They followed a path round the side of the house and crossed a lawn that lay within an irregular embankment set with rocks and covered by masses of tiny white and yellow and purple flowers. Beyond the bank, a smaller lawn flanked an open-fronted summer-house made of boarding covered with bark strips. Hanging within from its roof on three fine chains was a round metal bowl, decoratively pierced. Brevitt supposed it to be some kind of colander for growing bulbs. Palethorp had once inadvertently attended Benediction at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Southgate while trailing an indecent exposure suspect; he recognised a censer.
“It’s quicker this way,” Mrs Gloss explained, as they rounded the summer house and filed through a small wicket gate into a field. “The drive goes on past the house on the other side. They can get a tractor in when the grass needs mowing.” She pointed. “There you are—there’s the car you’re making all the fuss about.”
Scarlet glinted against the darkness of closely set trees about a hundred yards away on their right. They walked towards it, Mrs Gloss watching the ground as she stepped carefully in her high-heeled shoes.
Once or twice she tripped and would have fallen but for the ready and strong arm of Constable Brevitt. No corsets, he reflected after the most nearly democratic of these encounters had impressed him not unpleasurably with the warmth, scent and volume of her person. That evening and on several subsequent occasions before the memory faded, he was vicariously to award himself that privileged relationship with Mrs Gloss which he called “having a tit in each ear”.
Palethorp noticed, but did not remark upon, a circular patch of calcined earth, a couple of yards in diameter, where evidently there had been a wood fire within the last day or two. The evening breeze stirred pale, flocculent ash and blackened twig fragments.
The field was of perhaps six acres. It showed no signs of recent cultivation. Palethorp guessed it would be poor growing land. There was a shallow declivity near the centre where stood a group of tall ash trees; drainage probably was not too good. And the ranks of trees that enclosed the field on three sides would deprive crops of much light and nutriment.
Palethorp peered again at the grove in the middle of the field; it was now directly on their left and about thirty yards distant.
“What’s that thing in between the trees?” he asked.
“I’ve really no idea,” Mrs Gloss replied cheerily. “It seems to be some kind of old monument but I don’t think there’s an inscription or anything.”
“Looks a bit like a vault from here,” Palethorp said. “You know—like in churchyards.”
Brevitt, too, was staring now towards the table-like structure of greenish stone standing crookedly among the trees. He looked quickly back at Mrs Gloss when he heard her laugh.
Were churchyards comical, then? Brevitt wouldn’t thought so.
“As a matter of fact,” said the amused Mrs Gloss, “we’ve always called it the altar.”
Palethorp smiled politely and they walked the rest of the way to the red sports car in silence.
The two policemen padded round the car, giving it a preliminary scrutiny. They looked judiciously at each wheel in turn, examined the licence holder, eyed both number plates and gently kicked a front tyre that seemed softer than the others.
“Whose did you say it was, madam?” Brevitt had his notebook out again.
“I didn’t say,” Mrs Gloss corrected, “but I think it belongs to a lady called Miss Hillyard.” She watched Brevitt’s labouring pencil for a moment and added: “Miss Edna Hillyard.” He crossed out what he had written and began again.
Palethorp put a hand on the driver’s door. “Address?” he prompted, very quietly, then shook his head. “No, never mind. We can soon check if it’s really necessary. If she’s the Miss Hillyard I’m thinking of, she works in the Corporation Offices.”
“That’s right: she does.”
Brevitt wrote down some more. Then he asked: “Did Miss Hillyard have your permission to leave her car here?”
Mrs Gloss raised her brows, pouted. “Yes, in a general way. All my friends know they can park round here if they wish. There’s not a lot of room in front of the house.”
“I suppose you had company yesterday, did you, Mrs Gloss? I was wondering about all these wheel marks, as a matter of fact.” Palethorp indicated a complex of tyre tracks across the grass. “Ah...” His face brightened with sudden comprehension. “Of course. It will have been those folk song people. Right?”
Mrs Gloss challenged neither the appellation nor the plain hint in Palethorp’s tone that the sort of citizens who went hey-ding-a-ding-ing round a wet field when they could be watching television like everybody else were more to be pitied than harassed by the law. She simply confirmed that there had been a little social function the previous evening and suggested that Miss Hillyard might have had trouble in starting her motor afterwards and had been given a lift home by one of the others.
Palethorp opened the door on which he had been lightly leaning.
He looked around the inside of the car, then stretched across and gathered in his capacious hand the clothing on the passenger seat.
“The party who phoned said something about these,” he said.
Mrs Gloss looked annoyed for the first time in the interview.
“Well, I think they had a nerve. Not content with trespassing and breaking into somebody else’s car...”
“No sign of breaking,” Palethorp interrupted.
“All right. Opening it without permission, then. Anyway, after all that, they have the impertinence to interfere with personal property and then, if you please, to bring you people over on a...” Mrs Gloss nearly said “fool’s errand”, but diplomatically substituted “wasted journey”.
Brevitt watched the other policeman sort through the clothing and lay it, one article at a time, on the car bonnet. It consisted of a bright orange sweater, a short skirt in dark green corded velvet, white nylon slip, tights, a pair of black lace briefs and a matching brassière.
“And what do you make of those, madam?” asked Brevitt. He sounded rather pleased with himself.
“What do you mean, make of them? I suppose they’re the girl’s laundry. She’ll not thank you for getting them dirty again on there.”
Obediently, Palethorp gathered up the clothes. But instead of putting them back in the car, he looked them over again with a dubious expression.
“Funny that they should be an exact set,” he said. “If they’re laundry, that is. I’d have thought there’d be more than just the one each of some of them.”
“What my colleague means,” Brevitt explained, “is that it looks more as if the lady in question had stripped off.” As used by Brevitt, the word “stripped” was so evocative that Palethorp had to thrust his head inside the car and pretend further search in order to conceal his embarrassment.