The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

CHAPTER XX

The Story of a Crime

‘THE policy of laissez faire, exemplified by some of our leading statesmen during the eighteenth century,’ observed Mrs Bradley, fixing a beady, bird-like, sharp black eye upon the Vicar of Wandles Parva, who, absent-minded as usual, was endeavouring to insert a small but valuable silver vase, happily empty of water, into the right-hand pocket of his best alpaca jacket, ‘has its application even at the present day.’

‘My dear man!’ exclaimed Mrs Bryce Harringay in horror, grasping the charming little receptacle very hastily and rising to restore it to its former position on Mrs Bradley’s drawing-room mantelpiece. ‘It can’t be kleptomania in a gentleman of his profession,’ she confided in a sibilant aside to the owner of the vase, ‘so it must be pure absent-mindedness.’

‘Not kleptomania, no,’ replied Mrs Bradley composedly, but turning suddenly and terrifyingly serious. ‘That has become a mere police-court term to account for the astonishing vagaries of the idle rich.’ Her mirthless cackle added ironic corollary to the theorem.

‘I believe the young people have concluded their game,’ said Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘It sounds like it.’

‘Then I expect they would like some tea,’ said the hostess, rising to ring the bell. ‘Shall we go into the garden?’

The young people, consisting of Felicity Broome, Margery Barnes, Aubrey, and Jim, had been playing croquet on the lawn. It was a beautiful lawn, admirably kept, but none of the four cared for playing croquet upon any lawn whatsoever. However, their hostess, with a determined frown upon her forehead and a vinegary grin upon her lips, had insisted upon pressing mallets and balls upon them, and herself had placed the hoops ready for play. It was impossible to refuse to fall in with the arrangements. Mrs Bryce Harringay beamed approval.

‘A most delightful pastime, most!’ she observed largely, waving her plump white hands in a kind of careless benediction upon the incensed Aubrey, the embarrassed James, the giggling Margery, and the shrugging philosophical Miss Broome. ‘So good for the manners! So suitable for a summer day! A most attractive game, most!’

‘There,’ said Mrs Bradley to Aubrey, who promptly smacked his ball through the open gate into the road, where it trickled merrily downhill for a hundred yards or more, ‘now you can squabble and fight and lose your tempers and accuse each other of cheating for at least an hour, while we old, decrepit persons engage one another in gentle conversation punctuated by snatches of sleep.’

She waved a skinny claw at them, watched Aubrey stalk moodily off to recover his ball, and then she went into the house.

At tea the conversation turned inevitably upon the murder. ‘I wonder who on earth it can be? The inspector is getting absolute wind-up. I should think the police will be compelled to make some sort of a move soon, with all the newspapers shouting at them like this,’ said Aubrey to Mrs Bradley.

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I wonder they don’t pay more attention to Mr Savile,’ said Felicity. ‘He can’t show an alibi for the evening of June 22nd. He attempted to kill you in the Manor Woods –’

Mrs Bradley chuckled.

‘Aubrey here told the inspector so,’ she said, ‘and there is no doubt that Sethleigh used to meet Lulu Hirst in the Cottage and also in the Manor Woods. And Mr Wright did some curious things on the night of the murder. So did Mr Broome,’ she added, grinning.

‘Attempted to kill you?’ exclaimed Mrs Bryce Harringay. ‘Good gracious! When was this?’

‘Aubrey will remember, I dare say,’ replied Mrs Bradley comfortably. She selected a piece of cake with careful discrimination. ‘He was with me at the time, as I said. We were in the Manor Woods, and I was attempting to reconstruct the crime from the data which we had at our disposal at that time. I imagine that I was speaking in a loud voice. Suddenly an arrow – a cloth-yard, goose-feathered, Battle of Agincourt affair with a great iron barb and a most professionally Robin Hood flight, came whizzing past my ear and stuck in the trunk of a tree on the farther side of the clearing. The police theory seems to agree with Aubrey’s idea that the arrow was shot with the deliberate intention of putting an end to my quiet and harmless existence. All the same. Savile came forward immediately and apologized quite nicely for his carelessness.’

The vicar laughed.

‘Depends what meaning you attach to the word “carelessness”,’ said Jim Redsey. ‘He probably meant he was sorry he’d made such a boss-eyed shot.’

Mrs Bradley shook her head, and Felicity Broome broke in.

