"Martin. Did you ever wonder why I didn't offer to go with you on the ghost-hunting expedition?"
Martin felt uncomfortable. "Well! I thought you were…"
"Jealous? Yes, that was true. Afraid of ghosts? Also true, a little." Her lips and eyebrows apologized gently. "But I told you there was another reason. Martin, I want you to know everything about me. I do, I do! But I can't tell you now because if I'm wrong it's not merely being mistaken; it's — if s sordidly stupid."
"Jenny, I don't care. I'm not a detective."
She shook her hair violently, and settled the coat over her brown sweater as though more conscious of mist-clamminess.
It all comes back to that utterly meaningless skeleton," she said. "And now Grandmother's got it locked up somewhere."
"For innocent reasons, of course.’' He tried hard to make this a plain statement, without any inflection of question.
'Naturally. You see, under everything, Grandmother is just a sentimentalist"
Martin found his reason rocking. "Your grandmother," he said, defining the words with care, "you call a sentimentalist?"
"Oh, she isn't easy to live with. I hate her sometimes. But she is kind-hearted, and you'd see it if it weren't for the arrogance. Grandmother is shielding somebody." Jenny hesitated. "She says the skeleton is legally her property. She also says nobody, not even the police, can take it from her unless they can show why it's a vital piece of evidence. Is that right?"
"You'd better ask Stannard. But it sounds reasonable to me."
"Then that means," cried Jenny, her eyes shining under lowered lids, "the police don't know themselves. It means.."
Here Jenny, whose gaze had wandered along the line of the fence, uttered a cry and ran to Martin. Some little distance down beside the fence, a man was standing motionless.
A drifting mist-veil hid everything except his legs, as he stood sideways to the fence. Then the moving veil slowly swirled past and up. Martin saw clearly a large and somewhat burly figure, with its blue serge suit and its ruddy face dominated by a boiled blue eye, under a bowler hat
"Chief Inspector Masters!" Martin said.
Masters lifted one foot experimentally, and set it down with a faint squelch. If he did not happen to be in a good temper, the Chief Inspector never showed this in his professional countenance.
"Morning, miss. Morning, sir," he greeted them, as offhandedly as though he were in a London office instead of a mist-wrapped Berkshire field at half-past four on Sunday morning. Bland as ever, poker-faced as ever in public, he walked towards them and looked hard at Martin.
"Still alive, I see," he added.
Chapter 12
We talk with scorn of prophetic instincts. Martin felt one then, as sharp as the twinge from a bad heart; but, like the mist-movings, it drifted away and was lost in an instant.
"Still alive?" he repeated, and laughed. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't be alive?"
"We-el!" smiled Masters, with a tolerant and amused wave of his hand. "As you described it to Sir Henry and me, this execution shed business was to be a swell affair. But you don't seem to be hanged by the neck or snuffed out by any ghost, do you?"
Martin, studying him, saw that Masters had the appearance of a man who has walked hard to keep just ahead of somebody. In addition to his reddish eyelids, there were certain familiar dust-stains on the blue serge which had not quite been erased by a handkerchief or the mist-damp.
"Chief Inspector," he said, "were you at that prison too?"
"We-el!" said Masters, as though he debated this himself. That's a very interesting question, sir. I might have been, and then again I might not have been." He drew closer, confidentially. The fact is, a minute ago I heard you two saying something about a skeleton and a clock."
"Please don't start to browbeat me," begged Jenny. "Go and see my grandmother."
"Browbeat? Now, miss!" Masters was reproachful. He grew more confidential, like a Balkan diplomat. "I'll just tell you something about that skeleton, if you like. It wasn't Sir George Fleet"
Jenny's eyes opened. "Who on earth ever said it was?"
"Still miss, one or two people seem to have got the idea." His eye swung towards Martin. "What about you, sir?"
"It did occur to me, yes. But not very seriously."
"Oh, ah. And that's right Yesterday evening at the police-station, we got a message from London. From a supply-firm that keeps records as far back as the Flood, it'ud seem. Dr. Pierre Laurier, the old one who's dead, bought the skeleton as an anatomical specimen in 1912.
"Also last night, before he went to join you on the (hurrum!) ghost-hunt, Sir Henry and I talked with ‘young' Dr. Hugh Laurier, who's forty-eight years old. Lives just outside the town-limits of Brayle."
This was after the Ben-Hur chariot-race, I gather?" Martin asked.
Masters frowned at him slightly, and addressed Jenny..
"Dr. Hugh, miss, told us all about it. When it became (hurrum!) — well, what you might call not fashionable to have skeletons hanging about in doctors' offices, his father put it away in a cupboard. It wasn't till shortly before his death in 1936, when he was old and maybe a bit fanciful, that this Pierre Laurier… was he French, miss?"
"Yes. His name was formerly De Laurier. That means," Jenny spoke wearily, "he was a nobleman, and Grandmother simply— Never mind. And the Fleets! He was supposed to have a hopeless passion for Aunt Cicely."
Masters made a broad wave of the hand.
"Anyway, miss, the old doctor with the beard took this skeleton, and put it in a clock after he'd taken the works out, and stuck it up in his back parlour as a kind of… kind of…"
"Memento mori" suggested Martin.
Masters considered this.
"Oh, ah. Just so. If that means what I think it does. Like the people who put up sun-dials with a motto, 'It is later than you think.'"
'It is later than you think.' Yes, Martin had heard that before. When Masters leaned towards Jenny, his head suddenly emerged out of a mist-wreath like a fatherly Spanish Inquisitor.
"Now come, miss!" he urged persuasively. "That's the living truth. And there's no harm in anything; I'll take my oath to it. Why does her ladyship, your good grandmother, want to cause a lot of unnecessary fuss and bother? Just why does she want the thing anyway? Eh?"
"If it comes to that" said Martin, instantly putting a guard between Jenny and Masters, "why do you want it yourself?"
"Ah! I'm afraid that'd be Official Secrets, sir."
"But there was nothing secret about why Lady Brayle wanted it: as a present for Dr. Hugh Laurier. She was bidding for it at Willaby's, until H.M. topped her. Afterwards he gave it to her. That's all."
"Is it, now?" Masters asked affably. "Then why did she take the skeleton alone? And not the clock?"
Too late Martin saw the flaw in his argument But Masters dismissed the matter.
"What I really wanted to say," he declared, this also being a lie, "was I've got lost in this ruddy mist. How can I get back to the Dragon?"
This is a landmark,’’ Jenny assured him, putting her hand on the fence. "Follow this, no matter how far it seems to go, and you'll come to the main road. Then turn right and follow the main road. You cant miss it"
"Well, now, miss, I'm much obliged!" Masters' fatherly heartiness was overpowering. "The fence, eh? Not a countryman myself." His look at Martin was almost a sardonic wink. "Good day to you!" He followed the line of the fence a few feet; then turned round.