Scales of Justice

CHAPTER IV Bottom Meadow

Nurse Kettle was acquainted with death. She did not need Skip’s lament to tell her that the curled figure resting its head on a turf of river grass was dead. She knelt beside it and pushed her hand under the tweed jacket and silk shirt. “Cooling,” she thought. A tweed hat with fisherman’s flies in the band lay over the face. Someone, she thought, might almost have dropped it there. She lifted it and remained quite still with it suspended in her hand. The Colonel’s temple had been broken as if his head had come under a waxworker’s hammer. The spaniel threw back his head and howled again.

“O, do be quiet!” Nurse Kettle ejaculated. She replaced the hat and stood up, knocking her head against a branch. The birds that spent the night in the willows stirred again and some of them flew out with a sharp whirring sound. The Chyne gurgled and plopped and somewhere up in Nunspardon woods an owl hooted. “He has been murdered,” thought Nurse Kettle.

Through her mind hurtled all the axioms of police procedure as laid down in her chosen form of escape-literature. One must, she recollected, not touch the body, and she had touched it. One must send at once for the police, but she had nobody to send. She thought there was also something about not leaving the body, yet to telephone or to fetch Mr. Oliphant, the police-sergeant at Chyning, she would have to leave the body, and while she was away, the spaniel, she supposed, would sit beside it and howl. It was now quite darkish and the moon not yet up. She could see, however, not far from the Colonel’s hands, the glint of a trout’s scales in the grass and of a knife blade nearby. His rod was laid out on the lip of the bank, less than a pace from where he lay. None of these things, of course, must be disturbed. Suddenly Nurse Kettle thought of Commander Syce, whose Christian name she had discovered was Geoffrey, and wished with all her heart that he was at hand to advise her. The discovery in herself of this impulse astonished her and, in a sort of flurry, she swapped Geoffrey Syce for Mark Lacklander. “I’ll find the doctor,” she thought.

She patted Skip. He whimpered and scratched at her knees with his paws. “Don’t howl, doggy,” she said in a trembling voice. “Good boy! Don’t howl.” She took up her bag and turned away.

As she made her way out of the willow grove, she wondered for the first time about the identity of the being who had reduced Colonel Cartarette to the status of a broken waxwork. A twig snapped. “Suppose,” she thought, “he’s still about! Help, what a notion!” And as she hurried back along the path to Bottom Bridge, she tried not to think of the dense shadows and dark hollows that lay about her. Up on Watt’s Hill the three houses — Jacob’s Cottage, Uplands and Hammer — all had lighted windows and drawn blinds. They looked very far off to Nurse Kettle.

She crossed Bottom Bridge and climbed the zigzag path that skirted the golf course, coming finally to the Nunspardon Home Spinney. Only now did she remember that her flash-lamp was in her bag. She got it out and found that she was breathless. “Too quick up the hill,” she thought. “Keep your shirt on, Kettle.” River Path proper ran past the spinney to the main road, but a by-path led up through the trees into the grounds of Nunspardon. This she took and presently came out into the open gardens with the impressive Georgian façade straight ahead of her.

The footman who answered the front door bell was well enough known to her. “Yes, it’s me again, William,” she said. “Is the doctor at home?”

“He came in about an hour ago, miss.”

“I want to see him. It’s urgent.”

“The family’s in the library, miss. I’ll ascertain…”

“Don’t bother,” said Nurse Kettle. “Or, yes. Ascertain if you like, but I’ll be hard on your heels. Ask him if he’ll come out here and speak to me.”

He looked dubiously at her, but something in her face must have impressed him. He crossed the great hall and opened the library door. He left it open and Nurse Kettle heard him say, “Miss Kettle to see Dr. Lacklander, my lady.”

“Me?” said Mark’s voice. “O Lord! All right, I’ll come.”

“Bring her in here,” Lady Lacklander’s voice commanded. “Talk to her in here, Mark. I want to see Kettle.” Hearing this, Nurse Kettle, without waiting to be summoned, walked quickly into the library. The three Lacklanders had turned in their chairs. George and Mark got up. Mark looked sharply at her and came quickly towards her. Lady Lacklander said, “Kettle! What’s happened to you!”

Nurse Kettle said, “Good evening, Lady Lacklander. Good evening, Sir George.” She put her hands behind her back and looked full at Mark. “May I speak to you, sir?” she said. “There’s been an accident.”

“All right, Nurse,” Mark said. “To whom?”

“To Colonel Cartarette, sir.”

The expression of enquiry seemed to freeze on their faces. It was as if they retired behind newly assumed masks.

“What sort of accident?” Mark said.

He stood behind Nurse Kettle and his grandmother and father. She shaped the word “killed” with her lips and tongue.

“Come out here,” he muttered and took her by the arm.