‘I should think he would have run away if he really attempted your life,’ she said. ‘I mean, he wouldn’t have wanted to advertise his presence exactly, would he?’

‘Intent to deceive,’ said Aubrey, eating raspberries and cream with aplomb. He scooped up a delicious spoonful.

‘Greedy pig,’ said Margery Barnes indulgently. ‘Pass the cream.’

‘No, honestly,’ continued Aubrey, passing it, ‘I expect he thought somebody might have seen the shot, and wanted to lull their suspicions – and Mrs Bradley’s, too.’

‘Well, I certainly accepted his apology in the spirit which appeared to inspire it,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘I wonder someone doesn’t confess to the murder and have done with it,’ said Margery. ‘I mean, if I had committed a murder I should be in such a funk that I should throw in my hand and get the hanging over, I think.’ And she shivered at the thought.

‘Oh, I don’t know why one should confess,’ protested the vicar, passing his cup for more tea. Mrs Bradley took the cup from his hand, and he began to drum on the table with his long fingers. ‘After all, there is no need for a fellow to queer his own pitch, is there? It’s up to the police to prove he did it.’

‘You know,’ said Felicity, when the servants had cleared away the remains of the meal, and all were lounging comfortably in garden chairs, ‘I can’t quite see anybody doing all that.’

‘All what?’ Margery Barnes looked across at her.

‘Well, all the horrid part. I mean, well, take Mr Savile, for instance. He always seemed to me such a feeble specimen, somehow.’

‘Psychologically it would be possible for such a man to commit such a murder,’ pronounced Mrs Bradley, ‘and I told the inspector so! Not that it seemed to carry much weight, I must say. He could have done it; so could Cleaver Wright, I think. Dr Barnes would be capable of dismembering the body, owing, of course, to his training as a surgeon rather than, let us say, to his natural gifts!’

‘The police don’t worry about psychology,’ said Jim, grinning lazily, ‘and yet they seem to catch a good many murderers.’

‘And hang ’em, too,’ said the vicar, puffing contentedly at his pipe as he applied a match to the bowl.

Mrs Bradley sat up, and looked from one to the other of them.

‘Is that a challenge?’ she asked. Out from between her two rows of small, even teeth came a little red tongue. She passed it very slowly over her top lip. Her smile did not alter very much while she did it, and yet Jim Redsey wriggled uneasily in the long, well-cushioned, comfortable chair, and averted his eyes. The vicar was busily applying another match to his pipe, so that he saw neither the smile nor the tiny movement of the tongue, both so suggestive of a cruel beast of prey in lazy contemplation of a meal he is in no hungry haste to devour. . . .

Mrs Bradley lay back again.

‘The police are usually guided by what is known as circumstantial evidence,’ she said. ‘After all, there can seldom be any eye-witness of a crime like murder, and therefore direct evidence of guilt is difficult to obtain. Circumstantial evidence is the next best thing. That is about all which can be said for it. Sometimes it leads the police aright, and sometimes it leads them entirely wrong. Take this murder of Rupert Sethleigh. Let us work it out this way:

‘At seven fifty-five on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd, Rupert Sethleigh and his cousin, James Redsey, went into the Manor Woods to continue an argument which had degenerated into a bitter quarrel.

‘They had not been in the woods very long – put it that they walked to the Stone of Sacrifice, probably by devious ways, and that it took them ten minutes – when, in that rather sinister place, the quarrel became so bitter that Redsey turned upon Sethleigh and knocked him down. As he fell, Sethleigh struck his head, probably pretty hard. At any rate, his cousin firmly believed that he had killed him. He was panic-stricken at what he thought he had done, and, instead of going for assistance or doing any of the sensible, level-headed, humane things which ought to have suggested themselves to his mind under the circumstances, he took fright, hid what he supposed was the dead body of Sethleigh in a hazel copse, and made for the “Queen’s Head”, where he intended to perform for himself the double service of proving as plausible an alibi as the circumstances would permit, and of drinking himself into incoherence, helplessness, and forgetfulness.’

Jim writhed. Felicity gazed at him reproachfully, and Margery giggled nervously.

‘Well, it was not a very plausible alibi, because, unluckily for Redsey, it was known to Mrs Bryce Harringay that he had accompanied his cousin into the Manor Woods, and no one could be found who would swear to having seen Sethleigh alive after the woodland had swallowed them both up.

