Shelly Head lies about ten miles along the coast from Crow’s Beach, and is curiously lonely, considering how near it lies to the watering-place. Under the cliffs is a long stretch of clear sandy beach, never visited, and overlooked by no houses. The cliffs themselves are chalk, and covered with short turf, running back into a wide expanse of downs, with gorse and heather. Then comes a belt of pine-trees, beyond which is a steep, narrow and rutty road, leading at length into the tarmac high-road between Ramborough and Ryders Heath. The downs are by no means frequented, though there are plenty of rough tracks which a car can follow, if you are not particular about comfort or fussy over your springs.
Under the leadership of the boy scout, the police-car bumped uncomfortably over these disagreeable roads. It was hopeless to look for any previous car-tracks, for the chalk was dry and hard, and the grass and heath retained no marks. Everywhere, little dells and hollows presented themselves- all exactly alike, and many of them capable of hiding a small car, not to speak of the mere signs and remains of a recent picnic. Having arrived at what their guide thought to be approximately the right place, they pulled up and got out. Parker quartered the ground between the five of them and they set off.
Wimsey took a dislike to gorse-bushes that day. There were so many of them and so thick. Any of them might hold a cigarette package or a sandwich paper or a scrap of cloth or a clue of some kind. He trudged along unhappily, back bent and eyes on the ground, over one ridge and down into the hollow- then circling to right and to left, taking his bearings by the police-car; over the next ridge and down into the next hollow; over the next ridge-
Yes. There was something in the hollow.
He saw it first sticking out round the edge of a gorse-bush. It was light in colour, and pointed, rather like a foot.
He felt a little sick.
“Somebody has gone to sleep here,” he said aloud.
Then he thought:
“Funny- it’s always the feet they leave showing.”
He scrambled down among the bushes, slipping on the short turf and nearly rolling to the bottom. He swore irritably.
The person was sleeping oddly. The flies must be a nuisance all over her head like that.
It occurred to him that it was rather early in the year for flies. There had been an advertising rhyme in the papers. Something about “Each fly you swat now means, remember, Three hundred fewer next September.” Or was it a thousand fewer? He couldn’t get the metre quite right.
Then he pulled himself together and went forward. The flies rose up in a little cloud.
It must have been a pretty heavy blow, he thought, to smash the back of the skull in like that. The shingled hair was blonde. The face lay between the bare arms.
He turned the body on its back.
Of course, without the photograph, he could not- he need not- be certain that this was Vera Findlater.
All this had taken him perhaps thirty seconds.
He scrambled up to the rim of the hollow and shouted.
A small black figure at some distance stopped and turned. He saw its face as a white spot with no expression on it. He shouted again, and waved his arms in wide gestures of explanation. The figure came running; it lurched slowly and awkwardly over the heathy ground. It was the policeman- a heavy man, not built for running in the heat. Wimsey shouted again, and the policeman shouted too. Wimsey saw the others closing in upon him. The grotesque figure of the boy-scout topped a ridge, waving its staff- then disappeared again. The policeman was quite near now. His bowler hat was thrust back on his head, and there was something on his watch-chain that glinted in the sun as he ran. Wimsey found himself running to meet him and calling – explaining at great length. It was too far off to make himself heard, but he explained, wordily, with emphasis, pointing, indicating. He was quite breathless when the policeman and he came together. They were both breathless. They wagged their heads and gasped. It was ludicrous. He started running again, with the man at his heels. Presently they were all there, pointing, measuring, taking notes, grubbing under the gorse-bushes. Wimsey sat down. He was dreadfully tired.
“Peter,” said Parker’s voice, “come and look at this.”
He got up wearily.
There were the remains of a picnic lunch a little farther down the hollow. The policeman had a little bag in his hand-he had taken it from under the body, and was now turning over the trifles it contained. On the ground, close to the dead girl’s head, was a thick, heavy spanner- unpleasantly discolored with a few fair hairs sticking to its jaws. But what Parker was calling his attention to was none of these, but a man’s mauve grey cap.
“Where did you find that?” asked Wimsey.
“Alf here picked it up at the top of the hollow,” said Parker.
“Tumbled off into the gorse it was,” corroborated the scout, “just up here, lying upside down just as if it had fallen off somebody’s head.”
“Any footmarks?”
“Not likely. But there’s a place where the bushes are all trodden and broken. Looks as if there’d been some sort of struggle. What’s become of the Austin? Hi! Don’t touch that spanner, my lad. There may be finger-prints on it. This looks like an attack by some gang or other. Any money in that purse? Tenshilling note, sixpence and a few coppers- Oh!, the other woman may have had more on her. She’s very well off, you know. Held up for ransom, I shouldn’t wonder.” Parker bent down and very gingerly enfolded the spanner in a silk handkerchief, carrying it slung by the four corners. “Well, we’d better spread about and have a look for the car. Better try that belt of trees over there. Looks a likely spot. And, Hopkins- I think you’d better run back with our car to Crow’s Beach and let ’em know at the station, and come back with a photographer. And take this wire and send it to the Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and find a doctor and bring him along with you. And you’d better hire another car while you’re about it, in case we don’t find the Austin – we shall be too many to get away in this one. Take Alf back with you if you’re not sure of finding the place again. Oh! and Hopkins, fetch us along something to eat and drink, will you? We may be at it a long time. Here’s some money- that enough?”
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
The constable went off, taking Alf, who was torn between a desire to stay and do some more detecting, and the pride and glory of being first back with the news. Parker gave a few words of praise for his valuable assistance which filled him with delight, and then turned to the Chief Constable.
“They obviously went off in this direction. Would you bear away to the left, sir, and enter the trees from that end, and Peter, will you bear to the right and work through from the other end, while I go straight up the middle?”
The Chief Constable, who seemed a good deal shaken by the discovery of the body, obeyed without a word. Wimsey caught Parker by the arm.
“I say, he said, “have you looked at the wound? Something funny, isn’t there? There ought to be more mess, somehow. What do you think?”
“I’m not thinking anything for the moment,” said Parker, a little grimly. “We’ll wait for the doctor’s report. Come on, Steve! We want to dig out that car.”
“Let’s have a look at the cap. H’m. Sold by a gentleman, resident in Stepney. Almost new. Smells strongly of California Poppy- rather a swell sort of gangsman, apparently. Quite one of the lads of the village.”
“Yes- we ought to be able to trace that. Thank Heaven, they always overlook something. Well, we’d better get along.”
The search for the car presented no difficulties. Parker stumbled upon it almost as soon as he got in under the trees. There was a clearing, with a little rivulet of water running through it; beside which stood the missing Austin. There were other trees here, mingled with the pines, and the water made an ell spread into a shallow pool, with a muddy beach.