“You’re looking much better,” she assured him.
“I am much better.”
“Well enough to eat lunch?”
“Quite well enough to eat lunch.”
“Well enough to receive a visitor?”
“That depends on the visitor,” said Pettigrew warily. “If it is the girl friend at Minster Tracy-”
“No, it’s not the girl friend.” Eleanor called over her shoulder down the stairs, “Do come up!” Then she said, “I’m leaving you together,” and disappeared.
Pettigrew began to say something, but his protest died on his lips as the open doorway was blocked by the appearance of a broad, bulky figure-a figure, once agreeably familiar, that he had not seen for more than ten years, and which now seemed broader, bulkier and more agreeable than ever.
“Inspector Mallett!” Pettigrew exclaimed. “This is a pleasure!”
“Not Inspector,” said Mallett. “Plain Mister. I retired after the war, with the rank of Superintendent. I thought you knew,” he added reproachfully.
He walked across the room with the almost silent tread that always seemed so remarkable in a man of his enormous size and sat down by the bedside. Pettigrew looked into his wide, honest, intelligent face with something approaching affection.
“Do you know,” he said, “I haven’t thought of you for years, but now you are here I believe you’re the very man I’ve been waiting to see.”
“That,” said Mallett, “seemed to be the opinion of your good lady when I met her in Whitsea this morning.”
Pettigrew could find nothing better to say than, “Oh.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that,” Mallett observed. “I’m sorry, but one loses one’s finesse, living in the country.”
“Don’t apologize,” murmured Pettigrew. “I was just wondering how my good lady knew, that was all.”
“I’m never surprised at anything ladies know and by very few things ladies do,” was the reply. “Do you remember, Mr. Pettigrew-?”
They remembered in good earnest for some time. Then Pettigrew said:
“And what made you retire to this part of the world, Mr. Mallett?”
“It was my good lady’s wish, sir. She came from Exmoor. And now that I’m unhappily a widower, I stay on from force of habit. It’s quiet, but I don’t complain. My hobby keeps me busy.”
“Your hobby? What is that? Bee-keeping or rose-growing?”
“Neither, sir, thank you for the compliment. I leave bee-keeping to Sherlock Holmes. And rose-growing- let me see-that was Sergeant Guff, wasn’t it?”
“You study the detective classics, I see.”
“Not the classics only, Mr. Pettigrew. Detective fiction of all sorts. This is the hobby I was talking about. I’m writing a book about it. What you might call a treatise-from the professional point of view. Coming to the subject fresh, as I did, I found it full of surprises.”
“I suppose surprise is what the authors are after.”
“Not that sort of surprise only, sir. It’s the way that some of their characters behave that surprises me. Take that book on your bed now, for example. What would you think of anyone in real life finding a corpse in their dustbin and not saying a word about it to the police? Surprising isn’t the word for it. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Quite,” said Pettigrew. “Quite. I was thinking the same thing myself. All the same, there may be circumstances when-Look here, Mallett, I’d rather like your advice about this…”
And as Mallett leant forward to hear what he had to say, he had the strongest possible impression that this was precisely what his visitor had come for.
“Yes,” Mallett was saying thoughtfully, “Yes.” He tugged at the ends of his grizzled moustache in a well-remembered gesture. “And this body-appearance- ghost-whatever you like to call it-looked like what, exactly?”
“That was what Tom asked me.”
“And you couldn’t tell him, because your head was too full of what happened when you were a nipper. I know. But your head’s clear now. What do you say it looked like, now?”
“I’ve only a very vague recollection, you know. I didn’t see it for more than a second or two. It’s difficult to say.”
“Try.”
Under the influence of that calm, compelling tone, Pettigrew tried.
“Flannel trousers and a bluey-grey coat,” he said at last. “Open-necked shirt-white or pale yellow.”
“Hat?”
“No hat.”
“Hair, then.”
“Lightish brown-there might have been a bit of a curl in it.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. I couldn’t see the face. I’m afraid this is all too indefinite to be much use.”
“On the contrary, it’s very definite, and very useful. It proves one thing, that whatever you saw on Bolter’s Tussock yesterday, it wasn’t the ghost of the man you saw there fifty years ago. I don’t know how he was dressed, but I bet he wasn’t wearing flannel trousers and an open-necked shirt. Breeches and stockings and a collar and tie, more likely. ”
“Of course,” said Pettigrew. He began to laugh. “How ridiculously obvious! Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Well,” said Mallett tolerantly, “you had other things to think of, no doubt. That’s one possibility out of the way, anyhow.”
“Did you ever consider it a serious possibility?”
Mallett shrugged his great shoulders.
“More things in heaven and earth, you know,” he said. “But I shouldn’t have expected it from you, Mr. Pettigrew.”
“I don’t know whether that is a compliment or not. Let’s think about other possibilities.”
“Well, sir, the next possibility is that the man you saw was simply a hiker asleep on the grass, and that while you were gone he just got up and walked away. What do you think of that?”
“Not very much. It’s difficult to say why, exactly, but-”
“I know. Nothing so stiff as a stiff.”
“It’s more likely, if I was mistaken, that what I saw wasn’t a man at all, but just a chance combination of stones and grasses and so on that gave the impression of someone lying there. All the same, I don’t believe it. The question is, would the police believe it?”
Mallett did not answer the question. Instead, he asked another. “Has it occurred to you, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said, “that a body doesn’t get to and from a place like this without someone putting it there and taking it away again, and that anyone carting corpses about is apt to leave traces?”
“Of course,” said Pettigrew. “But the day before yesterday I had hardly the chance-”
“Nobody’s blaming you, sir. What I was getting at is this: supposing there is something here to go to the police about, there ought to be some proof of it on the spot. Wouldn’t it be as well for you to go there again first thing to-morrow with someone-someone with a bit of experience, shall we say?-to check up first? If there’s nothing there, the police aren’t going to believe your yarn. If there is, then you can go straight off to the station and leave it to them to find the clues all over again for themselves.”
“You mean, you’ll come with me and look at the place yourself?”
“That was my idea.”
“I am enormously obliged to you.” Pettigrew felt relieved at thus disposing of his problem, and at the same time ashamed at shifting a burden that was properly his on to another’s shoulders.