‘That’s what I was afraid of,’ agreed Moon with equanimity. ‘If there’s a hunk of local stone around with traces of blood, and not native to where it’s lying, we’ll get it for you before the light fails. I know this place better than I’ve ever bothered to get to know the palm of my hand. Mind if I borrow another piece to send after it? One of these bosses – no mistaking that for the one we shall be looking for, I take it?’
He had a way, both reassuring and unnerving, of being entrenched in certainty where the habits and cosmography of his chosen ground were concerned, and of proving right practically all the time. George was not in the least surprised when the sergeant came to him in the parish hall, around seven o’clock, bearing on a fold of paper a ten-inch sliver of stone, very gently curved, easily wielded in one hand by any well-grown person, and retaining a murderously sharp edge of moulding on its clean side, protected by having lain face-down in the discard pile. It had also, impaled upon this sharp edge, palpable traces of blood and matter, and a few short hairs.
‘Sorry I can’t guarantee any guilty prints, George,’ said Moon, easy and unofficial, since they were alone, ‘but I doubt if we’ve got the best field for ’em here. But this is the weapon, all right. We’ve marked the place where it crashed. I was about a couple of yards too far to the left with that boss, but about the same range. You’ve got a pretty hefty bloke to look for. It was a good throw, and he’d be in a hurry.’
There was a mass of statements to be matched up by then, and he sat down and joined in the work as soon as the murder weapon had been despatched to the forensic laboratory. They worked together with maximum placidity and understanding; but the statements were as void as they had both expected.
‘The vicar knows of only one occasion when somebody was up in the bell-chamber legitimately this year,’ George said, when they had been through everything. ‘That was in late May, when a swarm of bees invaded. Bees get in wherever they think they will. Anyhow, they moved in among the woodwork there, and if the Reverend Stephen didn’t want ’em, at least he knew of some who did.’
‘ “A swarm of bees in May…” ’, murmured Moon sententiously.
‘I know! “Worth a load of hay.” And we’re talking in Middlehope terms now. Well, the leading bass, Joe Llewelyn, is a fanatical bee-keeper, and wins prizes with his honey all over Britain. So Joe moved in to take the swarm. Nobody’d laid claim to it, it seems they may well have been wild bees. Joe came twice, once to size up the situation, and the second time with a skip, and an assistant to help him. And the assistant was Bossie Jarvis. I can well believe that if there was anything out of the ordinary going on, Bossie’d be in on it. Joe’s got no complaints. He got his bees, and Bossie was first-class as aide-de-camp. Those two seem to be the only people who have been up there with those two chests of magazines this year. Joe is sure both chests were left tidily closed when they came away. The one is more or less empty, anyhow, just a few rotting organ scores. Joe is particularly sure because Bossie, when not fully occupied, was poking about curiously in the other chest, the full one. He’d never be able to resist any reading matter, anyhow, the odder the better. But they left everything as they found it when they came down with the swarm.’
‘So that accounts for one person who disturbed the layers of dust,’ agreed Moon placidly. ‘But in May.’
‘And now it’s October, and somebody’s been at them very recently. And Rainbow is an antiquarian, but hardly likely to be after The Gentleman’s Magazine, even for seventeen-some-odd. So if it was Rainbow, what was he after? And why should he expect to find it there? And did he find it? And above all, can it possibly have been something worth killing him for?’
By the time they adjourned to pick up some cigarettes at the village shop before closing time, and snatch a pint and a sandwich at the ‘Gun Dog’, forensic had rung with reports on the matter found in Rainbow’s head-wound, and on that detected on the sliver of voussoir that had fractured his skull. The same stone-debris, the same species of moss, the same blood. The victim’s finger-nails had also provided specimens of all but the blood. No doubt about it, that was where he had died, and that was how he had died. Only who, and why, remained to be documented.
‘Which first?’ wondered George, stretching lengthily after hours of sitting. ‘Motive? My God, there’s no getting out of range of one motive, up here, is there? And yet ninety-nine-point-nine per cent of the time Middlehope is madly sane, if you’ll permit the paradox. They know this sort of solution only promotes a far worse problem. I don’t say they wouldn’t – I just say they wouldn’t without total safeguards for all the valley. And we also have a most equivocal lady, with a trail of admirers a mile long. And she surprisingly at home here, where he insulated himself totally. Perhaps he did everywhere? There are people who are chronically strangers here!’
‘Sad, that!’ said Sergeant Moon. ‘But what can you do, if they do the sealing? We’ve got nothing from the solicitors yet. Never take for granted the “Cui bono.” ’
‘I’ll see Bowes in person tomorrow morning,’ said George. ‘Do you feel as dry as I do?’
‘Like a lime-kiln. And I’m out of Woodbines. Mind if we stop in at Gwen’s?’
Gwen was Mrs Owen Lloyd, keeper of the shop, and mother of Toffee Bill.
‘A good idea,’ said George. ‘At closing time there might be something interesting to hear.’ For closing time did not hurry in the village. Trade ceased, but social exchanges frequently continued for another half-hour. And there was a sensation to be discussed today.
The shop was located on a corner, an enlarged house-window and an old, leaning roof above it, the usual invaluable local shop that has everything you’re ever going to need in an emergency, from gumstrip to TCP, and frozen peas to fresh eggs. It was as immaculate and brisk as all such genuinely professional shops are, and as informal, an exchange-point for news and gossip, a first-aid post for local protection, sending out feelers towards isolated old people unaccountably not seen for some days, delivering without benefit of fee where there was need, advising where regulation forms frightened intelligent but direct folk out of their normal routine. Its compact space of freezer and cases and shelves was everything anybody needed of modernity, without the gimmicks. And Gwen was a farmer’s daughter, fresh as new milk, large, fair and kind.
Miss de la Pole was standing at the counter when they entered, in the act of lighting one of the small cheroots she had just been buying. ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ she was saying comfortably, in her ripe baritone, ‘the child’s too close to it, that’s all. He just can’t digest it, it isn’t that he really cares. Give him a week or two, and he’ll have forgotten all about it. The man wasn’t likeable, you know, nobody can blame the boys for not liking him.’ She turned and recognised the police entering. ‘Why, hullo, George! We were just talking about this affair. Hullo, Jack, nice to know you’re standing by. I must say, it’s a shake-up for us all.’
‘It is,’ agreed Moon heartily. ‘Here yesterday and gone today. It makes you take stock.’
‘I’ve been doing that for some time,’ she assured him drily. ‘At my age, one does. You’re just a youngster, Jack. And then, I must have disliked him about as violently as anyone could, and that does make one take stock, as you put it.’
‘You didn’t, by any chance, make away with him, did you?’ asked George mildly.
‘No, sorry, George, I don’t really have the resolution, you know. I might dream about it, I’m unlikely ever to do it. In any case, I’m probably one of the last to see him alive, and he was mobile at the time, so I didn’t get the chance. I happened to look out of the window before I drew the curtains, last night, round about a quarter to twelve, and I saw him driving towards the gates, on his way home.’