“No chinks,” said Detective Constable Crosby.
Sloan favoured him with a withering stare, and the pathologist’s assistant, Burns, who rarely spoke, got out a large thermometer.
“Cold but not damp,” observed Dabbe generally.
“Yes,” agreed Sloan. It was one of the hottest days of the summer outside, but the heat hadn’t penetrated down here. All in all a good place to park a body if you didn’t want it found too quickly.
Dabbe was still circling the armour rather as a terrier spoiling for a fight will go round and round his adversary.
“Either, Sloan, they popped him in here pretty smartly after death or else they waited until rigor mortis passed off.”
“Oh?”
“Regard the angle of the arms.”
Sloan took a fresh look at the man in armour. The boy, Michael Fisher, had said something about the arms.
Dr. Dabbe pointed to—but did not touch—the right arm. It was bent at the elbow in a half defensive position. “He’s still on guard.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Before rigor mortis or after. Not during.”
“I see.”
“After, I expect,” said Dabbe mordauntly. “By the time you got all this… er… clobber on, it would have begun to set in.”
That was another thing to think about. Sloan mentally added it to a very long list of matters to think about. Some of them required action, too, but not until the pathologist had finished. Sloan had been at the game too long not to know that the medical evidence was always of primary importance.
“That’s another thing,” said Dabbe.
“What is?” Inspector Sloan came back to the present with a jerk.
“How he got into all this.”
“Quite so, Doctor.”
“And how we’re going to get him out.” The pathologist gave a fiendish grin. “I can’t do a post-mortem with a tin opener.”
“No, Doctor.”
“Of course,” went on Dabbe, “You had an armour-bearer in the old days.”
“So you did.” Sloan had forgotten that.
“What you might call a body servant, eh, Sloan?” The pathologist’s morbid sense of humour was a byword throughout the Berebury Force.
“Quite so”—weakly.
“I shouldn’t have said he’d got into this on his own though, even in this servant-less day and age,” said Dabbe.
“No.”
“And I think,” said the pathologist, “that we can rule out natural causes, too. Unless coincidence is stretching out a particularly long arm.”
“Yes.”
“That,” said Dabbe cheerfully, “leaves us the usual Coroner’s trio. Misadventure, suicide, or murder.”
“Misadventure?” said Sloan.
“Commonly known, Inspector, as pure bad luck.”
“I don’t quite see how…”
“The trap for the unwary pathologist, that’s what misadventure is,” said the doctor feelingly. “Suppose this chap got into this rigout for some perfectly sound reason, and then found he was trapped in it”
“Well?”
“He could have shouted his head off and no one would have heard him through the visor, let alone through the twelve-foot walls they seem to go in for down here.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think he did get into it himself and then call for help, Doctor.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“You see, we’ve checked the floor for footprints. It’s all been swept perfectly clean round the armour. Too clean.”
“Has it indeed? And what about fingerprints?”
“None of them either. Crosby’s been over the lot. The armour’s been handled all right—but with gloves on.”
The pathologist nodded swiftly. “In that case we can’t do a lot of harm by going inside.”
He didn’t touch the visor, but went straight to the helmet, lifting it with both hands from behind.
There was—after all that—no doubt about how Mr. Osborne Meredith had died.
The back of his skull had been staved in.
7
« ^ »
After he left Lady Eleanor, Charles Purvis went to his car. Ornum House was too far from any of its neighbours to visit them on foot—especially if time was short.
He drove the mile to the village, went through the ornamental gates and out into the High Street. All of the properties there were in good condition, most belonged to the Earl. He nosed his car gently past the usual Sunday afternoon village traffic and stopped outside the last cottage in a row not far from the Post Office. Most of the village would be watching the cricket, the rest getting ready for Evensong. He was quite sure the occupant of number four, Cremond Cottages, would be doing neither.
The man who came to the door was older than both Lord Henry Cremond and Charles Purvis and already running to overweight. He was dressed in old corduroy trousers that were none too clean and a shirt so open-necked as to be undone.
No one could have called his manner agreeable.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Charlie-boy.”
Purvis stiffened. “Good afternoon, William. Your uncle has sent me down—”
“I didn’t think you’d come on your own.”
Purvis tightened his lips. “No, I don’t think I would.”
Suddenly the man grinned. It changed his face completely. “Fifteen all. Your serve—”
“Your uncle sent me down,” repeated Purvis stolidly, “to say he wants to see you.”
“That’s a pleasant change, I must say,” drawled William Murton. “I’ve never known him actually to want to see me before.”
“Well, he does now”—shortly.
“Why?”
The Steward hesitated. “There’s been a spot of trouble up at the house.”
“Has there? I’m sorry to hear that.” William Murton did not sound particularly sorry. He squinted across the doorway at Charles Purvis. “Someone run off with the family plate, then, or something?”
“Not that sort of trouble.”
Murton raised his hands in mock horror. “You don’t mean to tell me that some cad has asked for my cousin Eleanor’s hand in marriage?”
Charles Purvis flushed to the roots of his hair. “No.”
“Not that sort of trouble either?”—offensively.
“No.”
“Well, well, how interesting. I shall come at once.” He paused on the threshold. “Tell me, does this invitation include a meal, do you suppose?”
“He wants to see you,” repeated Purvis.
“I see. What you might call a general summons rather than an invitation.”
What Detective Inspector Sloan could have done with was a ball of string.
That was what pot-holers used when they were in dark caves and wanted to be sure of their way back. It was not unlike that in Ornum House. What he was looking for was the door behind which Lady Maude had retreated earlier on. If he could find a large Chinese vase he thought he would be all right from then on.
He could, of course, easily have asked someone to take him there, but there were risks inherent in the way in which he was announced that might very well disturb the two old ladies with whom he wanted a quiet chat. With whom he wanted a quiet chat before anyone else got to them—which was why he had slipped away from the armoury for a few moments.
He was unlucky with the Chinese vase. He found it all right. Vast, well-proportioned, and delicately coloured, there was no mistaking it
Except for one thing.
Its twin.
It wasn’t until he had opened a whole series of wrong doors that he realised the gigantic vase he and Crosby had seen had been one of a matching pair. He found the other—the right one—at the far end of the same long corridor. From then on it should have been plain sailing.
He knocked on Lady Maude’s door.