“Not at all,” his grandmother said. She heaved herself out of her chair and bore down upon them. “Not at all, Mark. What has happened to Maurice Cartarette? Don’t keep things from me; I am probably in better trim to meet an emergency than anyone else in this house. What has happened to Maurice?”

Mark, still holding Nurse Kettle by the arm, said, “Very well, Gar. Nurse Kettle will tell us what has happened.”

“Let’s have it, then. And in case it’s as bad as you look, Kettle, I suggest we all sit down. What did you say, George?”

Her son had made an indeterminate noise. He now said galvanically, “Yes, of course, Mama, by all means.”

Mark pushed a chair forward for Nurse Kettle, and she took it thankfully. Her knees, she discovered, were wobbling.

“Now, then, out with it,” said Lady Lacklander. “He’s dead, isn’t he, Kettle?”

“Yes, Lady Lacklander.”

“Where?” Sir George demanded. Nurse Kettle told him.

“When,” Lady Lacklander said, “did you discover him?”

“I’ve come straight up here, Lady Lacklander.”

“But why here, Kettle? Why not to Uplands?”

“I must break it to Kitty,” said Sir George.

“I must go to Rose,” said Mark simultaneously.

“Kettle,” said Lady Lacklander, “you used the word accident. What accident?”

“He has been murdered, Lady Lacklander,” said Nurse Kettle.

The thought that crossed her mind after she had made this announcement was that the three Lacklanders were, in their several generations, superficially very much alike but that whereas in Lady Lacklander and Mark the distance between the eyes and the width of mouth suggested a certain generosity, in Sir George they seemed merely to denote ’the naïve. Sir George’s jaw had dropped, and handsome though he undoubtedly was, he gaped unhandsomely. As none of them spoke, she added, “So I thought I’d better report to you, sir.”

“Do you mean,” Sir George said loudly, “that he’s lying there in my bottom meadow, murdered?”

“Yes, Sir George,” Nurse Kettle said, “I do.”

“How?” Mark said.

“Injuries to the head.”

“You made quite sure, of course?”

“Quite sure.”

Mark looked at his father. “We must ring the Chief Constable,” he said. “Would you do that, Father? I’ll go down with Nurse Kettle. One of us had better stay there till the police come. If you can’t get the C.C., would you ring Sergeant Oliphant at Chyning?”

Sir George’s hand went to his moustache. “I think,” he said, “you may take it, Mark, that I understand my responsibilities.”

Lady Lacklander said, “Don’t be an ass, George. The boy’s quite right,” and her son, scarlet in the face, went off to the telephone. “Now,” Lady Lacklander continued, “what are we going to do about Rose and that wife of his?”

“Gar…” Mark began, but his grandmother raised a fat glittering hand.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “No doubt you want to break it to Rose, Mark, but in my opinion you will do better to let me see both of them first. I shall stay there until you appear. Order the car.”

Mark rang the bell. “And you needn’t wait,” she added. “Take Miss Kettle with you.” It was characteristic of Lady Lacklander that she restricted her use of the more peremptory form of address to the second person. She now used it. “Kettle,” she said, “we’re grateful to you and mustn’t impose. Would you rather come with me or go back with my grandson? Which is best, do you think?”

“I’ll go with the doctor, thank you, Lady Lacklander. I suppose,” Nurse Kettle added composedly, “that as I found the body, I’ll be required to make a statement.”

She had moved with Mark to the door when Lady Lacklander’s voice checked her.

“And I suppose,” the elderly voice said, “that as I may have been the last person to speak to him, I shall be required to make one, too.”

In the drawing-room at Hammer there was an incongruous company assembled. Kitty Cartarette, Mark Lacklander and Nurse Kettle waited there while Lady Lacklander sat with Rose in the Colonel’s study. She had arrived first at Hammer, having been driven round in her great car while Mark and Nurse Kettle waited in the valley and George rang up the police station at Chyning. George had remembered he was a Justice of the Peace and was believed to be in telephonic conference with his brethren of the bench.

So it had fallen to Lady Lacklander to break the news to Kitty, whom she had found, wearing her black-velvet tights and flame-coloured top, in the drawing-room. Lady Lacklander in the course of a long life spent in many embassies had encountered every kind of eccentricity in female attire and was pretty well informed as to the predatory tactics of women whom, in the Far East, she had been wont to describe as “light cruisers.” She had made up her mind about Kitty Cartarette but had seemed to be prepared to concede her certain qualities if she showed any signs of possessing them.

She had said, “My dear, I’m the bearer of bad tidings,” and noticing that Kitty at once looked very frightened, had remarked to herself, “She thinks I mean to tackle her about George.”

“Are you?” Kitty had said. “What sort of tidings, please?”

“About Maurice.” Lady Lacklander had waited for a moment, added, “I’m afraid it’s the worst kind of news,” and had then told her. Kitty stared at her “Dead?” she said. “Maurice dead? I don’t believe you. How can he be dead? He’s been fishing down below there and I daresay he’s looked in at the pub.” Her hands with their long painted nails began to tremble. “How can he be dead?” she repeated.

