With Gregory in the lead, they followed the roadside path as directed by the constable, the wet snow squishing unpleasantly under their feet and sticking to their shoes, and soon reached a section of road blocked off by ropes; behind the barrier some tire tracks stretched from the road to the shoulder, then swung across to the scene of the accident.
There, half on the road, half off, stood a long, gray Bentley, its front end rammed into a tree trunk, its headlights smashed to bits, its front windshield cracked. The doors were hanging open and, as much as Gregory could see, the inside of the car was empty. One of the local policemen walked over. Gregory continued studying the position of the Bentley and, without turning around, asked:
“Well, what happened?”
“The ambulance left already, Inspector. They took Williams,” the constable answered.
“Williams — was he the one on duty at the mortuary?” Gregory turned to the constable.
“That’s right, Inspector.”
“I’m a lieutenant. Where is this mortuary?”
“Over there, sir.”
Gregory glanced in the direction indicated. The cemetery was unwalled; its long, regular lines of graves were covered with snow. He hadn’t noticed it before because it was located off to the east, and to see it he would have had to look right into the rising sun, which was still fairly low on the horizon. Nearby, hidden by a few bushes, a footpath branched off from the road and led up to a building surrounded by a thicket.
“Is that the mortuary? The building with the tar-paper roof?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. I was on duty there until three this morning, then Williams relieved me. The way it was, our commanding officer got us all together, because—”
“Slow down and tell me the whole story. Williams had the duty after you. What happened next?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, who does?”
Gregory was experienced with this kind of conversation, so he remained patient.
Meanwhile, after getting the lay of the land, the men from the Yard settled down to their work. The photographer and the lab technician dumped their gear in the snow near where the highway patrolman’s motorcycle was leaning against the mile post. Sorensen tried to light a cigarette but his matches kept going out in the wind. The constable, a blonde, friendly-looking fellow with big eyes, cleared his throat.
“No one, Lieutenant. It was like this. Williams had the duty from three o’clock. Parrings was supposed to relieve him around six, but around half past five a driver called the station house to report that he’d just hit a constable who ran in front of his car, and that he smashed into a tree while trying to swerve out of the way. So then—”
“No,” said Gregory, “not yet. Now, tell me slowly, very slowly. First, exactly what was the man on duty at the mortuary supposed to do?”
“Well… we were supposed to walk around the place and check the door and windows.”
“All around the building?”
“Not exactly, sir, because there are bushes right up to the wall in the back, so we made a wide circle up to the graves and back.”
“How long did it take to make one circuit?”
“It depends. Tonight it took about ten minutes, because it was hard to get around in the snow and there was all that fog, and of course we had to check the door every time…”
“Good. Now tell me, what about the driver who phoned the station?”
“Sir?”
“Where is he now?”
“The driver? At the station, sir. He had a slight cut on his head and Dr. Adams wanted to look him over.”
“I see. Dr. Adams is the local doctor?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Still standing at the side of the road, Gregory suddenly snapped at the constable in an unexpectedly severe voice.
“What idiot was walking around in here and crushed all this snow? Was there anyone here you didn’t tell me about?”
Surprised but unperturbed, the constable winced.
“No one, sir. The C.O. told us to rope off the whole area to make sure.”
“What do you mean, no one? What about the ambulance crew? How did they get to Williams?”
“Oh, Williams was a little ways from here — we found him under that tree over there.” The constable pointed across the road at a depression in the snow perhaps ten or twelve paces behind the Bentley.
Without another word, Gregory stepped over the rope and, keeping as much to the side as possible, walked across the closed-off area. Like their car, he noticed, the Bentley had come from the direction of London. Stepping carefully, he walked back and forth a few times following the tracks. The impression of the tires was clear and even up to a certain point; from there on the snow was scattered in small lumps and bare pavement was visible. Apparently the driver had braked violently and his wheels, skidding sideways, had acted something like a snowplow. Farther on, still visible in the snow, were some long curving tracks leading right up to the rear tires of the Bentley, showing that it had swung sideways and driven straight into the tree. The tracks of a few other cars were also still preserved in the wet, plastic snow, especially along the side of the road. Among these were some deep ruts apparently left by the thick tires of a heavy truck; the treads were arranged in a characteristic prewar style. Gregory walked back in the direction of London for a while, and without any difficulty ascertained that the Bentley was the last car to have driven along this section of road, since in a few places its tire tracks had obliterated the marks left by the other vehicles. Now he began to look for human footprints: he headed in the opposite direction, moving away from the men and cars; the footpath, he found, was covered with footprints: enough for there to have been a parade. It must have been the ambulance attendants carrying the injured constable, he realized, making a mental note to compliment the Pickering police commander for having kept them off the road. The only footprints on the road itself had been made by a pair of heavy boots. It was evident that they were the tracks of a running man; someone who was probably not too good at running, though, because he had taken very short steps, apparently in an amateurish effort to increase his speed.
“He ran from the direction of the cemetery out into the middle of the road,” Gregory oriented himself, “and then headed toward the town. A constable running like that? Who was chasing him?”
He looked around for signs of the pursuer but there wasn’t a thing: the snow was untouched. Walking farther on, Gregory came to the place where a narrow lane, surrounded by dense bushes, branched off from the road and went up to the cemetery. About twenty paces farther along the road beyond that point, he saw some tire tracks and footprints in the snow, untouched and preserved perfectly. A vehicle had driven up from the opposite direction, turned around, and stopped (the tire tracks at this point were more deeply grooved); two men had gotten out; a third had approached them from the side, and led them over to the Bentley. They had walked toward it along the shoulder and had come back the same way. The man they were carrying had probably given them a little trouble, because there were a few round marks in the snow to indicate where they had set the stretcher down before sliding it into the ambulance. The spot where he found all these prints was just past the beginning of the lane, so Gregory took a look at the lane next, returning to the road after a moment or two because he had seen what he wanted: the running man’s tracks showed clearly how he had charged down the lane from the direction of the mortuary, the recently whitewashed wall of which blocked the view for about a hundred yards.
Carefully examining the running man’s footprints, Gregory walked back to the Bentley. Eight paces from the wrecked car, the prints showed, he had whirled around, as if suddenly trying to turn; a bit farther on the snow was so churned up that there wasn’t much to see. Standing with his hands in his pockets, