Henrietta Who?

"The cause of death," he was saying didactically, "would appear to be obvious. The main point must be the identity of the driver. If the police found him we could try suing for damages."

"Damages?"

"Substantial damages," said Arbican.

"If no one else saw the car even, let alone the driver, I don't see how they'll ever find him."

Bill Thorpe was getting restive too. "And it was nearly a week ago already."

"They'll go on trying," said the solicitor. "They're very persistent."

"You say," put in Mrs. Meyton anxiously, "that all Henrietta will have to do will be to give evidence of identification?"

"That's all, Mrs. Meyton. It won't take very long. The Coroner may want to know if Mrs. Jenkins's sight and hearing were normal. If it seems relevant her doctor could be called in as an expert witness on the point. Otherwise the Coroner will just note what she says."

" ' "Write that down," the King said'," burbled Henrietta hysterically, "' "and reduce the answer to shillings and pence" '."

Arbican looked bewildered.

"Alice in Wonderland," said the Rector as if that explained everything.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was a sudden stir and a rustle of feet Seven men filed into the room where the inquest was being held and sat toat one side of the dais. Henrietta looked at Arbican.

"The jury, Miss Jenkins."

She hadn't known there would be a jury.

"There is always a jury when death is caused by a vehicle on a public highway."

The Rector counted them. "I thought juries were like apostles…"

Arbican frowned. "I beg your pardon?"

"Twelve in number."

"Not for a Coroner's Inquest."

"So We Are Seven?"

Arbican frowned again. "We are seven?"

"It's another quotation," said Mr. Meyton kindly.

Henrietta was the first person to be called. A man handed her a Bible and told her what to say.

"I hearby swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give touching the death of Grace Edith Jenkins shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

The Coroner picked up his pen. "Your name?"

She swallowed visibly. "Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins."

"You have seen the body declared to be that of a woman found on the lower road to Belling St. Peter in the village of Larking on Wednesday morning last?"

"Yes."

"A little louder please, Miss Jenkins."

"Yes."

"And you identify it as that of the said Grace Edith Jenkins?"

"I do."

"What was your relationship to the deceased?"

She stared at a spot on the wall above and behind the Coroner's head and said faintly, "Adopted daughter."

The Coroner twitched his papers. "I must ask you to speak up. I am aware that this must perforce be a painful occasion to you but an inquest is a public enquiry, and the public have a right, if not a duty, to hear what is said."

"Adopted daughter." She said it more firmly this time, as if she herself were more sure.

"Thank you." His courtesy was automatic, without sarcasm. "When did you last see deceased alive?"

"Early in January, before I went back to college." She hesitated. "I was due home at the end of this month but, of course…" her voice trailed away.

"Quite so." The Coroner made a further note on his papers. "That will be all for the time being, Miss Jenkins. I must ask you to remain in the building as you may be recalled later."

Harry Ford, postman, came next, and deposed how he had come across the body early on Wednesday morning.

Graphically.

Mrs. Callows described how Mrs. Jenkins had got off the last bus with her and Mrs. Perkins.

Melodramatically.

Then P. C. Hepple related that which he had found.

Technically.

The Coroner wrote down the width of the carriageway and said, "And the length of the skid mark?"

Hepple cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid there wasn't one."

The Coroner was rather like a rook. An elderly but still spry rook. And very alert. He didn't miss the fact that there was no evidence of the car's brakes being urgently applied. Nor did he comment on it. Henrietta moved a little forward on her chair as if she hadn't quite heard the constable properly but otherwise his statement made no visible impact.

Then a tall thin man was taking the oath with practised ease. He identified himself—though the Coroner must have known him well—as Hector Smithson Dabbe, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury Group Hospital Management Committee. Then he gave his evidence.

Impersonally.

Henrietta lowered her head as if in defence but she couldn't escape the pathologist's voice while he explained that, in his opinion, the injuries sustained by the body which he was given to understand was that of one Grace Edith Jenkins…

Henrietta noticed the word "which." Grace Jenkins was— had been—a person. She wasn't any longer. This man had said "which" not "who."

"… were consistent," said Dr. Dabbe, "with her having been run over by a heavy vehicle twice."

Henrietta felt sick.

The Coroner thanked him and then shuffled his papers into order and looked at the jury. "I am required by law to adjourn an inquest for fourteen days if I am requested to do so by the Chief Constable on the grounds that a person may be charged with murder, manslaughter or with causing death by reckless or dangerous driving."

He paused. Someone in the room sneezed into the stillness.

"I have received such a request from the Chief Constable of Calleshire and this inquest is accordingly adjourned for two weeks. No doubt the press will take cognizance of the fact that the police are appealing for witnesses."

The press—in the person of a ginger-haired cub reporter from The Berebury News—obediently scribbled a note and suddenly it was all over.

Inspector Sloan came up to Henrietta. "I won't keep you, miss. There's just one thing I must say to you."

"Yes?"

"I know you weren't thinking of it but I must formally ask you not to go abroad before the inquest is resumed."

She smiled wanly. "I promise."

He hesitated. "May I hazard a guess, miss, that you've never been abroad at all?"

"Never, Inspector. How did you know?"

He didn't answer directly. "Did you ever want to?"

"Yes, I did. Especially lately. Since I've been at University, I mean. Some friends went on a reading party to France last summer. They asked me to go with them and I should liked to have gone…"

"But Grace Jenkins didn't want you to…" put in Sloan.

"That's right. How did you know?"

"Did she say why?"

"I thought it was because of the money."

"It may have been, miss, but there could have been another reason too."

"Could there?" It was impossible to tell if she was interested or not.

"To go abroad you need a passport."

"Yes…"

"To get a passport you need a birth certificate."

She was quicker to follow him than he had expected, swooping down on the point. "That means I'm not Jenkins, doesn't it?"

"I think so."

"Otherwise," went on Henrietta slowly, "she could have arranged it all without my actually seeing the birth certificate."

"Probably."

"But not if my surname wasn't Jenkins."

"No."

They stood a moment in silence then Henrietta said, "I shall have to sign my name somewhere sometime…"

"I should stick to Jenkins for the time being," advised Sloan.

"A living lie?"

"Call it a working compromise."

"Or shall I just make my mark?"

"Your mark, miss?"

"I think an 'X' would be most appropriate." She gave him a wintry smile. "After all, it does stand for the unknown quantity as well as the illiterate."

He opened his mouth to answer but she forestalled him.

"There's one thing anyway…"

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm practically certain of a place in any college team you care to mention."

"College team?" echoed Sloan, momentarily bewildered.

"There's always an A. N. Other there, you know," she said swiftly. And was gone.

"That's that," observed Crosby without enthusiasm as he and Inspector Sloan got back to the police station afterwards. "We've only got two weeks and we still don't know what sort of a car or where to look for the driver."

"One good thing though," said Sloan, determinedly cheerful. "From what the Coroner said everyone will think we're looking for a dangerous driver."

Crosby sniffed. "Needle in a haystack, more like. P. C. Hepple said to tell you there's nothing new at his end. He can't find anyone who saw or heard a car on Tuesday evening."

"No." Sloan was not altogether surprised. "No, I reckon whoever killed her sat and waited in the car-park of the pub and then just timed her walk from the bus stop to the bad corner."

"That's a bit chancy," objected Crosby. "She might not have been on that bus."

"I think," gently, "that he knew she was on it. The only real risk was that someone else from down the lane might have been on it too. But now I've seen how few houses there are there, I don't think that was anything to worry about" He pushed open his office door, and crossed over to his desk. There was a message lying there for him. "Hullo, the Army have answered. Read this, Crosby."

"Jenkins, C. E. Sergeant, the East Calleshires," read Crosby aloud. "Enlisted September, 1939, demobilised July, 1946. Address on enlistment…"

"Go on."

"Holly Tree Farm," said Crosby slowly, "Rooden Parva, near Calleford."

"The plot thickens," said Sloan rubbing his hands.

"That's what the girl told us, wasn't it, sir? Holly Tree Farm."

"That's right. She said she didn't know the second bit." He paused. "Get me the Calleford police…"

Sloan spoke to someone on duty there, waited an appreciable time while the listener looked something up and finally thanked him and replaced the receiver.

Crosby stood poised between the door and the desk. "Are we going there, sir?"

"Not straight. We're calling somewhere on the way. They've looked up the address. There's no one called Jenkins there now. Walsh is the name of the occupier." Sloan looked at his watch. "It's nearly twelve. Do you suppose Hirst nips out for a quick one before lunch?"

"Hirst?" said Crosby blankly.

"The General's man. We must know what's so sinister about the magic words Hocklington-Garwell."

Which was how Detective-Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby came to be enjoying a pint of beer at The Bull in Cullingoak shortly after half past twelve. The bar was comfortably full.

"He usually comes in for a few minutes," agreed the land-

lord on enquiry. "He's got the old gentleman, see. Got to give him his lunch at quarter past. Very particular about time, is the General. Same in the evening. He can't come out till he's got him settled for the night." He swept the two plainclothes-men with an appraising glance. "You friends of his?"

"Sort of," agreed Sloan non-committally.

The landlord leaned two massive elbows on the bar. "If it's money you're after you can collect it somewhere else. I'm not having anyone dunned in my house."

"No," said Sloan distantly. "We're not after money."

That's all right then," said the landlord.

Sloan allowed a suitable pause before asking, "Horses or dogs?"

The landlord swept up a couple of empty glasses from the bar with arms too brawny for such light work. "Horses. Nothing much—just the odd flutter—like they all do."

"Did he come in last night?"

"Hirst?" The landlord frowned. "Now you come to mention it, I don't think he did. Perhaps his old gentleman wanted him. He's not young, isn't the General."

"Quite," agreed Sloan. "What'll you have?"

It was nearly ten to one before Hirst appeared. He came in quietly, a newspaper—open at the sporting page—tucked under his arm. He looked a little younger in the pub than he had done in the General's house but not much. His shoes were polished to perfection and his hair neatly plastered down but he, like his master, was showing signs of advancing age. Sloan let him get his pint and sit down before he looked in his direction.

"I fear, Hirst, that I upset the General last night," he said.

Hirst looked up, recognised him and put down his glass with a hand that was not quite steady. "Yes, sir. That you did."

"It was quite accidental…"

"Proper upset, he was. I had quite a time with him last night after you'd gone, I can tell you."

"You did?" enquired Sloan, even more interested.

"Carrying on alarming he was till I got him to bed."

"Hirst, what was it we said that did it?"

"The General didn't say." He lifted his glass. "But he was upset all right."

"I was asking him something about the past," said Sloan carefully, watching Hirst's face. "Something I wanted to know about a woman who—I think—was called Grace Jenkins."

There was no reaction from Hirst.

"Do you know the name?" persisted Sloan.

"Can't say that I do." Reassured, he took another pull at his beer. "It's a common enough one."

"That's part of the trouble."

"I see."

"Garwell's not a common name," said Sloan conversationally.

"No," agreed Hirst. "There's not many of them about."

"And Hocklington-Garwell isn't common at all."