Lady Lacklander became more specific, and presently Kitty broke into a harsh strangulated sobbing, twisting her fingers together and turning her head aside. She walked about the room, still, Lady Lacklander noticed, swaying her hips. Presently she fetched up by a grog tray on a small table and shakily poured herself a drink.

“That’s a sensible idea,” Lady Lacklander said as the neck of the decanter chattered against the glass. Kitty-awkwardly offered her a drink, which she declined with perfect equanimity. “Her manner,” she thought to herself, “is really too dreadful. What shall I do if George marries her?”

It was at this juncture that Nurse Kettle and Mark had appeared outside the French windows. Lady Lacklander signalled to them. “Here are my grandson and Nurse Kettle,” she said to Kitty. “Shall they come in? I think it would be a good idea, don’t you?”

Kitty said shakily, “Yes, please. Yes, if you like.” Lady Lacklander heaved her bulk out of her chair and let them in.

“Sergeant Oliphant’s there,” Mark murmured. “They’re going to ring Scotland Yard. Does Rose…?”

“Not yet. She’s out in the garden, somewhere.”

Mark went across to Kitty and spoke to her with a quiet authority that his grandmother instantly approved. She noticed how Kitty steadied under it, how Mark, without fussing, got her into a chair. Nurse Kettle, as a matter of course, came forward and took the glass when Kitty had emptied it. A light and charming voice sang in the hall:

“Come away, come away, death…” and Mark turned sharply.

“I’ll go,” his grandmother said, “and I’ll fetch you when she asks for you.”

With a swifter movement than either her size or her age would have seemed to allow she had gone into the hall. The little song of death stopped, and the door shut behind Lady Lacklander.

Kitty Cartarette was quieter but still caught her breath now and again in a harsh sob.

“Sorry,” she said looking from Nurse Kettle to Mark. “Thanks. It’s just the shock.”

“Yes, of course, dear,” Nurse Kettle said.

“I sort of can’t believe it. You know?”

“Yes, of course,” Mark said.

“It seems so queer… Maurice!” She looked at Mark.

“What was that,” she said, “about somebody doing it? Is it true?”

“I’m afraid it looks very much like it.”

“I’d forgotten,” she muttered vaguely. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you, and you’re a doctor, of course.” Her mouth trembled. She wiped the back of her hand over it. A trail of red was dragged across her cheek. It was a sufficient indication of her state of mind that she seemed to be unaware of it. She said, “No, it’s no good, I can’t believe it. We saw him down there, fishing.” And then she suddenly demanded, “Where’s George?”

Nurse Kettle saw Mark’s back stiffen. “My father?” he asked.

“O, yes, of course, I’d forgotten,” she said again, shaking her head. “He’s your father. Silly of me.”

“He’s looking after one or two things that must be done. You see, the police have had to be told at once.”

“Is George getting the police?”

“He’s rung them up. He will, I think, come here as soon as he can.”

“Yes,” she said. “I expect he will.”

Nurse Keetle saw George’s son compress his lips. At that moment George himself walked in and the party became even less happily assorted.

Nurse Kettle had acquired a talent for retiring into whatever background presented itself, and this talent she now exercised. She moved through the open French window onto the terrace, shut the door after her and sat on a garden seat within view of the drawing-room but facing across the now completely dark valley. Mark, who would perhaps have liked to follow her, stood his ground. His father, looking extraordinarily handsome and not a little self-conscious, went straight to Kitty. She used the gesture that Mark had found embarrassing and extended her left hand to Sir George, who kissed it with an air nicely compounded of embarrassment, deference, distress and devotion.

“My dear Kitty,” said Sir George in a special voice, “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. What can one say! What can one do!”

He apparently had already said and done more than any of the others to assuage Kitty’s distress, for it began perceptibly to take on a more becoming guise. She looked into his eyes and said, “How terribly good of you to come.” He sat down beside her, began to pat her hand, noticed his son and said, “I’ll have a word with you in a moment, old boy.”

Mark was about to retire to the terrace when the door opened and his grandmother looked in. “Mark?” she said. He went quickly into the hall. “In the study,” Lady Lacklander said, and in a moment he was there with Rose sobbing bitterly in his arms.

“You need pay no attention to me,” Lady Lacklander said. “I am about to telephone New Scotland Yard. Your father tells me they have been called in, and I propose to send for Helena Alleyn’s boy.”

Mark, who was kissing Rose’s hair, left off abruptly to say, “Can you mean Chief Inspector Alleyn, Gar?”

“I don’t know what his rank is, but he used to be a nice boy twenty-five years ago before he left the Service to become a constable. Central? This is Hermione, Lady Lacklander. I want New Scotland Yard, London. The call is extremely urgent as it is concerned with murder. Yes, murder. You will oblige me by putting it through at once. Thank you.” She glanced at Mark. “In the circumstances,” she said, “I prefer to deal with a gent.”

