebook ready.

"There's a bureau. You know the sort of thing—you can write at it but it's not exactly a desk…"

"I know."

"It's been broken into. Someone's prised the flap part open—they've damaged the wood."

"When did you discover this, miss?"

Henrietta looked at her watch. It was just after ten o'clock in the morning. "About ten minutes ago. I came straight out to ring you."

"This damage, miss, you'd say it was someone trying to get inside without a key?"

"That's right."

He hesitated. "It couldn't have been your mother, miss? I mean, if she had lost her own key and needed to get in there quickly for something…"

"She'd never have spoilt it like this," retorted Henrietta quickly. "Besides she wasn't the sort of person who lost keys."

"Yes." Hepple knew what she meant. His own impression of Mrs. Jenkins was of a neat quiet lady. Law-abiding to a degree.

"Moreover," went on Henrietta, "if she had had to do something like that I'm sure she'd have told me in her letter."

P. C. Hepple came back to the question of time.

"When?" repeated Henrietta vaguely. "I don't know when."

"Yesterday, miss. You came back yesterday."

"That's right. They brought me home from Berebury in a police car afterwards…"

"About what time would that have been, miss?"

But time hadn't meant anything to Henrietta yesterday.

"It was dark. I don't know when exactly."

"Was the bureau damaged then?" persisted Hepple.

"I don't know. I didn't go into the front room at all last night. I've just been in there now…"

"The cottage was all locked up just gone twelve o'clock yesterday morning," said Hepple, "because I went along myself then to check. There were no signs of breaking and entering then, miss."

"There aren't any now," said Henrietta tersely. "Just the bureau. That's the only thing that's wrong."

With which, when he got there, P. C. Hepple was forced to agree.

"Windows and doors all all right," he said. "Unless they had a key, no one came in after I checked up yesterday morning."

They went back to the front room and considered the bureau again. Henrietta pointed to a deep score in the old wood.

"My mother never did that. She'd have sent for a locksmith first."

"Yes." Now he could see the bureau, that was patently true. No one who owned a nice walnut piece like this would ever spoil it in that way just to get inside. "What did she keep in there, miss, do you know?"

"All her papers," said Henrietta promptly. "Receipts, wireless licence—that sort of thing…"

"Money?"

"No, never. She didn't believe in keeping it in the house-especially a rather isolated one like this."

"Jewellery?"

Henrietta shook her head. "She didn't go in for that either—she never wore anything that you could call jewellery. My father's medals, though. They were in there."

Henrietta's gaze travelled from the bureau to the mantelpiece and a silver framed photograph of an Army sergeant— and back to the bureau. "They're in a little drawer at the side. I'll show you them if you like…"

"No," said Hepple quickly. "Don't touch it, miss."

She dropped her hands to her sides.

"Fingerprints," said Hepple. "It may not be worthwhile but you can't be sure until you've tried."

"I hadn't thought of that…" Her voice trailed away.

"Now, miss, about last night." Constable Hepple was nothif not persistent.

"They brought me home in a police car sometime in the early evening I think it was. I didn't hear—about Mother unnearly lunch time and it took me a while to get back to Berebury. Then I was there for quite a bit…"

"Yes, miss."

"They didn't want to leave me here alone the first night but I promised I'd go across to Mrs. Carter if I wanted anything."

"But," agreed Hepple gently, "the Carters are away. I called there this morning."

"That's right. Only I didn't know that until I banged on her door and didn't get an answer. So I came back here."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"You're sure you didn't come into this room?"

"Not until this morning."

"You heard nothing in the night?"

"I didn't hear anyone levering the bureau open if that's what you mean. And I'm sure I would have done."

They both regarded the splintered lock.

"Yes," said Hepple, "you would."

"Besides which," said Henrietta, heavy-eyed, "I can't say that I slept much last night anyway."

"No, miss," the policeman was sympathetic, "I don't suppose you did."

"And this couldn't have been done quietly."

"So," said Hepple practically, "that means that this was done before you got back yesterday evening, which was Wednesday, and after your mother left home for the last time—which was presumably some time on Tuesday."

"That's right," agreed Henrietta. "If she'd had to do it, she'd have told me in a letter—and if she'd found it done I'm sure she would have told the police."

"Can't understand it at all, sir." Police Constable Hepple rang his headquarters at Berebury Police Station as soon as he left Boundary Cottage. He was put onto the Criminal Investigation Department. "Mind you, we don't know what's gone from the bureau—if anything. The young lady isn't familiar with its contents. Her mother always kept it locked."

"Did she indeed?" said Detective-Inspector Sloan.

"And there's no sign of forced entry anywhere."

"Except the bureau."

"That's right, sir." Hepple paused significantly. "I shouldn't have said myself it was the sort of place worm a burglary."

"Really?" Sloan always listened to opinions of this sort.

"It's just one of Mr. Hibbs's old cottages. Mind you, they keep it very nice. Always have done."

"Who do?"

"Mrs. Jenkins and Henrietta—that's the daughter. Of course, coming on top of the accident like this I thought I'd better report it special."

"Quite right, Constable."

"Seems a funny thing to happen."

"It is," said Sloan briefly. "How far have they got with the accident?"

"Usual procedure with a fatal, sir. Traffic Division have asked all their cars to keep a look-out for a damaged vehicle, and all garages to report anything coming in for accident repair. I've got a decent cast of a nearside front tyre…"

"Size?"

"590X14."

"Big," said Sloan, just as Bill Thorpe had done.

"Yes, sir. They're asking for witnesses but they can't be sure of their timing until after the post-mortem. The local doctor put the time of death between six and nine o'clock on Tuesday evening, but I understand the pathologist is doing a post-mortem this morning."

"We'll know a bit more after that," agreed Sloan.

Wherein he was speaking more truthfully than he realised.

"Yes, sir," said Hepple. "They'll be able to fix an inquest date after that. I've warned the girl about it. But as to this other matter, sir…"

"The bureau?"

"It doesn't make sense to me. That house was all locked up when I went 'round it at twelve yesterday. I could swear no one broke in before then."

Sloan twiddled a pencil. "She could have gone out on Tuesday and forgotten to shut the door properly."

"Ye-es," said Hepple uneasily, "but I don't think so. Caresort of woman, I'd have said. Very."

"When did she go out on Tuesday? Do we know that? And where had she been?"

"We don't know where she'd been, sir. No one seems to know that. Her daughter certainly doesn't. As to when, she caught the first bus into Berebury and came back on the last."

"Not much help. She could have gone anywhere."

"Yes, sir. And it meant the house was empty all day."

"And all night."

"All night?"

"She was lying in the road all night."

"So she was," said Hepple. "I was forgetting. In fact, you could say the house was empty from first thing Tuesday morning until they brought the daughter from Berebury on Wednesday evening."

"I wonder what was in the bureau?"

"I couldn't say, sir. She didn't keep money in there, nor jewellery. Nothing like that. Just papers, her daughter said."

Detective Constable Crosby was young and brash and conrepresented the new element in the police force. The younger generation. He didn't usually volunteer to do anything. Which was why when Detective-Inspector Sloan heard him offering to take a set of papers back to Traffic Division he sat up and took notice.

"Nothing to do with us, sir," the constable said virtuously. "Road Traffic Accident. Come to the C.I.D. by mistake, I reckon."

"Then," said Sloan pleasantly, "you can reckon again."

Crosby stared at the report. "Woman, name of Grace Jenkins, run down by a car on a bad bend far end of Larking village."

"That's right."

"But Larking's miles away."

"In the country," agreed Sloan. "Let's hope the natives are friendly."

Sarcasm was wasted on Crosby. He continued reading aloud. "Found by H. Ford, postman, believed to have been dead between ten and twelve hours, injuries consistent with vehicular impact?"

"That's the case. Read on. Especially P. C. Hepple's report of this morning."

"Bureau in deceased's front room broken open. No signs of forced entry to the house." Crosby sounded disappointed. "That's not even breaking and entering, sir."

"True."

"I still don't see," objected Crosby, "what it's got to do with her being knocked down and killed."

"Frankly, Crosby, neither do I." Sloan put out his hand for the file. "In fact there may be no connection whatsoever. In which case some of your valuable time will have been wasted."

"Yes, sir." Woodenly.

"That is," he added gravely, "a risk we shall have to take."

Detective-Inspector Sloan read the accident report again and thanked his lucky stars—not for the first time—that he didn't work in Traffic Division.

"Of all the nasty messes," he mused aloud, "I think a hit-and-run driver leaves the worst behind. No medical attention. No ambulance. No insurance."

"And no prosecution," said Crosby mordantly. He pointed to the report. "Perhaps this character who hit her was drunk."

"Perhaps." Sloan got up from his desk. "Though it was a bit early in the evening for that."

"Perhaps she was drunk then," suggested Crosby, undaunted.

Sloan shook his head. "Hepple didn't suggest she was that sort of woman—quite the reverse in fact… A car, please, Crosby, and we shall venture into the outback at once."

They didn't go quite straight away because the telephone on Sloan's desk started to ring.

"Berebury Hospital," said a girl's voice. Can Inspector Sloan take a call from the Pathologist's Department, please?"

Crosby handed the receiver over to Sloan, who said, "Speaking."

"Dabbe here," boomed a voice.

"Good morning, Doctor," said Sloan cautiously.

"I've been trying to talk to your Traffic Division about a woman I'm doing a p.m. on."

"Yes?"

"They say she's your case now and you've got all the papers…"

"In a way," agreed Sloan guardedly. He'd sort that out with Traffic afterwards.

"I've got her down," said the pathologist, "as Grace Edith Jenkins."

"That's right. We're treating it as an R.T.A., Doctor."

"Road Traffic Accident she may be," said the pathologist equably. "I'll tell you about that later. That's not what I'm ringing about. The notes that came in with her say she was identified by her daughter."

"That's right."

"No, it isn't."

Sloan picked up the file. "Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins said it was her mother."

"Any doubt about the identification?"

"None that I've heard about, Doctor."

The pathologist grunted. "She wasn't disfigured at all-there were no facial injuries to speak of."

"No? Is it important, sir?"

"Either, Inspector, this girl…"

"Miss Jenkins."

"Miss Jenkins has identified the wrong woman…"

"I don't think so," objected Sloan, glancing swiftly through the notes in the file. "The village postman and a neighbouring fanner's son called Thorpe put us on to her—to say nothing of Constable Hepple. They all said it was Mrs. Jenkins well before we got hold of the daughter."

"That's just it," said the pathologist.

"What is, sir?"

"She wasn't the daughter."

"But…"

"This woman you've sent me may be Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins," said Dabbe.

"She is."

"I don't know about that," went on the pathologist, "but I can tell you one thing for certain and that's that she's never ever had any children."

"Her daughter, Doctor, said…"

"Not her daughter…"

Sloan paused and said carefully, "Someone who told us she was Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins then…"

"Ah," said Dabbe, "that's different."

"She said she was prepared to swear in a Coroner's Court that this was the body of her mother, Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins, widow of Sergeant Cyril Jenkins of the East Cal-leshires."

The pathologist sounded quite unimpressed.

"Very possibly," he said. "That's not really my concern but…"

"Yes?"

"You might take a note, Inspector, to the effect that I shall have to go to the same Coroner's Court and swear that, in my opinion, she—whoever she is—had certainly never had any children and had very probably never been married either."

CHAPTER THREE

"Have you ever turned two pages of something, Sloan?"

The Superintendent of Police in Berebury glared across his desk at the Head of his Criminal Investigation Department. It was a very small Department, all matters of great moment being referred to the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters in Calleford.

"No, sir. The girl positively identified the woman as her mother and Dr. Dabbe, the pathologist, says the woman had never had any children."

"How does he know?"Truculently.

"I couldn't begin to say,"said Sloan faintly. The Superintendent's first reaction was always the true English one of challenging the expert. he was quite definite about it."

"He always is."

"Yes, sir,"Sloan coughed. "There are really three matters…"

Superintendent Leeyes Grunted discouragingly.

"First of all a woman is knocked down and killed on Tuesday evening not far from her home."Sloan stopped and amended this. far from what we believe is her home. At some stage before or after this but not before Wednesday evening someone lets himself into her house with a key but doesn't have a key to the bureau so breaks it open…"

"Why?"

"I don't know yet sir. Thirdly…"

"Well?"

"Te woman isn't the mother of a girl who identified her as her mother."

"It's not difficult," said Leeyes softly. "She's probably the father's bastard."

Sloan ignored this and said conversationally, "Mrs. Jenkins seems to have been a very unusual woman, sir."can say that again,"said the Superintendent. 've never heard of unnatural childbirth before."

"She managed"—Sloan was still struggling to keep the tone at an academic level—"she managed to keep her private affairs private in a small village like Larking."

"I'll admit that takes some doing. Did she have a record then?"

"I don't know, sir, yet, but that's not quite the same thing as a secret."

"No? Perhaps, Sloan, I've been in the Force too long…"

"I think this secret must have been of a matrimonial nature."

The Superintendent brightened at once. "Then perhaps it was Mr. Jenkins who had the record."

"I'll check on that naturally, sir, but there is another possibility."

"There are lots of possibilities."

"Yes, sir."

"Not all of them to do with us."

"No, sir. This could well be just a family matter."

"Most of our cases," the Superintendent reminded him tartly, doing one of his famous smart verbal about-turns, "are family matters."

"Yes, sir." He paused. "Constable Hepple doesn't know anything about them not being mother and daughter and he's been living out that way for donkey's years."

"A good man, Hepple," conceded Leeyes. "Knows all the gossip. If there's much crime in the south of Calleshire he never tells us."

This might not have been Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary's view of what constituted a good policeman but the Superintendent was not a man who looked for work.

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked Sloan.

"See the girl for a start—and the bureau."

"She could be lying." Leeyes tapped Traffic Division's file. "According to Dr. Dabbe she is."

"Her mother could have lied to her…"

"A by-blow of the father's," repeated the Superintendent firmly, "for sure, brought up as her own. Some women will swallow anything."

"Perhaps," said Sloan cautiously. "But just suppose she isn't Grace Edith Jenkins?"

Superintendent Leeyes looked quite attentive at last. "I don't believe we've had a case of personation in the county for all of twenty years."

Young Thorpe had called at Boundary Cottage to see if Henrietta needed anything, and to say how sorry he was.

"It is nice of you, Bill," she said sincerely, "but I'm quite all right."

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, almost filling it with his square shoulders. He wasn't all that young either but being Mr. Thorpe of Shire Oak Farm's son he was destined to be known as young Thorpe for many years yet.

"I liked your mother, you know," he said, "in spite of everything."

"I know you did, Bill," Henrietta said quickly.

"She was probably right to make us wait. First I was away at the Agricultural College and then with her being so keen on your going away too."

Henrietta nodded. "She really minded about that, didn't she?"

"Some people just feel that way about education," said Bill Thorpe seriously. "My father's the same. He couldn't go to college himself but he made me. He's right, I suppose. You learn—well, it's not exactly how much you learn but the reasons behind things."

"And it wasn't very long, was it?"

He smiled wanly. "It seemed a long time."

"You never wrote."

"Neither did you," returned Bill.

"We promised not to. I thought it might make things easier."

"Did it?"

Henrietta shook her head. "No."

"Nor for me." He looked at her for a minute, then, "Mother said to come to the farm to sleep if you wanted."

"Will you say thank you? There's nothing I'd like more but," she grimaced, "I think if I once didn't stay here on my own I'd never get back to doing it again. She'll understand, I know."

Thorpe nodded. "We're a bit out of the way, too, at the farm. There'll be a lot to be done here I expect."

"It's not that but," she pushed her hair back vaguely, "there seem to be people coming all the time. The Rector's coming down to talk to me about the funeral and Mr. Hepple said he'd be back again about the inquest." She gave a shaky half-laugh. "I'd no idea dying was such a—well—complicated business."

"No,"agreed Thorpe soberly. He allowed a decent interval to elapse before he said, "Any news of the car?"

"What car—oh, that car? No, Bill, they haven't said anything to me about it yet."

Henrietta thought that Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby had come from the Berebury C.I.D. solely to examine her mother's bureau for fingerprints.

"It's in the front room," she said, leading the way. "I haven't touched it."

Sloan obligingly directed Crosby to perform this routine procedure while he talked to Henrietta.

"Nothing missing from the rest of the house, miss?"

"Not that I know of, Inspector. It all looks all right to me." She paused. "It's such an odd thing to happen, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Sloan simply.

"I mean, why should someone want to break in here…"

"Not break in, miss. P.C. Hepple said all the doors and windows were intact. He found the place quite well locked up really. Whoever got in here came in by the door. The front door."

("The back one's bolted as well as the Tower of London,"was what Hepple had said.)

"The front door," he repeated.

"That's worse," said Henrietta.

"Your mother, miss, would she have left a key with anyone?"

"No." Henrietta considered this. "I'm sure she wouldn't. Besides there were only two keys. There was one in her handbag and one hanging on a hook in the kitchen. That's the one I use when I'm at home."

"I see."

Henrietta shivered suddenly. "I don't like to think of someone coming in here…"

"No, miss."

"… with a key."

Sloan wasn't exactly enamoured of the idea either. It left the girl in the state the insurance companies called being "at risk."

"Now, miss, I think we can open the bureau."

Crosby had finished his dusting operations. He stood back and said briefly, "Gloves."

Sloan was not surprised.

"Was it usually kept locked?" he asked Henrietta.

"Always."

"Are you familiar with its contents?"

"Not really. My mother kept her papers there. I couldn't say if they are all there or not."

Sloan eased back the flap. Everything was neatly pigeonholed. Either no one had been through the bureau or they had done it conscious that they would be undisturbed. Sloan pulled out the first bundle of papers.

"Housekeeping accounts," he said, glancing rapidly through them. Grace Jenkins and her alleged daughter had lived modestly enough.