Hirst set his glass down with a clatter. "You mentioned Hocklington-Garwell to the General?"

"I did."

"You shouldn't have done that, sir," said Hirst reproachfully.

"This woman Jenkins told her daughter that she used to be nursemaid to the family."

"No wonder the General was so upset. In fact, what with her ladyship being dead, I should say it would have upset the General more than anything else would have done."

"It did," agreed Sloan briefly, "but why?"

Hirst sucked his teeth. "Begging your pardon, Mr. Sloan, sir, I should have said it was all over and done with long before your time."

"What," cried Sloan in exasperation, "was all over and done with before my time?"

"That explains why the General was so upset about your being a detective, sir, if you'll forgive my mentioning it."

Sloan, who had been a detective for at least ten years without ever before feeling the fact to be unmentionable, looked at the faded gentleman's gentleman and said he would forgive him.

"I kept on telling him," said Hirst, "that it was all over and done with." He took another sip of beer. "But it wasn't any good. I had to get the doctor to him this morning, you know."

"Hirst," said Sloan dangerously, "I need to know exactly what it was that was over and done with before my time and I need to know now."

"The Hocklington-Garwell business. Before the last war, it was. And she is dead now, God rest her soul, so why drag it up again?"

"Who is dead?" Sloan was hanging on to his temper with an effort. A great effort.

"Her ladyship, like I told you. And Major Hocklington, too, for all I know."

"Hirst, I think I am beginning to see daylight. Hocklington and Garwell are two different people, aren't they?"

"That's right, sir. Like I said. There's the General who you saw yesterday and then there was Major Hocklington—only it's all a long time ago now, sir, so can't you let the whole business alone?"

"Not as easily as you might think, Hirst."

"For the sake of the General, sir…"

"Am I to understand, Hirst, that Lady Garwell and this Major Hocklington had an affair?"

Hirst plunged his face into the pint glass as far as it would go and was understood to say that that was about the long and the short of it.

Detective-Inspector Sloan let out a great shout of laughter.

"Please, sir," begged Hirst. "Not here in a public bar. The General wouldn't like it."

"No," agreed Sloan. "I can see now why he didn't like my asking him if he was called Hocklington-Garwell. In the circumstances, I'm not sure that I would have cared for it myself. Would a note of apology help?"

"It might, sir." Hirst sounded grateful. "But why did you do it, sir? It's all such a long time ago now. We never had any children in the family, sir, so we never had any nurseat all. And there's no call for a nursemaid without babies to look after, is there?"

"I asked him, Hirst, because a woman, who is also dead now, had a sense of humour."

"Really, sir?" Hirst was polite but sounded unconvinced.

"Yes, Hirst, really. I never met her but I am coming to know her quite well. She misled me at first but I think I am beginning to understand her now."

"Indeed, sir?"

"A very interesting woman. Give me your glass, will you?"

"Thank you, sir. I don't mind if I do."

The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton joined Henrietta as soon as the inquest was over. She was standing talking to Bill Thorpe and Arbican.

"There is very little more you can do at this stage, Miss Jenkins," the solicitor was saying. "You must, of course, be available for the adjourned inquest."

"I shan't run away." Henrietta sounded as if she had had enough of life for one morning.

"Of course not," pacifically. "And then there will be the question of intestacy."

"What does that mean?"

Mr. Meyton coughed. "I think that is the greatest virtue of education…"

Arbican turned politely to the Rector, who said:

"You learn the importance of admitting you don't know."

"Quite so." Arbican turned back to Henrietta. "Grace Jenkins appears to have died without making a will. That is to say"—legal-fashion, he qualified the statement immediately—"we cannot find one. It hasn't been deposited with the bank, nor presumably with any Berebury solicitor…"

"How do you know that?" asked Bill Thorpe.

"There is a fairly full account of the accident in yesterday's local newspaper. I think any Berebury firm holding such a will would have made themselves known by now."

"The bureau," said Henrietta heavily. "I expect it was in the bureau."

There was a little silence. They had nearly forgotten the bureau.

Arbican coughed. "In the meantime, I think perhaps the best course of action would be…"

"I think," Bill Thorpe interrupted firmly, "that the best course of action would be for me to marry Henrietta as quickly as possible."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Rooden Parva was really little more than a hamlet.

It lay in the farthest corner of the county, south of Calle-ford and south of the much more substantial village of Great Rooden. Sloan and Crosby got there at about half-past two when the calm of a country Saturday afternoon had descended on a scene that could never have been exactly lively.

"This is a dead-and-alive hole, all right," said Crosby. They had pulled up at the only garage in Rooden Parva to ask the way and he had pushed a bell marked For Service beside the solitary petrol pump.

Nothing whatsoever happened.

"Try the shop," suggested Sloan tetchily.

They were luckier there. Crosby came out smelling faintly of paraffin and said Holly Tree Farm was about a mile and a half out in the country.

"This being Piccadilly Circus, I suppose," said Sloan lookat all of twelve houses clustered together.

"They said we can't miss it," said Crosby. "There's only one road anyway."

Holly Tree Farm lay at the end of it. It, too, had fallen into a sort of rural torpor, though this appeared to be a permanent state and in no way connected with its being Saturday afternoon. The front door, dimly visible behind a barricade of holly trees, looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. Knocking on the back one alerted a few hens which were pecking about in the yard but nothing and nobody else. The farmhouse was old, a long low building with windows designed to keep out the light and a back door built for small men.

They turned their attention to the yard. A long barn lay on the left, its thatched roof proving fertile ground for all manner of vegetation. Beyond was a sinister little shed about whose true function Sloan was in no doubt at all. Two elderly tractors stood in another corner beside a rusty implement whose nature was obscure to the two town bred policemen.

"Is that a harrow?" asked Crosby uncertainly.

"I'd put it in the Chamber of Horrors if it was mine," began Sloan when suddenly they were not alone any more.

A woman wearing an old raincoat emerged cautiously from behind the barn.

"Are you from the Milk Marketing Board?" she called, keeping her distance.

Sloan said they were not.

She advanced a little.

"The Ministry of Agriculture?"

Sloan shook his head and she came nearer still.

"No," she said ambiguously, "I can see you're not from them." She had a weatherbeaten face, burnt by sun and wind and she could have been almost any age at all. Besides her old raincoat, she had on a serge skirt and black Wellington boots. "We paid the rates…"

There were no visitors at Holly Tree Farm it seemed, save official ones. Sloan explained that he was looking for a man called Cyril Jenkins.

"Jenkins," she repeated vaguely. "Not here. There's just me and Walsh here."

"Now," agreed Sloan. "But once there were Jenkins's here."

Her face cleared. "That's right. Afore us."

"Splendid," said Sloan warmly. "Now, do you know what became of them?"

"The old chap died," she said. "Before our time. We've been here twenty years, you know."

Sloan didn't doubt it. It was certainly twenty years since anyone repaired the barn roof.

"We got it off the old chap," she said. "The young 'un didn't seem to want it."

"The young 'un?" Sloan strove to hide his interest.

"Yes." She looked at him curiously. "He didn't want it. He'd been away, you know, in the war."

"That's right."

"Didn't seem as if he could settle afterwards. Not here."

Sloan could well believe it. Aloud he said, "It isn't easy if you've been away for any time."

"No." She stood considering the two men. "Times, it's a bit quiet at Holly Tree, you know. There's just Walsh and me. Still, we don't want for nothing and that's something."

It wasn't strictly true. A bath wouldn't have been out of place as far as Mrs. Walsh was concerned. Say, once a month…

"This young 'un," said Sloan. "Did he ever marry?" She nodded her head. "Yes, but I did hear tell his wife died."

"Where did they go after you came here?" It was the question which counted and for a moment Sloan thought she was going to say she didn't know.

Instead she frowned. "Cullingoak way, I think it was."

"Just one more question, Mrs. Walsh…"

She looked at him, inured to official questions.

"This old man, Jenkins…"

"Yes?"

"Did he just have the one son?"

She shook her head. "I did hear there was a daughter too but I never met her myself."

The Rector and Mrs. Meyton had taken Henrietta out to luncheon in Berebury after the inquest. Bill Thorpe had declined the invitation on the grounds that there were cows to be milked and other work to be done. It was Saturday afternoon, he explained awkwardly, and the men would have gone home. Whether this was so, or whether it was because of the silence which had followed his mention of marriage, nobody knew. He had made his apologies and gone before they left the Town Hall.

Arbican had arranged for Henrietta to come to see him on Tuesday afternoon following the funeral in the morning. He had also enquired tactfully about her present finances.

There had been a lonely dignity about her reply, and Arbican had shaken hands all round and gone back to Calleford.

The mention of money, though, had provoked a memory on the Rector's part.

"This little matter of the medals," he began over coffee. "Yes," she said politely. It wasn't a little matter but if Mr. Meyton cared to put it like that…

"It solves one point which often puzzled me." He took some sugar. "Your mother…"

She wasn't her mother but Henrietta let that pass, too. She was beginning to be very tired now.

"Your mother was a very independent woman."

"Yes." That was absolutely true.

"Commendable, of course. Very. But not always the easiest sort of parishioner to help."

"She didn't like being beholden to anyone."

"Exactly." He sipped his coffee. "I well remember on one occasion I suggested that we approach the Calleshire Regimental Welfare Association…"

"Oh?"

"Yes. For a grant towards what is now, I believe, called 'further education.' In my day they called it…"

"After all," put in Mrs. Meyton kindly, "that's what their funds are for, isn't it, dear?"

"Yes," said Henrietta.

"But, of course," went on Mrs. Meyton, "it was before you got the scholarship, and though they always thought you would get one, you can never be sure with scholarships, can you, dear?"

"Never," said Henrietta fervently. She had never been cerherself, however often people had reassured her.

"Mrs. Jenkins was quite sharp with me," remembered the Rector ruefully. "Polite, of course. She was always very polite, but firm. Scholarship or no scholarship she didn't want anything to do with it."

Mrs. Meyton said some people always did feel that way about grants.

The Rector set his cup down. "But, of course, it all makes sense now we know that Cyril Jenkins wasn't killed in the war."

"No, it doesn't," said Henrietta.

"No?" The Rector looked mildly enquiring.

"You see," said Henrietta, "she told me that the Regimental Welfare people did help."

"How very curious."

"I know," she said quickly, "that the scholarship is the main thing but it's not really enough to—well—do more than manage."

The Rector nodded. "Quite so."

"Money," concluded Henrietta bleakly, "came from somewhere for me when I got there."

"You mean literally while you were there?"

"Yes. The Bursar saw that I had some at the beginning of each term." She flushed. "I was told it was from the Calleshire Regiment otherwise…"

"Otherwise," interposed Mrs. Meyton tactfully, "I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted it any more than your mother would have done."

"No."

The Rector coughed. "I think this may well be pertinent to Inspector Sloan's inquiry. Tell me, did the Bursar himself tell you where it came from?"

Henrietta frowned. "Just that it was from the Regiment Welfare Association."

"How very odd," said the Rector of Larking.

