‘Leaving no footprints?’

‘He’d taken off his boots for the night and ran over in his slippers-it’s all grass over the field to the cottage. Bert says, “He’s dead this time, all right” Then Mrs Ruddle goes to fetch a ladder, while Bert locks the door and puts the key back in the dead man’s pockets. He goes upstairs, through the trap-door on to the roof, and Mrs Ruddle holds the ladder while he gets down.’, Do you mean that seriously, Peter?* y»:,;;

‘I can’t mean it seriously till I’ve had a look at the roof. But there’s one thing they remember afterwards-Bert has left the cellar-door open-hoping it will look as though Noakes had had an accident. But when we arrive, they are a bit put out. We were not the people who were intended to discover the body. That was to be Miss Twitterton’s job.

They know she’s easily hoodwinked, but they know nothing about us. First of all, Mrs Ruddle isn’t keen to have us here at all-but when we insist on getting the key and coming in, she makes the best of it. Only-she calls out to Bert, “Shut the cellar-door. Bert! It’s perishing cold.” Thinking to postpone matters a little, you see, and take stock of us first. And, by the way, we’ve only got Mrs Ruddle’s word for it that Noakes died at that particular time, or that he didn’t go to bed, or anything. It might all have happened much later at night, or, better still, when she came in the morning; because then he’d be ready dressed, and she’d only have to make the bed again.’

‘What? In the morning? All that business on the roof?

Suppose anybody came by?’

‘Bert on a ladder, cleaning out the gutters. No ’arm in cleaning out a gutter.’

‘Gutter?… What does that?… Gutter-guttered-the candles! Don’t they prove it happened at night?’

“They don’t prove it; they suggest it. We don’t know how long the candles were to start with. Noakes may have sat listening to the wireless till they burnt themselves out in the sockets. Thrift, thrift, Horatio. It was Mrs Ruddle who said the wireless wasn’t going-who put the time at between 9 and 9.30-just after Sellon and Noakes had been quarrelling. It’s not awfully like Mrs Ruddle to have gone away without hearing the end of the row, when you come to think of it. If you look at the thing in a prejudiced way, all her actions seem odd. And she had it in for Sellon, and sprang it on him il beautifully.’

‘Yes,’ said Harriet, thoughtfully. ‘And, you know, she kept on sort of hinting things to me when we were doing the sandwiches for lunch. And she was very artful about refusing to answer Sellon’s questions before the Superintendent came. But, honestly, Peter, do you think she and Bert have brains enough between them to work out that business with the keys? And would they have had the sense and self-restraint to keep their hands off the money?’

‘Now you’re asking something. But one thing I do know. Yesterday afternoon, Bert fetched a long ladder from the out-house and went up on the roof with Puffett.’

‘Oh, Peter! So he did!’

‘Another good clue gone west. We do at least know there was a ladder, but how are we to tell now what marks were made when?’

‘The trap-door.’ Peter laughed ruefully. ‘Puffett informed me when I met them fetching the ladder that Bert had just been up to the roof that way, to see if there was a “sut-lid” anywhere in the chimney for cleaning the flue. He went up by the Privy Stair and through your bedroom when Miss Twitterton was being questioned down here. Didn’t you hear him? You brought Miss Twitterton down, and up he nipped, pronto.’

Harriet lit a fresh cigarette. ‘Now let’s hear the case against Crutchley and the vicar.’

‘Well-they’re a bit more difficult, because of the alibi. Unless one of them was in league with Mrs Ruddle, we’ve got to explain away the silence of the wireless. Take Crutchley first. If he did it, we can’t very well make up a story about his climbing in at the window, because he couldn’t have got there till after Noakes was in bed. He deposited the vicar at the parsonage at 10.30 and was back in Pagford before eleven. There’d be no time for long parleyings at windows and clever business with keys. I’m assuming, of course, that Crutchley’s times at the garage have been confirmed; if he’s guilty, of course, they will be, because they’re part of the plan. If it was Crutchley, it must have been premeditated, which means that he might somehow have stolen a key or had one cut. Very early in the morning is Crutchley’s time, I fancy-taking out a taxi for a non-existent customer or something of that kind. He leaves the car somewhere, walks up to the house and lets himself in-um! yes, it’s awkward after that. Noakes would be upstairs, undressed and in bed. I can’t see the point of it. If he attacked him, it would be to rob him-and he didn’t rob him.’

‘Now it’s you who are asking Why. But suppose Crutchley came to rob the house, and was rummaging in a bureau or something-in the kitchen, where the will was found-and Noakes heard him and came downstairs.’

‘Stopping to put on his collar and tie, and carefully taking all his precious bank-notes with him?’

‘Of course not. In his night-things. He interrupts Crutchley, who goes for him. He runs away, Crutchley hits him, thinks he’s dead, gets the wind up and runs off. locking the door after him from outside. Then Noakes comes to, wonders what he’s doing down there, goes back to his room, dresses, feels queer, goes towards the back door, meaning to fetch Mrs Ruddle, and falls down the stairs.’

‘Excellent. But who made the bed?’

‘Oh, bother! Yes-and we haven’t explained about the wireless.’

‘No. My idea was that Crutchley had put the wireless out of action, meaning to establish his alibi for the night before the murder. I meant it to be a murder-but you put me off with your theory about robbing a bureau.’

‘I’m sorry. I was starting two hares at once. The Crutchley red herring does seem to be rather a mild one. Is the wireless working now, by the way?’

‘We’ll find out. Supposing it isn’t, does that prove anything?’

‘Not unless it looks as though it had been deliberately put out of order. I suppose it works from batteries. Nothing’s easier than to loosen a terminal in an accidental-looking manner.’

‘Old Noakes could easily put a thing like that right for himself.’

‘So he could. Shall I run down and see whether it’s working now or not?’

‘Ask Bunter. He’ll know.’

Harriet called down the stairs to Bunter, and returned to say: ‘Working perfectly. Bunter tried it yesterday evening after we’d gone.’

‘Ah! Then that proves nothing, one way or the other. Noakes may have tried to turn it on, failed to spot the trouble till the news-bulletin was over, put it right and left it at that.’

‘He may have done that in any case.’

‘And so the time-scheme goes west again.’

‘This is very discouraging.’

‘Isn’t it? It now leaves the way open for a murderous attack by the vicar, between 10.30 and 11 o’clock.’

‘Why should the-? Sorry! I keep on asking why.’

‘There’s an awful strain of inquisitiveness on both sides of the family. You’d better reconsider those children, Harriet; they’ll be intolerable pests from the cradle.’

‘So they will. Frightful. All the same, I do think it looks neater to have a comprehensive motive. Murder for the fun of it breaks all the rules of detective fiction.’

‘All right. Well, then. Mr Goodacre shall have a motive. I’ll think of one presently. He walks over from the vicarage at about 10.35 and knocks at the door. Noakes lets him in-there’s no reason why he shouldn’t let in the vicar, who has always appeared mild and friendly. But the vicar, underneath his professional austerity, conceals one of those dreadful repressions so common among clergymen as depicted by our realistic novelists. So, of course, does Noakes. The vicar, under cover of a purity campaign, accuses Noakes of corrupting the village maiden whom subconsciously he wants for himself.’