"That's right," said Henrietta. "You'll find her cheque book there too."

Sloan took a quick look at the Bank's name for future reference. It was at a Berebury Branch. He put the tidily docketed receipts back and took out the next bundle. It brought an immediate flush to Henrietta's cheeks.

"I'd no idea she kept those."

Sloan looked down at a schoolgirl's writing.

"My letters to her," she said in a choked voice, "and my school reports."

If this was acting, thought Sloan, it was good acting.

"Mothers do." He chose his words carefully. "Part of the treasury of parenthood, you might say. By the way, where did you go to school?"

"Here in the village first, then Berebury High."

Sloan put the infant Henrietta's literary efforts back in their place and took out the next bundle.

"These seem to be about the cottage." He turned over a number of letters. "Fire insurance, rating assessment and so forth."

Sloan put them back but not before noting that all were quite definitely in the name of Mrs. G. E. Jenkins.

"Boundary Cottage," he said. "Did it belong to your mo— to Mrs. Jenkins?"

"No," Henrietta shook her head. "To Mr. Hibbs at The Hall. It's the last of the cottages on his estate. That's why it's called Boundary Cottage."

"Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to break in here?"

She shook her head again. "I don't think she kept anything valuable there. That's why I can't understand anyone wanting to go through it. There wasn't anything to steal…"

"It doesn't look," he said cautiously, "as if, in fact, anything has been stolen."

She reached over and pointed out a little drawer. "If you would just look inside that, Inspector… thank you. Ah, they're all right. My father's medals."

It was the opening Sloan was looking for.

"I'll need a note of his full name, miss, for the inquest."

"Sergeant Cyril Edgar Jenkins."

"And your mother's maiden name?"

"Wright," said Henrietta unhesitatingly.

"Thank you. That's his photograph, I take it?"

"It is." Henrietta handed it down from the mantelpiece and gave it to Sloan. "He was in the East Calleshires."

"That's unusual, isn't it, miss? I mean, they're mostly West Calleshires in these parts."

"He came from East Calleshire," she said.

"I see." Sloan studied the picture of a fair-haired man in soldier's uniform and glanced back at Henrietta's darker colouring.

"I was more like my mother to look at," she said, correctly interpreting his glance. "The same colour hair…"

But Mrs. Jenkins was not her mother. Dr. Dabbe had said so.

"Really, miss?" said Sloan aloud. "Now, you wouldn't have a photograph of her by any chance?"

"In my bedroom. I'll fetch it."

"A pretty kettle of fish," observed Sloan morbidly to Crosby the minute she was out of-earshot.

"Someone's been through that bureau with a toothcomb, sir," said Crosby. "Glove prints everywhere."

"Wonder what they wanted?"

"Search me." Crosby ran his fingers in behind pigeonholes, pressing here and pulling there. "Nothing to suggest a secret drawer."

"That's something to be thankful for anyway… Ah, there you are, miss, thank you."

Henrietta handed him a snapshot in a leather frame—quite a different matter from the studio portrait that had stood on the mantelpiece.

"It's not a very good one but it's the only one I've got."

Sloan held the snap in front of him. It was of an ordinary middle-aged woman, taken standing outside the back door of the cottage. She had on a simple cotton frock and had obviously been prevailed upon to come out of the kitchen to be photographed. She was smiling in a protesting sort of way at the camera.

"I was lucky to have one of her to show you," said Henrietta. The sight of the picture had brought a quaver into her voice which she strove to conceal from the two policemen. "She didn't like having her photograph taken."

"Didn't she indeed?"

"But I had a college friend to stay for a few days the sumbefore last and she had a camera with her."

"Do you mean to say, miss, that this is the only photograph of your mother extant?"

She frowned. "I think so. Angela—that was her name— sent it to us when she got home."

Inspector Sloan stood the two photographs side by side, the formal silver-framed studio study and the quick amateur snapshot.

"On my left, a sergeant in the East Calleshire Regiment called Cyril Edgar Jenkins…"

"My father," said Henrietta.

"Aged about—what would you say?"

"He was thirty-one," supplied Henrietta. "Is it important?"

"And on my right a middle-aged woman called Grace Edith Jenkins…"

"My mother," said Henrietta.

There was a short silence. Henrietta looked first at one policeman and then at the other.

Sloan avoided her clear gaze and said, "Can you remember anything before Larking?"

"No, I can't." She looked at him curiously but she answered his question. "I've lived here ever since I can remember. In Boundary Cottage. With my mother."

"And you don't remember your father at all?"

"No. He was killed soon after I was born."

"What do you know about him?"

"Him?"

"Yes, miss. I'll explain in a minute."

She hesitated. She had an image of her father in her mind, always had had and it was compounded of many things: the words of her mother, the photograph in the drawing room, the conception of any soldier, of all soldiers, killed in battle—but it wasn't something easily put into words.

"He wasn't afraid," she said awkwardly.

"I realize that." They didn't award medals for cowardice.

"But what do you know about him as a person? What was his occupation, for instance?"

"He worked on a farm."

"Did he own it?" Property owners as a class of person were easy to trace, popular with the police.

"I don't think so. He was the farm bailiff for someone."She frowned. "His father had a small farm, though. It wasn't really big for my father to work as well – that's why he worked for someone else."

"Whereabouts?"

"Somewhere on the other side of Calleshire. I'm not sure exactly where."

"So that is where your mother came from to Larking?"

"From that direction somewhere, I suppose. I don't know exactly. She said he – my father, that is, - had moved about a bit getting experience. He would have had to run his father's farm one day on his own and needed to learn."

"I see." He gave her a quick grin. "So on Saturday nights, miss, you-er-support the East Callies?"

She responded with a faint smile. The regimental rivalry between the East and West Calleshire was famous. "They get on very well without my help. The West Callies have lost their mascot twice already this year."

"Have they indeed? Vulnerable things, mascots. Now this farm of your-er-grandfather's-do you know where that was?"

"It was called Holly Tree Farm, I know,"said Henrietta promptly, "because I remember my mother telling me there was a very old holly tree there that my grandfather wouldn't have cut down even though it was just in front of the house and made the rooms very dark. He used to say you can't have a Holly Tree Farm without a holly tree."

"A very proper attitude,"agreed Sloan stoutly. "Did you ever go there?"

"Not that I can remember. I think he died when I was quite young."

"But your mother used to talk about the farm?"

"Oh, yes, a lot. She grew up near there too."

"And so she had known your father all her life?"

Henrietta nodded. "Ceratinly since they were children. She used to tell me a lot about him when he was a little boy. But, Inspector, I don't see what this has got to do with my mother's death."

"No, miss, I don't suppose you do,"Sloan paused judiciously.

"It's not easy to say this, miss, and if it weren't a matter of you having to give formal evidence of identification at the inquest it might not even be something we need to take cognizance of."

"What might not be?" Henrietta looked quite mystified.

"This Cyril Jenkins…"

"My father?"

"Had he been married twice by any chance?"

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"Or Grace Jenkins? Had she been married to anyone else besides Cyril Jenkins?"

A slow flush mounted Henrietta's cheeks. "No, Inspector, not to my knowledge."

Like a cat picking its way over a wet path Sloan said delicately, "There is a possibility that your name may not be Jenkins."

"Not Jenkins?"

"Not Jenkins."

"I may be being very stupid," said Henrietta, "but I don't see why not."

"It was Dr. Dabbe."

"Dr. Dabbe?"

"The pathologist, miss, from the hospital. He conducted a post-mortem examination on the body of the woman who was knocked down."

"That's right." She nodded. "My mother."

"No, miss."

Henrietta sat down suddenly. "I came into the Police Station on Wednesday—yesterday, that was—when I got back. They asked me to look at her. I signed something. There was a sergeant there—he'll tell you." She screwed up her face at the recollection. 'There wasn't any doubt. I wish there had been. It was her. Her face, her clothes, her handbag. I've never seen anyone dead before but I was absolutely certain…"

Sloan put up a hand to stem the memory. "It's not quite that, miss…" He couldn't tell if she knew nothing at all or if she knew a great deal more than he did. It was impossible to know.

She pushed a strand of hair away from her face and said very quietly, "Well, what exactly is it, then?"

"This woman who you identified yesterday as Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins…"

"Yes?"

Sloan didn't hurry to go on. He felt oddly embarrassed.

This wasn't the sort of subject you discussed with young girls. He didn't often wish work onto the women members of the Force but perhaps this might have been one of the times when…

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, miss, that the pathologist says she's never had any children."

A blush flamed up Henrietta's pale face. She tried to speak but for a moment no sound came. Then she managed a shaky little laugh. "I'm afraid there must have been some terrible mistake, Inspector…"

Sloan shook his head.

"A mix-up at the hospital, perhaps," she went on, heedless of his denial. "It happens with babies sometimes, doesn't it? Perhaps it's the same sometimes in—in other places…"

"No, miss…"

She took a deep breath. "That was my mother I saw yesterday. Beyond any doubt."

The doubt in Sloan's mind, because he was a policeman paid to doubt, was whether the girl was party to this knowledge about Grace Jenkins. He didn't let it alter his behaviour.

"I fear," gently, "that the pathologist is equally adamant that the subject of his examination had never borne children."

He saw the blush on the face of the girl in front of him fade away to nothing as she suddenly went very very pale.

"But…" Henrietta's world seemed suddenly to have no fixed points at all. She struggled to think and to speak logically. "But who am I then?"

CHAPTER FOUR

"Where do we go from here, sir?"

"That you may well ask, Crosby." Sloan was irritable and preoccupied as they walked away from Boundary Cottage. "All we've got so far is a girl who isn't who she thinks she is, the body of a woman who probably wasn't what she said she was and two photographs."

"Yes, sir." Crosby closed the gate behind them.

"Added to which we're leaving an unprotected girl, who has just been subjected to a great emotional shock, alone in a relatively isolated house to which we strongly suspect somehas already gained admittance with a key."

"She could go to friends. There must be someone near who would have her."

"I don't doubt that but it would be most unwise of her to go to them."

"Unwise, sir?"

"Unwise, Crosby. If we advise it and she goes she might have difficulty in regaining possession of her mother's—of Mrs. Jenkins's—belongings."

"I hadn't thought about that, sir." There was a distinct pause while Crosby did think about it, then, "From whom, sir?"

"I don't know."

"I see, sir." He didn't, in fact, see anything at all but thought it prudent not to say so.

"Have you thought that after this she may well not be in a position to prove her title to the cottage tenancy?"

"No, sir." Crosby digested this in silence. Then, "A sort of Tichborne Claimant in reverse, you might say, sir."

"That's it," agreed Sloan. Crosby, who was ambitious for promotion, had recently taken to looking up old cases. He stood for a moment beside the police car and then said, "A landlord usually knows a tenant as well as anyone after a while. Drive to The Hall, Crosby."

It lay between the village and Boundary Cottage, to the south of the church. Whereas the Rectory was Georgian, The Hall was older. It was quite small but perfectly proportioned.

"That's it," observed Sloan with satisfaction. "They had a bit about it in one of those magazines last year. My wife showed it to me. Late Tudor."

"Make a nice rest Home for tired constables," said Crosby.

James Hibbs saw them in his study. He was a well-built man in well-built tweeds. His hair was black running to grey and Sloan put his age at about fifty-five. As they went in two aristocratic gun dogs looked the two policemen over, decided they were not fair game and settled back disdainfully on the hearth.

"Shocking business," agreed Hibbs. "Don't like to think of something like that happening on your own doorstep, do you?"

"No, sir."

"Any news of the fellow who did it?"

"Not yet, sir."

"All in good time, I suppose." He sighed. "A good woman. Brought that girl up very well considering."

"Considering what, sir?"

Hibbs waved a hand. "That she'd had to do it on her own. No father, you know. Just her pension."

"Had you known her long?"

"Couldn't say I really knew her at all. She wasn't that sort of a woman. But she'd been here quite a while." He looked curiously at Sloan. "She came to Larking in the war. Couldn't tell you exactly when. Is it important?"

"No, sir. What we're trying to trace are some other relatives besides the girl."

"Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose she's still under age. Must be, of course, now I come to think of it."

"Why?"

"The Thorpe boy wanted to marry Henrietta and Mrs. Jenkins said no."

"Really, sir? On what grounds?"

"Age. The girl wasn't twenty-one at the time and still at university. Another year to go, then."

Sloan's gaze travelled upwards over the fireplace. An old oar, smoke-darkened, rested above it. A long time ago James Hibbs had rowed for his college.

"Nice lad," remarked Hibbs inconsequentially. "Can't think why she opposed it."

"To go back a bit further, sir…"

"Yes?"

"When she came here. Do you know where it was from?"

Hibbs frowned. "I had an idea it was East Calleshire somewhere but I couldn't be certain. I'd plenty of empty cottages on my hands at the time and old White would have been glad enough to get a tenant of any sort."

"Old White?"

"My agent at the time. Dead now, of course. He fixed it all up. I was only here intermittently. On leave."

"I see."

"Never thought we'd get anyone to live in Boundary Cotafter old Miss Potter died. Too far out."

"And how did you get Mrs. Jenkins?"

Hibbs shrugged his shoulders. "I couldn't tell you, Inspector, not at this distance of time. White might have adverit but I doubt it. Sending good money after bad in those days."

"Not now, sir."

"Good Lord, no. I could have sold it a dozen times since then if it had been empty. Sort of place people see on a Sunday afternoon drive in summer time and think they'd like to live in."

"Yes." Sloan looked reflectively round the study. "You wouldn't happen to have any records about this tenancy still, would you, sir?"

Hibbs considered this. "It's worth a look, I suppose. Old White was one of the old school. Neatest man I ever knew. Care to walk across to the Estate Office?"

Hibbs introduced them to the young man who was working there, called Threlkeld.

"Boundary Cottage, Mr. Hibbs?" Threlkeld stepped across to a filing cabinet. In the background Sloan could hear the low hum of a milking machine plant. The Hall was being run on very business-like lines. A file was produced. "What was it you wished to see?"

"The tenancy agreement, please."

Sloan watched him turn back the contents of the file. On top were details of the Rural District Council's Main Drainage connections, then, under a date for a few years earan estimate for repairs to the roof, Schedule "A" forms galore, more estimates, much smaller ones as they went back through the years. Nothing recorded the falling value of the pound like labour costs.

And rent.

Sloan almost—but not quite—whistled aloud when he saw the figure.

"Not a lot, is it?" said Hibbs ruefully. "That's the Rent Restriction Act for you."

Threlkeld went on turning back the pages. Everything was in date order. Suddenly the handwriting changed to an old-fashioned copperplate.

"Old White," said Hibbs. "Wrote a beautiful fist."

Threlkeld paused. "Here we are, Mr. Hibbs. Miss Potter died in December."

"Pneumonia," said Hibbs. "I can remember that much."

"The new tenant," went on Threlkeld, "took possession at the end of May. It was empty in between. You apparently signed an all-repairs lease…"

"For my sins," groaned Hibbs.

"… And it was accepted by her solicitors on behalf of their client in this letter, dated May 28th."

"Oh," said Sloan.

"It was East Calleshire then," said Hibbs. "I had an idea it was. Look, they were Calleford solicitors."

Sloan leaned over and read the address aloud. "Waind, Ar-bican & Waind, Ox Lane, Callef ord."

Acting on behalf of their client, Mrs. G. E. Jenkins, they had advised her to accept Mr. Hibbs's offer of Boundary Cottage, Larking, at the rent as stated.

"You don't remember her at all before this date, sir?"

Hibbs shook his head. "No. She came quite out of the blue. Old White probably thought that was a fair enough rent at the time and better than nothing."

"He was wrong," said Threlkeld unwisely. "No rent at all would have been better."

Hibbs turned. "It's easy to be wise after the event, Threlkeld. Besides, in those days one did give some consideration to widows and orphans."

Hibbs agreed readily enough to Sloan borrowing the letter and they took it back to Berebury with them.

Henrietta waited until Sloan and Crosby had gone.

She made herself stay sitting down in the front room until she heard the police car draw away. Then she slipped on a coat and left the house.

It was fresher outside. There was a March wind blowing and she felt more free than in the confined atmosphere of the house. Boundary Cottage had suddenly become much too small for her—there hardly seemed air enough inside for her to breathe.

She didn't go along the road but through the orchard behind the cottage and then along the old footpath. It brought her out near the church. Across the green from the church was the Rectory.

She went up to the door. It was half open. Somewhere beyond in the wide hall someone was counting aloud.

"Four, five…"

She knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" called a woman's voice.

"I d… don't know," said Henrietta miserably.

"Well, come in whoever it is—oh, it's you, Henrietta. Come in, dear, and just hold that for me, will you, while I finish these. I won't be a minute." A short, stout woman pushed a pile of freshly laundered surplices into Henrietta's hands. "Now, where was I?"

"Five."

"Six, seven, eight—what that Callows boy does with his, I can't think—nine, ten. That's the lot, thank goodness." She took the bundle back again. "Edward can take them across with him later. Now, come along in by the fire. You look frozen."

"I'm not cold. Just a bit shaky, that's all."

"I'm not surprised," retorted Mrs. Meyton. "Losing your poor mother like that. A terrible shock. The Rector was coming down to see you this afternoon—didn't you get his message?"

"Yes. Yes, I did." Henrietta drew in a deep breath. "Mrs. Meyton…"

"Yes, dear?"

"I want you to tell me something."

"What's that?"

"Do you remember my mother and I coming here?"

Mrs. Meyton nodded vigorously. "Yes, dear. It was just before the war ended."

"Did we come together?"

"Did we come together?" She smiled. "Of course you did. You were only a very tiny baby, you know. I remember it quite well. Such a sad little family."

"My father…"

Here Mrs. Meyton shook her head. "No, it was just after he was killed. I never met him."

"But," urgently, "you do remember us coming together?"