This information was one more small piece which, when fitted exactly together with dozens of other small pieces of truth (and lies), detail, immutable fact, routine enquiry, known evidence, witnesses' stories and a detective's deductions, would, one day, produce a picture instead of a jigsaw.

This particular segment was relayed to Inspector Sloan when he made a routine telephone call to Berebury Police Station after leaving Rooden Parva. He and Crosby had called in at the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters to ascertain that the Calleford search for one Cyril Jenkins, wanted by the Berebury Division, had not yet widened as far as the villages.

"Have a heart," said Calleford's Inspector on duty. He was an old friend of Sloan's called Blake. Rejecting—very vigorously—the obvious nickname of Sexton, he was known instead throughout the county as "Digger."

"There's dozens of small villages round here."

Sloan nodded. "Each with its own separate small register, I suppose?"

"That's right." Blake pushed some tea in Sloan's direction. "Your Superintendent as horrible as ever?"

"He doesn't change," said Sloan.

"What with him and Happy Harry,"condoled Blake, "I don't know how you manage, I really don't."

For better or worse, Superintendent Leeyes was on duty for this weekend.

"Well, Sloan," he barked down the telephone, "how are you getting on?"

"Not too badly, sir. I've got a couple of promising lines of enquiry at the moment."

"Hrrmph." The Superintendent didn't like optimism in anyone, least of all in his subordinates. "How promising?"

"Once upon a time, sir…"

"Is this a fairy story, Sloan?"

"A romance," said Sloan shortly.

Leeyes grunted. "Go on."

"Once upon a time a certain Lady Garwell seems to have had an affair with a Major Hocklington."

"Did she, by Jove?" mockingly.

"Yes, sir."

"Got her name mentioned-fn the Mess?"

"I fear so, sir."

"Things aren't what they were in my day, Sloan."

"No, sir, except that this was all a long time ago."

"That makes it worse," retorted Leeyes promptly. "Much worse. Morals were morals then. I don't know what they are now, I'm sure."

"No, sir." The Superintendent's views on vice were a byword in the Division.

"This Lady Garwell…"

"Yes, sir?"

"Are you trying to tell me that this girl who's the cause of all the trouble…"

That was a bit unfair. "Henrietta, sir?" he said, putting as much injury into his tone as he dared.

"Henrietta." He paused. "Damn silly name for a girl, isnt it?"

"Old fashioned," said Sloan. "Almost historical, you might say."

Leeyes grunted. "You think she's the—er—natural outcome of this affair?"

"I shouldn't like to say, sir. Not without further investigation. The General's practically gaga."

"Doesn't mean a thing," replied Leeyes swiftly. "Or rather, it helps the case."

"In what way, sir?"

Leeyes gave a chuckle that could only be described as salacious. "Suppose he's married to some young thing…"

"Well?"

"Then she's much more likely to dilly-dally with this young Major Somebody or Other."

"Hocklington, sir."

"Much more likely," repeated the Superintendent, who was by now getting to like the theory.

"Yes, sir. I see what you're driving at." That was an understatement. "But we don't know for certain that she was young."

"Then find out."

"Yes, sir." He swallowed. "Any more than we know that Major Hocklington was young…"

"It stands to reason, Sloan, that they weren't old. Not if they had an affair."

"No, sir." Sloan didn't know Mrs. Leeyes. Only that she was a little woman who bred cats. He wondered what it was like, being married to the Superintendent. He said inconse"She's dead. Lady Garwell, I mean."

"That doesn't stop her being Henrietta's mother," snapped Leeyes.

"No, sir."

"What about Major Hocklington?"

"Hirst—that's the General's man—didn't know."

"Then find that out, Sloan, while you're about it."

"Yes, sir."

"After all, she could have been in early middle age twenty-two years ago." The Superintendent himself had been in early middle age for as long as Sloan could remember. "And then died herself comparatively early."

"Dead and never called her mother, in fact," misquoted Sloan, who had once seen the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society play East Lynne—and never forgotten the searing experience.

Literary allusions were lost upon the Superintendent who only said, "And get Somerset House to turn up Hocklington-Garwell in the Births for twenty-one years ago. Or just plain Hocklington, if it comes to that."

"Or Garwell," pointed out Sloan. "An illegitimate child takes the mother's surname, doesn't it?"

Leeyes grunted. "At least it's not Smith. That's something to be thankful for."

"You don't suppose," asked Sloan hopefully, "that her ladyship—if she was, in fact, Henrietta's mother—would have taken out an affiliation order against the father?"

"I do not," said Leeyes.

"Pity."

"Those sort of people don't." An eager note crept into the Superintendent's voice. "What they do, Sloan, is to dig up a faithful nanny who knows them well and they park the nanny and the infant in a cottage in the depths of the country."

Sloan had been afraid of that.

"And"—Leeyes was warming to his theme—"they support the child and the nanny from a distance."

In Lady Garwell's case the distance—either way—so to speak—would be considerable, she being dead. Sloan presumed he meant Major Hocklington and said, "Yes, sir, though I still can't see why Grace Jenkins should have to die just before the girl is twenty-one."

"Ask Major Hocklington," suggested Leeyes sepulchrally.

"Or, come to that, sir, why Grace Jenkins went to such enormous lengths to conceal the girl's true name and then talked quite happily about the Hocklington-Garwell's. If Lady Garwell were the mother, it doesn't make sense."

"Someone has been sending the girl money at college," said Leeyes. "She and the clergyman have just been in to say so."

"Maintenance," said Sloan.

"Via the Bursar."

Sloan scribbled a note, his Sunday rest day vanishing into thin air. "We could leave as soon as we've seen Cyril Jenkins…"

"And," said Superintendent Leeyes nastily, "you could see Cyril Jenkins as soon as you've had your tea and sympathy from Inspector Blake."

Cullingoak was more certainly a village than Rooden Parva. It had all the customary prerequisites thereof—a church standing foursquare in the middle, an old Manor House not very far away, shops, a Post Office, a row of almshouses down by the river, even a cricket ground.

"All we want," observed Crosby, "is a character called Jenkins."

"No," said Sloan, "if the civil register is correct, is called Cyril Edgar and should live at number twelve High Street."

"Dead easy," Crosby swung the car round by the church. "That'll be the road the Post Office is in, for sure."

"Stop short," Sloan told him. "Just in case."

"Sir, do you reckon he's her father?"

"I'll tell you that, Crosby, when I've seen him."

"Likeness?"

"No." Sloan remembered Mrs. Walsh with a shudder. "Something called eugenics."

They found number twelve easily enough. Most of the High Street houses were old. They were small, too, but well cared for. Neither developers nor preservationists seemed to have got their hands on Cullingoak High Street. None of the houses were once 'wrong" ones now "done up" for "right" people. There was, too, a refreshing variety of coloured paint The door of number twelve was a deep green. Sloan knocked on it.

There was no immediate reply.

"Just our luck," said Crosby morosely, "if he's gone to a football match."

It was implied—but not stated—that had Detective Constable Crosby not had the misfortune to be a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary, that that was where he would have been this Saturday afternoon in early March.

"Berebury's playing Luston."

"Really?"

"At home."

That was the crowning injustice.

Next Saturday Crosby would have to spend good money travelling to Luston or Calleford or Kinnisport to see some play.

Sloan knocked again.

There was no reply.

He looked up and down the street. There would be a back way in somewhere. The two policemen set off and walked until they found it—a narrow uneven way, leading to back gates. Some as neatly painted as the front doors. Some not. None numbered.

Crosby counted the houses back from the beginning of the row. "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve." He stopped at a gate that was still hanging properly on both hinges. "I reckon this is the one, sir."

"Well done," said Sloan, who had already noticed that that back door was painted the same deep green as they had seen in the front. "Perhaps he's one of those who'll answer the back door but not the front."

They never discovered if this was so.

When they got to the back door it was ever so slightly ajar.

It opened a little further at Sloan's knock, and when there was no reply to this, Sloan opened it a bit more still and put his head round.

"Anyone at home?" he called out.

Cyril Jenkins was at home all right.

There was just one snag. He was dead.

Very.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Superintendent Leeyes was inclined to take the whole thing as a personal insult.

"Dead?" he shouted in affronted tones.

"Dead, sir."

"He can't be…"

"He is."

"Not our Jenkins," he howled. "Not the one we wanted…"

"Cyril Edgar," said Sloan tersely. That much, at least, he had established before leaving number twelve and a pale but resolute Crosby standing guard. "As for him being ours…"

"Yes?"

"I should think the fact that he's had his brains blown out rather clinches it."

Sarcasm was a waste of time with the Superintendent. "Self-inflicted?" he inquired eagerly.

"Impossible to say, sir, at this stage."

"Was there a note?"

"No." Sloan paused. "Just a revolver."

He wasn't sitting in the comfort of Inspector Blake's office now. He was in the cramped public telephone kiosk in Cul-lingoak High Street hoping that the young woman with a pram who was waiting to use it after him, couldn't lip-read. At least she couldn't hear the Superintendent.

Sloan could.

"What sort of revolver?" he was asking.

"Service." Sloan sighed. "Old Army issue."

"Officers, for the use of, I suppose," heavily.

"Yes, sir."

Leeyes grunted. "So it's still there?"

"Yes, sir. Silencer and all."

"Not out of reach, I suppose?"

"No, sir."

"I didn't think it would be."

"By his right hand."

"That's what I thought you were going to say. No hope of him being left handed?"

"None. I checked." Sloan had searched high and low himself for signs which would reveal whether Cyril Edgar Jenkins had taken his own life or if someone had taken it for him.

"I don't like it, Sloan."

"No, sir." Sloan didn't either. There was nothing to like in what he had just seen. The recently shot are seldom an atsight and Cyril Edgar Jenkins was no exception. He had been sitting down when it had happened and the result was indescribably messy. Experienced—and hardened—as he was, Sloan hadn't relished his quick examination. At least there hadn't been the additional burden of breaking the news to anyone. "He lived alone," he told Leeyes. "Mrs. Walsh out at Holly Tree Farm was quite right about his wife. She did die about eight years ago."

"Who says so?"

"The woman next door. Remembers her well."

"Which wife?" demanded Leeyes contentiously.

Sloan paused. "The one he had been living with ever since he came to Cullingoak."

"Ah… that's different." Sloan could almost hear the Superintendent fumbling for the word he wanted. "She might have just been his concubine."

"Yes, sir, except that we couldn't find any record of a marriage between Cyril Edgar Jenkins and Grace Edith Wright in the first place…"

"I hadn't forgotten," said Leeyes coldly. "Now I suppose you're going to set about finding out if he was really married to this second woman…"

What Sloan wanted to do—and that very badly—was to set about finding out who had killed Cyril Jenkins.

"Yes, sir. In the meantime, do you think Dr. Dabbe would come over?"

"I don't see why not," said Leeyes largely. When he himself was working through a weekend he was usually in favour of as many people doing so as possible. "What do you want him for?"

"Inspector Blake is handling the routine side of this, seeing as it's in his Division," said Sloan, "but I want to talk to Dr. Dabbe about blood."

There was no shortage of this vital commodity in the living room of number twelve Cullingoak High Street.