‘Now it seems practically certain from the police point of view that Sethleigh was not dead when Redsey fled from the woods to the public house. They think he was stunned. The evidence offered in support of this contention is that Redsey would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to dismember the body. He could prove satisfactorily where he was all that Sunday night, and that he was in and about the Manor House all day Monday, and it seems certain that he could not have transported the body into Bossbury, introduced it into Binks’s shop, and dismembered it between the hours of eight a.m., when the market opened, and nine-thirty a.m., when Binks and his assistant entered the shop on Tuesday morning. For these reasons the police assumed that he was not the murderer, unless he had an accomplice who performed the more gruesome part of the task for him. As no such accomplice could be traced, the police assumed, as I say, that Redsey’s blow had stunned his cousin, and had not caused his death.

‘That disposes of Redsey’s part in the matter. That he spent part of the Monday night in digging a grave in the woods for the reception of the body, and searched, without success, in the bushes near the clearing for the corpse which had disappeared, is further evidence in support of the theory that he had nothing to do with dismembering the body.

‘Now I come to a peculiar circumstance which has been allowed to waste its full significance upon the desert air until this moment. An axiom among historians and great detectives is to beware of the bit of evidence which refuses to fit. These little awkward facts are keys to mysteries. Now, in this case, we have such an awkward fact in a remark made by Margery Barnes to –’

Margery sat up with a jerk, consternation written all over her ingenuous countenance.

‘Me?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, but I’m sure –’

‘To Felicity Broome, in my presence,’ continued Mrs Bradley, proceeding serenely with her argument. ‘The remark was to the effect that at about nine o’clock or just after, on that fateful Sunday evening, being in the Manor Woods for a purpose which had nothing to do with us or with the murder of Sethleigh, she saw a man come crawling out of some bushes behind the circle of pines which mark the clearing. Now, rather naturally, I think, considering the circumstances, afterwards she assumed that this crawling man must have been Rupert Sethleigh, and that, through having seen him alive after nine o’clock, she was in a position to prove positively that James Redsey could not have killed him at about five minutes past eight.

‘Now, I refused to have anything to do with that part of Margery’s tale for two reasons. First, she did not actually recognize the man as Sethleigh; she merely assumed, after she had heard that James Redsey might be accused of the murder, that a man crawling out of the bushes in the Manor Woods on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd, must necessarily have been the man James Redsey knocked down and whose body he hid. The second point is a good deal more important because, after all, although the idea that this man must have been Sethleigh was mere auto-suggestion on Margery’s part, yet the notion was far from improbable. It might very well have been Sethleigh whom she saw, except for one strikingly important fact.

‘The human eye, in moments of terror, acts like the snapshot attachment of a camera. There is no long exposure, as, to speak fancifully, we get when we calmly admire a fine view. No! The mind clicks a shutter – down and up! I am terrified! I cry out! I run! And one distinct impression of the thing which terrified me remains upon my mind. Margery retained such an impression. When you were telling us the tale, your words, Margery, my dear, were these: “And a man came slowly crawling out of the bushes like a great black slugh!

‘Now, at nine o’clock on a midsummer night it is very far from dark. It might have been dark in those woods under the trees and among the bushes at that time, but Margery saw this man in the large circular clearing where the Stone of Sacrifice stands. It would have been as light there as in any other open space – light enough to play tennis, for example. Well, I took particular care to find out what Rupert Sethleigh was wearing that night. So did the police. But my reason was not theirs. Never mind. I will come back to that, perhaps, in a moment. The point is this: instead of the dinner-suit one might suppose that Rupert Sethleigh would be wearing, he had on that evening a white tennis shirt and light-grey flannel trousers.’

‘Aha!’ said Aubrey Harringay. ‘If Margery had really seen old Rupert, you mean she couldn’t have thought he looked black?’

‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Bradley, beaming upon him fondly and causing him to feel exactly three and a half years old.

There was a long pause.

‘Then who was it I saw?’ asked Margery at last, in a queer, frightened tone. She glanced hastily behind her, and then sat up and checked off the names on her fingers.

‘It wasn’t Rupert Sethleigh. You’ve proved that. It wasn’t Jim Redsey, because we know he was in the “Queen’s Head” at that time. It wasn’t Cleaver Wright, because he was there too, I suppose, or on his way, at any rate; and, anyway, I feel sure the man was bigger than Mr Wright –’

‘A good point, but it doesn’t do to feel too sure about a thing like that. You didn’t allow yourself much time to look, remember. Personally, I think you would have had no difficulty in recognising Mr Wright, had it been he.’