"Certainly. Boundary Cottage had been empty for a long time—since old Miss Potter died, in fact—and I remember how glad we were that someone was going to live in it after all." Mrs. Meyton raised her eyebrows heavenwards. "A rare old state it was in, I can tell you, but your mother soon got to work on it and she had it as right as ninepence in next to no time—garden and all."

"She liked things just so…"

Mrs. Meyton wasn't listening. "How the years do go by. It hardly seems the other day but it must be all of twenty years…"

"Twenty-one," said Henrietta. "I'll be twenty-one next month."

"I suppose you will." Mrs. Meyton regarded the passing years with disfavour. "I don't know where the time goes. And the older you get the more quickly it passes."

"Baptism," said Henrietta suddenly.

"What about it, dear?"

"Was I christened here in Larking?"

But here Mrs. Meyton's parochial memory failed her. She frowned hard. "Now, I would have to think about that. Is it important? Edward would know. At least," she added loyally, "he could look it up in the Register."

Memory was not one of the Rector's strong points.

"Do you think he would? You see,"—she swallowed hard—"you see, the police have just told me that Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother after all."

Mrs. Meyton looked disbelieving. "Not your mother?"

"That's what they said."

"But," said Mrs. Meyton in a perplexed voice, "if she wasn't, who was?"

"That's what I'd like to know." There was a catch in her voice as she said, "I expect I'm illegitimate."

"Nonsense." Mrs. Meyton shook her head. There were thirty years of being a clergy wife behind her when she said, "Your mother wasn't the sort of woman to have an illegitibaby."

"She hadn't ever had any children," said Henrietta bleakly, "and she wasn't my mother, so it doesn't apply."

"I shouldn't have said myself," went on Mrs. Meyton, "that she was the sort of woman either to say she'd had a baby if it wasn't hers."

"Neither would I," agreed Henrietta promptly. "That's the funny thing…"

"But if she did," sensibly, "I expect she had a good reason. They must have adopted you."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"A cup of tea," said Mrs. Meyton decisively, "that's what we both need."

Ten minutes later Henrietta put her cup down with a clatter. "I've just thought of something…"

"What's that, dear?"

"How do I know I'll be twenty-one in April?"

"Because…" Mrs. Meyton's voice trailed away. "Oh, I see what you mean." Then, "A birth certificate, dear. You must have a birth certificate. Everyone does."

"Do they? I've never seen mine."

"You'll have one somewhere. You'll see. Your mother will have kept it in a safe place for sure."

"The bureau…" cried Henrietta. - "That's right," said Mrs. Meyton comfortably.

"It's not right," retorted Henrietta. "Someone broke into the bureau on Tuesday."

"Oh, dear."

"And there's certainly no birth certificate in there now…"

"A copy," said Mrs. Meyton gamely. "You can send for one from Somerset House."

"But don't you see," cried Henrietta in despair, "if she wasn't my mother I don't know what name to ask for."

CHAPTER FIVE

"Crosby…"

"Sir?' Crosby had one ear glued to the telephone receiver but he listened to Sloan with the other.

"You tell me why a woman brings up a child as her own when it isn't."

"Adopted, sir, that's all."

"Why?"

"Why adopt, sir? I couldn't say, sir. Seems quite unnecessary to me. Asking for trouble." His early years on the beat had made a child-hater out of Crosby.

"Why adopt when she did," said Sloan. 'That's what I want to know."

"When?" echoed Crosby.

"The middle of a war, that's when. With her husband on active service."

"Do we know that, sir, for sure?"

"We don't know anything for sure," Sloan reminded him with some acerbity, "except that Dr. Dabbe swears that this Grace Edith Jenkins never had any children." He paused. "We know a thing or two that are odd, of course."

"The bureau?"

"The bureau. Someone broke into that for a reason."

"They found what they were looking for…"

"Yes, I think they did. Something else that's odd, Crosby…"

Crosby thought for a moment. "Odd that they didn't have to break into the house. Just the bureau."

"Very odd, that."

"Yes, sir." Crosby waved his free hand. "Dr. Dabbe is coming on the line from the hospital now, sir."

Sloan took the receiver.

"This road traffic accident you sent me, Sloan, one Grace Edith Jenkins…"

, Doctor."

" I confirm of death. Between six and nine o'clock on Tuesday evening. Nearer nine than six."

"Thank you." Sloan started to write.

"She was aged about fifty-five," continued the pathologist. "Forty-five; I think it was, Doctor." Sloan turned back pages of the file. "Yes. Her daughter said she was forty-five. Forty-six next birthday."

"And I," said Dr. Dabbe mildly, "said she was about fifty-five."

Sloan made his first significant note.

"She had also had her hair dyed fairly recently."

"Oh?" said Sloan.

"From—er—blonde to brunette."

"Had she indeed?" The pathologist never missed anything.

"I should say she had been hit from behind by a car which was travelling pretty fast. The main injury was a ruptured aorta and she would have died very quickly from it.

"Outright?"

"In my opinion, yes."

That, at least, was something to be thankful for.

"I should say the car wheel went right over her, also rupturing the spleen. There are plenty of surface abrasions…""I'm not surprised."

"Both ante-mortem and post-mortem.""Post-mortem?"

"There was also a post-mortem fracture of the right femur," said the pathologist.

Sloan said, "I'm sorry to hear that." .

"I fear," said Dr. Dabbe, "that these injuries are consistent with her having been run over by a heavy vehicle twice.

"Two successive cars?" asked Sloan hopefully.

The pathologist sounded cautious. "I'd have to see the planof how she was lying but I'd have said she was definitely hit from behind the first time."

"That's what the constable in attendance thought.""And from the opposite direction the second time."

"Nasty."

"Yes."

Sloan replaced the receiver and looked out of the window "A car, Crosby, and quickly. I want to get back to, Lading before the light goes. And get on to Hepple and tell him to meet us at the scene of the accident."

Henrietta was still at the Rectory when the Rector returned.

He was undismayed when his wife told him that Henrietta was not Grace Jenkins's daughter.

"That explains something that always puzzled me," he said.

Henrietta looked up quickly. "What was that?"

"Why she came to Larking in the first place. As far as I could discover she had no links here at all. None whatsoever." Mr. Meyton was a spare, grey-haired scholarly man, a keen student of military history and the direct opposite of his tubby, cheerful wife. "If I remember correctly you both arrived out of the blue so to speak. And no one could call Boundary Cottage the ideal situation for an unprotected woman and child in war time."

Henrietta blinked. "I hadn't thought of that…"

"If she was deliberately looking for somewhere lonely…"

"Nowhere better," agreed Henrietta. "I just thought she liked the country."

"It occurred to me at the time she had set out to cut herself off," said Mr. Meyton. "Some people do. A great mistake, of course, and I always advise against it."

"Now we know why," said Henrietta.

"Perhaps."

"She wanted everyone to think I was hers."

"She probably didn't want you to know you weren't," said Mr. Meyton mildly. "Which is something quite different."

"But why on earth not?" demanded Henrietta. "Lots of children are adopted these days."

"True." The Rector hesitated. "There are other possibilities, of course."

"I'm just beginning to work them out," dryly.

"She might have had you by a previous marriage…"

"No. It wasn't that."

"Or even—er—outside marriage."

"Nor that," said Henrietta tonelessly. "The police said so. She wasn't anybody's mother—ever."

"I see. There will be reasons, you know."

She sighed. "I could have understood any of those things but this just doesn't make sense."

"It is an unusual situation." Mr. Meyton gave the impression of choosing his words with care.

"Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter," said Henrietta defiantly, "whatever anyone says."

"Quite so."

"And I swear no one could have been kinder…"

"No." He said tentatively, "Perhaps—had you thought— most likely of all, I suppose—that you were a child of your father's by a previous marriage."

Mrs. Meyton who had been sitting by, worried and concerned, put in anxiously, "That would explain everything, dear, wouldn't it?"

"I had wondered about that," said Henrietta.

The Rector stirred his tea. "It is a distinct possibility."

Henrietta stared into the fire. 'That would make me her stepdaughter."

"Yes." He coughed. "It might also account for the strange fact that following his death she didn't tell you."

"She didn't," said Henrietta vigorously, "behave like a stepmother."

"That's a fiction, you know," retorted the Rector. "You've been reading too many books."

Henrietta managed a tremulous smile, and said again, "Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter. I know she loved me…"

"Of course she did," insisted Mrs. Meyton.

"Perhaps that's the wrong word," said Henrietta slowly. "It was more than that. I always felt…" She looked from one of them to the other struggling to find a word that would convey intangible meaning, "… well, cherished, if you know what I mean."

"Of course, I do," said Mrs. Meyton briskly. "And you were. Always."

"It wasn't only that. She made great sacrifices so that I could go away to university. We had to be very careful, you know, with money." She pushed her hair back from her face and said, "She wouldn't have done that for just anybody, would she?"

What could have been a small smile twitched at the corners of the Rector's lips but he said gravely enough, "I think we can accept that—whoever you are—you aren't—er—just anybody."

"But am I even Henrietta?"

"Henrietta?"

"Henrietta Eleanor Leslie—those are my Christian names…"

"Well?"

"I thought I was my mother's daughter until this morning."

"You're looking for proof that…"

"That at least I'm Henrietta."

"If you had been baptised here…"

"I wasn't then?"

The Rector shook his head. "No. Your mother…"

"She wasn't my mother."

"I'm sorry." He bowed his head. "I was forgetting. It isn't easy to remember…"

"No." Very ironically.

"Mrs. Jenkins told me you were already baptised."

He did remember then. Aloud Henrietta said, "That's why the bureau was broken into then. I can see that now."

"You think there must have been something there?"

"I do."

The Rector frowned. "It does rather look as if steps have been taken to conceal certain—er—facts."

Henrietta tightened her lips. "It's not going to be easy, is it?"

"What isn't?"

"Finding out who I am."

Sloan and Crosby saw Constable Hepple soon after they had forked left at the Post Office. He had brought a plan with him.

"You can't see the chalk lines any more, sir," he said, "but deceased was lying roughly here."

"I see."

"Walking home and hit from behind, I'd say," went on Hepple. "People never will walk towards oncoming traffic like they should."

"No."

"His front wheel caught that bit of grass verge afterwards, deflected a bit by the impact, I'd say."

Sloan nodded.

"I've got a good cast of that," said Hepple.

Sloan stood in the middle of the bend and looked in both directions. It was a bad bend but with due care and attention there was no need to kill a pedestrian on it.

Hepple was still theorising. "I reckon he didn't see her at all, sir. There's not a suspicion of a skid mark on the road. Daresay he didn't realise what he'd done till afterwards and then he panicked."

That was the neat and tidy explanation. And, but for Dr. Dabbe it would probably have been the one that went down on the record. Pathology was like that.

"Where exactly did you say she was lying?" asked Inspector Sloan.

Constable Hepple stood squarely on the spot where he had seen the body.

"That," pronounced Sloan sombrely, "fits in very well with the first set of injuries…"

"The first, sir?" Hepple looked shocked. "You mean…"

"Run over twice," said Sloan succinctly. "Once each way," amplified Crosby for good measure. "But…" Hepple pointed to the patch of road where he was standing. "But, sir, someone coming the other way— from Belling St. Peter—would have had to come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her."

"Yes."

"But…" said Hepple again.

"I am beginning to think someone did come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her," said Sloan, still sombre. "The pathologist reports that a second car went over her after she was dead."

"After she was dead?"

"Broke her femur."

"A second car?" echoed Hepple wonderingly. 'Two cars ran over Mrs. Jenkins on this road…"

"Yes."

"And neither of them stopped?" That was the enormity to P. C. Hepple. A new crime in an irresponsible society, that's what that was, something they'd have been ashamed to put on the Newgate Calendar.

"Two cars," said Sloan ominously, "or the first one on its way back."

Constable Hepple looked really worried. "I don't like the sound of this at all, sir."

"No." Sloan looked at the village constable. "I don't think I do either." He examined the road again. "Now, tell me this—just supposing that it was the same car that hit her both times…"

"Yes, sir?" Clearly Hepple didn't like considering anything of the sort.

"Where would he have been able to turn?" This was where really detailed local knowledge came into its own.

"If he'd wanted to stay on the metalled road, sir, he'd have had to go quite a way. There's no road junction before Belling and this road is too narrow for a really big car to turn in. But if he'd settled for a gateway or the like…"

"Yes?"

"Then Shire Oak Farm is the first one you'd come to beyond the houses. The Thorpes's. After that there's Peterson's and then Smith's…"

Inspector Sloan sent Crosby off to search for tyre prints. "It's probably too late, but it's worth a look." Then he asked Constable Hepple to tell him what he knew about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins of Boundary Cottage.

"Known her for a long time, sir, and always very pleasant when we met." Thinking this might be misconstrued he added hastily, "Never in the course of duty, mind you, sir. I never had occasion to speak to her in the course of duty. A quiet lady. Kept herself to herself, if you know what I mean."

Sloan knew and wasn't pleased with the knowledge. Not the easiest sort of person to find out about.

"Tuesday," he said. "Did you find out anything about what she'd been doing on Tuesday?"

"She was away from Larking all day," replied Hepple promptly, "that's all I know. She went off on the early bus— the one that gets people into Berebury in time for work. And she came back on the last one. Two Larking people got off at the same time. Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows."

"Do we—does anyone—know how she spent the day?"

"Not yet, sir. They—Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows—had been shopping but if Mrs. Jenkins had, I don't know what she'd done with her basket because it wasn't here when I searched yesterday morning."

"I see."

"Must have been all of eight o'clock when she was killed," went on Hepple. "Allowing for the walk from the Post Office."

Sloan stroked his chin. "Eight o'clock fits in with what the pathologist says."

"Sir." The conscientious Hepple was still worried about something.

"Yes?"

"This second accident—was it straight after the first?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows."

"Oh, I see, sir, thank you."

"We only know," said Sloan, "that she was killed outright by the first one, and that after it another car ran over her."

Hepple had scarcely finished shaking his head over this before Crosby was back.

"Didn't have to go very far, sir."

"How far?"

"He—whoever he was—turned in the first farm gateway…"

"Shire Oak Farm," said Hepple. "The Thorpes's."

"He was fairly big," went on Constable Crosby. "He had to have two goes at it to get round."

"Yes." That was what Sloan would have expected.

"The offside rear tyre print's nearly gone—had some big Stuff through that gate since then I should think…"

"Tractors," supplied Hepple, "and the milk lorry."

"But there's a good one of a nearside rear."

Sloan pointed to the grass verge. "So we've got a nearside front tyre print there…"

"A good clear one," contributed Hepple professionally.

"And a same sized nearside rear tyre print turning in the Thorpe entrance about—how far away would you say, Crosby?"

"About half a mile."

Hepple didn't like the sound of that at all. "So you think he came back this way, sir?"

"I do."

"He must have seen her the second time," persisted Hepple. "The road isn't wide enough for him not to have seen her lying across it the second time even if he didn't the first."

"I am beginning to think," said Sloan grimly, "that he saw her quite well both times."

"You mean, sir…"

"I mean, Hepple, that I think we're dealing with a case of murder by motorcar."

CHAPTER SIX

The offices of Waind, Arbican & Waind were still in Ox Lane, Calleford.

Inspector Sloan telephoned from the kiosk outside Larking Post Office. There were, it seemed, now no Mr. Wainds left in the firm but Mr. Arbican was there, and would certainly see Inspector Sloan if he came to Calleford. Sloan looked at his watch and said they might make it by six o'clock. Cross country it must be all of forty miles from Larking to the county town.

They got there at ten minutes to the hour, running in on the road alongside the Minster as most of the population were making their way home. Crosby wove in and out of the crowded streets until he got to Ox Lane.

The solicitor's office was coming to the end of its working day too. In the outer office a very junior clerk was making up the post book and two other girls were covering over their typewriters. One of them received the two policemen and showed them into Mr. Arbican's room. The solicitor got to his feet as they entered. He was in his early fifties, going a little bald on top, and every inch the prosperous country solicitor. The room was pleasantly furnished, if a little on the formal side.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Do sit down." He waved them to two chairs, and said to the girl who had shown them in, "Don't go yet, Miss Chilvers, will you? I may need you."

Miss Chilvers looked resigned and returned to the outer office.

Arbican looked expectantly across his desk. It had a red leather top and was in rather sharp contrast to the wooden one at which Sloan worked.

"It's like this, sir," began Sloan. "We're in the process of making enquiries about a client of yours…"

Arbican raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"Or it might be more correct," went on Sloan fairly, "to say a former client."

Arbican cleared his throat encouragingly but still did not speak.

"A Mrs. Jenkins," said Sloan.

"Jenkins?" Arbican frowned. "Jenkins. It's a common enough name but I don't think I know of a client called Jenkins."

"Jenkins from Larking," said Sloan.

"lurking? That's a fair way from here, Inspector. I shouldn't imagine we would have many clients in that direction. You're sure there's no mistake?"

"We are working, sir, on the supposition that she came from East Calleshire before she went to Larking."

"Ah, yes, I see. Quite possibly. Though I can't say offhand that the name alone means anything to me." He raised his eyebrows again. "Should it?"

"We have a letter you wrote…"

Arbican's voice was very dry. "I write a great many letters."

"To a Mr. James Heber Hibbs of The Hall, Larking."

Arbican shook his head. "I'm very sorry, Inspector. Neither name conveys anything."

"That could be so, sir. It was all a long time ago."

"You're being quite puzzling, Inspector…"

"Yes, sir," said Sloan stolidly. He took out the letter James Hibbs had given him and handed it across the desk to the solicitor. "Perhaps you'd care to take a look at it."

Arbican took the letter and read it through quickly. "I'm sorry I couldn't remember the name but I must have written hundreds of letters like this. In fact, Inspector, it's neither an uncommon name nor an uncommon letter."