Sloan had vacated the telephone kiosk with a polite apolto the girl with the pram. In the manner of a generation brought up without courtesy, she had favoured him with a blank stare in return. Oddly disconcerted, but without time to wonder what things were coming to, he had hurried back to the house.

His friend, Inspector Blake, had just arrived from Calle-ford and was standing surveying the scene.

"Nasty."

Sloan could only agree. Crosby, who had been surveying the same scene for rather longer and more consistently than either Blake or Sloan, was looking rather green at the gills.

"He got wind that you wanted a little chat, did he then?" asked Digger Blake. He had brought his own photographer and fingerprint man with him and he motioned them now to go ahead with their gruesome work.

"Perhaps," said Sloan slowly. "Perhaps not."

"Not a coincidence anyway," said Blake.

"No. Someone knew."

"Many people realise you wanted this word or two with him?" Digger's questions were usually obliquely phrased.

"Enough." Sloan took a deep breath. "A girl who said she saw him in Calleford yesterday afternoon." Henrietta had probably been right about that, now he came to think of it, but how significant it was he couldn't sort out. Not for the moment. "Her solicitor. He knew, of course. He's called Ar-bican."

"That'll be Waind, Arbican & Waind, in Ox Lane," said Blake. "There's only him left in the firm now."

"And a young man called Bill Thorpe…" He hesitated. "I can't make up my mind about him."

"What's the trouble?"

"Too ardent for my liking."

"It's not whether you like it, old chap," grinned Blake. "It's if the lady likes it."

"She's got quite enough on her plate as it is," said Sloan primly.

And he told Digger the whole story.

"A proper mix-up, isn't it?" Blake said appreciatively. "Rather you than me."

"Thank you. Crosby, if you want to be sick go outside."

"Who else knew you wanted Jenkins?" asked Blake, who was nowhere near as casual as he sounded.

Sloan frowned. "The Rector of Larking and his wife. Meyton's their name."

"Lesson One," quoted Blake. "The cloth isn't always what it…"

"It is this time."

"Oh, really? And who else is in the know?"

"No one that I know of. There's a James Heber Hibbs, Esquire…"

"Gent?"

"Landed Gent," said Sloan firmly, "of The Hall, Larking, but he doesn't know about Jenkins. Not unless the girl's told him and I don't quite see when she would have done. Owns about half the village if you ask me."

"For Hibbs read Nibs," said Digger frivolously. "Has he got a missus?"

"Yes, but you call her madam, my lad."

"And their connection with this case?"

"Obscure," said Sloan bitterly.

"Anyone else?"

Sloan hesitated. "There's a certain Major Hocklington but…"

"But what?"

"He might be dead."

"I see. Well, when you've made your mind up…"

"He might have had the M.C. and the D.S.O., too."

"That'll be a great help in finding him," murmured Digger affably, "but I'd rather he had a scar on his left cheek, if it's all the same to you."

"There's always the possibility," said Sloan, "that he had an agent."

"If he's dead, for instance?" Blake moved out of the photographer's line of vision.

"That's right."

Blake pointed the same way as the photographer's camera. "He's not going to tell you. Not now."

"No," said Sloan morbidly, "though, oddly enough, I'm after his blood too."

It was something after eight o'clock that evening when Inspector Sloan, supported by a still rather wan-looking Constable Crosby, reported back to Superintendent Leeyes in person at the Berebury Police Station.

"As pretty a kettle of fish, sir," Sloan said, "as you'll find anywhere."

"Suicide or murder?" demanded Leeyes.

But it wasn't as simple as that.

Dr. Dabbe had got to Cullingoak at a speed which, as far as Sloan was concerned, didn't bear thinking about. He was well known as the fastest driver in Calleshire and nothing that his arch enemy, Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, could do seemed to slow him down at all.

At the house Dr. Dabbe had met his opposite number, the Consultant Pathologist for East Calleshire, Dr. Soriey McPherson. The two doctors had treated each other with an elaborate and ritual courtesy which reminded Sloan of nothing so much as the courtship display of a pair of ducks at mating time.

With professional punctiliousness each had invited the other's opinion on every possible point.

The upshot—after, in Sloan's private opinion, a great deal of unnecessary billing and cooing—was that Cyril Edgar Jenkins had probably been shot in the head by someone sitting opposite him across the table, who had pulled out a revolver and leaned forward.

"We can't be certain, of courrrse"—Dr. Soriey McPherson had rolled his "r's" in an intimidating way—"but it looks as if the rrevolver was placed in deceased's rright hand after death."

"I see, Doctor."

"Suicide," he went on, "was doubtless meant to be in-ferrrred."

Sloan thought the "r's" were never going to stop.

"We'll be needing a wee look at the poor chap's fingerprints on the revolver handle. D'you not agree, Dabbe?"

Dr. Dabbe had agreed. The powder burns, the position of the shot, the body, the revolver, all indicated murder made to look like suicide.

Sloan said all this to the Superintendent "But only inferred, sir. Not proved yet."

Leeyes snorted in a dissatisfied way. "Except, then, that he's dead, we're no further forward…"

Sloan said nothing. If Leeyes cared to regard that as progress there was nothing he could say.

"What about the blood?" said the Superintendent.

"Dr. Dabbe's grouping it now. He's going to ring."

Leeyes drummed a pencil on his desk. "You say no one in Cullingoak saw or heard anything?"

"No one. The people in the house next door on one side were out and the woman in the other always has a lay down after her lunch. Anyone could walk in the back, just like we did. He did have a job in Calleford, by the way. She confirms that."

"No other children?"

"No sir, not that she knew of."

Leeyes grunted. "And Major Hocklington—where have you got with him?"

"The Army are doing what they can, but…"

"I know, Sloan. Saturday night's not the best time."

"No, sir. If he were a serving officer now it would be quite simple."

"I presume," coldly, "you checked the Army List days ago."

"Yes, sir."

"So we have to wait." Leeyes wasn't good at waiting.

"Yes, sir."

"And our other friends?"

Sloan turned back the pages of his notebook though he knew well enough what was written there. "Bill Thorpe excused himself pretty smartly after the inquest and went off just before Arbican went back to Calleford."

"Went off where?"

"Larking, he says. He wouldn't have lunch in Berebury with the Meytons and Henrietta."

"Why not?"

"Said he hadn't time. Had to get back to the farm."

"And did he?"

Sloan said carefully. "No one happened to see him at Shire Oak—which, of course, is not to say he wasn't there."

"Did you get his background?"

"It seems all right, sir. Second son of middling-size farmers with quite a good name locally. Lived in Larking all his life. Known Henrietta ever since she was a child. Been home from Agricultural College for about two years."

"Found the body with the postman, could have knocked it down, stuck to the girl like a leech since it happened, wants to marry her quickly." Leeyes's rasping tones supplanted Sloan's matter-of-fact report. "Could have killed Cyril Jenkins. Could have known the whole story. Could have wanted money…"

"Why, sir?"

"He's the second son, Sloan. You've just said so."

"Yes, sir." It was futile to argue with the Superintendent.

Leeyes grunted. "And this other fellow—the one with the money. What about him?"

"Hibbs?" said Sloan. The Superintendent was always suspicious of people with money, assuming it—in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, to be ill-gotten. Sloan cleared his throat uneasily. "He and his wife went into Calle-ford for the day."

"They did what?"

"Went into Calleford," repeated Sloan, going on hastily, "they had a meal at The Tabard. She went to a dress shop and he called in at a corn chandlers in the morning…"

"Whatever for?"

"He's hand-rearing some pheasants this year, sir." Sloan himself had always wondered what you did at a corn chandlers. "And he visited a wine merchant just after lunch."

"When was Jenkins shot?"

"Roughly about three o'clock." The two pathologists had been as agreed on this as on everything else.

"Could he have done it?"

"Easily. So could Bill Thorpe. Anyone could have done it. Even Arbican if he had had a mind to—to say nothing of Major Hocklington. Always supposing he exists."

Leeyes was thinking, not listening. "Sounds as if it could have been someone Jenkins knew fairly well—all this business of back doors and sitting down at the table together."

"Yes, sir." Inspector Blake had cottoned on to that fact, too, as he went methodically about his routine investigation. "The only trouble is that we don't know who it was that Cyril Jenkins knew."

"No." Leeyes frowned. "Or what."

"The whole story, I expect," said Sloan gloomily. "That's why he had to go."

The telephone rang. Leeyes answered it and handed it to Sloan. "The hospital," he said. "Dr. Dabbe."

Sloan listened for a moment, thanked the pathologist, promised to let him know something later and then rang off.

"The late Cyril Jenkins's blood was Group AB," he announced.

"And the girl's?" asked Leeyes.

"We don't know yet. We're going to ask her if we can have some to see."

"Tricky," pronounced Leeyes. "Be very careful…"

"Why, sir?"

"Because if this case ever gets to court"—he stressed the word "if heavily, and implied if it didn't it would be Sloan's fault—"if it does then you will probably find some clever young man arguing that you've committed a technical assault, that's why."

"But if the putative father…"

"Get as many witnesses to her free consent as you can," advised Leeyes sourly. "That's all."

"Yes, sir," promised Sloan, "and then we're going to Camford to see the bursar of her college."

He and Crosby got up to go but Sloan turned short of the door.

"That AB Blood Group, sir…"

"What about it?"

"It's the same as Grace Jenkins's."

"Well?"

"If the girl hadn't said the woman's maiden name was Wright, I could make out quite a good case for Grace Jenkins and Cyril Jenkins being brother and sister."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Dead?" said Henrietta dully.

"I'm afraid so." Sloan wished her reaction could have been more like the Superintendent's. It couldn't be doing her any good sitting here in Boundary Cottage, hanging on to her self-control with an effort that was painful to watch.

"Inspector," she whispered, "I killed him, didn't I?"

"I don't think so, miss," responded Sloan, surprised.

"I don't mean actually." She twisted her hands together in her lap. "But as good as…"

"I don't see quite how, miss, if you'll forgive my saying so…" It occurred to Sloan for the first time that this was what people meant by wringing their hands.

"By seeing him." She swallowed. "Don't you understand? If I hadn't seen him yesterday and recognised him, then he wouldn't be dead today."

This, thought Sloan, might well be true.

"Perhaps, miss," he said quietly, "but that doesn't make it your fault."

"I haven't got the Evil Eye, or anything like that, I know, but"—she sounded utterly shaken—"but if he was my father and rve been the means of killing him… I don't think I could bear that."

Sloan coughed. She had given him the opening he wanted. "That's one of the reasons why we've come, miss. About the question of this Cyril Jenkins being your father."

"Do you know then?" directly.

"No, miss. We don't think he was but we can't prove it either way… yet."

"Yet?" she asked quickly.

"Dr. Dabbe—he's the hospital pathologist, miss—he says a blood test can prove something but not everything."

"Anything," she said fervently, "would be better than this not knowing."

"If you agreed to it," he said carefully, "and I must make it clear you don't have to, it might just prove Cyril Jenkins wasn't your father and never could have been."

