'We saw a bit of that suit he always wore, and Margaret found one of his boots in the bushes. Look, Our Sarah, we want to find the murderer, because Mr Ward must have been murdered to have been buried like that. What we want to know is whether you and the gang will come in with us.'
'To look for a murderer? That's a p'lice job, that es.'
'Oh, please come in with us.'
'For whoi?'
'Well, to catch the murderer, like I said.'
'More loike the murderer 'ud ketch us, Oi reckon. Oi don't want no part of et.'
Kenneth gave up.
'It's no use arguing with her,' he said, as we made for the plank bridge and grandfather's iron gate. 'She won't budge. It's up to us, I reckon.'
Aunt Kirstie heard us come into the scullery. She told us not to make a noise because the police were interviewing Uncle Arthur upstairs in the parlour.
'And look you here,' she went on, 'I don't want you roaming about no more. You ain't to go on The Marsh or anywhere near that old cottage.'
'Police orders?' asked Kenneth.
'And mine and your grandfather's and your Uncle Arthur's. 'Tain't safe. I wishes as I could pack you both off home, but I can't do that till your father sends.'
We talked it over in the bedroom.
'What on earth shall we find to do?' I asked dolefully. 'Without the cottage-not that I really want to go there any more-and without The Marsh and the sheepwash, I don't see it's worth while being here any longer.'
'Of course it is,' said Kenneth. 'We're not forbidden the village streets and that's where we shall score. We've got to get at people and question them. Somebody must know something or have seen something. All we've got to do is find out what it is.'
'We can't just go knocking on doors.'
'I suppose not. Well, you think of something.'
As it happened, it was the Sunday school superintendent, and not myself, who thought of something, although he had no idea that he had solved the first part of our problem for us. More or less incarcerated as we felt ourselves to be, even Sunday school seemed tolerable now that we had been deprived of our meetings on The Marsh with Our Sarah and her gang, so that when, on Sunday morning, Aunt Lally suggested it before she sent us over to get our breakfast from Aunt Kirstie, she found us in an unusually compliant mood.
We allowed ourselves without protest to be arrayed like the lilies of the field and set off in good time for the tin-roofed building. We settled ourselves in decorous silence, listened without comment to the young and ignorant teacher's exposition of the Sermon on the Mount and, when classes were over, paid attention to the superintendent's remarks before we had the closing hymn and his snuffling, unctuous, extempore closing prayer. His little homily included the story of the Children's Crusade which took place in the Middle Ages. Then he urged us all to become Crusaders. (He did not mention that the unfortunate children never reached the Holy Land, but ended up in the slave markets of North Africa, and we did not know this at the time.) He drew a picture of their missionary zeal, their courage, their devotion to what he called The Cause and he finished up by saying that at the end of the meeting there would be collecting boxes for distribution to all those who would be willing to collect for Foreign Missions.
I looked across the room at the boys' side of the hall and caught Kenneth's eye. I made our tiny signal which meant Shall we? He nodded vigorously so, at the end of the session, we joined a small party of volunteers at the table where the star-cards were marked (an asterisk if you had attended and were punctual, a zero if you had attended but were late, the latter to count only half a mark towards the tally which meant a ticket for the Sunday school treat) and received our collector's card and a tin with a slit in the top.
The secretary who marked the cards would not give us a card and a tin each. He said that we did not come regularly.
'No, but we come when we can,' said Kenneth, 'and I'm sure we can get you some money.' So the man handed me the collector's card and, with a jocular remark that the gentleman always carried the luggage, gave the tin to Kenneth.
'Did you think what I thought?' he asked, when we got outside.
'Of course. It makes a whale of a reason for nosey-parkering round the village and asking questions,' I said. 'We shall have to be careful, because people do hate giving money except for hospitals and-'
'And the life boat,' he suggested.
'Yes. But I don't think people will be very interested in foreign missions. Our teacher in London told us that she gave up worrying about foreign missions when she found that they sent out the missionaries and the trade gin in the same ship.'
'What's trade gin?'
'I don't know, but that's what she said, so we'd better be careful not to argue and only start asking those people who won't turn nasty.'
'There are some we'll have to talk to, whether they turn nasty or not. We shouldn't argue with grown-ups, anyway. You only get your ears boxed if you do.'
Instead of going straight back to Aunt Kirstie for our Sunday dinner, we decided to call first on Aunt Lally.
'She goes to the Mission Hall regularly on Sunday evenings, or else to the Baptist Church in the town,' said Kenneth, 'so I think she is certain to give us something and it helps a lot if you can show people your card with somebody's name already on it and there's something to rattle in the tin. I know that from Cubs. A Boy Scout gave me the tip. "Shove a dud coin and a couple of buttons in before you start," he said, "and get one of your mates to sign the book." He said it always works, and it seems to, because I tried it, although I did put in a ha'penny of my own with the buttons and signed the card myself-well, it was a little notebook, actually-so as not really to cheat.'
So began our private Crusade in quest of Mr Ward's murderer. We only hoped we would not be called back to London before we had found him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE HILL VILLAGE IRREGULARS
Aunt Lally subbed up handsomely with three lovely great pennies. She wanted to save her threepenny bit (silver in those days) for Church collection, she said. Anyway, the pennies suited us because they set up such a suggestive response when we rattled them in the tin. Aunt Lally improved the occasion by telling us that we would get our reward in heaven hereafter by working for the Lord, and warned us on no account to go into the village public house with our collecting box.
That belongs to the Salvation Army,' she somewhat ambiguously explained. When we went next door for our Sunday dinner with Aunt Kirstie the police were there again. Uncle Arthur was in the kitchen. He sent us straight up to the parlour and there the inspector took us all through our story again about how we had persuaded Poachy to dig up Mr Ward's body. The police sergeant sat at the table and checked off our replies against, I suppose, the previous statements we had made.
There was nothing new we could tell them. We repeated our stories of Mr Ward's digging operations in various places and our theory that the hermit might have hidden money or other treasure under the floor of the cottage; we told of Mr Ward's mad behaviour in the sheepwash and of the grave he had dug. They questioned us closely about this. What had made us think of a grave? Had we ever seen an open grave? What made us ask Poachy to help us? Why had we forced apart the bars in the iron fence which bounded the back garden? Who else ever went into the cottage?
We answered truthfully, although the questioning made me nervous. The inspector realised this because, as he got up to go, he said,
'It's all right, youngsters. We don't suspect you of doing anything wrong and we shan't be troubling you again.' To Aunt Kirstie he said, 'We'll see ourselves out, Mrs Landgrave. If anything else concerning Mr Ward should occur to you which you think may help us, I shall be glad to know.'