‘Just so. You wanted the money for the garage. What did he say to that?’

‘Promised he’d let me have it next time I come-that’s today. I might a-known ’e never meant it. Wasn’t the first time he’d promised, and then always ’ad some excuse. But he promised faithful, this time-the dirty old swine, and well he might, and him all set to skip with ’is pockets stuffed full of bank-notes, the bleeder.’

‘Come, come,’ said Kirk, reprovingly, with a deprecatory glance at her ladyship. ’Mustn’t use language. Was he alone in the kitchen when you went out?’

‘Yes. He wasn’t the sort people dropped in for a chat with. I went off then, and that’s the last I see of him.’

‘You went off,’ repeated the Superintendent, while Joe Sellon’s right hand travelled laboriously among the pothooks, ‘and left him sitting in the kitchen. Now, when-’

‘No, I didn’t say that. He followed me down the passage, talkin’ about givin’ me the money first thing in the morning, and then I ’eard ’im lock and bolt the door be’ind me.’

Which door?’

‘The back door. He mostly used that. The front door was allus kep’ locked.’

‘Ah! Is that a spring lock?’

‘No; mortice lock. He didn’t believe in them Yale things. Don’t take much to bust them off with a jemmy, he’d say.’

‘That’s a fact,’ said Kirk. ‘So that means the front door could only be opened with a key-from inside or out.’

‘That’s right. I should a-thought you’d a-seen that for yourself, if you’d looked.’

Mr Kirk, who had indeed examined the fastenings of both doors with some care, merely inquired: ‘Was the front-door key ever left in the lock?’

‘No; he kept it on his bunch. It ain’t a big one.’

‘It certainly wasn’t in the lock last night,’ volunteered Peter. ‘We got in that way with Miss Twitterton’s key, and the lock was perfectly free.’

‘Just so,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Was there any other spare key that you know of?’

Crutchley shook his head. ‘Mr Noakes wouldn’t go ’andin’ out keys by the bushel. Somebody might a-got in, you see, and pinched something.’

‘Ah! Well now, to get back. You left the house last Wednesday night-what time?’

‘Dunno,’ said Crutchley, thoughtfully. ‘Must a-been getting on for twenty-past, I reckon. Anyway, it was ten past when I wound that there clock. And it keeps good time.’

‘It’s right now,’ said Kirk, glancing at his watch. Harriet’s wrist-watch confirmed this, and so did Joe Sellon’s. Peter, after a blank gaze at his own watch, said, ‘Mine’s stopped,’ in a tone which might have suggested that Newton’s apple had been observed to fly upward or a B.B.C. announcer heard to use a bawdy expression.

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Harriet, practically, *you forgot to wind it up.’

‘I never forget to wind it up,’ said her husband, indignantly. ‘You’re quite right, though; I did. I must have been thinking of something else last night.’

‘Very natural, I’m sure, in all the excitement,’ said Kirk. ‘Can you remember whether that there clock was going when you arrived?’

The question distracted Peter from his own lapse of memory. He dropped his watch back into his pocket unwound and stared at the clock.

‘Yes,’ he said, finally. ‘It was. I heard it ticking, when we were sitting here. It was the most comfortable thing in the house.’

‘It was right, too,’ said Harriet ‘Because you said something about its being past midnight and I looked, and it said the same as my watch.’

Peter said nothing, but whistled a couple of bars almost inaudibly. Harriet remained imperturbable; twenty-four hours of matrimony had taught her that, if one was going to be disturbed by sly allusions to Greenland’s coast or anything else, one might live in a state of perpetual confusion.

Crutchley said: ‘Of course it was going. It’s an eight-day, I tell you. And it was right enough this morning when I wound it. What’s the odds, anyhow?’

I “Well, well,’ said Kirk. ‘We’ll take it, then, that you left here some time after 6.10 by that clock, which was right as near as makes no difference. What did you do next?’

‘Went straight to choir practice. See here-’

‘Choir practice, eh? Ought to be easy enough to check up on that. What time’s practice?’