"Then," said Henrietta in a perplexed way, "who was he and what had he got to do with us?"

"We don't know…"

"Just that he's dead."

"That's right, miss."

She looked at him. "How soon can you do this blood thing?"

"If you would come with me to the telephone and ring Mr. Arbican—he's entitled to advise you against it, if he thinks fit—then I could ring Dr. Dabbe now." He grinned. "It won't take him long to get here."

It didn't.

A stranger would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary should he have chanced to visit the village of Larking the next morning. Not, of course, that there were any strangers there. Larking was not that sort of village. A Sunday calm had descended upon the place and the inhabitants were going about their usual avocations. About a quarter of them were in church. At Matins.

Henrietta was there.

She was staying at the Rectory now. She had been in that pleasant house on the green since late last night. Just before he had left, Inspector Sloan had said he would be greatly obliged if Miss Jenkins would take herself to the Rectory for the night.

"Otherwise, miss," he had gone on, "I shall have to spare a man to stay here and keep an eye on you."

Mrs. Meyton, bless her, had been only too happy to have her under the Rectory wing and Henrietta had been popped between clean sheets in the spare bed without fuss or botheration. The Rector presumably had been wrestling with his sermon because she hadn't seen him at all last night nor this morning when he had breakfasted alone between early service and Matins.

James Heber Hibbs read the First Lesson.

Henrietta was devoutly thankful that today was one of the Sundays in Lent, which meant that she didn't have to listen while he fought his way through the genealogical tree of Abraham who begat Isaac who begat Jacob who begat…

She could listen to the Book of Numbers (Chapter 14, verse 26) with equanimity but she didn't think she could bear to hear that unconscionable list of who begat whom when she was still no nearer knowing the father who had begat her. She sat, hands folded in front of her, while James Hibbs's neat unaccented voice retailed what the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron.

She felt curiously detached. No doubt the events of the past week would fade into proportion in time just as those of the Old Testament had done but at the moment she wasn't sure.

"… save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun," said James Hibbs in those English upper middle class tones considered suitable for readings in church which would have greatly surprised both Caleb and Joshua, son of Nun, had they heard them.

That had been how a man was known in those far off days, of course. It mattered very much whose son you were, which tribe you belonged to… One day, perhaps, she, Henrietta, would be able once again to look into a mirror without wondering who it was she saw there, but not yet… definitely not yet.

A fragment of an almost forgotten newspaper article came back to her while she was sitting quietly in the pew. Somewhere she had read once that to undermine the resistance of prisoners in a concentration camp their captors first took away every single thing the poor unfortunates could call their own—papers, watches, rings, glasses, false teeth even. It was the first step towards the deliberate destruction of personality. After that the prisoners, utterly demoralised, began to doubt their very identity. Lacking reassurance in the matter, then surely existence itself would seem pointless, resistance became more meaningless still.

"… Here endeth the First Lesson," declared James Hibbs, leaving the lectern and going back to his wife in the pew which, abolition of pew rents or not, inalienably belonged to The Hall. He still walked like a soldier.

It didn't seem possible that last Sunday Henrietta had been at college in Camford, finals the biggest landmark in her immediate future, Bill Thorpe more nebulously beyond… her mother always in the background. Only she wasn't her mother.

And the background had changed as suddenly as a theatre backdrop. The man in the photograph on the mantlepiece had come briefly alive—and mysteriously was now dead again.

Uncomforted by the Rector's blessing at the end of the service, she waited in her seat until the church emptied. That, at least, saved her from all but the most bare-faced of the curious. Mrs. Meyton insisted upon her lunching at the Rectory. Henrietta demurred.

"When, my dear child, have you had time to buy food?" Mrs. Meyton asked.

Henrietta spoke vaguely of some cheese but was overruled by an indignant Mrs. Meyton.

"Certainly not," said that lady roundly.

It wasn't the happiest of meals. Henrietta ate her way through roast beef and Yorkshire pudding without appetite, one thing uppermost in her mind.

"They don't say very much in the newspapers," she murmured. "And the Inspector didn't tell me anything. Just that he was found dead…"

This was only partly true. The Sunday newspapers not available at the Rectory had covered the death of Cyril Jenkins fairly graphically (WIDOWER DIES… GUNSHOT DEATH… BLOOD-STAINED ROOM) but neither the Meytons nor Henrietta knew this.

The Rector nodded. "I fear there is little doubt that his death is significant."

"What I want to know," demanded Henrietta almost angrily, "is if he was my father or not."

She didn't know yet if the little red bottle borne away last night by the pathologist—after a few mild, stock jokes about vampires—was going to tell her that or not.

Mr. Meyton nodded again. "Quite so."

And in an anguished whisper: "And who killed him."

"My dear," began Mrs. Meyton, "should you concern yourself with…"

"Yes," intervened the Rector firmly, "she should."

"I must know," said Henrietta firmly, a tremulous note coming into her voice in spite of all her efforts to suppress it, "whether I am misbegotten or not."

Dr. Dabbe could have told her something.

He telephoned the Berebury Police Station. "That you, Sloan? I've done a grouping."

"Yes, doctor?"

"The girl's Group O."

Sloan wrote it down. "Jenkins was AB, wasn't he?"

"That's right."

"That means, Doctor, that…"

"That he is not the girl's father," said Dr. Dabbe dogmatically. "And that's conclusive and irrespective of the mother's blood group. A man with an AB Group blood cannot have a child with O Group blood."

"Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much. That's a great help…"

"It's an indisputable fact," said Dr. Dabbe tartly, "which is more to the point."

Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby reached the university town of Camford just before noon on the Sunday morning and drove straight to the centre of that many tower'd Camelot. A friendly colleague directed them to Boleyn College.

"Funny person to call a ladies' college after," muttered Constable Crosby, putting the car into gear again. "Wasn't she one of Henry the Eighth's…"

"Yes," said Sloan shortly, "she was."

They found the decorous brick building on the outskirts of the town and waited while the porter set about finding the Bursar, Miss Wotherspoon. She did not keep them long. A petite bird-like figure came tripping down the corridor. Sloan explained that he had come about Henrietta Jenkins.

"Jenkins?" said Miss Wotherspoon. "Nice girl."

"Yes."

"Not a First…"

"Oh?" said Sloan, who hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about but wasn't prepared to say so.

"Perhaps a Second but I shouldn't count on it."

"No…"

"And," Miss Wotherspoon sighed, "there'll be some young man waiting to marry her who doesn't care either way."

"There is."

Miss Wotherspoon shook her head. "No use trying to stop them," she said briskly. "Take my advice about that. They hold it against you for ever afterwards."

On that point Sloan was agreed with the Bursar, but before he could say anything further she went on.

"But I've just remembered, Henrietta Jenkins hasn't got a father."

"That's right," agreed Sloan.

"Then you must be…" began Miss Wotherspoon—and stopped.

"Who?" prompted Sloan gently. But he wasn't catching the Bursar out that way.

"No," she said. "I think you must tell me."

"The police," admitted Sloan regretfully.

"You had better come to my study."

She listened to Sloan's tale without interruption, waited until he was quite finished and then announced that she would have to take him to the Principal. He and Crosby tramped off after her and soon found themselves in a very gracious room indeed.

The Principal was an impressive woman by any standard save that of fashion. She had a calm, still authority, responsive yet unsurprised. Sloan and Crosby were invited to settle into chintz armchairs and to repeat their story.

"I see," said the Principal when he had done—and not before. Both women exhibited a rare facility for listening. If this was the result of the education of women, then Sloan— for one—was all in favour.

"You will be able to see our difficulty, too," said Sloan. "You have this girl whom we have reason to believe is being maintained here beyond such scholarships and grants as she may have been awarded."

"True," said the Bursar, "but we were given funds on the condition that she never knew the source."

"I don't think she need," replied Sloan seriously. "I can't give you any sort of undertaking because this is a criminal case but unless such facts came out in open court I see no reason myself why she should be told."

"In that case," pronounced the Principal, "I see no reason why Miss Wotherspoon should not divulge the—er—donor's name to you."

"Thank you, madam."

Miss Wotherspoon disappeared in the direction of ber study and returned waving a piece of paper.

"It wasn't a lot," she said. "Just a small cheque each term to make things more… what is the word I'm looking for?"

The word Sloan was looking for—and that very badly-— was on the paper the Bursar was holding. He retained his self-control with difficulty.

"Tolerable," decided Miss Wotherspoon brightly. "Grants and scholarships are all very well but a girl needs a bit more than that if she's going to get the most out of Camford."

"The name," pleaded Sloan.

Miss Wotherspoon looked at the paper in her hand.

"Would it," she said rather doubtfully, "be Hibbs? That's what it looks like to me. J. A. H. Hibbs."

Sloan groaned aloud.

"The Hall, Larking, Calleshire," said Miss Wotherspoon for good measure.

"He never said why, I suppose?" asked Sloan.

"Just a brief note with the first cheque saying he thought funds at home were rather low and the enclosed might help." Miss Wotherspoon waved a hand vaguely. "That sort of thing. The only condition was that the girl didn't know. I could tell her what I liked."

"And what did you tell her?"

"A Service charity," said the Bursar promptly. "Plenty of girls receive money from them. There was no reason why she shouldn't."

"There was," said the Principal unexpectedly.

Sloan, Crosby and Miss Wotherspoon all turned in her direction.

"A very good reason," said the Principal.

Sloan cleared his throat. It had suddenly seemed to go very dry.

"What was that, madam?" She looked the sort of person who could tell a good reason from a bad one. If she thought it a very good reason…

"She wasn't who she thought she was."

"No. We have established that, madam, in Calleshire, but I should dearly like to know how you…"

"For entry to Boleyn College, Inspector, we require a sight of the candidate's birth certificate…"

"Of course!" Sloan brought his hand down on the arm of the chintz-covered chair with a mighty slap. "We should have thought of that before."

"Not, you understand, in order to confirm family details. We are not concerned"—here academic scruple raised its head—"with the father's occupation but with the age of the candidate."

"Quite so," said Sloan, who was concerned about something quite different still. "How very stupid we have been, madam. This would have saved us a great deal—might even have saved a life."

As before, the Principal waited until he was quite finished before she continued. "Naturally this also applied in the case of Henrietta Jenkins."

"Yes…" eagerly.

"With her birth certificate came a letter from the woman whom she believed to be her mother…"

"Grace Jenkins…"

The Principal inclined her head. "This letter, which was addressed to me personally, explained that the girl did not know the name of her real parents and was not to be told it until she was twenty-one."

"Yes?" even more eagerly.

"This I felt was a most unwise procedure and one I would have counselled against most strongly. However…"

Sloan was sitting on the very edge of his chair. "Yes?"

"However, her—er—guardian… is that who she was?"

"In a way," said Sloan grimly.

"Her guardian's wishes were entitled to be respected."

"And?"

"The birth certificate was returned to Mrs. Jenkins and I have not mentioned the fact to anyone until today."

"The name," said Sloan. "What was the name?"

The Principal paused. "I don't think I can be absolutely certain…"

"Henrietta who?" said Sloan urgently.

"I am left with the impression that it was Mantriot."

