Miss Silver gazed at him approvingly.
‘That is just what I would expect from you, Inspector.’
He said rather gruffly, ‘It sounds as if he was planning to blackmail someone. I’ve had a word with the landlord of the Bull, and he says Ezra always talked big when he’d had a few, but he’d been talking bigger than usual. I asked him if Mr Harsch’s name was mentioned, and he said it was. Just that – and he’d got something that would put money in his pocket if someone knew which side their bread was buttered. The landlord said he didn’t take it at all seriously. But there you have it – the man boasted of what he knew. Now after that somebody gave him brandy, somebody hit him, and he drowned in a foot of water. No evidence to say how he got there, but he may have been put. The place he was found was out of his way if he was going home. There’s one thing more – the sort of thing that mayn’t mean much, or then again it may – I haven’t had time to think it out. Frank there can tell you about it – it’s his pigeon.’
Abbott took his hand away from his mouth and sat up.
‘It’s just that I had a look at his boots,’ he said. ‘There was a speck or two of dry gravel on them.’
Miss Silver looked at him with extreme interest.
‘Dear me!’
Rightly considering this to be a tribute, he continued.
‘You know how sloppy the village street is. Even in the warm, dry weather we’ve been having it’s damp, and between the Bull and the place where this fellow was found there’s a dip in the road which is more or less of a quagmire. The only gravel anywhere about is on the drives of the houses round the Green and on the paths in the churchyard. If Ezra got gravel on his boots from any of those places, it couldn’t possibly have been dry and clean by the time he got to the place where he was drowned – if he walked there.’
‘That is very interesting indeed,’ said Miss Silver.
‘His boots were muddy all right – that’s how the gravel stuck. But once it got there it stayed clean. It wasn’t walked on – not to that miry place where he was found. I say he was given a tot of brandy and knocked out. Then he was taken down to the stream and put into it. It could have been done with a hand-cart or a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately the place has been so trampled over that there isn’t much to go by. I should think everybody in the village has been out to have a look. Anyhow all the traffic there is goes along that road, so there isn’t much chance of picking out a single track.’
‘The churchyard-’ said Miss Silver slowly. ‘That is very interesting. Yes – of course – there are gravel paths in the churchyard. And that reminds me that I have some information for you. The first item takes us a little away from our present subject, but it is so important that I feel you should have it without delay. You will, I am afraid, be unable to call Miss Brown as a witness in any possible case against Mr Madoc.’
Lamb stared.
‘Indeed?’
The needles clicked, the khaki sock revolved.
‘I had a conversation with her this afternoon, and she informed me that she married Mr Madoc on June 17th five years ago, at Marylebone Register Office.’
Frank Abbott said, ‘That’s torn it!’
His Chief Inspector turned a deep plum colour.
‘Well, if that doesn’t beat the band!’ he said in an exasperated tone.
Miss Silver coughed.
‘I felt that you should be informed immediately. But let us return to Ezra Pincott. Without wishing to link my second item of information with his death, I cannot but feel that it has a certain relevance in view of the fact that the churchyard paths are gravelled. I have discovered a witness, a young girl by the name of Gladys Brewer, who was in the churchyard round about ten o’clock on the night of Mr Harsch’s death. Her companion was a lad of the name of Sam Bowlby. I have not interrogated him, but Gladys says they saw the sexton, Bush, come out of the church at a little before ten.’
The Chief Inspector’s eyes bolted.
‘She saw him come out of the church?’
Miss Silver inclined her head.
‘She says he came out, locked the door behind him, and went off in a hurry round the building in the direction of the gate which opens upon the village street.’
‘Miss Silver!’
She inclined her head again.
‘Yes, I know. It makes a very considerable difference, does it not?’
‘Bush came out of the church before ten o’clock?’
‘A few minutes before the clock struck. We must allow time for him to lock the door, skirt the church, and be out of sight before the clock struck. Gladys and her friend were sitting on the flat stone of Mr Doncaster’s grave right up against the Rectory wall. They were immediately opposite the side door of the church, and it was bright moonlight. They could see perfectly, but were screened themselves by the branches of a copper beech which overhangs the wall at this spot.’
Lamb was leaning forward, his big body tilted, his eyes more like bull’s-eyes than ever.
‘You think she’s reliable, this girl? She’s not having us on – or working off a grudge against Bush? If she’s in the way of going into the churchyard with her boyfriend at night she might have had the rough side of his tongue – see?’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘I do not think so. I believe that she was telling the truth. I arrived at the point in a somewhat oblique manner, and it was only when pressed for every detail of what she had seen on Tuesday night that the facts emerged. She was so impatient to be gone to the pictures with Sam Bowlby, and she had, I am sure, no idea that what she told me was of any importance whatever. She said at the end, “I told you it wasn’t nothing, any of it,” and went off without a thought in her head except about her boy and the film they were going to see.’
Lamb took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
‘Well, I’ll take your word for that. But what a mix-up! Bush came out of the church before ten. He was in it not so very long after the shot was fired. If he hasn’t got an alibi to cover the time, there’s nothing to say he didn’t fire that shot himself. He was seen coming out. If he wasn’t seen going in, well… And there’s another thing. If that girl’s telling the truth and she saw him lock the door, then all that business about the key goes west – there’s nothing to show that the door was locked at all before Bush locked it. The fact that Madoc had a key isn’t nearly so important as it was.’
Miss Silver said, ‘Exactly. The theory that Mr Harsch committed suicide was based on the fact that he was found behind locked doors with his own key in his pocket. The case against Mr Madoc was based upon the discovery that he had come into possession of Miss Brown’s key after a jealous scene with her, and about a quarter of an hour before the shot was fired. But since it now appears that the door behind which Mr Harsch’s body was found was neither locked by his own key nor by the one in Mr Madoc’s possession, but by Bush, it seems to me that the case against Mr Madoc is very much weakened. When it is further considered that there is evidence that Ezra Pincott was murdered last night, the case would seem to be very weak indeed, since Mr Madoc could have had no hand in this murder.’
Lamb hoisted himself out of his chair.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I won’t say yes, and I won’t say no. But this man Bush has certainly got something to explain. We’ll have to see him and ask him what about it.
Half way to the door he turned back.
‘You haven’t got a motive to hand us, I suppose? Respectable sextons don’t go about murdering organists as a rule. You’ve got to have a motive, you know. Juries are funny that way.’
Miss Silver drew herself up. It was the slightest, most ladylike of gestures, but it certainly conveyed to Sergeant Abbott, if not to his superior officer, that the Chief Inspector had allowed a perhaps natural exasperation to impair the courtesy due to a gentlewoman. There was a faint chill upon her voice as she said, ‘There is a possible motive, and I feel it my duty to acquaint you with it. Bush, though born a British subject, is of German origin. His parents settled in this country. The name was Busch, spelt in the German manner with an sch, the English spelling being adopted during the last war. Miss Fell informs me that a short time previously this man Frederick Bush, who was then about seventeen years of age, was approached by enemy agents who endeavoured to persuade him to obtain information for them. He was at that time under-footman in a house where the conversation at the dinner table might have been of considerable value. I must hasten to add that he immediately refused, and that he acquainted Miss Fell’s stepfather, who was then Rector of Bourne, with the particulars.’