Margery blushed.

‘It might have been Mr Savile, mightn’t it?’ she suggested.

‘It might.’ Mrs Bradley put her head on one side and half closed her eyes. ‘And it might have been your father –’

‘Father? Oh, but –’

‘Do you know where your father was at nine o’clock that night?’

‘I understand he was at the major’s.’

‘Very well. That’s a thing that can be proved. Go on. We’ll assume for the moment that he was at the major’s.’

‘I can’t think of anybody else! Oh, yes!’ She glanced mischievously at the Reverend Stephen Broome. His pipe was well alight now. He was sprawling back in a deck-chair with his black shining alpaca jacket wide open, showing his black clerical vest and the little gold crucifix he wore. His long, black-trousered legs were stretched out in front of him, and his large, strong, long-fingered hands were clasped behind his head.

Mrs Bradley chuckled.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘his clothes are certainly black enough, and he asked for it just now! He shall have it, too! We will assume that it was the Vicar of Wandles Parva whom you saw crawling out of the bushes, and we will try our circumstantial evidence on him. Mr Broome!’ She prodded him in the stomach with her mauve and white parasol. ‘Wake up!’

‘Eh?’ said the vicar, who had been far away, as usual. ‘I beg your pardon?’ He raised himself and blinked at her with his heavily lidded blue-grey eyes.

‘Where were you on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.

‘At church, I expect.’

‘Yes. And after church?’

‘Went for a walk, I expect. I generally do, while Felicity gets the supper.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Haven’t the least idea. Round and about, you know.’ He lay back in his chair again, and puffed away at his pipe.

‘We’ll assume he went for his walk in the Manor Woods,’ said Mrs Bradley to Margery, disregarding the vicar’s shake of the head. ‘Now, then.’

‘You must go on,’ said Margery. ‘I can’t get any farther.’

‘Very well. At five minutes past eight we see Rupert Sethleigh stretched senseless on the ground. James Redsey catches hold of him under the arms and drags him into the bushes. James disappears in the direction of the Bossbury road, en route for the public house. In a few minutes Rupert regains consciousness. The church service of Evening Prayer is concluded at a quarter to eight. The vicar leaves the building at eight o’clock perhaps –’

‘Five to,’ came in lazy tones from behind the pipe.

‘Very well, Mr Broome. It makes it all the worse for you. Gives you five more minutes for the murder. At five minutes to eight he goes off for his walk. He enters the Manor Woods by the wicket gate. He walks along the path which leads to the clearing. He is just in time to see the cousins quarrel, and he witnesses the blow which stretched Sethleigh senscless on the ground. He marks the spot where Redsey hides the body. Influenced unconsciously by Redsey’s action in dragging his cousin in among the bushes, he concludes that Sethleigh is dead. He hates Sethleigh. When Redsey has fled from the woods, the vicar parts the bushes and has a look at the man he loathes.’

‘The man he loathes?’ said two voices.

‘Of course,’ replied Mrs Bradley, surprised. ‘Everybody who met him seems to have detested Rupert Sethleigh. Why should the vicar be any exception?’

‘His cloth,’ suggested Mrs Bryce Harringay in honeyed tones, directing a languishing glance at the sprawling figure of the Reverend Stephen Broome. ‘The feelings of an ordained priest –’

‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Mrs Bradley brusquely. ‘An ordained priest feels like any other father of a charming daughter, I suppose? Why shouldn’t he?’

Felicity turned her nose up.

The vicar went on smoking – less placidly. A slight frown gathered between his contemplative eyes.

Margery Barnes held up a shapely bare arm and eyed its contours with artless satisfaction.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, under her breath. ‘No,’ she added immediately.

‘Go on,’ said the vicar. ‘Don’t mind me. I shall go to sleep as soon as I’ve finished this pipe.’

‘By the way,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘do you carry your tobacco in a pouch?’

‘Used to,’ replied the Reverend Stephen Broome.

‘What do you use now?’

The vicar looked embarrassed.

‘Well – er – as a matter of fact, you see –’ he began confusedly.

The company sat up and began to look interested. Felicity scowled, and glared at Jim Redsey, who was grinning broadly.

The half-amused tone in Mrs Bradley’s voice had gone when next she spoke. Her words seemed almost unwilling to issue forth.

‘When the vicar found Sethleigh he had an unpleasant shock,’ she said.

