‘But when do you suppose it all happened?’ demanded Harriet She appreciated Peter’s effort to exonerate the house from all share in the crime, and was annoyed with herself for having betrayed any sensibility on the subject It was distracting for him. Her tone, in consequence, was determinedly off-hand and practical.

‘That,’ said the Superintendent, ’is what we’ve got to fine out. Some time last Wednesday night, putting what the doctor says with the rest of the evidence. After dark, if them candles are anything to go by. And that means-H’m! We’d better have this chap Crutchley in. Seems like he might have been the last person to see the deceased alive.’

‘Enter the obvious suspect,’ said Peter, lightly.

“The obvious suspect is always innocent.’ said Harriet in the same tone.

‘In books, my lady,’ said Mr Kirk, with a little indulgent bow towards her, as who should say, ‘The ladies. God bless them!’

‘Come, come,’ said Peter, ‘we must not introduce our professional prejudices into the case. How about it. Superintendent? Shall we make ourselves scarce?’

‘That’s as you like, my lord. I’d be glad enough if you’d stay; you might give me a bit of help, seeing as you know the ropes, so to speak. Not but what it’ll be a kind of busman’s holiday for you,’ he finished up, rather dubiously.

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Harriet. ‘A busman’s honeymoon. Butchered to make a-’

‘Lord Byron!’ cried Mr Kirk, a little too promptly. ‘Butchered to make a busman’s-no, that don’t seem right somehow.’

‘Try Roman,’ said Peter. ‘All right, we’ll do our best. No objection to smoking in court, I take it. Where the devil did I put the matches?’

‘Here you are, my lord,’ said Sellon. He produced a box and struck a light. Peter eyed him curiously, and remarked: ‘Hullo! You’re left-handed.’

‘For some things, my lord. Not for writing.’

‘Only for striking matches-and handling Edinburgh rock?’

‘Left-handed?’ said Kirk. ‘Why, so you are, Joe. I hope you ain’t this tall, left-handed murderer what we’re looking out for?’ mm

‘No, sir,’ said the constable, briefly.

‘A pretty thing that’ud be?’ said his superior, with a hearty guffaw. ‘We shouldn’t never hear the last of that. Now, you hop out and get Crutchley. Nice lad he is,’ he went on, turning to Peter as Sellon left the room. ’Ard working, but no Sherlock ’Olmes, if you follow me. Slow in the uptake. I sometimes think his heart ain’t rightly in his work these days. Married too young, that’s what it is, and started a family, which is a handicap to a young officer.’

‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘all this matrimony is a sad mistake.’

He laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder, while Mr Kirk tactfully studied his notebook.

Chapter VIII. L.S.S

The gardener walked up to the table with a slightly belligerent air, as though he had an idea that the police were there for the sole purpose of preventing him from exercising his lawful right to obtain payment of forty pounds. He admitted, briefly, when questioned, that his name was Frank Crutchley and that he was accustomed to attend to the garden one day a week at Talboys for a stipend of five shillings per diem, putting in the rest of his time doing odd jobs of lorry-driving and taxi-work for Mr Hancock at the garage in Pagford.

‘Saving up, I was,’ said Crutchley, with insistence, ‘to get a garridge of my own, only for that there forty pound Mr Noakes had off of me.’

‘Never mind that now,’ said the Superintendent. “That’s gone west, that has, and it’s no use crying over spilt milk.’ Crutchley was about as much convinced by this assurance as were the Allies, on being informed by Mr Keynes, after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty, that they might whistle for their indemnities, since the money was not there. It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.

‘He promised,’ affirmed Frank Crutchley, in a dogged effort to overcome Mr Kirk’s extraordinary obtuseness ‘that he’d let me have it when I came today.’

‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘I dare say he might have done, if some body hadn’t butted in and brained him. You ought to a-beer smarter and got it out of him last week.’

This could be nothing but stupidity. Crutchley explained patiently: ‘He hadn’t got it then.’

‘Oh, hadn’t he though?’ said the Superintendent ‘That’s all you know about it.’

This was a staggerer. Crutchley tamed white.

‘Cripes! You don’t mean to tell me-’

‘Oh, yes he had,’ said Kirk. This information, if he knew anything about it, was going to loosen his witness’s tongue for him and save a deal of trouble. Crutchley turned with a frantic look to the other members of the party. Peter confirmed Kirk’s statement with a nod. Harriet, who had known days when the loss of forty pounds would have meant greater catastrophe than Peter could ever suffer by the loss of forty thousand, said sympathetically: ‘Yes, Crutchley. I’m afraid he had the money on him al the time.’

‘What! He had the money? You found it on him?’

‘Well, we did,’ admitted the Superintendent. ‘There’s no call to make a secret of it.’ He waited for the witness to draw the obvious conclusion.

‘Mean to say, if he hadn’t been killed, I might have had my money?’

‘If you could have got in before Mr MacBride,’ said Harriet, with more honesty than consideration for Kirk’s tactics.

Crutchley, however, was not troubling his head about Mr MacBride. The murderer was the man who had robbed him of his own, and he took no pains to conceal his feelings. ‘God! I’ll-I’ll-I’ll-I’d like to-’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Superintendent, ‘we quite understand that. And now’s your opportunity. Any facts you can give us-’

‘Facts! I’ve been done, that’s what it is, and I-’

‘Look here, Crutchley,’ said Peter. ‘We know you’ve had a rotten deal, but that can’t be helped. The man who killed Mr Noakes has done you a bad turn, and he’s the man we’re after. Use your wits and see if you can’t help us to get even with him.’ The quiet, incisive tone had its effect. A kind of illumination spread over Crutchley’s features.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ said Kirk. ‘That’s about the size of it, and put very plain. Now, my lad, we’re sorry about your money, but it’s up to you to give us a hand. See?’

‘Yes,’ said Crutchley, with an almost savage eagerness. All right. What d’you want to know?’

‘Well, first of all-when did you last see Mr Noakes?’

‘Wednesday evening, same as I said. I finished up my work just before six and come in here to do the pots; and when I’d done ’em he give me five bob, same as usual, and that’s when I started askin’ him for my forty quid.’

‘Where was that? In here?’

‘No, in the kitchen. He always sat in there. I come out of here with the steps in my ’and-’

‘Steps? Why the steps?’

‘Why, for that there cactus and the clock. I wind the clock every week-it’s an eight-day. I can’t reach either on ’em, without the steps. I goes into the kitchen, like I was saying, to put the steps away, and there he was. He give me my money-’arf a crown, and a bob, and two tanners and sixpence in coppers, if you want to be perticler, all out of different pockets. He liked to make out he couldn’t ’ardly lay ’and on a ’apenny, but I was used to that. And when he’d finished play-actin’, I asks him for my forty pound. I want that money, I says-’