"I suppose not, sir."

"It was—er—as you say quite a long time ago, too."

"Over twenty years."

"Then you can't really have expected me to remember." He smiled for the first time. A quick professional smile. "I was a comparative youngster then, cutting my legal teeth on routine where I couldn't do any harm."

"But you did write it?"

He scanned the letter again. "I must have done. These are certainly my initials at the top—F.F.A. Therefore"—he frowned—"therefore we must have done business with this Mrs. G. E. Jenkins." He looked curiously across at Sloan. "And so?"

"And so you might have some records, sir," responded Sloan promptly.

"I very much doubt it at this distance of time. We destroy most records after twelve years except conveyances and wills. However, we can soon see." He rang for Miss Chilvers whose look of patient resignation had changed with the passage of time to one of plain resentment. "Miss Chilvers, will you please see if we have any records of a Mrs. G. E. Jenkins of…" he looked down at the letter, "Boundary Cottage, Larking."

Miss Chilvers withdrew but her unforthcoming expression started a new train of thought in Sloan's mind. He waved vaguely towards the outer office. "Perhaps, sir, whoever actually typed the letter might remember. Not Miss Chilvers naturally…"

Arbican looked at the letter again and shook his head. "No?" said Sloan.

"I'm afraid not. I should say that our Miss Lendry typed this letter. Her initials are there after mine—W.B.L."

"Couldn't she help?"

"No. She isn't with us any more."

"Perhaps we could find her," suggested Sloan. "Do you know her address?"

"I'm sorry. I was using a euphemism." He sighed. "Miss Lendry's dead. About six months ago." He tapped the letter. "She wouldn't have been all that young when this was written, but she'd have remembered all right."

"I see."

"Been with the firm for years," said Arbican. "Knew everything…"

"Right-hand woman?"suggested Sloan helpfully. They could hear Miss Chilvers bumping her way round the filing cabinets in the outer office.

Arbican sighed. "It's not the same without her." Sloan knew what he meant. Miss Chilvers returned with little ceremony to announce that she couldn't find anything about a Mrs. G. E. Jenkins at all anywhere.

"Thank you," said Arbican. He turned to Sloan. "I'm sorry, Inspector, it doesn't look as if we're to help you with this Mrs. Grace Jenkins but if we do come across any…"

Sloan got to his feet "Thank you, sir. I'd be much obliged if you'd let me know."

Arbican handed the letter back. "Whoever she was, it looks as if she got her settlement all right."

"Settlement?" said Sloan sharply.

The solicitor pointed to the letter. "Isn't that what that was?"

"Was it?" countered Sloan.

"I can't remember," said Arbican cautiously, "but it reads to me now as if it could have been. We advised her to accept the man's offer—that phrasing sounds like a settlement to me but I may be wrong. It's all a long time ago, now, Inspector, and I certainly can't remember."

"Murder by motorcar!" exploded Superintendent Leeyes. "Are you sure, Sloan?"

"No, sir." Sloan was both tired and hungry. "Not yet."

It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening and they had just got back to Berebury Police Station after an hour's driving along the main road from Calleford.

"But Crosby found some tyre prints in a gateway where the car turned and came back, and Dr. Dabbe says she was run over twice."

"Twice?" said the Superintendent, just as Hepple had done.

"Twice. Once alive, once dead."

"Macabre chap, Dabbe."

"Yes, sir." Sloan paused. "It's not exactly the sort of road where you could miss seeing someone lying in it."

"So that makes you think that…"

"I think," said Sloan heavily, "that she was knocked down from behind on that bend on purpose by someone who afterwards turned in the entrance to Shire Oak Farm and who came back and deliberately hit her again."

Leeyes grunted.

"Only he had a bit of bad luck."

"It sounds to me," said the Superintendent sarcastically, "as if he wasn't the only one who had a bit of bad luck."

"No, sir."

"Well, in what way was he unlucky?"

"He happened to kill her outright the first time he went over her which meant the pathologist knew he'd gone over her twice."

"How?"

"Because the second lot of injuries were post-mortem ones. They don't—bleed," he added elliptically.

"You wouldn't convince a jury on that alone, Sloan."

"I shouldn't try," retorted Sloan spiritedly. "But it's not alone. Put it together with the breaking into of the bureau and the fact that whoever Grace Jenkins was she wasn't the mother of the girl."

"Ah, yes. I was forgetting the daughter had been smuggled in in a warming pan."

"That's about the only explanation that fits at the moment," agreed Sloan gloomily. "There's something else, too, sir."

"What's that?"

"This woman—Grace Jenkins—was having her daughter on about something else. Her age."

"Her age?"

"Yes, sir. She told the girl she would be forty-six next birthday. Dr. Dabbe says she was older than that."

"He should know, I suppose."

"Yes, sir."

"Anything else?"

"She'd had her hair dyed."

"Who hasn't?" said Leeyes cynically.

"From blonde to brunette."

"It's usually the other way," agreed the Superintendent.

"The girl's hair is dark," said Sloan, "but the father's is fair—noticeably fair—even in a photograph. Grace Jenkins was fair too—before she had her hair dyed."

"A pretty puzzle," Leeyes said unhelpfully.

"Yes, sir. So far we've confirmed that the woman went to Larking when the girl was a small infant and passed her off to everyone as her own."

"It's been done before."

"Yes, sir. They rented a small cottage in the grounds of The Hall estate."

"Buried in the country."

"Exactly, sir. The rent is very low indeed. Seems almost nominal now but it may have been fair enough at the time. Landlord says he isn't allowed to put it up."

"He may not have wanted to," observed Leeyes.

"That thought had occurred to me, sir."

"That's been done before too," said the Superintendent emphatically.

"What has, sir?"

"Parking an infant in a corner like that. Where you can keep an eye on it."

"Without acknowledging anything," Leeyes grunted. "What's he like?"

"Hibbs? Dark. But it's not a father we're short of, sir, it's a mother."

"Someone who couldn't acknowledge it either, I daresay," said the Superintendent.

"Perhaps. Then who is Grace Jenkins?"

"And why kill her?"

"Aunt?" said Sloan as if he had not spoken. "Nanny? Or grandmother?"

"Wet nurse, more like," growled Leeyes.

Sloan told him about the letter and the interview with Ar» bican. "He thought the wording read like the outcome of a settlement rather than straightforward renting."

"There's nothing straightforward about this case," said the Superintendent irritably. "Nothing at all."

"No, sir."

"We don't even know for a start that the deceased has been correctly identified."

"We've no evidence either way about that," said Sloan carefully. "The only actual evidence we've got that will stand up in a Coroner's Court is that she was childless. We've got none as to who she is."

"Then," said the Superintendent irritably, "you'd better get some, hadn't you, Sloan…"

"Yes, sir."

"… And quickly."

Henrietta refused to stay the night at the Rectory.

"It's very kind of you," she said awkwardly. "Mrs. Thorpe asked me to go to Shire Oak as well but I don't think I will, all the same. I feel—well—I feel I ought to begin as I mean to go on."

"You may be right there," conceded the Rector, though the kindhearted Mrs. Meyton was all protestation. "I'll just walk back with you, though, and see you safely home."

"Is it?"

"Is it what?"

"Home," said Henrietta.

He took the question very seriously. "You know, what you need is a good solicitor."

"I feel," she said fervently, "as if I need more than that. A magician, at least."

But she was grateful to him for escorting her home and said so.

He came indoors with her and checked that Boundary Cotwas secure for the night.

Henrietta pointed to the photograph on the mantelpiece. "Now I know why the police were so interested in my father."

"Yes."

"I wasn't able to tell them much."

The Rector nodded slowly. "Your mother never spoke about him to me."

"She did to me—but mostly about the sort of person he was. Not," bitterly, "concrete facts for policemen."

"No."

"And she wasn't my mother."

"I was forgetting," he apologised obliquely.

"It's made me realise how little I really know about him too."

"A sergeant in the East Calleshires," said Mr. Meyton, moving towards the photograph. "That's definite enough."

"Yes."

"And he saw a fair bit of action."

"Yes."

"The D.C.M. and the Military Medal, I think,"said the Rector, taking a closer look still. "Yes, that's right."

Henrietta opened the bureau drawer. 'They're in here so that's another thing that's definite."

She pulled open the little drawer inside the bureau and got out the two medal cases. "Here they are."

She handed them to the Rector. He flicked them open.

"Henrietta," he said.

"Yes?"

"These medals…"

"Don't tell me," she said in a voice that was almost harsh, "that there's something wrong with those too."

"That chap in the photograph…"

"My father."

"He had the D.C.M. and the Military Medal."

"I know."

"These," the Rector indicated the two in his hand, "these are the D.S.O. and the M.C."

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Who?" asked Sloan into the telephone.

"A Mr. Meyton, sir," said the Station Sergeant. The Rector of Larking."

"Do you know him, sergeant?"

"Not to say know him exactly," replied the sergeant carefully. "Not him, himself, if you know what I mean. But we know his hat and his gloves and his umbrella—particularly his umbrella. It comes in here practically every time he comes into Berebury. Very clearly marked, though, I will say that for them."

"Put him through," said Sloan resignedly.

He listened. Then in a quite different voice, "Are you sure, sir?"

"Oh, yes, Inspector." Mr. Meyton might forget his hat, gloves and umbrella but not his military history. "Henrietta showed them to me last night and I took the liberty of taking them home with me for—er—safe keeping."

"Thank you, sir."

"And they're quite different. This one was a white enamcross pattee with a slightly convexed face. The edge of the cross was gold."

"And the D.C.M.?"

"Circular and made of silver," replied the Rector promptly. "It's connected to a curved scroll clasp, too. The one that was in the bureau has a ring which fits on to a straight clasp."

"You saw the ribbons on the photograph?" said Sloan, thinking quickly.

"I did indeed. And they're not even similar…"

"Oh?"

"The D.S.O. ribbon," said the Rector, warming to his theme, "is red with an edging of blue. The D.C.M. one is crimson, dark blue and crimson in equal widths."

"Yes," said Sloan thoughtfully, "there's all the difference in the world, I can see that. What about the other two?"

"The M.C. and the M.M., Inspector? The M.C. ribbon is white, a sort of purply blue, and white in three equal strips." The Rector paused. "I think I'm right in saying the Military Medal has a narrow white centre stripe with narrow red, then I think it's narrow white, and then two edging strips of rather wider dark blue on each side."

"Six—no seven stripes," said Sloan.

"That's right."

"Not easily confused even on a photograph."

"No. It's not the different colours then, of course, it's the widths which you can see."

"And you can't very well confuse three broad stripes with a ribbon with seven small ones on."

"No," agreed the Rector. "Not easily."

"I see," said Sloan slowly.

"The other one was a cross, too," went on the Rector. "Whereas the Military Medal is round and attached to a curved scroll clasp."

"Didn't they have any names on?" asked Sloan. "I thought they sometimes did."

"Sometimes," said the Rector. "The owner's name, rank and date are usually engraved on the reverse of the M.C."

"Usually?" No one could have called Sloan slow.

"Yes, Inspector. Not on this one. I'm no expert, of course, but I should say…"

"Yes, sir?"

"I should say that—er—steps have been taken to remove the owner's name from this one."

"Would you, sir?" Sloan became extremely alert.

"The back is almost smooth—but not quite."

"I understand, sir. You've been most helpful. There'll be an explanation, of course, but in the meantime perhaps you would be kind enough to keep them under lock and key until I get to you. I daresay," he added heavily, "there will be rhyme to it as well as reason. If you know what I mean, sir."

"Indeed, yes," affirmed Mr. Meyton. "There are, of course, matters which are properly mysterious to us in the religious sense but—er—finite matters are always…"

"No, Inspector," Henrietta shook her head. "I can't tell you anything more than that because I don't know anything more."

"I see, miss. Thank you." Sloan and Crosby were back in the parlour of Boundary Cottage, sitting where they had been sitting the day before. Then, Henrietta had looked as if she hadn't slept much the previous night.

Now she looked as if she hadn't slept at all.

"The Rector," she went on wearily, "just said that they weren't the right medals for the photograph."

"Yes, miss. He rang me."

"He took them away."

"Yes."

"Inspector…"

"Yes, miss?"

"Why weren't they taken on Tuesday?"

"On Tuesday, miss?"

"By whoever broke into the bureau."

"I couldn't say, miss."

"They must have seen them. They weren't locked up in their cases or anything."

"No." He cleared his throat and said cautiously, "If they'd gone then, of course, you would have missed them."

"Naturally."

"Well, that—their absence—might have served to call your—call our attention to—er—any irregularities in the situation between you and your—er—parents." Sloan felt himself going a bit hot under the collar. It wasn't a sensation he was accustomed to. "I don't think it is generally appreciated that the—er—fact of childlessness is—er—established at a routine post-mortem."

He hadn't appreciated it himself, actually.

Until yesterday.

To his relief Henrietta smiled wanly and said, "I see."

"I mean," expanded Sloan, "the chances of your discovering that they were the wrong medals…"

"Wrong?" she said swiftly.

"Wrong for the photograph."

"Go on, Inspector." Warily.

"The chances of them being handled by anyone knowing quite as much about the subject as Mr. Meyton were really very slight."

Since putting down the telephone Sloan had sent Crosby to check up on the Rector's standing as an historian and found it high. Particularly in the field of military history.

"Inspector, are you trying to tell me that someone has been unlucky?"

"That's one way of looking at it, miss. But for the accident of the Rector seeing them you might never have known."

"Known what?" she said with a sigh. "What exactly does it mean we know now that we didn't know before?"

"That the medals are significant," said Sloan promptly.

She looked up. "Do you think so, Inspector?"

"I do, miss, though I don't know what of just yet. Give us a little time." He hesitated and then said, "I think we may be going to find the answer to a lot of questions in the past."

She nodded. "Twenty-one years ago."

"Why then?"

"I'll be twenty-one next month. At least I think I will be if my mother…" she corrected herself painfully, "if what I've been told is correct."

"Twenty-one?" Sloan frowned. "That could be important."

"To me, Inspector." Her voice had an ironic ring. "The key of the door perhaps. But not to anyone else."

"I shouldn't be too sure about that, miss. Not just yet."

"And it rather looks," she went on as if she hadn't heard him, "as if I'm not the only one to have a key to the front door of Boundary Cottage, doesn't it?"

"True." He paused. "Yesterday you told me as much as you could remember being told about your father."

"Yes?"

"What all do you know about your… about Grace Jenkins?"

It was pitifully little in terms of verifiable fact—if she was telling him the truth. Her mother had been a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell, somewhere over the other side of the county. Henrietta didn't know the exact address but she had been brought up on stories of the Hocklington-Garwell children. There had been two of them—both boys. Master Hugo and Master Michael. Then Grace Wright had met Cyril Jenkins, and married him.

"After that," concluded Henrietta tightly, "I understood they had had me."

"I see," said Sloan.

"And that very soon afterwards my father had been killed."

"I see," said Sloan again.

"But they didn't have me," observed Henrietta astringently.

"She didn't," agreed Sloan. 'The chances of your being your father's child—so to speak—are high."

"Thank you," she said gravely. "I'll remember that."

"And the chances of her having come from East Calleshire are higher still." He told her about Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind in Calleford. "So, miss, I think we can take it that the mystery originates that way somewhere."

He did not mention murder.

"What I want to know," said the Superintendent testily, "is not who got which going but what you're doing about it, Sloan." The Inspector was speaking from the call box in Larking village.

"Yes, sir. In the first instance we are looking for a car which hit a woman…"

"An unknown woman," pointed out Leeyes.

"A woman who may or may not be unknown,"agreed Sloan more moderately, "which hit her on a bad bend outside Larking village on Tuesday evening sometime between say six and nine o'clock."

"And have you got anywhere?"

"No, sir."

"There's an inquest coming along on Saturday morning," said Leeyes very gently. "It's the law, Sloan, and the first thing the Coroner does is to take evidence of identification."

"Yes, sir." He hesitated. "We've no reason to suppose she isn't Grace Jenkins…"

Superintendent Leeyes gave an intimidating grunt.

"But,"went on Sloan hastily, "I'm going to make some enquiries about her pension now, and see the two people who came back on the bus with her on Tuesday night. And I've got a man checking up now on the marriage register in Somerset House…"

"What's that going to prove?"

"Whether or not this Grace Edith Wright did, in fact, marry one Cyril Edgar Jenkins. That should give us a lead."

"One way or the other," said Leeyes pointedly.

"Exactly, sir. We've got the experts working on those tyre casts too, and we're putting out a general call for witnesses. We're also trying to establish how she spent Tuesday—that may have some bearing on the case …"

Leeyes grunted again.

"It's a bit difficult," said Sloan, "because the girl has no idea…"

"It strikes me that the girl has no idea about too many things …"

"She was away at College at the time."

"Check up on that, too, Sloan."

"Yes, sir. This man Hibbs…"

"Ah, yes," ruminatively. "Hibbs. That solicitor fellow you were talking to yesterday…"

"Arbican."

"He mentioned a settlement, didn't he?"

"Yes, sir."

"It could have been with Hibbs."

"Yes, sir. That had already occurred to me."

"Could he have killed Grace Jenkins?"

"It strikes me," said Sloan pessimistically, "that anyone could have killed her. Anyone at all."

"He's a local," said Leeyes.

"Yes, sir."

"He would know about the bend…"

"And the last bus."

"So you see…"

"And that it's a deserted road at the best of times, but esat night."

"I don't like the country," declared Leeyes. "There are never any witnesses."

"No, sir."

"Find out what Hibbs was doing on Tuesday night."

"Yes, sir."

"What sort of a car has he got?"

"The right sort," said Sloan cautiously.

"What?"

"That size tyre fits half a dozen cars. He happens to have one of them. A Riley."

"Was it damaged?"

"I only saw the back."

"Then take a look at the front, Sloan, somehow. I don't care how."

"Yes, sir."

"Bill, will you do something for me?"

Bill Thorpe throttled back the tractor to silence point and started to climb down from his high seat. "Not something." He grinned. "Anything."

In spite of all that had happened, Henrietta smiled.

"Changed your mind about coming to the farm to sleep?" asked Bill. "Mother'll be pleased. She's been worried about you down here on your own these last two nights."

"No, Bill, it's not that." Henrietta pulled her coat round her shoulders. "I'm not leaving Boundary Cottage even for one night."

"It was just that…"

"I feel it's the only link I've got now with things like they used to be."

"I expect you're bound to feel like that for a bit," he said awkwardly. "I daresay it'll wear off after a while."

"No, it won't…"

"I see."

She shook her head. "No, you don't, Bill. But—it's difficult to explain—but the cottage and the things in it are the only things that seem real to me somehow."

"I'm real," said Bill Thorpe. And indeed he looked it, foursquare against the spring sky.

"I know you are. It's not that."

"Well, what is it, then?"

She shivered. "I feel I need to actually see the things I know there. Otherwise…"

"Otherwise what?"

"Otherwise," she said soberly, "I think I shall go out of my mind."

"Here," protested Bill. 'Take it easy. No one can make you leave if you don't want to."

"Can't they just!" retorted Henrietta. "That's what you think, Bill."

"You're a protected tenant," insisted Bill firmly. "No one can make you leave. I'll see to that. Besides, Mr. Hibbs would never turn you out. He's not that sort of man."

"I don't think he would either," said Henrietta slowly. "He's always been very kind." She looked at Bill and opened her eyes wide. "He's always been very kind."

"Yes, yes," said Thorpe impatiently. "I know. I think you're worrying about nothing."

"I'm not." She paused, then "Bill…"

"Yes?"

"I've got something to tell you." She swallowed twice in quick succession. "You're not going to like it."

"Try me," he said evenly.

"The police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother." Now it was out she felt better. "And," she added defiantly, "I don't know who was."

In the event his reaction was surprising.

He kissed her.

And then:

"You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that."

Henrietta looked up at him in astonishment—he was half a head taller than she was—and said, "Why?"

"I thought it was me."

"You thought what was you?"

"The reason why your mother wouldn't let us get married."

"She wasn't my mother," said Henrietta automatically.

"Exactly." Bill Thorpe was beaming all over his face.

"I don't see what that's got to do with us not getting married."

"Don't you?"

"No."

"Silly." He looked down at her affectionately. "We couldn't get married without her permission because you weren't twenty-one."

"I know that…"

"She couldn't give it."

"Why not?"

"Because she wasn't your mother. You've just said so."

"I never thought of that," said Henrietta wonderingly. "I thought it was only because she wanted me to finish my three years at university."

"And I thought it was because she didn't like Bill Thorpe," said Bill Thorpe ruefully.

"And all the time," whispered Henrietta, "it was because she didn't want me to know I wasn't hers."

"Until you were twenty-one," concluded Thorpe. "I reckon you were to be told then."

She shivered. "Now we may never know."

"Don't you believe it."

"Bill…" tentatively.

"Yes?"

"There must be some… some reason why she didn't want me to know."

He nodded. "Knowing your mother I should say a good reason." He hesitated. "She'd got all this worked out, hadn't she?"

"It rather looks like it. I… I don't know what to think."

Bill Thorpe looked at the sky. It was the subconscious glance of a farmer. "What was it you wanted me to do, then?"

"Take me to Calleford this afternoon."

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Where are we now, Crosby?"

It was a rhetorical question. Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby were, in fact, walking from Boundary Cottage towards Larking Post Office.

"We thought we didn't know about the mother," responded Crosby. "Now we don't know about the father either."

"Not well put, but I am with you."

"In fact," went on Crosby morosely, "we hardly know anything." He did not like walking.

"We know a woman was killed by a motor vehicle in— er—unusual circumstances."

They were not far now from the fatal bend in the road. Crosby looked up and down. "You couldn't not see someone on a road as narrow as this."

"No." Sloan reverted to Grace Jenkins. "We know that she was childless."

"But," put in Crosby, "that she pretended not to be."

"Just so," said Sloan. "An interesting situation."

"And that's all we do know," concluded Crosby flatly.

"Try again," advised Sloan, "because it isn't."

Crosby's brow became as furrowed as one of the Thorpe's ploughed fields.

There's something fishy about the photograph and the medals?"

"There is." Sloan was already listing in his own mind the inquiries which would have to be made about the photograph and the medals. "But go back to the woman for a moment…"

Crosby's brow resumed its furrows.

"Why," asked Sloan helpfully, "was she killed?"

There was a long pause. "Search me," said Detective Constable Crosby at long last.

"If Sergeant Gelven wasn't on annual leave, Constable, I wouldn't have to," said Sloan crisply.

"No, sir."

They had passed the bad bend now and were walking towards the centre of the village. The Hall lay over on their right, nestled into the folding countryside in the sheltered site selected in their wisdom by its Tudor builders. It would be in the best situation for several miles around and there would have been a spring or a good well nearby.

They walked past the gates. They were well hung and newly painted. Nothing, thought Sloan, gave you as good a view of the state of a property as the gates. Mr. James Hibbs was clearly a man of means who was prepared to pay attention to detail.

"I think we know why she was killed," said Sloan.

The church had come into view now. It, too, was on the right of the road. If Sloan knew anything about landowners there would be a gate through into the churchyard from the grounds of The Hall. The ultimate in status symbols.

"Do we?" said Crosby cautiously.

"You mentioned adoption…"

"Yes, sir."

"There comes a point when—like it or not—it is customary to tell the adopted child the—er—truth about its parents or lack of them."

"Twenty-one," said Crosby.

"Just so. All wrong, of course. The right time is before they can understand."

"Yes, sir. The psychologists say …"

"I understand," said Sloan coldly, not liking the word, "that you should stress that they are chosen." He looked Crosby up and down. "Not an unhappy accident of fate like everyone else's children."

"No, sir."

They could see beyond the church now to the Rectory and the patch of grass that presumably did duty as a village green. No one could have called Larking picturesque—which probably meant it was spared a good deal—but it was by no means unattractive.

"I think she was killed because the girl is going to be twenty-one next month."

"And someone doesn't want Henrietta to know who she is?" responded Crosby brightly.

"Don't strain yourself thinking too hard, Constable, will you?"

"No, sir."

"She tells us she is going to be twenty-one in April," con-tinued Sloan, "and I think she has been correctly informed on this point, but April would be too late for the killing of Grace Jenkins for two reasons…" He waited hopefully for Crosby to enumerate them.

Crosby said nothing.

"Two reasons," went on Sloan in a resigned way. When he got back to Berebury he would look up the leave schedules to see when Sergeant Gelven was coming back. They weren't going to solve anything at all at this rate. "One of them is that the girl would have been back from college by then."

Crosby nodded in agreement.

"The other is…"

"Daylight," said Crosby unexpectedly.

"Exactly. By April the last bus would be getting to Larking in the twilight rather than the sort of darkness you can easily run someone down in. There's another thing…"

Crosby cocked his head like a spaniel.

"This wedding…"

"She wouldn't let them get married," said Crosby. "That chap Hibbs told us that."

"Have you thought why not? Thorpe's a nice enough lad by all accounts…"

They were right in the centre of the village now and he and Crosby knocked on the door of the house of the last perknown to have seen the late Grace Edith Jenkins alive.

"That's right," said Mrs. Martha Callows, not without relish. "I reckon me and Mrs. Perkins was the last to see her. On the last bus, she was, same as we were."

She admitted the policemen into an untidy house, knocked a cat off one chair, scooped a child out of another and inthem to sit down.

"The last bus from Berebury?" asked Sloan with the air of one anxious to get everything clear.

"There aren't any other buses from anywhere else," Mrs. Callows said, "and there aren't all that many from Berebury. If you miss the seven five you walk."

"Quite so. Was it crowded?"

"Not after Cullingoak. Most people get out there. Get down, you." This last was said to the cat, which, thwarted of the chair, was settling on the table.

"Where did you get out?"

"The Post Office. That's the only stop in Larking. We all got out there. Me and Mrs. Perkins and her."

"About what time would that have been?"

"Something short of eight o'clock."

The cat had not, in fact, troubled to get down and was now investigating some dirty plates which were still on the table.

"You'd been shopping?" said Sloan generally.

"Sort of. Mrs. Perkins—that's who I was with—her husband's in hospital. That's why we was on the late bus. Visiting hours. 'Course, we'd been round the shops first… Berebury's a long way to go for nothing."

"Quite so. Had Mrs. Jenkins got a shopping basket?"

"Now I come to think of it," said Mrs. Callows, screwing up her face in recollection, "I don't know she had." Her face cleared suddenly. "But then she wouldn't have, would she?"

"Why not?" enquired Sloan with interest.

"Friday's her day for Berebury. Not Toosday. She goes in Fridays, regular as clockwork. Always has done."

"Not Tuesdays?"

Mrs. Callows shook her head. "Not shopping."

"I see. Tell me"—Sloan was at his most confidential— "tell me, was she her usual self otherwise?"

A wary look came into Mrs. Callows's eye. "Yes, I suppose you could say she was."

Sloan tried another tack. "Cheerful?"

"I wouldn't say cheerful meself. Polite, of course, hoh yes, always very polite was Mrs. Jenkins, but not what you'd call cheerful."

"Talkative sort?"

Mrs. Callows shook her head. "Not her. Never much to say for herself at the best of times but take Toosday f'r'instance. 'Good evening,' she says. 'We could do with a bit better weather than this, couldn't we? Too windy.' And passes right down the bus to the front and sits there by herself."

"Kept herself to herself?"

"That's right. She did." Mrs. Callows reached out absently and gave the cat a cuff. It retreated but only momentarily.

"She didn't tell you how she'd spent the day?" asked Sloan.

Mrs. Callows sniffed. "She wouldn't tell us a thing like that. She wasn't the sort."

"I see." Sloan reverted to officialese. "We are naturally anxious to trace Mrs. Jenkins's movements on Tuesday…"

"There I cannot help," said Mrs. Callows frankly. "Neither of us set eyes on her until we got to the bus station."

"What about afterwards?"

"When we got back to Larking, you mean?"

"That's right." Sloan waved an arm. "Other people, for instance. Was there anyone about?"

She shook her head. "We didn't see anybody else, but then we wouldn't, would we?"

"Why not?"

"Because it was Toosday, like I said."

"Tuesday?"

"The first Toosday," amplified Mrs. Callows. "Institoot night."

"I see. So what happened when you all got off the bus?"

"She turned down the lane towards her house. Mrs. Perkins and me—we went the other way. That was the last we saw of her."

"I see," said Sloan. "Thank you."

"It's a nasty bend," volunteered Mrs. Callows suddenly.

"Indeed, yes. By the way, did you see any vehicular traffic?"

Mrs. Callows looked blank. "Oh, you mean cars? No, none at all."

Sloan and Crosby rose to go.

"Except," she added, "the ones parked outside the King's Head."

Sloan and Crosby took a look at the King's Head car park on their way from Mrs. Callows's house to the Post Office.

It was an asphalt affair and disappointing.

"We won't get a tyre print on this." Crosby stood in the middle of it and stamped his foot. "Hard as iron."

Inspector Sloan didn't appear to be interested in the surface of the car park. He was moving about and looking down the road to his right.

"Anyway," went on Crosby, "she was killed on Tuesday. Today's Friday. Other vehicles would have come in here since then and rubbed them out."

"What exactly can you see from here, constable?"

Crosby looked down the road. "The Post Office, sir, and a telephone kiosk, the fork in the road to Belling St. Peter, the signpost and so forth." He paused, then, "A woman pushing a pram, a delivery van, a row of horse chestnuts…"

"This is not a nature ramble, Crosby."

"No, sir."

"Anything else?"

"There's the church, sir, beyond the bus stop."

"Precisely."

Crosby looked puzzled. "Is the church important, sir?"

"No."

"The bus stop?"

"Don't overdo it, Crosby, will you?"

"No, sir." He turned back to Sloan. "Where to, now, sir?"

"The Post Office. To see a Mrs. Ricks. The admirable Hepple says she knows everything."

But this was not quite true.

While confirming that the late Grace Jenkins always went into Berebury on Fridays, and seldom, if ever, on Tuesdays, Mrs. Ricks was unable to say why she had left on the early bus and come back on the late one. Sloan squeezed alongside a sack of corn while the tall Crosby ducked out of the way of a vicious-looking billhook which was suspended from the ceiling. It was above his head—but only just.

"I don't know," she wheezed regretfully. It was an admission she rarely had to make. "She wouldn't have said. She wasn't a talker."

"So I heard," said Sloan.

"I saw her leave in the morning," offered Mrs. Ricks. "In her best, she was."

"Was she?" said Sloan, interested.

"And she was gone all day. At least I never saw her get off a bus before I closed." Mrs. Ricks apparently monitored the bus stop outside the Post Office window as a matter of course.

"Nasty things, car accidents," observed Sloan to nobody in particular.

"You needn't think, officer," said Mrs. Ricks, divining his intentions with uncanny accuracy, "that you'll find anyone to say a word against Mrs. Jenkins, because you won't."

"Madam, I assure you…"

"She didn't," went on Mrs. Ricks with the insight born of years of small shopkeeping, "mix with people enough to upset them, if you see what I mean."

Sloan saw what she meant.

"Difficult job, all the same," he said diffidently, "bringing up a child without a father."

Mrs. Ricks gave a crowing laugh. "She brought her up all right. She never did anything else all day but look after that child. And that house of hers."

"Devoted?" suggested Sloan.

Mrs. Ricks gave a powerful nod. "It was always 'Henrietta this' and 'Henrietta that' with Mrs. Jenkins," she said a trifle spitefully. "A rare old job it was to get her to take an interest in anything else."

"I see."

Mrs. Ricks gave a sigh and said sententiously, "Here today, gone tomorrow. We none of us know, do we, when we shall be called…"

Sloan got her back to the point with an effort. "Do you happen to know which is her pension day?"

"That I do not," declared Mrs. Ricks. "But I can tell you one thing…"

"What's that?"

"That she never got it here."

"Oh?"

"There's some that don't." She looked round the crowded little store, saleable goods protruding from every square inch of wall and ceiling space, and lining most of the floor too. "They like where bigger."

Sloan saw what she meant. The sales point of the billhook was practically making itself felt.

"Especially," said Mrs. Ricks in her infinite wisdom, "if it isn't as much as they'd like you to think. Sergeant, wasn't he?"

Sloan nodded.

Mrs. Ricks sniffed. "Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren't."

Calleford Minster rose like an eminence grise above and behind the clustered shops at the end of Petergate. Mr. Arbi-can of Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind would be very happy to see Henrietta but her appointment with him was not until a quarter to three. Farmers as a race lunch early and Henrietta and Bill Thorpe had time to spare.

Henrietta turned towards the Minster. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

Bill Thorpe turned an eye on the towering stone. "It's more than lovely. Do you realise it could be useful to you?"

"To me?"

He nodded. "That chap in the photograph…"

"My father," responded Henrietta a little distantly.

"He was—what did you say?—a sergeant in the East Cal-leshires?"

"That's right. What about it?"

"He was killed, wasn't he?"

She flushed. "So I understand."

"Well, then…"

"Well then what?"

"Calleford's their town, isn't it?"

Henrietta sighed. "Whose town?"

"The East Calleshires," explained Bill Thorpe patiently. "The Regiment. They've got their barracks here. Like the West Calleshires have theirs in Berebury."

"What if they have?"

He pointed to the Minster. "If this is their home town then I think we might find their memorial in the Minster here, don't you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," she said slowly. "He—my father—'ll be there, won't he?"

Bill Thorpe led the way towards the Minster gate. "We can soon see."

The East Calleshires did have their memorial in the Minster. Henrietta followed Bill Thorpe into the Minster and down the nave. She lagged behind slightly as if she did not want to be there, glancing occasionally at the memorials to eighteenth-century noblemen and nineteenth-century soldiers.

An elderly verger led them to the East Calleshire memorial on the North wall of the North transept.

"It catches the afternoon light just here, you know," he said. "Nice piece of marble, isn't it?"

"Very," said Bill Thorpe politely.

"They couldn't get no more like it," the man said. "Not when they came to try. Still, they weren't to know they were going to need a whole lot more less than twenty years later, were they?"

Bill Thorpe nodded in agreement. "Indeed not. That knowledge was spared them."

"So that," went on the man, "come 1945 they decided they would put those new names on these pillars that were there already. Quite a saving, really, though the money didn't matter, as it happened." He signed. "Funny how often it works out like that, isn't it?"

"Very," said Bill Thorpe.

"The same crest did, too." It was obvious that the man spent his days showing people around the Minster. His voice had a sort of hushed monotone suitable to the surroundings. "That's a nice bit of work, though they tell me it's tricky to dust. They don't think of that sort of thing when they design a monument."

"I suppose not."

The verger hitched his gown over his shoulders. "You two come to look somebody up?"

"Yes," said Bill. "Yes, we have."

"Thought so. People never ask unless they particularly want to see someone they was related to." He looked them up and down and said tersely, "First lot or second?"

"Second."

He sucked his breath in through gaps in his teeth. "It'll be easier to find them."

" 'An epitaph on an army of mercenaries' " said Bill Thorpe sadly as the old man wandered off.

Henrietta wasn't listening.

"Bill," she tugged his sleeve urgently. "Look."

"Where?"

She pointed. "There…"

"It goes," agreed Bill Thorpe slowly, "from Inkpen, T. H. to Jennings, C. R."

"There's no one called Jenkins there at all," whispered Henrietta.

CHAPTER NINE

Bill Thorpe shifted his weight from one foot to the other and considered the matter.