Mark had drawn Rose to a chair and was kneeling beside her, gently wiping away her tears.

“Hullo!” Lady Lacklander said after an extremely short delay. “New Scotland Yard. This is Hermione, Lady Lacklander, speaking. I wish to speak to Mr. Roderick Alleyn. If he is not on your premises, you will no doubt know where he is to be found. I don’t know his rank…”

Her voice, aristocratic, cool, sure of itself, went steadily on. Mark dabbed at Rose’s eyes. His father, alone with Kitty in the drawing-room, muttered agitatedly, “…I’m sorry it’s hit you so hard, Kit.”

Kitty looked wanly at him. “I suppose it’s the shock,” she said, and added without rancour, “I’m not as tough as you all think.” He protested chaotically. “O,” she said quite gently, “I know what they’ll say about me. Not you, p’raps, but the others. They’ll say it’s cupboard-sorrow. ‘That’s what’s upsetting the widow,’ they’ll say. I’m the outsider, George.”

“Don’t, Kit. Kit, listen…” He began to plead with her. “There’s something I must ask you — if you’d just have a look for — you know — that thing — I mean — if it was found—”

She listened to him distractedly. “It’s awful,” George said. “I know it’s awful to talk like this now, Kitty, but all the same — all the same — with so much at stake. I know you’ll understand.” Kitty said, “Yes. All right. Yes. But let me think.”

Nurse Kettle out on the terrace was disturbed by the spatter of a few giant rain drops.

“There’s going to be a storm,” she said to herself. “A summer storm.”

And since she would have been out of place in the drawing-room and in the study, she took shelter in the hall. She had no sooner done so than the storm broke in a downpour over the valley of the Chyne.

Alleyn and Fox had worked late, tidying up the last phase of a tedious case of embezzlement. At twelve minutes to ten they had finished. Alleyn shut the file with a slap of his hand.

“Dreary fellow,” he said. “I hope they give him the maximum. Damn’ good riddance. Come back with me and have a drink, Br’er Fox. I’m a grass-widower and hating it. Troy and Ricky are in the country. What do you say?”

Fox drew his hand across the lower part of his face. “Well, now, Mr. Alleyn, that sounds very pleasant,” he said. “I say yes and thank you.”

“Good.” Alleyn looked round the familiar walls of the Chief Inspector’s room at New Scotland Yard. “There are occasions,” he said, “when one suddenly sees one’s natural habitat as if for the first time. It is a terrifying sensation. Come on. Let’s go while the going’s good.”

They were half-way to the door when the telephone rang. Fox said, “Ah, hell!” without any particular animosity and went back to answer it.

“Chief Inspector’s room,” he said heavily. “Well, yes, he’s here. Just.” He listened for a moment, gazing blandly at his superior. “Say I’m dead,” Alleyn suggested moodily. Fox laid his great palm over the receiver. “They make out it’s a Lady Lacklander on call from somewhere called Swevenings,” he said.

“Lady Lacklander? Good Lord! That’s old Sir Harold Lacklander’s widow,” Alleyn ejaculated. “What’s up with her, I wonder.”

“Chief Inspector Alleyn will take the call,” Fox said and held out the receiver.

Alleyn sat on his desk and put the receiver to his ear. An incisive elderly voice was saying “… I don’t know his rank and I don’t know whether he’s on your premises or not, but you’ll be good enough if you please to find Mr. Roderick Alleyn for me. It is Hermione, Lady Lacklander, speaking. Is that New Scotland Yard and have you heard me? I wish to speak to…”

Alleyn announced himself cautiously into the receiver. “Indeed!” the voice rejoined. “Why on earth couldn’t you say so in the first instance? Hermione Lacklander speaking. I won’t waste time reminding you about myself. You’re Helena Alleyn’s boy and I want an assurance from you. A friend of mine has just been murdered,” the voice continued, “and I hear the local police are calling in your people. I would greatly prefer you, personally, to take charge of the whole thing. That can be arranged, I imagine?”

Alleyn, controlling his astonishment, said, “I’m afraid only if the Assistant Commissioner happens to give me the job.”

“Who’s he?”

Alleyn told her.

“Put me through to him,” the voice commanded.

A second telephone began to ring. Fox answered it and in a moment held up a warning hand.

“Will you wait one second, Lady Lacklander?” Alleyn asked. Her voice, however, went incisively on, and he stifled it against his chest. “What the hell is it, Fox?” he asked irritably.

“Central office, sir. Orders for Swevenings. Homicide.”

“Blistered apes! Us?”

“Us,” said Fox stolidly.

Alleyn spoke into his own receiver. “Lady Lacklander? I am taking this case, it appears.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Lady Lacklander. “I suggest you look pretty sharp about it. Au revoir,” she added with unexpected modishness, and rang off.