The vicar’s unhappy expression changed to one of thoughtful serenity at the resumption of the tale. He lay comfortably back in his chair and closed his eyes.

‘He found that Sethleigh was not dead,’ contributed Aubrey.

‘Thereupon, although he was disappointed and furious to think that this man had escaped,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘he helped him out of the bushes, and Sethleigh lay down on the Stone of Sacrifice to recover. The sight of his prostrate form incensed the vicar to the point of madness. He drew out his penknife –’

‘Never carry one,’ came in muffled tones from behind the pipe.

‘And stabbed Sethleigh in the throat.’

Margery Barnes glanced fearfully behind her. Felicity said crossly:

‘What nonsense!’

‘Then he heard voices,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, unperturbed by this frank comment, ‘the voices of Margery Barnes and Cleaver Wright. Hastily he lowered the body of Sethleigh to the ground on the side of the Stone which faces the Manor House. Then, stooping low so that the Stone would cover him, he entered the woods on the house side, and gradually worked his way among the trees and bushes until he had partially compassed a circular course, and was hidden in the bushes – where, Margery?’

Margery sat up, blushing hotly. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, met Mrs Bradley’s basilisk gaze, and was prompted to reply:

‘Do you mean where did I see that man come crawling out? Oh – er – well, it was about opposite the right-hand side of the Stone if you had your back to the Bossbury road.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a courteous inclination of the head. ‘Well,’ she continued abruptly, ‘when Margery fled from Cleaver Wright, that young man, finding no pleasure, but rather a somewhat ludicrous dismay, in finding himself left seated upon the pine-needles, got up and strolled across the clearing. His experience of women taught him that the chances were in favour of Margery’s return when she recovered from the fright he had given her –’

‘I wouldn’t have gone back there for anything,’ declared Margery vehemently.

‘So he walked round the Stone to examine it. The thing has its fascination. On the farther side of it he came upon Sethleigh’s body. He knelt to examine it. In doing so he got a good deal of blood on to the knees of his trousers. Now mark the sequel to that. The corpse had bled from the neck. There was no blood probably on Sethleigh’s trousers. They were grey flannels supported merely by –’ She glanced enquiringly at Mrs Bryce Harringay.

‘A coloured silk scarf, I believe,’ supplied that lady. ‘But I really must say, Mrs Bradley –’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘A coloured silk scarf. Cleaver Wright is quick-witted. He realized that Sethleigh had been murdered. He felt the blood of Sethleigh wet against his shins. At any second Margery Barnes might return.’

‘Ugh! Don’t!’ screamed Margery, covering her face.

‘So Wright hastily dragged off the trousers of the corpse, pulled off his own flannels –’ She glanced enquiringly at Margery. Aubrey tapped the girl on the arm to attract her attention. Margery lowered her hands and nodded.

‘Yes, he was wearing grey flannel trousers that evening,’ she admitted.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bradley, satisfied. ‘I knew it. He then left his own trousers lying on the ground and darted into the woods, where he assumed the nether garments of the murdered man. Then he emerged from the bushes, went with all speed to the “Queen’s Head”, and, fearful lest any undetected bloodstains might be visible upon his clothing, he promptly picked a quarrel with the biggest young fellow there, and got himself so badly knocked about that no one would suppose any blood on his person to be other than his own blood from his poor nose’ – she glanced with affected commiseration at Margery – ‘or his poor lip.’ She smiled with quiet enjoyment.

‘Brains,’ said Aubrey Harringay admiringly. ‘Bright man!’

‘I agree,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly.

Felicity Broome sat noticeably still and mute. The vicar knocked out his pipe against the wooden arm of Mrs Bryce Harringay’s deck-chair, lay back, and composed himself for slumber.

‘Well,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘the vicar was much intrigued by Wright’s performance with the trousers, for he was too far away to realize the implication or the significance of it. He did realize very clearly, however, that Wright had seen the dead body. That was exceedingly awkward. It meant that if possible the body had to be disposed of. He crawled towards it. It was then that Margery saw him. He realized that she had seen him, did not know whether she had recognized him, but trusted she had not. He then took a big risk. He lifted Sethleigh’s body in his arms – he is a very strong man, remember – and carried him the shortest way he could – except that he kept along the edge of the public woods instead of on the Bossbury road itself – to the wicket gate, up to the lych-gate of the church, through the churchyard, and over the wall into his own garden. He took exactly the same route, in fact, as that taken by his daughter Felicity’ – she grinned horribly at her – ‘when she transported the bloodstained suitcase from the pigsty to the Manor Woods. That suitcase, I may suggest to you, was stained with blood from the murdered man’s collar, tie, and white tennis shirt, and it was because Felicity knew that, and knew that her father was the guilty person, that she was so anxious to be rid of that incriminating clue.’