"He should have been here, shouldn't he?"

"He was in the East Calleshires," insisted Henrietta. "My mother always said he… I was told he was but there's the photograph too."

"The man in the photograph was wearing their uniform."

"Exactly," said Henrietta.

"But that's all."

"All?"

"All you know for sure," said Thorpe flatly.

Henrietta turned a bewildered face back to the memorial. "Do you mean the man in the photograph wasn't killed?"

Bill ran his eye down the names. "He may have been killed and not called Jenkins."

"Or," retorted Henrietta astringently, "I suppose he may have been called Jenkins and not been killed."

"That is the most probable explanation," agreed Thorpe calmly.

"How—how am I going to find out?"

"Did you ever see your mother's pension book?"

"She didn't cash her pension at the Post Office," she said quickly. "She took it to the bank. She told me that. Then she used to cash a cheque."

"I see."

There was a long pause and then Henrietta said, "So that, whether or not he was my father, he wasn't killed in the war, was he?"

"Not if he was in the East Calleshires and was also called Jenkins," agreed Bill Thorpe, pointing to the memorial. "Of course there is another possibility."

Henrietta sighed but said nothing.

"He might not have been killed on active service," went on Thorpe.

"You mean he might have died a natural death?"

"People do, you know," said Thorpe mildly. "Even in war."

She was silent for a moment. Then, "Nothing seems to make sense any more."

"Everything has an explanation."

"This must sound very silly," she said, choosing her words carefully, "but let me say what I know for certain. There is a photograph…"

"The photograph is a fact," acknowledged Bill Thorpe.

"Which you have seen."

"Then the photograph is doubly a fact," he murmured ironically.

"There is a photograph of a man in the uniform of this regiment in the drawing room at home, and…"

"And that," said Bill Thorpe, "is all you know for certain."

She stared at him. "A man who I thought was my father."

"Ah, that's different."

"Who I thought was called Jenkins."

"Who may or may not be called Jenkins."

"And who I thought was killed in the war."

Bill Thorpe pointed to the memorial again. "Don't you see that he might be called Jenkins or he might have been killed in the war—but not both. The facts are mutually exclusive— unless he changed regiments halfway through or something out of the ordinary like that."

"Or died a natural death," persisted the girl.

"Or a very unnatural one," retorted Thorpe.

Henrietta waited.

"Well," said Thorpe defensively, "if he'd been shot as a spy or a deserter or something like that…"

"I hadn't thought of that."

"…We're hardly likely to find his name here, are we?"Bill waved a hand which took in all the hallowed thirteenth-century stone about them.

"That means," decided Henrietta logically, "that you don't think the man in the photograph is…" she hesitated, "or was my father."

"There is something wrong with the medals…"

"There's something wrong with everything so far," rejoined Henrietta. "We're collecting quite a bit of negative evidence."

"Just as useful as the other sort," declared Thorpe.

"I'm glad to hear it," she said rather tartly. "At the mo-ment the only thing we seem to be absolutely sure about is that there is a photograph of a sergeant in the East Cal-leshires which has been standing in Boundary Cottage ever since I can remember."

"The photograph is a fact," agreed Bill Thorpe with un-diminished amiability.

"And so is the name of Jenkins not being on this memorial."

"The evidence is before our very eyes, as the conjurors say."

"And the police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother."

Bill Thorpe looked down at her affectionately. "I reckon that makes you utterly orphan, don't you?"

She nodded.

"Quite a good thing, really," said Thorpe easily.

Henrietta's head came up with a jerk. "Why?"

"I don't have to ask anyone's permission to marry you."

She didn't respond. "I'm worse than just orphan. I don't even know who I am or who my parents were."

"Does it matter?"

"Matter?" Henrietta opened her eyes very wide.

"Well, I can see it's important with—say—Shire Oak Majestic. A bull's got to have a good pedigree to be worth anything."

"I fail to see any connection," said Henrietta icily.

"I'm not in love with your ancestors…"

The verger ambled up behind them. "Found what you were looking for, sir, on that memorial?"

"What's that? Oh, yes, thank you, verger," said Thorpe. "We found what we were looking for all right."

"That's good, sir. Good afternoon to you both."

Not unexpectedly, Mr. Felix Arbican or Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind, Solicitors, shared Henrietta's view rather than Bill Thorpe's on the importance of parentage. He heard her story out and then said, "Tricky."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta politely. She regarded that as a gross understatement.

"It raises several—er—legal points."

"Not only legal ones," said Henrietta.

"What's that? Oh, yes, quite so. The accident, for instance." Arbican made a gesture of sympathy. "I'm sorry. There are so many cars on the road these days." He brought his hands up to form a pyramid under his chin. "She was walking, you say…"

"She was."

"Then there should be less question of liability."

"There is no question of where the blame for the accident lies," said Henrietta slowly. "Only the driver still has to be found."

"He didn't stop?"

She shook her head.

"Nor report it to the police?"

"Not that I've heard."

"That's a great pity. If he had done, there would have been little more to do—little more from a professional point of view, that is, than to settle the question of responsibility with the insurance company, and agree damages."

Henrietta inclined her head in silence.

"And they usually settle out of court."

Henrietta moistened her lips. "There is to be an inquest… on Saturday morning."

"Naturally."

"Is Berebury too far for you to come?"

"You want me to represent you? If your—er—mother was a client of mine at one time—and it seems very much as if she must have been, then I will certainly do that."

"The Inspector told me she came to you once…"

"A long time ago."

"You don't recall her?"

Arbican shook his head.

Henrietta lapsed back in her chair in disappointment "I was so hoping you would. I need someone who knew her before very badly…"

"Quite so." The solicitor coughed. "I think in these—er— somewhat unusual circumstances my advice would be that you should first establish if a legal adoption has taken place. That would put a different complexion on the whole affair. You say there are no papers in the house whatsoever?"

"None. There was this burglary, you see…"

Arbican nodded. "It doesn't make matters easier."

"No."

"In the absence of any written evidence we could begin a search of the court adoption registers…" Henrietta looked up eagerly.

"But it will necessarily be a slow business. There are about forty County Courts, you see, and—er—several hundred Magistrates' Courts."

"I see."

"A will," said Arbican cautiously, "might clarify matters."

"In what way?"

"It would perhaps refer to the relationship between you and Grace Jenkins. Whilst not being her—er—child of the body you could still stand in a legal relationship to her."

"I don't see how."

"Have you thought that you could be a child of an earlier marriage of one of the two parties?"

She sighed. "I don't know what to think."

"If that were so then you must have been the child of one of them…"

"Not Grace Jenkins," reiterated Henrietta.

"If you aren't," went on the solicitor, "and the fact of this in each case can be proved, then you could be a child of a marriage, the surviving partner of which subsequently married one of the two persons whom you had hitherto considered your parents…"

She put her hands up to her head. "You're going too quickly."

"That would entail a third marriage on someone's part— but three marriages are not out of the place these days."

"It—it's very complicated, isn't it?"

"The law," said Arbican cheerfully, "is."

She hesitated. "Mr. Arbican, if I were illegitimate?"

The fingers came up under his chin again while the solicitor pontificated. "The law is much kinder than it used to be, and if your—the person whom you thought to be your mother has made a will in your favour it is of little consequence."

"It isn't that," said Henrietta quickly. "Besides we—she had no money. I know that."

Arbican looked as if he was about to say that that was of no consequence either.

"In any case," went on Henrietta, "I wouldn't want to claim anything I wasn't entitled to, and if she wasrft my mother, I don't see how I can be."

"A will," began Arbican, "would…"

"She may not have made one," countered Henrietta, "She wasn't expecting to die."

"Everyone should make a will," said the solicitor senten-tiously.

While farmers lunch early, and clergy at exactly one fifteen, policemen on duty lunch not at all. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby found themselves back in the Berebury Police Station after two thirty with the canteen offering nothing more substantial than tea and sandwiches. Crosby laid the tray on Sloan's desk.

"It's all they had left," he said briefly.

"Somerset House didn't have anything either," Sloan told him, pushing a message pad across the desk. "No record of any Grace Edith Wright marrying any Cyril Edgar Jenkins within five years of either side of when the girl thought they did."

Crosby took another sandwich and thought about this for the length of it. Then "Grace Jenkins must have had a birth certificate."

"Wright," said Sloan automatically.

Crosby, who thought Sloan had said "Right,"looked pleased and took another sandwich.

"Though," continued Sloan, "if she's Wright, why bring Jenkins in at all, especially if she's not married to him." Crosby offered no opinion on this. "Moreover, where do you begin to look?"

"Where, sir?" he echoed.

"Where in time," explained Sloan kindly. "Not where in space. It'll all be in Somerset House. It's a question of knowwhere to look. The girl tells us Grace Jenkins was fdrty-five years old. The pathologist says she was fifty-five or thereabouts."

"Yes," agreed Crosby helpfully.

"And that's not the only thing. The girl says she was married to one Jenkins, deceased, and her maiden name was Wright. Somerset House can't trace the marriage and Dr. Dabbe thinks she was both unmarried and childless."

"More tea?" suggested Crosby constructively. "Thank you." Sloan reached for his notebook. "We can't very well expect the General Register Officer to give us the birth certificate of someone whose age we don't know and whose name we aren't sure about. So, instead ;.."

"Yes, sir?"

"You will start looking for a family called—what was it?—ah, yes: a family called Hocklington-Garwell. And a farm."

"A farm, sir?"

"A Holly Tree Farm, Crosby."

"Somewhere in England, sir?"

"Somewhere in Calleshire," snapped Sloan.

Crosby swallowed. "Yes, sir."

Sloan read through the notes of the interview with Mrs. Callows. "Then there's the bus station. Grace Jenkins arrived there on Tuesday morning and left there on the seven five in the evening. See if you can find any lead on where she went in between."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you remember what it was that was unusual about her on Tuesday?"

"She was killed?"

"Try again, Constable…" dangerously.

Crosby frowned. "She was dressed in her best…"

"Anything else?"

"It wasn't her day for shopping in Berebury."

"Exactly."

"You could just say it wasn't her day," murmured Crosby, but fortunately Inspector Sloan didn't hear him.

Henrietta came out of the office of Waind, Arbican & Waind, and stood on the Calleford pavement. Bill Thorpe was a little way down the road and she waved. He turned and came towards her asking, "Any luck?"

"None," Henrietta said despondently. "He doesn't rememher at all."

"What about the legal side?" He fell in step beside her. "I've found a tea shop down this lane."

"The legal side!" echoed Henrietta indignantly. "I'd no idea adoption was so easy. And there's no central register of adoption either." There was quite a catch in her voice as she said, "I could be anybody."

"We'll have to get the vet to you after all. Turn left at this corner."

Her face lightened momentarily. "Strangles or spavin?"

"To look at your back teeth," said Bill Thorpe. He pushed open the door of the tea shop and led the way to the table. They were early and the place was not full. He chose the one in the window and they settled into chairs facing each other.

Henrietta was not to be diverted. "I am a person…"

"Undoubtedly. If I may say so, quite one of the…"

"You may not," she said repressively.

"Tea, I think, for two," he said to the waitress. "And toast."

"When I was a little girl," said Henrietta, "I used to ask myself, 'Why am I me?' Now I'm grown up I seem to be asking myself, 'Who am I?' "

"Philosophy is so egocentric," complained Bill Thorpe, "and everyone thinks it isn't. I'm not at all sure I like the idea of your studying it."

"I'm me," declared Henrietta.

"And very nice, too, especially your…"

"I know I'm me, but where do we go from here?"

Bill Thorpe stirred. "Your existence isn't in doubt, you know. Only your identity."

"Then who on earth am I?"

"I don't know," he said placidly, "and I don't really care."

Henrietta did. "At this rate I could be anybody at all."

"Not just anybody."

"There are over fifty million people in this country and if I'm not called…"

"We can narrow the field a bit."

"You're sure?"

"Unless I'm very much mistaken," he underlined the words, "you're female. That brings it down to twenty-five million for a start."

"Bill, be serious. This is important."

"Not to me, it isn't. But if you insist…"

"I do."

"Then you're a leucodermii." He grinned. "That's silenced you. I did anthropology for a year. Enjoyed it, too."

She smiled for the first time that day. It altered her appearance beyond measure. "Science succeeding where philosophy has failed, Bill?"

"Well you're the one who wants to find out who you are. Not me."

She lowered her eyes meekly. "And you tell me I'm a leucodermii."

He waved a hand. "So you are. If I said, 'Come hither, my dusky maiden,' you needn't come."

That startled her. "I'm English."

It was his turn for irony. "White, through and through?"

She flushed. "Not that, but surely… I never thought I could be anything but English. Oh, I am. Bill, I must be."

"Indo-European anyway." He moved his chair back while the waitress set the tea in front of them. "Thank you." While Henrietta poured out, he squinted speculatively at her. "Your head's all right."

"Thank you."

"Mesocephalic. Not long, not broad, but medium."

"That sounds English if anything does."

"The lady mocks me." He held up a hand and ticked off the fingers one by one. "You're not Slav, nor Mongol…"

"Thank you."

"… Nor Mediterranean type. If your cheek bones had been a fraction higher, you could have been Scandinavian…"

"I feel English."

"Nurture, not nature."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Unless you believe in all this inherited race consciousness theory."

She shook her head. "I don't know enough about it."

"Nobody does. Have some toast. Then I think all we can conclude is that you are free, white and nearly twenty-one."

"Free?" echoed Henrietta.

"Remarkably so. No attachments whatsoever. Except to me, of course."

She wouldn't be drawn but sat with her head turned away towards the window, staring at the street.

" 'Free as nature first made man,' " quoted Bill.

"You'll be talking of noble savages in a minute, I suppose."

"Never!"

"Tell me this," she said. "Do vets still go in for branding?"

"Sometimes," he said cautiously. "Why?"

"Because a few marks on my ear at birth would have saved a lot of trouble all round, that's why."

"You'd better have another cup of tea," he said. "And some more toast."

She refilled her cup and his, and sat gazing through the teashop window at the passers-by.

Suddenly she let her cup fall back into her saucer with an uncontrolled clatter. "Bill, look. Out there."

"Where?"

"That man." She started to struggle to her feet, her face quite white.

"What about him?"

She was pointing agitatedly towards the back of a man walking down the street. "It… it's the man in the photograph… Oh, quickly. I'm sure it is."

"You mean your father?" He pushed his chair back.

"Cyril Jenkins," she said urgently. "I swear it is. It was exactly like the man in the photograph but older." She started to push her way out of the tea shop. "Come on, Bill, quickly. We must catch him whatever happens."

CHAPTER TEN

It was well after four o'clock before Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby met again. Crosby went into Sloan's room at the Berebury Police Station waving a list.

"Nearly as long as my arm, sir, this."

"It can't be as long as your face, Crosby. What is it?"

"The Holly Tree Farms in Calleshire."

"Routine is the foundation of all police work, Constable. You should know that."

"Yes, sir. Records have come through on the phone, too, sir. They've got nothing against any Cyril Edgar Jenkins or Grace Edith Wright."

"Or Jenkins."

"Or Jenkins."

"That doesn't get us very far then."

"No, sir." Crosby still sounded gloomy. "And I can't get anywhere either with this family that the girl says her mother used to work for."

"Hocklington-Garwell?" Inspector Sloan frowned. "I was afraid of that They may not have lived in Calleshire, of course…"

"No, sir. I'd thought of that" Crosby looked as if he might have to take on the world.

"And there is always the possibility that the girl may be having us on."

"You mean they might not exist?" If Crosby's expression was anything to go by, this was not quite cricket.

"I do."

Crosby looked gloomier still. "It's a funny name to be havus on with, sir, if you know what I mean."

"That, Constable, is the most sensible remark you've made for a long time."

"Thank you, sir."

"Therefore I am inclined to think that the Hocklington-Garwells do exist."

"Not in Calieshire, sir," said Crosby firmly. "Several Gar-wells but no Hocklingtons and not a sniff of a Hocklington-Garwell."

"Give me the Garwells's addresses then," said Sloan. "We've got to start somewhere and we're getting nowhere fast at the moment."

"It would have been a lot simpler," said Crosby plaintively, "if she had had the baby and we were looking for the father."

Superintendent Leeyes said much the same thing in different words a few minutes later in his office in the same corridor.

"I've dealt with a few paternity orders in my time, Sloan, but I'm damned if I've met a maternity one yet."

"No, sir." He coughed. "This case has several unusual features."

"You can say that again," said his superior encouragingly. "Found out whose the medals were?"

"Not yet, sir. The old boy at the Rectory's quite right. Knows his stuff. They're the wrong ones for the photograph quite apart from the fact that the D.S.O. and M.C. are never awarded to sergeants."

"Officers, medals, for the use of."

"Yes, sir."

"This man Hibbs at The Hall. He an officer type?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hrrrmph."

"I've had a look at his car," said Sloan hastily. "It looks all right to me. It's not all that new and I don't know how much damage to expect to the car from her injuries. I'll have a word with Traffic about that. And Dr. Dabbe."

"And check," growled Leeyes, "that he hasn't had them repaired. Plenty of time for that since Tuesday."

"Yes, sir."

"What was he doing on Tuesday evening anyway?"

"Nothing," said Sloan cautiously.

"Nothing?"

"He was alone at home."

"Was he indeed? Interesting."

"You see, sir, it was the first Tuesday in the month."

"I am aware of that, Sloan, but the significance eludes me…"

"That's Institoot—I mean, Institute night."

"You don't say."

"Mrs. Hibbs," said Sloan hurriedly, "is Branch President So she was out."

"No servants?"

"A daily. A real one."

"A real one?"

"Comes every day. Daily."

"There's no need to spell it out for me, man."

"No, sir."

"What you are trying to tell me—and taking the devil of a long time about it, if I may say so—is that James Heber Hibbs was alone all evening at The Hall, he has a car whose tyre marks correspond with those found at the scene of the accident and you aren't yet sure if he killed Grace What-ever-her-name is."