Fox, in the meantime, had noted down instructions. “I’ll inform Mr. Alleyn,” he was saying. “Yes, very good, I’ll inform him. Thank you.” He hung up his receiver. “It’s a Colonel Cartarette,” he said. “We go to a place called Chyning in Barfordshire, where the local sergeant will meet us. Matter of two hours. Everything’s laid on down below.”

Alleyn had already collected his hat, coat and professional case. Fox followed his example. They went out together through the never-sleeping corridors.

It was a still, hot night. Sheet-lightning played fretfully over the East End. The air smelt of petrol and dust. “Why don’t we join the River Police?” Alleyn grumbled. “One long water carnival.”

A car waited for them with Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson and their gear already on board. As they drove out of the Yard, Big Ben struck ten.

“That’s a remarkable woman, Fox,” Alleyn said. “She’s got a brain like a turbine and a body like a tun. My mother, who has her share of guts, was always terrified of Hermione Lacklander.”

“Is that so, Mr. Alleyn? Her husband died only the other day, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. A quarter of a century ago he was one of my great white chiefs in the D.S. Solemn chap… just missed being brilliant. She was a force to be reckoned with even then. What’s she doing in this party? What’s the story, by the way?”

“A Colonel Maurice Cartarette found dead with head injuries by a fishing-stream. The C.C. down there says they’re all tied up with the Royal Visit at Siminster and are understaffed, anyway, so they’ve called us in.”

“Who found him?”

“A district nurse. About an hour ago.”

“Fancy,” said Alleyn mildly, and after a pause, “I wonder just why that old lady has come plunging in after me.”

“I daresay,” Fox said with great simplicity, “she has a fancy for someone of her own class.”

Alleyn replied absently, “Do you, now?” and it said something for their friendship that neither of them felt the smallest embarrassment. Alleyn continued to ruminate on the Lacklanders. “Before the war,” he said, “the old boy was Chargé d’Affaires at Zlomce. The Special Branch got involved for a time, I remember. There was a very nasty bit of leakage: a decoded message followed by the suicide of the chap concerned. He was said to have been in cahoots with known agents. I was with the Special Branch at that time and had quite a bit to do with it. Perhaps the dowager wishes to revive old memories or something. Or perhaps she merely runs the village of Swevenings, murdered colonels and all, with the same virtuosity she brought to her husband’s public life. Do you know Swevenings, Br’er Fox?”

“Can’t say I do, sir.”

“I do. Troy did a week’s painting there a summer or two ago. It’s superficially pretty and fundamentally beautiful,” Alleyn said. “Quaint as hell, but take a walk after dusk and you wouldn’t be surprised at anything you met. It’s one of the oldest in England. ‘Swevenings,’ meaning Dreams. There was some near-prehistoric set-to in the valley, I forget what, and another during Bolingbroke’s rebellion and yet another in the Civil Wars. This Colonel’s blood is not the first soldier’s, by a long chalk, to be spilt at Swevenings.”

“They will do it,” Fox said cryptically and with resignation. For a long time they drove on in a silence broken at long intervals by the desultory conversation of old friends.

“We’re running into a summer storm,” Alleyn said presently. Giant drops appeared on the windscreen and were followed in seconds by a blinding downpour.

“Nice set-up for field-work,” Fox grumbled.

“It may be local. Although… no, by gum, we’re nearly there. This is Chyning. Chyning: meaning, I fancy, a yawn or yawning.”

“Yawns and dreams,” Fox said. “Funny sort of district! What language would that be, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Chaucerian English, only don’t depend on me. The whole district is called the Vale of Traunce, or brown-study. It all sounds hellishly quaint, but that’s how it goes. There’s the blue lamp.”

The air smelt fresher when they got out. Rain drummed on roofs and flagstones and cascaded down the sides of houses. Alleyn led the way into a typical county police-station and was greeted by a tall sandy-haired sergeant.

“Chief Inspector Alleyn, sir? Sergeant Oliphant. Very glad to see you, sir.”

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said, introducing him. There followed a solemn shaking of hands and a lament that has become increasingly common of late years in the police force. “We’re that short of chaps in the county,” Sergeant Oliphant said, “we don’t know which way to turn if anything of this nature crops up. The Chief Constable said to me, “Can we do it, Oliphant? Suppose we call on Siminster, can we do it? And look, Mr. Alleyn, I had to say no, we can’t.”

Fox said, “T’ch.”

“Well, exactly, Mr. Fox,” Oliphant said. “If you haven’t got the chaps, it’s no good blundering in, is it? I’ve left my one P.C. in charge of the body, and that reduces my staff to me. Shall we move off, Mr. Alleyn? You’ll find it wettish.”