‘Six-thirty. I was in good time-you can ask anybody.’

‘Quite so,’ agreed Kirk. ‘All this is rowtine, you know getting the times straight and so on. You left the house not earlier than 6.10 and not later than-say 6.25, to let you get to the church at 6.30. Right. Now, as a matter of rowtine, what did you do after that?’

‘Vicar asked me to drive his car over to Pagford for him. He don’t like driving himself after lighting-up. He ain’t so young as he was. I had me supper over there at the Pig and Whistle and had a look-on at the darts match. Tom Puffett can tell you. He was there. Vicar give him a lift over.’

‘Puffett a darts player?’ inquired Peter, pleasantly.

‘Ex-champion. And still throws a tidy dart.’

‘Ah! it’s the power he puts behind it, no doubt. Black he stood as night. Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell. And shook a dreadful dart.’

‘Ha, ha!’ cried Kirk, taken unaware and immensely tickled. ‘That’s good. Hear that, Joe? That good, that is. Black? He was black enough last time I saw him, halfway up the kitchen chimney. And shook a dreadful dart-I must tell him that. Worst of it is, I don’t suppose he ever heard of Milton. Fierce as-well, there, poor old Tom Puffett!’ The Superintendent waited to roll the jest over again on his tongue before returning to his inquiry.

‘We’ll see Tom Puffett presently. Did you bring Mr Goodacre back?’

‘Yes,’ said Crutchley, impatiently; he was not interested in John Milton. ‘Half-past ten I got him home, or just after. Then I went back to Pagford on my bike. I got in just on eleven and went to bed.’

‘Where do you sleep? Hancock’s garage?’

‘That’s right. Along of their other chap, Williams. He’ll tell you.’

Kirk was in the middle of extracting further particulars about Williams, when the sooty face of Mr Puffett poked itself in through the door. ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Puffett, ‘but I can’t do nothing with this ’ere pot. Will you ’ave the reverend’s gun, my lord? or shall I fetch the ladders afore it gets dark?’

Kirk opened his mouth to reprove the intruder, but was suddenly overcome. ‘Black it stood as night,’ he muttered, joyfully. This new way of applying quotations, not to edification, seemed to have caught his fancy.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Harriet. She glanced at Peter. ‘I wonder if we’d better leave it till tomorrow?’

‘I don’t mind telling you, me lady,’ observed the sweep,

‘Mr Bunter’s fair put out, thinkin’ he’ll have to cook dinner on that there perishin’ oil-stove.’

‘I’d better come and talk to Bunter,’ said Harriet. She felt she could not bear to see Bunter suffer any more. Besides, the men would probably get on better without her. As she went out, she heard Kirk call Puffett into the room.

‘Just a moment,’ said Kirk. ‘Crutchley here says he was at choir practice last Wednesday night from half-past six on. Do you know anything about that?’

‘That’s right, Mr Kirk. We was both there. ’Arf-past six to ’arf-past seven. ’Arvest anthem. “For ’Is mercies still endure. Ever faithful, ever sure.”’ Finding his notes less powerful than usual, Mr Puffett cleared his throat. ‘Been swallowing of the sut, that’s what I’ve been doing of. “Ever faithful, ever sure.” That’s quite correct.’

‘And you see me round at the Pig, too,’ said Crutchley.

‘Course I did. I’m not blind. You dropped me there and took vicar on to the Parish ‘All and come back not five minutes arter for your supper. Bread and cheese, you ’ad, and four and a ’arf pints, ’cause I counted ’em. Drahnd yourself one o’ these days, I reckon.’

‘Was Crutchley there all the time?’ asked Kirk.

‘Till closin’. Ten o’clock. Then we ’ad to go round and pick up Mr Goodacre again. Whist-drive was over at 10, but we ’ad to wait gettin’ on ten minutes while he ’ad a chat with old Miss Moody. ’Ow that woman do clack on, to be sure!