My dear:
What can I say? Only that you have lost a devoted brother and I a very dear friend. I know so well, believe me so very well, what a grievous shock this has been to you and how bravely you will have taken it. If it is not an impertinence in an old fogy to do so, may I offer you these very simple lines written by my dear and so Victorian Duchess of Rampton? They are none the worse, I hope, for their unblushing sentimentality.
So must it be, dear heart, I’ll not repine,
For while I live the Memory is Mine.
I should like to think that we know each other well enough for you to believe me when I say that I hope you won’t dream of answering this all-too-inadequate attempt to tell you how sorry I am.
Yours sincerely,
Percival Pyke Period
The Austrian maid came in and found Connie still gazing at this letter.
“Trudi,” she said with an effort, I've had a shock.”
“Bitte?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going out. I won’t be long.”
And she went out. She crossed the Green and tramped up Mr. Pyke Period’s drive to his front door.
The workmen were assembled in Green Lane.
Alfred opened the front door to her.
“Alfred,” she said, “what’s happened?”
“Happened, Miss?”
“My brother. Is he—?”
“Mr. Cartell is not up yet, Miss.”
She looked at him as if he had addressed her in an incomprehensible jargon.
“He’s later than usual, Miss,” Alfred said. “Did you wish to speak to him?”
“Hull — Oh, Connie! Good morning to you.”
It was Mr. Pyke Period, as fresh as paint, but perhaps not quite as rubicund as usual. His manner was overeffusive.
Connie said: “P.P., for God’s sake what is all this? Your letter?”
Mr. Period glanced at Alfred, who withdrew. He then, after a moment’s hesitation, took Connie’s hand into both of his.
“Now, now!” he said. “You mustn’t let this upset you, my dear.”
“Are you mad?”
“Connie!” he faintly ejaculated. “What do you mean? Do you — do you know?”
“I must sit down. I don’t feel well.”
She did so. Mr. Period, his fingers to his lips, eyed her with dismay. He was about to speak when a shrill female ejaculation broke out in the direction of the servants’ quarters. It was followed by the rumble of men’s voices. Alfred reappeared, very white in the face.
“Good God!” Mr. Period said. “What now?”
Alfred, standing behind Connie Cartell, looked his employer in the eyes and said: “May I speak to you, sir?” He made a slight warning gesture and opened the library door.
“Forgive me, Connie. I won’t be a moment.”
Mr. Period went into the library followed by Alfred, who shut the door.
“Merciful heavens, Alfred, what’s the matter with you? Why do you look at me like that?”
“Mr. Cartell, sir.” Alfred moistened his lips. “I, really, I scarcely know how to put it, sir. He’s — he’s—”
“What are you trying to tell me? What’s happened?”
“There’s been an accident, sir. The men have found him. He’s—”
Alfred turned towards the library window. Through the open gate in the quickset hedge, the workmen could be seen, grouped together, stooping.
“They found him—” Alfred said — “not to put too fine a point on it, sir — in the ditch. I’m very sorry I’m sure, sir, but I’m afraid he’s dead.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Alleyn
“There you are,” said Superintendent Williams. “That’s the whole story and those are the local people involved. Or not involved, of course, as the case may be. Now, the way I looked at it was this. It was odds-on we’d have to call you people in anyway, so why muck about ourselves and let the case go cold on you? I don’t say we wouldn’t have liked to go it alone, but we’re too damned busy and a damn’ side too understaffed. So I rang the Yard as soon as it broke.”
“The procedure,” Alleyn said dryly, “is as welcome as it’s unusual. We couldn’t be more obliged, could we, Fox?”
“Very helpful and clearsighted, Super,” Inspector Fox agreed with great heartiness.
They were driving from the Little Codling constabulary to Green Lane. The time was ten o’clock. The village looked decorous and rather pretty in the spring sunshine. Miss Cartell’s Austrian maid was shaking mats in the garden. The postman was going his rounds. Mr. Period’s house, as far as it could be seen from the road, showed no signs of disturbance. At first sight, the only hint of there being anything unusual might have been given by a group of three labourers who stood near a crane truck at the corner, staring at their boots and talking to the driver. There was something guarded and uneasy in their manner. One of them looked angry.
A close observer might have noticed that, in several houses round the Green, people who stood back from their windows were watching the car as it approached the lane. The postman checked his bicycle and, with one foot on the ground, also watched. George Copper stood in the path outside his corner garage and was joined by two women, a youth and three small boys. They, too, were watching. The women’s hands moved furtively across their mouths.
“The village has got on to it,” Superintendent Williams observed. “Here we are, Alleyn.”
They turned into the lane. It had been cordoned off with a rope slung between iron stakes and a Detour sign in front. The ditch began at some distance from the corner, and was defined on its inner border by neatly heaped-up soil and on its outer by a row of heavy drainpipes laid end to end. There was a gap in this row opposite Mr. Period’s gate, and a single drainpipe on the far side of the ditch.
One of the workmen made an opening for the car and it pulled up beyond the truck.
Two hundred yards away, by the side gate into Mr. Period’s garden, Sergeant Noakes waited selfconsciously by a disorderly collection of planks, tools, a twelve-foot steel ladder, and an all-too-eloquent shape covered by a tarpaulin. Nearby, on the far side of the lane, was another car. Its occupant got out and advanced: a middle-aged, formally dressed man with well-kept hands.
“Dr. Elkington, our divisional surgeon,” Superintendent Williams said, and completed the introductions.
“Unpleasant business, this,” Dr. Elkington said. “Very unpleasant. I don’t know what you’re going to think.”
“Shall we have a look?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Bear a hand, Sergeant,” said Williams. “Keep it screened from the Green, we’d better.”
“I’ll move my car across,” Dr. Elkington said. He did so. Noakes and Williams released the tarpaulin and presently raised it. Alleyn being particular in such details, he and Fox took their hats off and so, after a surprised glance at them, did Dr. Elkington.
The body of Mr. Cartell lay on its back, not tidily. It was wet with mud and water, and marked about the head with blood. The face, shrouded in a dark and glistening mask, was unrecognizable, the thin hair clotted and dirty. It was clothed in a dressing gown, shirt and trousers, all of them stained and disordered. On the feet were black socks and red leather slippers. One hand was clenched about a clod of earth. Thin trickles of muddy water had oozed between the fingers.
Alleyn knelt beside it without touching it. He looked incongruous. Not his hands, his head, nor, for that matter, his clothes, suggested his occupation. If Mr. Cartell had been a rare edition of any subject other than death, his body would have seemed a more appropriate object for Alleyn’s fastidious consideration.