Bill Thorpe walked down from Shire Oak Farm about half past two and called for Henrietta at the Rectory. She went with him as much because the Meytons were obviously used to a post prandial snooze on Sunday afternoons as for any other reason.

"I told you I'd seen Cyril Jenkins yesterday," she said by way of greeting. Her feelings towards Bill Thorpe were decidedly ambivalent.

"You did," agreed Thorpe.

"What price him being my father?"

"Perhaps," diplomatically.

"Or do you still think it doesn't matter?"

Bill Thorpe grinned. "A gooseberry bush would still do for me."

"Well!" exploded Henrietta crossly, "I think you're the…"

"Or a carpet bag. At Victoria Station." He took a couple of paces back and raised an arm to ward off an imaginary blow. 'The Brighton line, of course."

"The police," said Henrietta, ignoring this, "probably won't believe me, but…"

"The police," declared Bill, "are trained not to believe anybody. It is the secret of their success."

They had passed the entrance gates to The Hall now and were walking down the road to Boundary Cottage.

"I've just thought of something," said Henrietta suddenly.

"What's that?"

"If I'm not who I thought I was…"

"Yes?"

"I don't have to be an only child."

"No," agreed Bill Thorpe.

"I thought you were going to say that didn't matter either,"she said, a little deflated.

"But it does." Bill Thorpe pushed open the gate of Boundary Cottage and stood back to let her go in first. "Very much."

"Very much?"

"Just in the one set of circumstances." He turned to shut the gate behind him, farmer through and through. "Unlikely, I know, but…"

"But what?"

"We must make absolutely sure," he said gravely, "that you and I are not brother and sister. I have every intention of marrying you and that's the only thing which could stop me."

She laughed at last. "Not allowed outside ancient Egypt?"

"The word is, I believe, taboo."

Henrietta led the way up to the front door, still laughing.

She stopped as soon as she opened it.

"Whatever's the matter?" enquired Bill quickly. "You've gone quite white."

She stood stockstill on the doorstep.

"Someone's been in here," she said, "since I left last night."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was no question of either of them having a meal. It was offered by the Principal of Boleyn College and seconded by the Bursar. Even in the ordinary way Inspector Sloan (if not Detective Constable Crosby) would have refused an invitation to sit down with three hundred young ladies of academic bent. Today was not ordinary. Their one aim was to get back to Calleshire with all possible speed. They hurried away from the dreaming spires without so much as a backward glance and got out on the open road.

"Hibbs," said Crosby glumly.

"Mantriot," countered Sloan.

Crosby executed a driving manoeuvre between two lorries and an articulated trailer which he had not learnt at the police motoring school.

"It isn't going to help our investigations, constable," said Sloan testily, "if we none of us live to find out Mantriot."

"No, sir." Crosby lifted his foot off the accelerator a frac"I think I know something already."

"You what?"

"The name, sir, it rings a bell."

"In what way?"

"I don't know."

"Then think."

"Yes, sir."

There was a short silence in the police car while Constable Crosby thought. This did not preclude him overtaking a sports car at a speed Sloan did not relish.

"If," said Sloan, "you would think any better away from the wheel, I will take it."

"That's all right, sir, thank you. I don't have to think about my driving."

"I noticed," said Sloan sweetly.

There was another silence while they ate up the miles at a speed which was specifically forbidden at the police motoring school.

Crosby was observed to be frowning.

"Well?" said Sloan hopefully.

"It's in the past somewhere, sir."

"I know that."

"I mean what I remember."

Sloan did not attempt to sort this out. He was now too busy wishing he had led a better life—time for reform having obviously run out.

The car swerved dangerously. 've got it, sir."

"Have you?" muttered Sloan between clenched teeth. "Then slow down." He started to breathe again as the fields stopped flashing by quite so quickly. "Now tell me."

"I can't tell you anything, sir," said Crosby helpfully, "except that I remember the name."

"Where?"

"The past."

"I wish," said Sloan, made irritable by fear, "that you would stop saying that."

"I mean, sir"—Crosby was never good at explanations— "when I was trying to learn about the past."

"Light is beginning to dawn, Crosby. Go on."

"It all started when I didn't know who George Smith was, sir."

I'm not sure that I do either."

"He drowned his wives," said Crosby reproachfully. "All of them."

"Oh, him."

"Yes, sir, but I didn't know at the time and they pulled my leg a bit at the Station."

"I'll bet they did."

"Every time anyone mentioned the word 'bath.' So Sergeant Gelven—he said if I was ever going to get anywhere, I'd better read up famous cases."

"The Tichborne Claimant," remembered Sloan suddenly. "That's how you knew about that…"

"Yes, sir."

"But," puzzled, "how does Mantriot come in?"

"It's not a Famous Case, sir, I do know that."

"Not yet it isn't," retorted Sloan, "but I shouldn't count on it staying that way."

"So it must be a local one. After I'd done the others, sir, I went back through the Calleshire records. That's where I've seen the name, I'm sure." Crosby spotted a rival county's ratrap and slowed down. "But I don't remember when or where."

"We'll soon find out," said Sloan pleasantly. "You can go through them again until you find it."

Superintendent Leeyes's afternoon cups of tea were rather like American television shows which went from the late show to the late, late show to the late, late, late show thence merging imperceptibly into the early, early, early show, the early, early show and naturally enough the early show. His tea went on the same principle—the after lunch cup, the early Afternoon cup, the middle of the afternoon one and so forth. It was impossible for Sloan and Crosby to guess which one he was at when they arrived back in Berebury.

"We've got him," announced Leeyes triumphantly.

Sloan shook his head. "I should say that gift lets Hibbs out."

"And I should say," retorted Leeyes robustly, "that it lets him in."

"I'll go down there at once, sir, and see."

"There's one other thing, Sloan…"

"Sir?"

"This girl—I think she's starting to imagine things now…"

"I should very much doubt that."

"You sent her away from home last night."

"I tried to. I don't know if she went but I told P. C. Hepple he was to keep an eye on her if she didn't."

"She did. To the Rectory. But she and the Thorpe boy went back to Boundary Cottage after lunch."

"Yes?" said Sloan alertly.

"He rang up about an hour ago to say the girl swears someone's been in the cottage overnight."

Sloan expired audibly. "I thought they might. That's why…"

"Someone's got a key," snapped Leeyes. "We've known that all along. Why didn't you have the lock changed?"

"I wanted them to show their hand," said Sloan simply. "And they have."

Sunday was Sunday as far as James Hibbs and his wife were concerned. It was late afternoon when Sloan and Crosby arrived at The Hall. This time, being Sunday, they were shown into the drawing room. Tea at The Hall on Sundays would always be in the drawing room. Tea this afternoon had been eaten but not cleared away. A beautiful Georgian silver teapot graced the tea tray, some sandwiches and a jar of Gentleman's Relish stood beside it Sloan hankered after the sandwiches but not the tea. He had had some tea from a teapot like that once before—pale, straw-coloured stuff with a sinister taste. He had not been at all surprised to learn that it had come from China.

The two policemen were invited to sit on the large sofa in front of the fire. Their combined weights sank into it. Constable Crosby was the heavier of the two which gave Sloan's sitting position an odd list to starboard. No one could have described it as an advantageous situation from which to conduct an interview in what Sloan now knew to be a double murder case.

His tone was sharper than it had been earlier.

"You said before, sir, that you had never seen Mrs. Grace Jenkins until she came to Larking."

"Actually," said Hibbs mildly, "I don't think I saw her until quite a while afterwards. I was away myself, you know, at the time. I told you, if you remember, my old agent fixed up the tenancy."

"Yes, sir, you did. You showed me a letter."

"Ah, yes."

"You showed me a letter," said Sloan accusingly, "but I don't think you told me the whole story."

"No, Inspector? What else was it you wanted to know?"

"Why you sent money to be given to Henrietta at the university?" Sloan asked the question of James Hibbs but he was looking at Mrs. Hibbs's face while he spoke.

It did not change.

"Come, now," Hibbs smiled disarmingly. "You surely can't expect me to have told you a thing like that."

Mrs. Hibbs nodded in agreement with her husband and said in her pleasant deep voice: "It was a private benefaction, Inspector. Nothing to do with anyone but ourselves."

"At the moment, madam, everything to do with Henrietta is to do with us."

"We could see a need," said Hibbs, embarrassed, "that's all."

"So you set about filling it?"

"That's right, Inspector. I don't hold with all these national appeals. I'd rather give on my own."

"Charity beginning at home, sir?"

Hibbs flushed. "If you care to put it like that."

"I see, sir." Sloan started to heave himself out of the sofa. MI asked you earlier if the name Hocklington-Garwell conveyed anything to you and you said no…"

"I did."

"I'm asking you now if you have ever heard the name of Mantriot before."

"Hugo, you mean?"

"Perhaps. Or Michael. Michael was killed early on. Dunkirk."

James Hibbs said very soberly, "Yes, Inspector, of course I have…"

"Of course?"

"He was in the East Callies and I was in the West but . Good Lord… I never thought!"

"You never thought what, sir?"

"Of Henrietta being Hugo's." Hibbs frowned into the distance. "I must say, Inspector, in all the years I've been here it's never crossed my mind for an instant."

"What hasn't, sir?"

"Inspector, are you trying to tell us that Henrietta Jenkins is the Mantriot baby?"

"I don't know, sir. Suppose you tell me."

"You won't remember, of course…"

"No, sir."

"It was all pretty ghastly," said Hibbs. "It was in the war, you know. Towards the end. Hugo had had a bad war one way and another…"

That, thought Sloan with mounting excitement, would exthe D.S.O. and the M.C.

"… but he got home for a spot of leave just after the baby was born. Everyone was delighted, naturally, but somewent very wrong."

"What?"

"I don't know." Hibbs shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. "They said afterwards that his mind must have been turned. Common enough thing to happen at the time, of course. He must have been through some rotten experiences before the end. Could have happened to any of us, I suppose."

"What could, sir?" very quietly.

"Didn't you know, Inspector?"

"No, sir. Not yet."

"One day he killed his wife and then he shot himself."

Hibbs shook his head sadly. "It's all a long time ago now, of course. Some nanny took the baby…"

"Grace Jenkins!" cried Mrs. Hibbs suddenly.

"Bless my soul," said Hibbs.

Sloan started to move towards the door when Hibbs burst out laughing.

"It's a funny world, Inspector. Here's my wife and I sending money to Eleanor Leslie's daughter…"

"What's so odd about that, sir?"

Hibbs stopped laughing and said solemnly, "Because Eleanor Leslie—that's who Hugo Mantriot married—was a great deal wealthier than you or I shall ever be. She was old Bruce Leslie's only daughter. You know—the shipping people."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The next two hours were the busiest young Constable Crosby had ever known. First of all he was put down in front of a pile of dusty old records and told to get on with it. This was particularly difficult as Superintendent Leeyes and Detective-Inspector Sloan were talking round him.

"So Hibbs realised you'd got onto the name and decided to play the surprised innocent," said Leeyes triumphantly.