Alleyn and Fox accompanied the sergeant in his car while Bailey, Thompson and the Yard driver followed their lead. On the way Sergeant Oliphant gave a business-like report. Sir George Lacklander had rung up Sir James Punston, the Chief Constable, who in turn had rung Oliphant at a quarter to nine. Oliphant and his constable had then gone to Bottom Meadow and had found Dr. Mark Lacklander, Nurse Kettle and the body of Colonel Cartarette. They had taken a brief statement from Nurse Kettle and asked her to remain handy. Dr. Lacklander, who, in Oliphant’s presence, made a very brief examination of the body, had then gone to break the news to the relatives of the deceased, taking Nurse Kettle with him. The sergeant had returned to Chyning and reported to the Chief Constable, who decided to call in the Yard. The constable had remained on guard by the body with Colonel Cartarette’s spaniel, the latter having strenuously resisted all attempts to remove him.

“Did you form any opinion at all, Oliphant?” Alleyn asked. This is the most tactful remark a C.I.D. man can make to a county officer, and Oliphant coruscated under its influence.

“Not to say opinion, sir,” he said. “Not to say that. One thing I did make sure of was not to disturb anything. He’s lying on a patch of shingle screened in by a half-circle of willows and cut off on the open side by the stream. He’s lying on his right side, kind of curled up as if he’d been bowled over from a kneeling position, like. His hat was over his face. Nurse Kettle moved it when she found him, and Dr. Lacklander moved it again when he examined the wound which is in the left temple. A dirty great puncture,” the sergeant continued, easing off his official manner a point or two, “with what the doctor calls extensive fractures all round it. Quite turned my chap’s stomach, drunks-in-charge and disorderly behaviour being the full extent of his experience.”

Alleyn and Fox having chuckled in the right place, the sergeant continued. “No sign of the weapon, so far as we could make out, flashing our torches round. I was particular not to go hoofing over the ground.”

“Admirable,” said Alleyn.

“Well,” said Sergeant Oliphant, “it’s what we’re told, sir, isn’t it?”

“Notice anything at all out of the way?” Alleyn asked. The question was inspired more by kindliness than curiosity, and the sergeant’s reaction surprised him. Oliphant brought his two freckled hams of hands down on the driving-wheel and made a complicated snorting noise. “Out of the way!” he shouted. “Ah, my God, I’ll say we did. Out of the way! Tell me, now, sir, are you a fly-fisherman?”

“Only fair to middling to worse. I do when I get the chance. Why?”

“Now listen,” Sergeant Oliphant said, quite abandoning his official position. “There’s a dirty great fish in this Chyne here would turn your guts over for you. Pounds if he’s an ounce, he is. Old in cunning, he is, wary and sullen and that lordly in his lurkings and slinkings he’d break your heart. Sometimes he’ll rise like a monster,” said Sergeant Oliphant, urging his car up Watt’s Hill, “and snap, he’s took it, though that’s only three times. Once being the deceased’s doing a matter of a fortnight ago, which he left his cast in his jaws, he being a mighty fighter. And once the late squire Sir Harold Lacklander, which he lost him through being, as the man himself frankly admitted, overzealous in the playing of him, and NOW,” the sergeant shouted, “NOW, for the last and final cast, hooked, played and landed by the poor Colonel, sir, and lying there by his dead body, or I can’t tell a five-pound trout from a stickleback. Well, if he had to die, he couldn’t have had a more glorious end. The Colonel, I mean, Mr. Alleyn, not the Old ’Un,” said Sergeant Oliphant.

They had followed Watt’s Lane down into the valley and up the slope through blinding rain to the village. Oliphant pulled up at a spot opposite the Boy and Donkey. A figure in a mackintosh and tweed hat stood in the lighted doorway.

“The Chief Constable, sir,” said Oliphant. “Sir James Punston. He said he’d drive over and meet you.”

“I’ll have a word with him, before we go on. Wait a moment.”

Alleyn crossed the road and introduced himself. The Chief Constable was a weather-beaten, tough-looking man who had been a Chief Commissioner of Police in India.

“Thought I’d better come over,” Sir James said, “and take a look at this show. Damn’ bad show it is. Damn’ nice fellow, Cartarette. Can’t imagine who’d want to set about him, but no doubt you’ll be able to tell us. I’ll come down with you. Filthy night, isn’t it?”

The Yard car had drawn up behind Oliphant’s. Bailey, Thompson and the driver got out and unloaded their gear with the economic movements of long usage and a stubborn disregard of the rain. The two parties joined up and led by the Chief Constable climbed a stile and followed a rough path down a drenched hillside. Their torches flashed on rods of rain and dripping furze bushes.

“They call this River Path,” the Chief Constable said. “It’s a right-of-way through the Nunspardon estate and comes out at Bottom Bridge, which we have to cross. I hear the dowager rang you up.”

“She did indeed,” Alleyn said.

“Lucky they decided it was your pigeon anyway. She’d have raised hell if they hadn’t,”

“I don’t see where she fits in.”

