“You tell me,” said Alleyn, “that after you had heard Rankin and Mrs. Wilde leave the room and had entered it yourself someone turned out the lights. Might that not have been Rankin himself returning to do so?”
“No,” said Nigel. “I heard him shut the door and go away. No, it was someone who had sat at the far end of the drawing-room, beyond the ‘elbow’ of the room, you know, and, like me, had overheard.”
“Have you any impression of them?”
“How could I?”
“It is possible. Their sex, for instance.”
“I — please don’t attach any significance to this — I rather felt, why I don’t know, that it was a woman.”
“And here we are at the gates. Mr. Alfred Bliss, he of the mackintosh, is, as you see, greatly interested in a distant view of an A.A. telephone box. We won’t disturb him. My dear lad, let us embark on a little ramble.”
“Good Lord, what do you mean — a ramble?”
“Have you never read Eyes and No Eyes? I am going to improve your keen young journalistic brain. Come on.”
He turned off the avenue into the woods with Nigel at his heels. They followed the merest hint of a track that wound its way through dense undergrowth.
“I discovered this track,” said Alleyn, “only yesterday. Acting on information received, as we say in the courts, I have come here to do a little genuine sleuthing. Someone came this way between four-thirty and six on Monday evening. I hope to learn something of their identity. Keep your eyes skinned, will you?”
Nigel tried to think of things that he ought to be looking for, and could arrive at nothing better than footprints and broken twigs. Alleyn walked very slowly, looking round him and down at the ground between each step. The ground was springy and quite dry. The wood smelt delicious, primal, and earthy. The track doubled and twisted. Alleyn turned his head this way and that, paused, squatted like a native, appeared to examine the ground between his feet, straightened up, and went slowly onwards.
Nigel stared at the intricate series of patterns made by green striking across green, and forgot to look for anything else. He wondered who had gone down this path before them, stirring the leaves, whose head had been darkly silhouetted against the patterns of green, whose presence had left the faint imprint which Alleyn so assiduously hunted.
Suddenly they were walking towards a high iron fence, and he realized that they had arrived at the edge of the wood where Frantock ran with the main road.
“Finis!” said Alleyn. “End of the trail. Seen anything?”
“Afraid not.”
“Not much to see. Now look here. Look at these iron standards in the fence. Fairly well discoloured and stained, aren’t they? Some sort of meagre little vegetable has managed to make a living on them. Easily rubbed off, though. Can you get your hand between them?”
“Not I.”
“Nor I neither. Someone managed to do it on Monday. Look there — a small hand.” He leant his face down to the rails and looked at them closely. Then cautiously he ran his fingers down the stem, holding his handkerchief to catch the minute fragments that fell into it. These in turn he scrutinized.
“Black fur,” he said. “I think black fur.”
“Holmes, my dear fellow, this is supernatural,” murmured Nigel.
“Holmes wasn’t such a boob when all’s said,” answered Alleyn. “Personally, I think those yarns are jolly clever.”
“As you say. Were you expecting to find black fur on the railings, may I ask?”
“I hadn’t hoped to — it’s a help, of course.”
“For God’s sake, Alleyn,” exploded Nigel, “tell me a bit more or don’t tell me anything. I’m sorry, but I am rather interested.”
“My dear fellow, I’m sorry, too. I assure you I’m not being mysterious out of vanity or officiousness. If I told you everything, every bit of evidence, every investigation I think proper to make, you would suspect, as I have suspected, every member of your house-party in turn. I will tell you this much. On Monday, late in the afternoon, a person whose identity I am anxious to establish came here to this fence and, unseen by the waterproof at the gates, threw a letter, stamped and addressed, out on to the road there. It was picked up by a passing cyclist, who took it into the village post office.”
“How did you nose all this out?”
“What an unattractive phrase that is! I didn’t nose at all. The cyclist, instead of putting the letter in the box, handed it over the counter with a brief explanation of where he had found it. The young woman in the basket cuffs who guards His Majesty’s mail in little Frantock showed startling intelligence. I had, of course, asked her to stop all letters going out of Frantock and, recognizing the locality, she thought there might be something up and held it back. It wasn’t in a Frantock envelope either.”
“You have got it, then?”
“Yes, I will show it to you when we get back.”
“Is it illuminating?”
“Quite the reverse at present. But indirectly I hope it will be. Come on.”
They made their way out of the wood and tramped in silence back to Frantock. Nigel made but one remark. “This time to-morrow,” he said, “the inquest will be over.”
“Presumably — or adjourned.”
“Thank heaven for that, anyhow; we can at least go home.”
They walked up the steps to the front door. “Come into the study for a moment,” invited Alleyn.
The study had been set apart as a sort of private office for him. He unlocked the door, and Nigel followed him in.
“Light the fire, will you,” said Alleyn; “we shall be some time.”
Nigel lit the fire and his pipe, and settled himself down in an arm-chair.
“Here is the letter,” said Alleyn. From his breast pocket he produced a white envelope, and handed it to Nigel.
“I may tell you,” he said, “that there were no finger-prints on it; of course, I have by this time got photos of all your finger-prints.”
“Oh, quite,” said Nigel rather blankly.
The envelope bore a typed address:
Miss Sandilands,
P.O. Shamperworth St.
Dulwich.
The enclosure also was typed; on a piece of the green note-paper used by Sir Hubert and distributed throughout all the bedrooms. Nigel read it aloud.
“Please destroy the parcel in Tunbridge B. at once and do not tell a soul.”
There was no signature.
“The envelope,” said Alleyn, “tells us nothing — it came from an odd packet of white stationery in the library writing desk.”
“And the type?”
“Corresponds with the machine in the library which also yields no finger-prints except the housemaid’s and a few very blurred and ancient ones left by Sir Hubert. This letter was typed by an inexperienced person— there are several mistakes, as you see.”
“Have you traced the female — Miss Sandilands?”
‘A C.I.D. man went to the post office in Shamperworth Street yesterday. A clerk there remembered a woman calling in the morning to ask if there were any letters for Miss Sandilands. There were none, and she has not been in since then.”
“She may go again.”
“Certainly, but I don’t want to wait.”
“What do you propose to do? Run up and down Tunbridge looking for a parcel?”
“I see you are in merry pin. No, I propose to work from this end, and with the aid of my bits of black fur it ought not to be difficult.”
“And the fur?”
Alleyn produced from his pocket his inevitable and rather insignificant Woolworth note-book.
“Meet my brain,” he said; “without it I’m done.” He turned the leaves rapidly, muttering to himself.