"I'm not sure, sir. If so, he did it very well…"

"He would," snapped Leeyes. "He's had plenty of time to get ready for it. Twenty-one years."

"The important thing, of course," said Sloan, "is obviously the girl's twenty-first birthday. That'll be the day when she'll come into her mother's money for sure."

"I should like to be quite certain that the young man at the farm didn't know that," said Leeyes. "His—er—wooing was a bit brisk."

"But not until after Grace Jenkins died,"pointed out Sloan. "He'd agreed to stay in the background until Henrietta finished at Boleyn College."

"Then," said Leeyes pouncing, "he kills Grace Jenkins and goes ahead with Henrietta."

Sloan shook his head. "What I would like to know, sir, is where Cyril Jenkins comes in."

"I think he committed just the one mistake," said Leeyes shrewdly. "He knew who Henrietta was and he was probably the last person alive who did."

"Bar one," agreed Sloan ominously.

"Bar one," agreed Leeyes. "And what do you propose to do about it, Sloan?"

"Set a trap," said that policeman, "so deep that there'll be no getting out of it."

It was half an hour later when Crosby gave a loud cry. "Found something interesting, Constable?"

"A report of a road accident, sir."

"When?"

Crosby glanced up to the top of the newspaper page. "Almost six months ago."

Sloan stepped over and read it.

"Do you believe in coincidence, Crosby?"

"No, sir."

"Neither do I."

"There's something I do believe in, sir."

"What's that?"

"Practice making perfect."

"You can say that again," said Sloan warmly, "we've just found this."

Crosby read out the faded cutting which Inspector Sloan handed him. "This bit, sir? 'Deceased had apparently shot himself whilst sitting down. The weapon had fallen on to the table in front of him…'" Crosby looked up. "Just like Cyril Jenkins, sir…"

"Just like Cyril Jenkins," agreed Sloan.

Later still.

"I've been a fool, Crosby."

Crosby, no diplomat but still a career man, said guardedly, "How come, sir?"

"We agreed a long long time ago," (it was Wednesday actually) "that where Grace Jenkins had gone in her Sunday best on Tuesday was relevant."

"Yes, sir. Bound to have been. Someone who knew she would arrive at Berebury bus station too late to catch the five fifteen."

"So she was bound to catch the seven five," Sloan pointed to Crosby's notebook. "She helped an old lady who fell getting off the bus, didn't she?"

"Yes, sir, but I don't see what…"

"The bus company will have the old lady's name and address. You can bet your sweet life on that. It'll be a rule of the house in case of an injury claim afterwards. Ten to one she came off the same bus."

"Do you think so, sir?"

"It's worth a try."

It was still Sunday.

That, to Henrietta, was the funniest part. It didn't seem like Sunday at all.

She was trying to explain to Inspector Sloan how it was she knew someone had been into the house during the night, but it didn't seem as if he wanted to know.

"That's all right, miss. I rather thought they might."

"Inspector, were they looking for me?"

"I think so, miss."

"You mean I'm in someone's way?"

"Let's say you're the stumbling block, miss."

"What to?" Bewildered.

"A pretty penny, miss, though I'd say most of it's gone now." He raised a hand to stem any more questions. "Now that we know someone was here, would you mind just not mentioning it to anyone at all please."

"Bill knows already. He was here…"

"To anyone else besides—er—Bill."

"All right." She didn't really care very much now whom she spoke to, still less what she said. "The blood, Inspector, did it tell?"

"Yes, miss." He paused. "You're not Cyril Jenkins's daughter after all."

"No."

"You're not surprised?"

"No." She hesitated. "I think I would have felt it more."

"Very probably, miss."

"Affinity. That's the word, isn't it? I didn't feel that when I saw him. He was just a photograph, you see. Not like her."

Sloan heard the warmth come flooding back into her voice and said as impersonally as he could, "She really cared for you, miss. I expect that's what makes the difference, more than blood relationship."

"Yes," she turned her head away. "Inspector, what about tonight? Do I go back to the Rectory?"

"Ah," said Sloan. "Tonight. Now listen very carefully. This is important."

"No," said Superintendent Leeyes flatly.

"But, sir…"

"Too risky. Suppose the girl gets hurt…"

"She won't be there to be hurt."

"I still don't like it."

"I can't think of a better way of making him show his hand."

There was a long pause. It became evident that the Supercouldn't either.

Henrietta was standing in the telephone kiosk outside the Post Office. It was nearly ten o'clock in the evening.

The fact that the pile of small change feeding the coin box came from Inspector Sloan's pocket was highly significant.

"Is that you, Mr. Hibbs? This is Henrietta Jenkins speaking."

Sloan could hear his deep voice crackling over the line.

"It is."

"I'm sorry to trouble you but I'd like some advice."

"What's the trouble?" James Augustus Heber Hibbs, secular adviser to the village, did not sound particularly surprised. Just attentive.

"I was just going to bed," said Henrietta, "and I thought I'd like something to read. I… I haven't been sleeping all that well since…"

"Quite."

"Well, I was getting a book out of the bookcase—one of my favourites actually—and I came across my mother's will. It's in an envelope—all sealed up. I just wondered what I should do."

"Put it somewhere safe," advised Hibbs sensibly, "and ring your solicitor first thing in the morning."

She had exactly the same conversation a few minutes later with Felix Arbican.

"Grace Jenkins's Will?" echoed the solicitor. "Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," said Henrietta mendaciously. "You said it would be a help."

"It will," said Arbican. "I think you'd better bring it over to me first thing in the morning—just as you found it. In the meantime…"

"Yes?" said Henrietta meekly.

"Put it in the bureau."

"But the lock's gone."

"I don't suppose anyone would think to go back there a second time."

Bill Thorpe might have been in when Henrietta rang the farm. He didn't say. He listened to her tale and said firmly, "Before you leave the call box I should ring the police. Let them decide what to do. And, then I should go straight back to the Rectory."

"I'm not going back there tonight," she said. "I'll be all right on my own."

"Now, listen to me, Henrietta Jenkins…"

"Not Jenkins," said Henrietta sedately.

"Henrietta whoever you are, I won't have you…"

But Henrietta had rung off.

"I meant that," she said to Sloan.

"What, miss?"

"That bit about not going back to the Rectory."

"Oh, yes, you are."

Henrietta smiled sweetly. "Oh, no, I'm not, Inspector. What's more, you can't make me. I'm coming back to the cottage with you."

For a long time nothing happened.

Henrietta switched lights on and off according to Sloan's bidding—kitchen first, then hall, ten minutes later the bathroom, and finally the bedroom one. Then, fully dressed, she crept downstairs again.

"Please, miss," pleaded Sloan, "won't you go and lie down in the spare room? If anything happens to you I shall be in for the high jump."

"What's going to happen?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said truthfully, "but we're dealing with a confirmed murderer."

"Inspector…" Henrietta found it easier to talk in the dark. She had the feeling that she was alone with Sloan though she knew Constable Crosby was in the next room and P. C. Hepple in the kitchen and heaven knew who outside. "Inspector, do you know now who I am?"

"Yes, miss, I think so. We'll have to check with Somerset House in the morning but…"

"Who?" she asked directly.

"Henrietta Mantriot."

"Mantriot." She tested out the sound, tentative as a bride with a new surname. "Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Mantriot."

"Your mother…" began Sloan.

"Yes?" There was a sudden constriction in her voice.

"We think she was called Eleanor Leslie. The spelling of Leslie ought to have given us a clue."

"I've often wondered," she remarked, "where those names came from."

"She's been dead a long time," volunteered Sloan.

This did not seem to disturb the girl. "I knew she must have been," she said, "otherwise Grace Jenkins wouldn't have…"

"No."

"And my father, Inspector?"

"Your father, miss, we think was a certain Captain Hugo Mantriot."

"Master Hugo!" she cried. "Shhhhhsh, miss. We must be very quiet now."

"I'm sorry," she said contritely. "I was always hearing about Master Hugo. I never dreamt that…"

"Now you know why, miss." Sloan heard Crosby's whisper before Henrietta did and he was on his feet and out in the hall in a flash.

"Someone coming down the Belling road, sir."

"Upstairs," commanded Sloan. "Quickly. You too, miss."

In the end he went up with her and stood at the landing window. Together they watched someone approach the cottage on foot, slide open the gate and disappear behind some bushes in the garden.

"He's not coming in," whispered Henrietta.

"Not yet," murmured Sloan. "Give him time. He's waiting to see if the coast's clear." He withdrew from the window and passed the word down to Crosby and Hepple to be very quiet now.

It was quite still inside Boundary Cottage. The next move was a complete surprise to everyone. Constable Crosby's hoarse whisper reached Sloan and Henon the front upstairs landing.

"There's someone else, sir."

"Where?"

"Coming down the Belling road."

The visitor did not pause in the garden. He came straight up to the front door.

"Inspector," said Henrietta. "Look! The man in the garden. He's following the other one in."

Sloan did not stay to reply. He moved back to the head of the stairs and waited there, watching the front door open.

"He's got a key," breathed Henrietta, hearing it being inserted into the lock.

"Shssshhhhh," cautioned Sloan. "Don't speak now."

The front door opened soundlessly and someone came in. Whoever it was moved forward and then turned to shut the door behind him.

Only it wouldn't shut.

And it wouldn't shut for a time-honoured reason. There was someone else's foot in it.

Someone pushed from the inside and someone else pushed from the outside. The outside pusher must have been the stronger of the two for in the end the door opened wide enough to admit him.

Henrietta recognised the silhouette dimly outlined against the night sky and framed by the doorway. She clutched the banister rail for support. No wonder he had got the door opened in spite of the other man. Bill Thorpe was the strongest man she knew.

Bill Thorpe was apparently not content with having got the door open. He now advanced upon the other man, flinging himself against him. There was a surprised grunt, followed by a muffled oath. Then a different sound, the sudden ripping of cloth. In the darkness it sounded like a pistol shot.

It was enough for Detective Inspector Sloan.

He switched on the lights.

"The police!" cried a somewhat dishevelled Felix Arbican. "Thank God for that. I caught this young man breaking into…"

"Felix Forrest Arbican," said Sloan lawfully from half way up the stairs, "I arrest you for the murder of Cyril Edgar Jenkins and must warn you that anything you say may be…"

"Thank you," retorted the solicitor coldly, "I am aware of the formula."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"I thought it would be the solicitor," said Superintendent Leeyes unfairly. "Bound to be when you came to think about it."

"Yes, sir." Sloan was sitting in the Superintendent's office the next morning, turning in his report.

"What put you on to him in the beginning, Sloan?"

"It was the very first time we saw him, sir. I asked him if he knew of a client called Mrs. G. E. Jenkins and he said no."

"And?"

"And in the same interview he referred to her as Grace Jenkins though neither Crosby nor I had mentioned her Christian name, so I reckoned he knew her all right."

Leeyes grunted. "Stroke of bad luck that Hibbs fellow keeping his letter all those years."

"Yes and no, sir. He'd written it a bit ambiguously at the time—it could indicate a settlement like he said if you cared to look at it that way, so it could have been said to have served his case as well." He paused. "I think he would know that an agent would file it, too. Besides…"

"Besides what?"