“She doesn’t in any ordinary sense of the phrase. She’s merely taken it upon herself ever since she came to Nunspardon to run Chyning and Swevenings. For some reason they seem to like it. Survival of the feudal instinct, you might think. It does survive, you know, in isolated pockets. Swevenings is an isolated pocket and Hermione, Lady Lacklander, has got it pretty well where she wants it.” Sir James continued in this local strain as they slid and squelched down the muddy hillside. He gave Alleyn an account of the Cartarette family and their neighbours with a particularly racy profile of Lady Lacklander herself.

“There’s the local gossip for you,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody and has done so for centuries. There have been no stockbroking overflows into Swevenings. The Lacklanders, the Phinns, the Syces and the Cartarettes have lived in their respective houses for a great many generations. They’re all on terms of intimacy, except that of late years there’s been, I fancy, a little coolness between the Lacklanders and old Occy Phinn. And now I come to think of it, I fancy Maurice Cartarette fell out with Phinn over fishing or something. But then old Occy is really a bit mad. Rows with everybody. Cartarette, on the other hand, was a very pleasant, nice chap. Oddly formal and devilishly polite, though, especially with people he didn’t like or had fallen out with. Not that he was a quarrelsome chap. Far from it. I have heard, by the way,” Sir James gossiped, “that there’s been some sort of coldness between Cartarette and that ass George Lacklander. However! And after all that, here’s the bridge.”

As they crossed it, they could hear the sound of rain beating on the surface of the stream. On the far side their feet sank into mud. They turned left on the rough path. Alleyn’s shoes filled with water and water poured off the brim of his hat.

“Hell of a thing to happen, this bloody rain,” said the Chief Constable. “Ruin the terrain.”

A wet branch of willow slapped Alleyn’s face. On the hill to their right they could see the lighted windows of three houses. As they walked on, however, distant groups of trees intervened and the windows were shut off.

“Can the people up there see into the actual area?” Alleyn asked.

Sergeant Oliphant said, “No, sir. Their own trees as well as this belt of willows screen it. They can see the stretch on the far side above the bridge, and a wee way below it.”

“That’s Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s preserve, isn’t it?” asked the Chief Constable. “Above the bridge?”

“Mr. Danberry-Phinn?” Alleyn said, sharply.

“Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn, to give you the complete works. The ‘Danberry’ isn’t insisted upon. He’s the local eccentric I told you about. He lives in the top house up there. We don’t have a village idiot in Swevenings; we have a bloody-minded old gentleman. It’s more classy,” said Sir James, acidly.

“Danberry-Phinn,” Alleyn repeated. “Isn’t there some connection there with the Lacklanders?”

Sir James said shortly, “Both Swevenings men, of course.” His voice faded uncertainly as he floundered into a patch of reeds. Somewhere close at hand a dog howled dismally and a deep voice apostrophized it, “Ah, stow it, will you.” A light bobbed up ahead of them.

“Here we are,” Sir James said. “That you, Gripper?”

“Yes, sir,” said the deep voice. The mackintosh cape of uniformed constable shone in the torchlight.

“Dog still at it seemingly,” said the sergeant.

“That’s right, Mr. Oliphant. I’ve got him tethered here.” A torch flashed on Skip, tied by a handkerchief to a willow branch.

“Hullo, old fellow,” Alleyn said.

They all waited for him to go through the thicket. The constable shoved back a dripping willow branch for him.

“You’ll need to stoop a little, sir.”

Alleyn pushed through the thicket. His torchlight darted about in the rain and settled almost at once on a glistening mound.

“We got some groundsheets down and covered him,” the, sergeant said, “when it looked like rain.”

“Good.”

“And we’ve covered up the area round the corpse as best we could. Bricks and one or two planks from the old boatshed yonder. But I daresay the water’s got under just the same.”

Allyn said, “Fair enough. We couldn’t ask for better. I think before we go any nearer we’ll get photographs. Come through, Bailey. Do the best you can. As it stands and then uncovered, with all the details you can get, in case it washes out before morning. By Jove, though, I believe it’s lifting.”

They all listened. The thicket was loud with the sound of dripping foliage, but the heavy drumming of rain had stopped, and by the time Bailey had set up his camera, a waxing moon had ridden out over the valley.

When Bailey had taken his last flash-photograph of the area and the covered body, he took away the groundsheet and photographed the body again from many angles, first with the tweed hat over the face and then without it. He put his camera close to Colonel Cartarette’s face and it flashed out in the night with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Only when all this had been done, did Alleyn, walking delicately, go closer, stoop over the head and shine his torch full on the wound.

“Sharp instrument?” said Fox.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “yes, a great puncture, certainly. But could a sharp instrument do all that, Br’er Fox? No use speculating till we know what it was.” His torchlight moved away from the face and found a silver glint on a patch of grass near Colonel Cartarette’s hands and almost on the brink of the stream. “And this is the Old ’Un?” he murmured.