"Yes, sir."

"Anything else?"

"There may well be something odd about this chap Jenkins, sir, apart from the medals."

"You can say that again," responded Leeyes generously.

"I've been making a few enquiries about his pension."

"Oh?"

"And I can't trace it. It wasn't paid out via the local village Post Office which is not all that surprising, but it didn't go into her bank account either. I've just seen the manager. No pension voucher record there. Her account was kept going with a small regular monthly cash payment over the counter."

"Who by?" sharply.

"Grace Jenkins herself to all intent and purposes," sighed Sloan. "According to the paying-in slips, she always handed it over herself."

"Maintenance,"concluded Leeyes.

"Yes, sir, with any clue to its source carefully concealed."

"And anything not concealed equally carefully removed from the bureau on Tuesday."

"Just so," agreed Sloan.

"From what you've said so far," said the Superintendent, "she doesn't strike one as having been a kept woman."

"Only literally, sir, if you follow me. I think it was the child who was kept. I've got in touch with the pension auand they're doing a bit of checking up now but it'll take time. It's not as if it were an uncommon name even."

"No." The Superintendent thought for a moment and then said, "The most interesting question from our point of view is: Who was keeping both of them."

"Yes, sir."

"And why." The Superintendent sat silent, thinking. Sloan knew better than to interrupt his thoughts. "If," said Leeyes at last, "we knew why they were being kept I daresay we'd know who killed the woman."

"Whatever the story," said Sloan, "I think we can be fairly sure the situation changed when the girl reached twenty-one."

"And someone didn't like it the new way."

"No."

"That means there's money somewhere, Sloan, or I'm a Dutchman."

"Perhaps." Sloan tapped his notebook. "It could be a quesof inheritance easily…"

"Or concealment of birth."

"I'd thought of that, sir. I've been on to the General Register Office with the only reasonable thing I could think of to ask them."

"What was that?"

"A list of the female children born about the same time as Henrietta Jenkins says she was and who have the same Chrisnames."

"That's a tall order," said the Superintendent.

"They said it would take time," agreed Sloan dubiously. "I don't suppose a Friday afternoon's the best moment to ask them either."

"No." Leeyes looked at his watch. "Late on Friday afternoon at that."

"She was called Henrietta Eleanor Leslie though."

"That's better than Mary, I suppose."

"But you don't have to register a birth for six weeks and…"

"And," said the Superintendent grimly, "we've only got her word for it that those are her names and that that is when she was born."

"Just so," said Sloan.

That was the moment when the telephone began to ring.

Leeyes picked it up, listened for a moment and then handed it over to Sloan. "A call for Inspector Sloan from Calleford. Urgent and personal."

Sloan took the receiver in one hand and a pencil in the other. "Speaking…"

He listened attentively, then he asked two questions in quick succession, advised the speaker to go home, and replaced the receiver.

"That was Bill Thorpe, sir."

Leeyes nodded. "That's the chap who helped find the body, isn't it? The one the girl wanted to marry…"

"Him," said Sloan. "He's with the girl in Calleford now and she's just seen Cyril Jenkins."

"Who?" roared Leeyes.

"Cyril Jenkins."

"He's dead."

"Not if she's just seen him," said Sloan reasonably.

"How does she know it's him?"

"Living image of the man in the photograph but older."

"She's imagining it then."

"She swears not."

"Wishful thinking."

"A dead likeness," said Sloan pithily. "That's what Thorpe said."

"Did he see him himself?"

"No. Not his face. Just his back."

"I don't like it, Sloan."

"No, sir." He waited. "There's something else."

Leeyes' head came up with a jerk. "What?"

"They've been in the Minster looking at the East Calleshire Memorial there."

"Well?"

"Jenkins's name isn't on it and he was supposed to have been killed in the war."

"Well, if he's alive and kicking in Calleford this afternoon that's hardly surprising, is it? Be logical, Sloan."

"Yes, sir." You couldn't win. Not with Superintendent Leeyes.

"And I suppose they let him get away."

"They were in a tea shop, sir. By the time they got out he'd disappeared."

"So we don't know if the girl was right or wrong?"

"Strictly speaking, no."

"And we don't know either, Sloan, if she is having us all on, the Thorpe boy included."

"No, sir."

"If she is, do you realize that nearly all the evidence we've got—if you can call it evidence—comes from her?"

"Yes, sir. Apart from Dr. Dabbe, that is…"

"It's a lonely furrow," agreed Leeyes sardonically, "that the doctor's ploughing. What did you tell them to do?"

"Go home to Larking," said Sloan. "As the crow flies they're nearer there than they are to Berebury. I'll go down to Larking to see them later."

Leeyes grunted.

"And," continued Sloan, "I'll get some copies of Jenkins's photograph blown up and rushed over to Calleford. No harm in looking for him…"

"No harm in finding him," retorted Leeyes meaningfully. "It'll be interesting to see if they can pick him up over there. I understand that they can do almost anything at Headquarters."

"Yes, sir." The Superintendent pursued his own private vendetta with County Constabulary Headquarters at Calleford.

"Of course," blandly, "he may not be called Jenkins."

"No," agreed Sloan dutifully.

"And that won't make it any easier for them."

He did not sound particularly sorry about this.

Sloan went into Traffic Division on his way back from seeing the Superintendent. A lugubrious man called Harpe was in charge. He had a reputation for having never been known to smile, which reputation he hotly defended on the grounds that there had never been anything to smile about in Traffic Division. He was accordingly known as Happy Harry.

So it was now.

"Nothing's turned up, Sloan," he said unsmiling. "Not a thing. No witnesses. No damaged cars. Nobody reported knocking a woman down."

"Where do you usually go from here?"

"Inquest. Newspaper publicity. Radio appeal for eyewitnesses to come forward."

"Any response as a rule?"

"It all depends," said Harpe cautiously. "Usually someone comes forward. Not always."

"They won't this time," prophesied Sloan. Harpe's pessimism was infectious.

"Don't suppose they will. Lonely road. Unclassified, isn't it? Nobody about. Dark. Pubs open. Shops shut."

"Institute night."

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

"Our chaps have been in all the local repair garages—no one's brought in anything suspicious, but then if they were bent on not coming forward they'd go as far afield as they conveniently could-"

"Or not repair at all." Harpe looked up. "How do you mean?"

"If this was murder," said Sloan, "they'd be dead keen on not getting caught."

"I'll say."

"Well, I don't think they'd risk having telltale repairs done in Calleshire."

"They might sell," said Harpe doubtfully. "We could get County Hall to tell us about ownership changes if you like."

"I wasn't thinking of that, though it's a thought. No, if I'd done a murder with a motor car and got some damage to the front… how much damage would it be, by the way?"

Harpe shifted in his chair. "Difficult to say. Varies a lot. Almost none sometimes. Another time it can chew up the front quite a lot. Especially if the windscreen goes."

"It didn't," said Sloan. "There was no glass on the road at all. We looked."

"That means his headlamps were all right then, too, doesn't it?"

Sloan nodded.

"Of course," went on Harpe, with the expert's cold-blooded logic, "if you're engineering your pedestrian stroke vehicle type of accident on purpose…"

"I think we were."

Harpe shrugged. "If you can afford to wait until you can see the whites of their eyes, then naturally you pick your spot."

"How do you mean?"

"You hit them full on."

"Amidships, so to speak?"

"Between the headlamps," said Harpe seriously. "You wouldn't break any glass then."

"I see," said Sloan.

"Of course, your 'exchange principle' still applies."

"What's that?"

"Car traces on the pedestrian. Pedestrian traces on the car. Paint, mostly, in the first case…"

"Dr. Dabbe didn't say and he never misses anything."

"Blood stains on the car," went on Harpe cheerlessly, "and hair and fibres of clothing—only you haven't got the car, have you?"

"No," said Sloan. 'Then, to go back to concealing the damage…"

"If you didn't want to take it anywhere to repair…"

"I know what I'd do."

Harpe looked at him uncompromisingly. "Well, and what would you do?"

"Bash it into a brick wall," said Sloan cheerfully. "Or arrange another accident that would destroy all traces of the first. That would make him safe enough if they did find the car."

Even then Harpe did not smile.

It was about a quarter to six when Henrietta and Bill Thorpe got back to Boundary Cottage, Larking.

Henrietta went straight through into the front room and halted in her tracks. Bill nearly bumped into her.

"Oh, I'd forgotten," she said.

"What?"

"The Police Inspector took the photograph away with him."

"Why?"

"The medals," said Henrietta vaguely. "He was going to talk to the Rector about them."

"There's a fair bit of talking needing doing," said Bill, settling himself in a chair. "Am I glad you're going to be twenty-one next month!"

"Why?" She hardly bothered to turn her head.

"Because if we've got to find this character Jenkins and ask his permission for you to marry me we're in real trouble."

"He's not my father," said Henrietta. "My father's dead."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," she agreed miserably. "I don't know anything. I don't even know what I know and what I don't know."

Bill Thorpe nodded comprehendingly. "I follow you— though thousands wouldn't. All the same, I'm glad that we'll be able to get to the altar without him. Shouldn't know where to begin to look."

"It was him," she said in the tone of one who has said the same thing many times before. "I'd know him anywhere again. I knew that photograph like the back of my hand."

"So you said before."

"He was older, that's all."

"Twenty years older?"

"About." She sat down too. "Men don't change all that much."

"Sorry to hear you say that." Bill Thorpe grinned and ran a hand over his face. "There's room for improvement here. Or do you like me as I am?"

She made a gesture with her hand. "I can't like you, Bill—I can't like anyone at the moment. Not until I know who I am. Oh, I can't put it into words but there just isn't any of me left over for things like that. Besides, you must know who it is you're marrying."

"You," said Bill Thorpe promptly. "And very nice, too."

"Bill, do be serious."

"I am," he said. "Deadly. I want to marry you. You as you are now."

She shook her head. "I'm too confused. I don't know what I want."

"I do," he said simply. "You."

She turned away without speaking.

Bill Thorpe was not disconcerted. Instead he looked at his watch and then switched on the radio. It hummed and hawed for a bit and then presently the weather forecast came on. He listened intently until it was finished and was just leaning across to switch the radio off when the announcer said:

The six o'clock news will follow in a minute and a quarter. Before the news there is a police message. There was an accident on the lower road to Belling St. Peter in the village of Larking, Calleshire, on Tuesday evening when a woman was knocked down and fatally injured. Will the driver of the vehicle and anyone who witnessed the accident or who may be able to give any information please telephone the Chief Constable of Calleshire, telephone Calleford 2313 or any police station.

Henrietta gave a sudden laugh. It was high-pitched and todevoid of humour.

"Any information!" she cried. "That's good, isn't it? If they only knew how much information we needed…"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"External examination," Inspector Sloan began to read. "The body was of a well-nourished female…"

Dr. Dabbe's typewritten report of his post-mortem examination, addressed to H. M. Coroner for Callesbire and marked Copy to Chief Constable, lay on Inspector Sloan's desk. He got as far as "aged about fifty-five" when Detective Constable Crosby came in.

"Everyone else seemed to be having tea, sir, so I brought some down. And the last of the cake."

"Good," said Sloan. "I was beginning to feel the opposite of well nourished myself. How have you got on?"

Crosby carefully carried a cup of tea across the room and sat down. Then he opened his notebook. "The hair, sir…"

"Ah, yes." Sloan fingered Dr. Dabbe's report. "I've got the name of that dye down here. All twenty-five syllables of it."

"I found the ladies' hairdressing saloon, sir…"

"They drop the second 'c,' Constable, nowadays.""Really, sir? Well, she had it done at a place called Marlene's in the High Street. I spoke to a young person there by the name of Sandra who—er—did her."

"When?"

"Every second Friday at ten o'clock. Without fail."

"Yes." Sloan set his cup down. "It would have to be without fail. Otherwise it would show."

"What would, sir?"

"Her fair hair. According to Dr. Dabbe she was fair-haired."

"And the girl was dark so she dyed hers dark, too," concluded Crosby, "so that the girl would think…"

"It's as good a disguise as any, too," said Sloan. "Especially if you don't expect it" He paused. "Cyril Jenkins was fair. You could see that much on the photograph."

"Yes, sir."

"That suggest anything to you?"

"No, sir."

Sloan sighed. "Constable, I agree the possibilities in this case are infinite. The murderer could be anyone, and as far as I am concerned the victim could be anyone and I am not altogether sure of the nature of the crime but there are just one or two clues worth considering."

"Yes, sir," said Crosby stolidly.

"The fact that Cyril Jenkins had…"

"Should it be 'has,' sir?"

Sloan glared. "What's that? Oh, yes, that's a point." He grunted and went on. "Has—may have—fair hair and Grace Jenkins had fair hair which she took pains to dye the same colour as Henrietta's is interesting…"

"Yes, sir."

"It's worse than drawing teeth, Crosby. Don't you have any ideas at all?"

"Yes, sir. But not about this," he added hastily, not liking the look on Sloan's face.

"Has it occurred to you that there is one possibility that would account for it? That Cyril and Grace Jenkins were brother and sister…"

"No, sir," replied Crosby truthfully. He thought for a minute and then said very, very cautiously, "Where would the baby come in then?"

"I don't know." Sloan turned back to the report. "How did you get on otherwise?"

"No joy about where she'd been all day except that it wasn't in Berebury."

"What?"

"I showed her photograph to the Inspector at the bus station. He thinks he saw her at the incoming unloading point about half five. Doesn't know what bus she got off…"

"Wait a minute," said Sloan suspiciously. "How does he remember? That was Tuesday. Today's Friday."

"I wondered about that, too, sir, but it seems as if an old lady tripped and fell and this Grace Jenkins helped her up and dusted her down. That sort of thing. And then handed her over to the bus people."

Sloan nodded. "Go on."

"It appears she stayed in the bus station until the Larking bus left at seven five. In the cafeteria most of the time. The waitress remembered her. Says she served her with…"

"Baked beans," interposed Sloan neatly.

Crosby looked startled. "That's right. At about…"

"Six o'clock," supplied Sloan.

"How do you know, sir?"

"Not me." Laconically. "The pathologist. He said so. She ate them about two hours before death. That ties up with her being killed as she walked home from the last bus."

"Wonderful, sir, isn't it, what they can do when they cut you up?"

"Yes," said Sloan shortly.

Crosby turned back to his notebook. "Wherever she'd been she didn't get to the bus station until after the five fifteen to Larking had left, otherwise she'd presumably have caught that."

"Fair enough," agreed Sloan. "What came in after five fifand before she went into the cafeteria?"

"A great many buses," said Crosby with feeling. "It's about their busiest time of the day. I've got a list but I wouldn't know where to begin if it's a case of talking to conductors."

"Return tickets?" murmured Sloan. "They might help."

Crosby looked doubtful. Sloan went back to the post-morexamination report.

"Was Happy Harry any help, sir?" ventured Crosby a little later.

"Inspector Harpe," said Sloan distantly, "has instigated the usual routine enquiries."

"I see, sir. Thank you, sir."

Suddenly Sloan tapped Dr. Dabbe's report. "Get me the hospital, will you, Crosby? There's one thing I can ask the pathologist…"

He was put through to Dr. Dabbe's office without delay.

"About this Grace Jenkins, Doctor…"

"Yes?"

"I notice you've made a note of her blood group."

"Routine, Inspector."

"I know that, Doctor. What I was wondering is if the blood group could help us in other ways."

"With the alleged daughter, you mean?" said Dabbe.

"Her alleged husband has turned up too," said Sloan; and he explained about the sighting of Cyril Jenkins.

"Blood groups aren't a way of proving maternity or paternity. Only of disproving it."

"I don't quite follow."

"If the child has a different one then that is a factor in sustaining evidence that it is not the child of those particular people."

"And if it is the same?"

"That narrows the field nicely."

"How nicely?" guardedly.

"Usually to a round ten million or so people who could be its parents."

"I see." Sloan thought for a moment. "We already know that Grace Jenkins is not the mother of Henrietta…"

"We do."

"But if Cyril Jenkins is alive and is the father of Henrietta, then their blood groups would tie up, wouldn't they?"

A low rumble came down the telephone line. "First, catch your hare…"

General Sir Eustace Garwell was at home and would see Inspector C. D. Sloan.

This news was conveyed to the waiting policemen by an elderly male retainer who had creaked to the door in answer to their ring. He was the fourth Garwell upon whom they had called since leaving the police station late that afternoon. The other three had numbered several Jenkins's among their acquaintance but not a Cyril Edgar nor a Grace and certainly not a Henrietta Eleanor Leslie. Nor did they look as if they could ever have had a hyphen in the family, let alone a Hocklington.

It was different at The Laurels, Cullingoak.

Sloan and Crosby had left it until the last because it was on the way to lurking. Both the hyphen and the Hocklington would have gone quite well with the Benares brass trays and the faded Indian carpets. There were a couple of potted palms in the hall and several fronds of dusty pampas grass brushed eerily against Crosby's cheek as he and Inspector Sloan followed the man down the corridor. He walked so slowly that the two policemen had the greatest difficulty in not treading on his heels. There was that in his walk though, together with the fact that he had referred to "the General"and not "Sir Eustace" that made Sloan say:

"You've seen service yourself."

"Batman to the General, sir, since he was a subaltern."

"The West Calleshires or the Cavalry?" hazarded Sloan.

The man stopped in his tracks and drew himself up to his full height "The East Calleshires, sir, not the West."

Sloan began to feel hopeful.

"We only live in the Western part of the county," went on the man, "because her ladyship was left this property, and though she's been dead some years, the General's too old to be making a change."

"I'm sorry," said Sloan, suitably abject.

A very old gentleman struggled out of a chair as they entered.