"It was a sort of insurance, sir. If we should get hold of it, it would bring him into the picture and keep him in touch in a rather privileged way, wouldn't it?"

Leeyes grunted again.

"That's why I told the girl about him early on," said Sloan temerariously.

"You did what?"

"Sort of hinted that he was her motherts solicitor and so…" Sloan waved a hand and left the sentence unfinished.

"Suppose," suggested Leeyes heavily, "we go back to the very beginning."

"The last war," said Sloan promptly. "A promising young officer in the East Calleshires called Hugo Mantriot of Great Rooden Manor…"

"Where's that?"

"Just south of Calleford." Sloan resumed his narrative. "This Hugo Mantriot marries the only daughter of the late Bruce Leslie…"

"Who's he?"

"The shipping magnate."

"Money?"

"Lots."

Leeyes nodded, satisfied.

"They have a baby girl," went on Sloan.

"Henrietta?"

"Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Mantriot." Sloan paused. "When she's about six weeks old her father comes home on leave to Great Rooden and there's a terrible—er—incident."

"What?" bluntly.

"According to the reports at the time Captain Hugo Mantriot went completely out of his mind, shot his wife and then himself. The Coroner was very kind—said some soothing sentences about the man's mind being turned by his wartime experiences and so forth. The whole thing played down as much as possible, of course."

Leeyes grunted.

"Twenty-four people had been killed by a flying bomb in Calleford the same week—the police had more than enough to do—the Coroner hinted that the Mantriots were really casualties of war in very much the same way as the flying bomb victims…"

"Arbican kill them both?" suggested Leeyes briefly.

"I shouldn't wonder, sir, at all, though we're not likely to find out at this stage." Sloan turned over a new page in his notebook. "Mrs. Mantriot had made a new will when the baby was born. I've had someone turn it up for me in Somerset House this morning and read it out. She created a trust for the baby should anything happen to either parent…"

"She being at risk as much as he was in those days," put in Leeyes, who could remember them.

"Exactly, sir. Those were the days when things did happen to people, besides which her husband was on active service and there was a fair bit of money involved. So she created this trust with the trustees as…"

"Don't tell me," groaned Leeyes.

"That's right, sir. Waind, Arbican & Waind. After all, of course, it's only guesswork on my part…"

"Well?"

"I reckon Grace Jenkins was already in the employment of the Mantriots as the baby's nanny. She was a daughter of Jenkins at Holly Tree Farm in Rooden Parva which isn't all that far away…"

"So?"

"I think Arbican suggested to her that she look after the baby. Probably put it into her mind that the infant shouldn't be told about the murder and suicide of her parents—that would seem a pretty disgraceful thing to a simple country girl like her."

Leeyes grunted.

"From there," said Sloan, "it's a fairly easy step to getting her to pass the baby off as her own until the child was twenty-one. All done with the highest motives, of course."

"Of course," agreed Leeyes. "And he keeps them both, I suppose?"

"That's right. Sets Grace Jenkins up in a remote cottage, maintains the household at a distance and not very generously at that…"

"Verisimilitude," said Leeyes.

"Pardon, sir?"

"You wouldn't expect a widow and child to have a lot of money."

"No, sir, of course not. Grace Jenkins falls for it like a lamb. Takes along a photograph of her own brother to forestall questions, and Hugo Mantriot's medals, and puts her back into bringing up Master Hugo's baby as if it's her own."

"Then what?"

"Then nothing, sir, for nearly twenty-one years. During which time the Wainds in the firm die off, public memory dies down and Felix Arbican gets through a fair slice of what Bruce Leslie left his daughter."

"The day of reckoning," said Leeyes slowly, "would be Henrietta's twenty-first birthday."

"That's right. Grace Jenkins had no intention of carrying the pretence further than that. She was a loyal servant and an honest woman."

"So?"

"She had to go," said Sloan simply, "and before Henrietta came back from University."

"He just overlooked the one thing," said Sloan.

It was the afternoon now and Sloan and Crosby were sitting in the Rectory drawing room. In spite of all her protestations Henrietta had gone to the Rectory the previous night—or rather, in the early hours of the morning—after all. Bill Thorpe and P. C. Hepple had escorted her there to make—as Sloan said at the time—assurance doubly sure. Once there Mrs. Meyton had taken it upon herself to protect her from all comers and she had been allowed to sleep on through the morning.

Now they were all foregathered in the Rectory again—bar the main consultant, so to speak. The case was nearly over, the Rectory china looked suitably unfragile and Mrs. Meyton's teapot as if it contained tea of a properly dark brown hue—so Sloan had consented to a cup.

"Just one thing," he repeated.

Nobody took a lot of notice. Henrietta and Bill Thorpe were looking at each other as if for the very first time. Mrs. Meyton was counting cups. Constable Crosby seemed preoccupied with a large bruise that was coming up on his knuckle.

"What was that?" asked Mrs. Meyton with Christian kindness.

"That a routine post-mortem would establish the fact of Grace Jenkins's childlessness."

"Otherwise?"

"Otherwise I doubt if we would have looked further than a Road Traffic Accident. We wouldn't have had any reason to…"

"Then what?" put in Bill Thorpe.

"Then nothing very much," said Sloan. "Inspector Harpe would have added it to his list of unsolved hit-and-runs and that would have been that. Miss Mantriot would…"

Henrietta looked quite startled. "No one's ever called me that before."

Sloan smiled and continued. "Miss Mantriot would have gone back to university none the wiser. She's twenty-one next month. The only likely occasion for her to need a birth certificate after that would be for a passport."

Bill Thorpe nodded. "And if it wasn't forthcoming, she wouldn't even know where to begin to look."

"Exactly."

"Hamstrung," said Bill Thorpe expressively.

"But," said Henrietta, "what about her telling me she had been a Miss Wright before she married?"

Sloan's expression relaxed a little. "I never met Grace Jenmiss, but I've—well—come to respect her quite a bit in the last week. I think she had what you might call an ironic sense of humour. This Wright business…"

"Yes?"

"I expect you've all heard the expression about Mr. Right coming along."

Henrietta coloured. "Yes."

"Me," said Bill Thorpe brightly.

"Perhaps," said Sloan. "In her case I think when she had to choose a maiden name so to speak—she chose Wright in reverse."

"Well done, Grace Jenkins," said Mr. Meyton.

"That's what I think too, sir," said Sloan. "The same thing applies in a way with the Hocklington-Garwells who had us running round in circles for a bit."

"What about it?"

"When she had to choose the name of a family she'd worked for—you know the sort of questions children ask, and she couldn't very well say Mantriot—I think she put tothe names of two people involved in an old Calleshire scandal."

"Hocklington and Garwell?"

"That's right. I gather it was a pretty well-known affair in the county in the old days."

"That's how Mrs. Hibbs knew about it!" said Crosby suddenly.

"I didn't know you'd noticed," said his superior kindly, "but you're quite right."

"But it had nothing to do with the case at all?" said the Rector, anxious to get at least one thing quite clear.

"Nothing," said Sloan.

"So there was a reason why she was older than I thought," said Henrietta.

Sloan nodded. "And for her having her hair dyed and for her not liking having her photograph taken."

"And for Cyril Jenkins having to be killed," said Bill Thorpe logically.

"He was her brother. And, of course, he knew the whole story. As far as Grace Jenkins was concerned there was no reason why he shouldn't."

"So he had to die," concluded Mr. Meyton.

"Once I'd seen him," cried Henrietta. "He was quite safe until then."

"Not really, miss. You see, he would have known about your going to be told the truth when you were twenty-one. He'd have smelt a rat about his sister's death before very long." He paused. "That's what put James Hibbs in the clear for once and for all."

"What did?"

"He didn't know you'd seen Cyril Jenkins so there was no call for him to be killing him on Saturday afternoon."

"I hadn't thought of that…"

"The only people who knew were young Mr. Thorpe here, Arbican himself…"

"I told him," said Henrietta, with a shudder.

"And Mr. and Mrs. Meyton here."

"How did you know it wasn't me?" enquired Bill Thorpe with deep interest.

"I couldn't be quite sure. Especially when you turned up last night."

"I wasn't going to come in," said Thorpe somewhat bash"I just wanted to keep an eye on the place. Besides, I didn't have a key."

"He had," said Henrietta. She meant Arbican but didn't seem able to say the name.

"Yes, miss, he had. Had it for years, I expect. He used that when he came in on Tuesday. He had to make sure Grace Jenkins hadn't left anything incriminating around. He probatook your birth certificate away with him then and anything else that might have given the game away."

"Inspector." Henrietta pushed back a wayward strand of hair. "What did happen on Tuesday?"

"We can't be quite sure but I should imagine Arbican summoned Grace Jenkins over to Calleford for a conference. You can imagine the sort of thing. 'Henrietta's coming home—she's twenty-one next month—got to be told—modest celebration' and so forth."

Henrietta winced.

"That would explain the Sunday best that so puzzled Mrs. Callows and Mrs. Ricks," said Sloan, "and her catching the early bus into Berebury and the last bus back. Berebury to Calleford is a very slow run, you know. The bus calls at all the villages on the way."

"He wouldn't have her to his office, surely?"

"No. I expect he took her out to lunch, then put her on the bus back which he knew would get her into Berebury after the five fifteen to Larking had left."

"So he knew she would be on the seven five?"

"That's right Then he drives himself cross country. It's a much shorter run. First he goes through the bureau and then waits in the pub car park until the bus gets in. He would be able to see her get off. All he has to do then is to time her walk until she's near enough to the bad corner for it to seem like a nasty accident."

"Which it wasn't," said Henrietta.

"No, miss."

"Inspector." The Rector spoke up. "What was Arbican's motive in all this?"

"Gain," said Sloan succinctly. "Carefully calculated and very expertly carried out. Unless he confesses we shall never know whether he contrived the deaths of Henrietta's father and mother. It isn't impossible and they fell very smartly after the legal arrangements had been completed, but there is another death we do know something about now…"

"Cyril Jenkins, you mean?"

"Him, too, sir," Sloan said to the Rector, "but that was afterwards. This one was before Grace Jenkins was killed."

It was very quiet in the Rectory drawing room.

"Who was that, Inspector?"

"A certain Miss Winifred Lendry, sir."

"I've never heard of her," said Mr. Meyton.

"I don't suppose any of you have." Sloan looked round the room. "It is her death that makes us realise that this was all a long term plan. Miss Lendry was Arbican's confidential secretary until she was killed by a hit-and-run driver last autumn."

It was on the Thursday morning that Constable Crosby picked up the telephone and handed the receiver to Detective-Inspector Sloan.

"For you, sir. The Kinnisport police."

"Good morning," said Sloan.

"About this Major Hocklington," began his opposite number in Kinnisport. "Do you want us to watch him for ever? I've had a man posted outside his house for days now and the old boy hasn't stepped out of his wheelchair once…"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body —a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre's most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who? and A Most Contagious Game have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury, where she serves as an aid to her father, a doctor, and takes an interest in local affairs.