The Chief Constable and Sergeant Oliphant both broke into excited sounds of confirmation. The light moved to the hands, lying close together. One of them was clenched about a wisp of green.

“Cut grass,” Alleyn said. “He was going to wrap his trout in it. There’s his knife, and there’s the creel beside him.”

“What we reckoned, sir,” said the sergeant in agreement.

“Woundy great fish, isn’t it?” said the Chief Constable, and there was an involuntary note of envy in his voice.

Alleyn said, “What was the surface like before it rained?”

“Well, sir,” the sergeant volunteered, “as you see, it’s partly gravel. There was nothing to see in the willows where the ground was dry as a chip. There was what we reckoned were the deceased’s footprints on the bank where it was soft and where he’d been fishing and one or two on the earthy bits near where he fell, but I couldn’t make out anything else and we didn’t try, for fear of messing up what little there was.”

“Quite right. Will it rain again before morning?”

The three local men moved back into the meadow and looked up at the sky.

“All over, I reckon, sir,” said the sergeant.

“Set fine,” said the deep-voiced constable.

“Clearing,” said Sir James Punston.

“Cover everything up again, Sergeant, and set a watch till morning. Have we any tips of any sort about times? Anybody known to have come this way?”

“Nurse Kettle, sir, who found him. Young Dr. Lacklander came back with her to look at him, and he says he came through the valley and over the bridge earlier in the evening. We haven’t spoken to anyone else, sir.”

“How deep,” Alleyn asked, “is the stream just here?”

“About five foot,” said Sergeant Oliphant.

“Really? And he lies on his right side roughly parallel with the stream and facing it. Not more than two feet from the brink. Head pointing down-stream, feet towards the bridge. The fish lies right on the brink by the strand of grass he was cutting to wrap it in. And the wound’s in the left temple. I take it he was squatting on his heels within two feet of the brink and just about to bed his catch down in the grass. Now, if, as the heelmarks near his feet seem to indicate, he kneeled straight over into the position the body still holds, one of two things must have happened, wouldn’t you say, Br’er Fox?”

“Either,” Fox said stolidly, “he was coshed by a left-handed person standing behind him or by a right-handed person standing in front of him and at least three feet away.”

“Which would place the assailant,” said Alleyn, “about twelve inches out on the surface of the stream. Which is not as absurd as it sounds when you put it that way. All right. Let’s move on. What comes next?”

The Chief Constable, who had listened to all this in silence, now said, “I gather there’s a cry of possible witnesses waiting for you up at Hammer. That’s Cartarette’s house up here on Watt’s Hill. If you’ll forgive me, Alleyn, I won’t go up with you. Serve no useful purpose. If you want me, I’m five miles away at Tourets. Anything I can do, delighted, but sure you’d rather be left in peace. I would in my day. By the way, I’ve told them at the Boy and Donkey that you’ll probably want beds for what’s left of the night. You’ll find a room at the head of the stairs. They’ll give you an early breakfast if you leave a note. Good-night.”

He was gone before Alleyn could thank him.

With the sergeant as guide, Alleyn and Fox prepared to set out for Hammer. Alleyn had succeeded in persuading the spaniel Skip to accept them, and after one or two false starts and whimperings he followed at their heels. They used torches in order to make their way with as little blundering as possible through the grove. Oliphant, who was in the lead, suddenly uttered a violent oath.

“What is it?” Alleyn asked, startled.

“Gawd!” Oliphant said. “I thought someone was looking at me. Gawd, d’you see that!”

His wavering torchlight flickered on wet willow leaves. A pair of luminous disks stared out at them from the level of a short man’s eyes.

“Touches of surrealism,” Alleyn muttered, “in Bottom Meadow.” He advanced his own torch, and they saw a pair of spectacles caught up in a broken twig.

“We’ll pluck this fruit with grateful care,” he said and gathered the spectacles into his handkerchief.

The moon now shone on Bottom Meadow, turning the bridge and the inky shadow it cast over the broken-down boatshed and punt into a subject for a wood engraving. A group of tall reeds showed up romantically in its light, and the Chyne took on an air of enchantment.

They climbed the river path up Watt’s Hill. Skip began to whine and to wag his tail. In a moment the cause of his excitement came into view, a large tabby cat sitting on the path in the bright moonlight washing her whiskers. Skip dropped on his haunches and made a ridiculous sound in his throat. Thomasina Twitchett, for it was she, threw him an inimical glance, rolled on her back at Alleyn’s feet and trilled beguilement. Alleyn liked cats. He stooped down and found that she was in the mood to be carried. He picked her up. She kneaded his chest and advanced her nose towards his.

“My good woman,” Alleyn said, “you’ve been eating fish.”

Though he was unaware of it at the time, this was an immensely significant discovery.