"Come in, gentlemen, come in. It's not often I have any callers in the evening. We live a very quiet life here, you know. Stopped going out when m'wife died. What'll you take to drink?"

Sloan declined port, madeira and brandy in that order.

"On duty, sir, I'm afraid."

The General nodded sympathetically, and said they would forgive him his brandy and soda because he wasn't on duty any more, in fact it was many a long year now since he had been.

"It's about the past we've come," said Sloan by way of making a beginning.

"My memory's not what it used to be," said the old man.

"Pity," murmured Crosby sotto voce.

"What's that? I can't hear so well either. Damned M.O. fellow wants me to have a hearing aid thing. Can't be bothered." The General indicated a chair on his left and said to Sloan, "If you would sit here I shall hear you better." He settled himself back in his own chair. "Ah, that's more comfortable. Now, how far back in the past do you want to go? Ladysmith?"

"Ladysmith?" echoed Sloan, considerably startled.

"It was Mafeking they made all the fuss about—they forgot the siege of Ladysmith." He fixed Sloan with a bleary eye. "Do you want to know about Ladysmith?"

"You were there, sir?"

The General gave a deep chuckle. "I was there. I was there for a long time. The whole siege. And I've never wasted a drop of drink or a morsel of food since." He leant forward. "Are you sure about that brandy?"

"Certainly, sir. Thank you."

The General took another sip. "Commissioned in '99. Went through the whole of the Boer War. Nearly died of fever more than once. Still"—he brightened—"none of it seemed to do me any harm."

This much, at least, was patently true. They were looking at a very old man indeed but he seemed to be in possession of all his faculties. Sloan thought back quickly, dredging through his schoolboy memory for names of battles.

"Were you at Omdurman, Sir Eustace?"

Sir Eustace Garwell waved the brandy glass under his nose with a thin hand, sniffing appreciatively. The veins on his hand stood out, hard and gnarled. "No, sir, I was not at Omdurman. Incredible as it may seem now, I was too young for that episode in our military history. At the time I was very distressed about missing it by a year or so. I was foolish enough to fear that there weren't going to be any more wars." He gave a melancholy snort. "I needn't have worried, need I?"

"No, sir…"

"Now, on the whole I'm rather glad. You realise, don'tyou, that had I been born a couple of years earlier I should probably be dead by now."

Sloan took a moment or two to work this out and then he said, "I see what you mean, sir."

"The East Callies were there, of course. Battle honours and all that…"

"Yes." Sloan raised his voice a little. "There is just one little matter on which you may be able to help us by remembering. After Ladysmith. Probably sometime between the wars."

"I was in India from '04 to 1913," said the General helpfully. "In the Punjab."

"Not those wars," said Sloan hastily, hoping Sir Eustace was too deaf to have heard Crosby's snort. "Between the other two."

"Ah. It wasn't the same, you know."

"I daresay not," said Sloan dryly.

"Everything changed after 1914 but war most of all."

"Do you recollect a Sergeant Jenkins in the Regiment, sir?"

There was a row of ivory elephants on the mantelpiece, their trunks properly facing the door. Sloan had time to count them before the General replied.

"Jenkins did you say? No, the name doesn't mean anything to me. Known quite a few men of that name in m'time but not in the Regiment. Hirst might know. Ask him."

"Thank you, sir, I will."

"They put me on the Staff," said the old voice querulously. "You never know anyone then."

"Did you ever have a woman called Grace Jenkins working for you either, sir?"

"Can't say that we did. We had a housekeeper but she's been dead for years and her name wasn't Jenkins."

"Or Wright?"

"No. One of the cleaning women might have been called that. You'd have to ask Hirst. They come and go, you know."

If the dust on the ivory elephants was any measure, this was one of the times when they had gone.

"No, not a cleaning woman," said Sloan. "A children's nurse, perhaps. A nanny?"

"Never had any children," said the General firmly. "No nannies about the place ever."

"I see, sir. Thank you. Well, then, I must apologise for disturbing you. Routine enquiry, you understand."

"Quite so."

Sloan got up to go. "About a woman who used to work as a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell and we're trying to trace…"

Without any warning the whole atmosphere inside the drawing room of The Laurels, Cullingoak, changed.

Two beady eyes peered at Sloan over the top of the brandy glass. Just as quickly the old face became suffused with colour. A choleric General Sir Eustace Garwell put down his glass with shaking hands.

"Sir," he said, quite outraged, "is this a joke?"

He struggled to his feet, anger in every feature of his stiff and ancient frame. He tottered over to the wall and put his finger on a bell.

"If I were a younger man, sir," he quavered, "I would send for a horse whip. As it is, I shall just ask my man to show you the door. Goodnight, sir, goodnight."

CHAPTER TWELVE

As always, Sloan was polite.

He had long ago learned that there were few situations where a police officer—or anyone else, for that matter— gained by not being.

Henrietta was sitting opposite him and Crosby in the little parlour of Boundary Cottage.

"Yes, Inspector, I'm certain it was Hocklington-Garwell. It's not really a name you could confuse, is it?"

"No, miss, that's very true."

"Besides, why should I tell you a name like that if it isn't the one I was told?"

"That's not for me to say, miss."

She stared at him. "You do believe me, don't you?"

"The mention of the name certainly upset the old gentleman, miss. He ordered us out of the house."

Henrietta just looked puzzled. "I can't understand it at all. It was Hocklington-Garwell and they had two boys. Master Michael and Master Hugo. I've heard such a lot about them always…"

"The General said he hadn't had any children," said Sloan.

"There you are, then. It must have been the wrong man…"

"But the merest mention of the name upset him, miss. There was no mistake about that."

She subsided again, shaking her head. "I can't begin to explain that. They're wrong, you know, when they say 'What's in a name?' There seems to be everything in it."

"Just at the moment," agreed Sloan. He coughed. "About the other matter, miss…"

"My father?"

"The man in the photograph."

"Cyril Jenkins…"

"Yes, miss. We've got a general call out for him now, starting in the Calleford area…"

"You'll find him, won't you?"

"I think we will," said Sloan with a certain amount of reservation. "Whether, if we do, we shall find he fulfils all three conditions of identity…"

"Three?"

"That your father, the man in the photograph and Cyril Edgar Jenkins are all one and the same."

She nodded and said positively, "I can only tell you one of them, that he was the man in the photograph." She tightened her lips. "You'll have to tell me the other two afterwards, won't you?"

Sloan frowned. There were quite a few little matters that Cyril Jenkins could inform them about and the first question they would ask him was where exactly he had been just before eight o'clock on Tuesday evening. Aloud he said, "We'll tell you all we can, miss, though you realise someone might simply have borrowed his photograph to put on the mantelpiece here?"

She smiled wanly. "Is that what they call a father figure, Inspector?"

"Something like that, miss."

"Why should she have told me he was dead if he wasn't?"

"I don't know, miss." Sloan couldn't remember a time when he had used the phrase so often. "He might have left her, I suppose…" It wasn't a subject he was prepared to pursue at this moment, so he cleared his throat and said, "In view of what you have told us about the War Memorial and the Rector about the medals, we are in touch with the War Office but there will inevitably be a little delay."

A brief smile flitted across her face and was gone. "Friday afternoon's not the best time, is it?"

"No, miss, I doubt if we shall have anything in time for the inquest."

"Mr. Arbican's coming," she said, "and he's going to get someone to start going through the Court Adoption records."

"That's a long job," said Sloan, who had already taken advice on this point.

"Starting with the Calleshire County Court and the Bere-bury, Luston and Calleford Magistrates' ones. That's the most hopeful, isn't it?" she said. "I expect you think I'm being unreasonable, Inspector, but I must know who I am—even if Bill Thorpe doesn't care."

"Doesn't he?" said Sloan alertly.

She grimaced. "He only thinks it's important if you happen to be an Aberdeen Angus bull."

"Back to Berebury?" enquired Crosby hopefully, as they left Boundary Cottage. Breakfast was the only solid meal he had had so far that day and he was getting increasingly aware of the fact.

Sloan got into the car beside him. "No." He got out his notebook. "So young Thorpe doesn't care who she is…"

"So she said."

"But he still wants to marry her."

"That's right," said Crosby, who privately found it rather romantic.

"Has it occurred to you that that could be because he already knows who she is?"

"No," responded Crosby simply.

"I think," said Sloan, "we shall have to look into the background of young Mr. Thorpe. Just to be on the safe side, you might say."

"Now?" Crosby started up the engine.

"No. Later. Just drive up the road. We're going to call at The Hall. To see what Mr. James Hibbs knows."

Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs were just finishing their evening meal. Enough of its aroma still hung about to tantalise Crosby's idle digestive juices, though there was no sign of food. The Hibbs's were having coffee by a log fire in their hall, the two gun dogs supine before it. A bare wooden staircase clambered up to the first floor. The rest was dark panelling and the total effect was of great comfort.

Sloan declined coffee out of cups so tiny and fragile looking that he could not bear to think of them in Constable Crosby's hands.

"You're quite sure?" said Mrs. Hibbs. She was a tall, imposing woman with a deep voice. "Or would you prefer some beer?"

Sloan—to say nothing of Crosby—would have greatly preferred some beer but he shook his head regretfully. "Thank you, no, madam. We just want to ask a few more questions about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins."

"A terrible business," said Mrs. Hibbs. "To think of her lythere in the road all night, and nobody knew."

"Except, I daresay," put in Hibbs, "the fellow who knocked her down. All my eye, you know, this business that you can say you didn't notice the bump. Any driver would notice."

"Quite so, sir."

"It's a wonder that James didn't find her himself," went on Mrs. Hibbs, placidly pouring out more coffee.

"Really, madam?"

"You sometimes take Richard and Berengaria that way, don't you, dear?"

"Yes," said Hibbs rather shortly.

Sloan said, "Who?"

"Richard and Berengaria." She pointed to the dogs. "We always call them after Kings and Queens, you know."

"I see, madam." Sloan, who thought dogs should be called Spot or Lassie, turned to James Hibbs. "Did you happen to take them that way on Tuesday, sir?"

"No, Inspector."

"Which way," mildly, "did you take them?"

"Towards the village. I had some letters to post."

"About what time would that have been?"

"Half-past eight-ish."

"And you saw nothing and nobody?" The answer to that anyway was a foregone conclusion.

"No."

"I see, sir. Thank you." Sloan changed his tone and said easily, "We're running into a little difficulty in establishing the girl's antecedents… it wouldn't matter so much if Henrietta—Miss Jenkins—weren't under twenty-one."

"Probate, I suppose," said Hibbs wisely. "And she was intestate, too, I daresay. I'm forever advising people to make their wills but they won't, you know. They think they're immortal."

"Quite so, sir," said Sloan, who hadn't made his own just yet.

"She needn't worry about the cottage, if that's on her mind. She's a protected tenant and anyway I can't see myself putting her on the street."

This was obviously meant to be a mild joke for his wife smiled.

"Even if Threlkeld would advise it," went on Hibbs heart-fly, "and I expect he would. There's more to being an agent than that."

"That letter he found for us," said Sloan, "which put us on to the Calleford solicitors…"

"Yes?"

"It didn't get us much further. They had no records of any dealings with her."

"I'm not really surprised," said Hibbs. "It was a long time ago."

"That's true." Sloan, it seemed, was all affability and agreement. "Actually, we have gone a bit further back than that. To some people Grace Jenkins used to work for…"

"Really?" Hibbs didn't sound unduly interested.

"They were called Hocklington-Garwell."

"Yes?" His face was a mask of polite interest.

"Does the name convey anything to you?"

Hibbs frowned. "Can't say it does, Inspector."

But it did to Mrs. Hibbs.

Sloan could see that from her face.

Superintendent Leeyes was never in a very good mood first thing in the morning. He sent for Inspector Sloan as soon as he got to the police station on the Saturday morning. The portents were not good.

"Well, Sloan, any news?"

"Not very much, sir. Inspector Harpe hasn't got anything for us at all on the Traffic side. No response at all to the radio appeal. Of course, it's early days yet—it only went out last night…"

Leeyes grunted. "They either saw it or they didn't see it."

"No witnesses," went on Sloan hastily. "No cars taken in for suspicious repairs anywhere in the county…"

"I don't know what we have a Traffic Division for," grumbled Leeyes.

Sloan kept silent.

"What about Somerset House?"

"Still searching, sir."

Leeyes grunted again. "And the pensions people?"

"They've been on the phone. They say they're paying out a total disability pension to a Cyril Edgar Jenkins…"

"Oh?"

"Not him. This one was wounded on the Somme in July 1916."

"That's not a lot of help."

"No, sir." He coughed. "In view of the brief reappearance of Jenkins I've asked the War Office to turn up the Calleshire Regiment records. His discharge papers would be a help."

"So would his appearance," said Leeyes briskly. "Calleford haven't found him yet, I take it?"

"I rang them this morning," said Sloan obliquely. "They'd visited all the people called Jenkins in the city itself without finding anyone corresponding to either the photograph or the girl's description—but there's a big hinterland to Calleford. And it was their market day yesterday too. He might have come in to that—or to shop or to work."

"Or to see the Minister," suggested Leeyes sarcastically. "What I don't like about it is the coincidence."

"I suppose it is odd," conceded Sloan. "The one day the girl happens to go there she sees him."

"She says she sees him," snapped Leeyes.

"On the other hand he might be there every day. For all we know he is."

"Get anywhere with the Garwells?" Superintendent Leeyes always changed his ground rather than be forced into a conclusion which might subsequently turn out to be incorrect. His subordinates rarely caught him out—even if they never realised why it was.

Sloan obediently told him how far he had got with the Garwells.

Leeyes sniffed. "Funny, that."

"Yes, sir. The General very nearly threw a fit and Mrs. Hibbs knew something. I'm sure of that."

"What about Hibbs himself?"

"Didn't move a muscle. If the name meant anything to him, it didn't show in his face like it did in hers."

"Is he putting the girl out?" said Leeyes hopefully. "That might mean something."

"No." Sloan shook his head. "He says she's a protected tenant but in any case he wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"It's still a bit feudal out there, sir."

"They had this sort of trouble in feudal times."

"Gave me the impression, sir, that he felt a bit responsible for his tenants."

"Impression be blowed," retorted Leeyes vigorously. "What we want to know is whether he was literally responsible for the girl. Biologically speaking."

"Quite so," murmured Sloan weakly.

"It's all very well for him to be hinting that he couldn't put her on the street because it wasn't expected of a man in his position but," Leeyes said glaring, "that's as good a way of concealing a real stake in her welfare as any."

"Sort of taking a fatherly interest?" suggested Sloan sedulously.

The Superintendent snorted. "This village patriarch of yours—what's his wife like?"

"Tall, what you might call a commanding presence."

Leeyes looked interested. He felt he had one of those himself.

"She didn't," said Sloan cautiously, "strike me as the sort of woman to overlook even one wild oat."

"There you are then." He veered away from the subject of the Hibbs's as quickly as he had brought it up. "What next?"

"The inquest is in an hour." Sloan looked at his watch. "And then a few inquiries about young Master Thorpe of Shire Oak Farm."

"Oh?" Leeyes's head came up like a hound just offered a new scent.

"He," said Sloan meaningfully, "doesn't care who she is. He just wants to marry her as soon as possible. That may only be love's young dream…"

"Ahah," the Superintendent leered at Sloan. "From what you've said she's a mettlesome girl."

"On the other hand," said Sloan repressively, "it may not."

The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton and Bill Thorpe all went into Berebury with Henrietta for the inquest. It was to be held in the Town Hall and they met Felix Arbican, the solicitor, about half an hour beforehand in one of the numerous rooms leading off the main hall.

"I can't predict the outcome," was the first thing he said to them after shaking hands gravely. "You may get a verdict of death by misadventure. You may get an adjournment."

"Oh, dear," said Henrietta.

"The police may want more time to find the driver of the car…"

"And Cyril Jenkins."

Arbican started. "Who?"

Henrietta told him about the previous afternoon.

"I'm very glad to hear you've seen him," responded the solicitor. "It would seem at this juncture that a little light on the proceedings would be a great help."

"No light was shed," said Henrietta astringently.

"None?"

"We couldn't find him in the crowd," said Bill Thorpe.

Arbican turned to Thorpe and asked shrewdly, "Were you able to identify him?"

Bill Thorpe shook his head. "I only saw his back."

"I see. So Miss Jenkins is the only person who is certain who it was and the police haven't yet found him?"

"Yes," intervened Henrietta tersely.

"Extraordinary business altogether."

"More extraordinary than that," said Mr. Meyton, and told him about the medals.

Arbican's limpid gaze fell upon the Rector. "Most peculiar. Let us hope that the police are able to find this man and that when they do some—er—satisfactory explanation is forthcoming." He coughed. "In the meantime I think we had better come back to the more immediate matter of the inquest."

Henrietta lifted her face expectantly. The animation which had been there since she saw Cyril Jenkins had gone.

"Your part, Miss Jenkins, is quite simple. You have only to establish identity."

"Quite simple!" she echoed bitterly. "It's anything but simple."

"To establish identity as you knew it," amplified Arbican. "If the police have evidence that Grace Jenkins was not— er—Grace Jenkins they will bring it. As far as you are concerned that has always been the name by which you knew her…"

"Yes."

"Strong presumptive evidence. In any case…"

"Yes?"

"The Coroner holds an inquest on a body, not—so to speak—on a person. An unknown body sometimes."

"I see."

"His duty will be to establish the cause of death. If it was from other than natural causes, and it—um—appears to have been, then he has a parallel duty to inquire into the nature of the cause."

"I see." Henrietta wasn't really listening any more. For one thing, she found it difficult to concentrate now. Her mind wandered off so easily that she couldn't keep all her attention on what someone was saying. For another she didn't really want to hear a legal lecture from a prosperous looking man in a black suit. He had never had cause to wonder who he was. He was too confident for that.