Felicity sat up.

‘How dare you say such a thing?’ she demanded passionately. ‘It was nothing of the sort!’

Mrs Bradley waved her hand pacifically.

‘You will remember that I am reconstructing on circumstantial and not upon psychological evidence,’ she remarked coolly. ‘Well, the vicar carried Sethleigh’s body over to the empty pig-sty and laid it down in the inner shed. It then occurred to him that he was still in possession of the knife with which he had killed a man, and the clothes of the corpse, and also that there was a considerable quantity of blood on the cuff of his own coat. So he sallied forth again, swiftly and by devious ways, until he got nearly to Culminster. There, trading on the fact of his known absent-mindedness, he deliberately walked into the River Cullen, dropped the incriminating knife, dropped the murdered man’s clothes, which he had weighted with stones –’

‘How?’ asked Jim Redsey.

‘A handful of flints placed in the middle of the shirt, the collar and tie thrown on top of the stones, the shirt gathered up like a bag and tied round with string,’ said the vicar, joyously entering into the game.

Mrs Bradley looked at him in surprise. He grinned at her genially. Margery giggled. Felicity glowered. Jim Redsey picked a daisy and dropped it accurately into Aubrey Harringay’s open mouth, as the boy, lying almost full length, opened his lips to speak.

‘Then he returned to Wandles Parva,’ continued Mrs Bradley, ‘went into the house, and informed his daughter and the servant that he had absent-mindedly walked into the river. All unsuspecting’ – she glanced at Felicity, who sat straight-lipped and pale in her chair – ‘the two of them dried his clothes, prepared a hot bath for him, and believed implicitly the tale he told them.’

She turned to Felicity.

‘Dear child,’ she said, ‘would you rather I stopped?’

‘Good gracious, no,’ replied Felicity angrily. ‘I know it’s only a joke on your part. Of course, it sounds rather horrid to me,’ she added, chin in air.

‘Of course it does,’ said Mrs Bradley decidedly. ‘I won’t go on. It isn’t really funny.’

‘But I want to hear the rest,’ the vicar remarked. ‘You had better go away, Felicity. Don’t spoil other people’s pleasure!’ And he chuckled lazily.

‘I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ said Felicity furiously, and almost in tears. She rose hastily and ran into the house.

‘Go on, Mrs Bradley,’ said Aubrey. ‘Corpse in pig-sty. Vicar in bath. Rupert missing. What next?’

‘The next is where the rest of the circumstantial evidence comes in,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a sidelong glance at the vicar.

‘How do you mean?’ asked Aubrey Harringay. ‘Haven’t we heard it all? Oh, no. The butcher’s shop business.’

‘That doesn’t interest me very much,’ confessed Mrs Bradley. ‘You see, the young man who acts as Binks’s assistant belongs to the Boys’ Club in Bossbury which the vicar holds on third Mondays. Note the significance of these facts. First the day. What day in the week could be so convenient for the transportation of the corpse into Bossbury? Especially as Cleaver Wright often lent the vicar his car for the journey. He could have propped up Sethleigh’s body in the car and driven him into the market with the utmost ease. He could have stolen the key of the lock-up shop from Binks’s boy’s pocket when the lads were changing for their running practice. He is strong enough to perform the somewhat arduous task of dismembering the corpse –’

‘Good heavens!’ said the vicar blankly.

‘Lastly,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘at this very instant he is in possession of a tobacco-case, beautifully wrought in silver, which was once the property of the murdered man!’

She turned implacably upon the astounded cleric.

‘I knew this passion of yours for secreting receptacles of all kinds about your person would get you into some ridiculous scrape one day,’ she said sternly. ‘Turn out your pockets!’

Mrs Bryce Harringay helped him. It did not take them long. Very sheepishly the vicar pulled out a small circular box with a hinged lid. It was about three inches in diameter, beautifully chased and engraved, and the engraving consisted of three letters intertwined in a maze of ornamental scroll-work, but perfectly distinguisable.

They were the initials of Rupert Sethleigh.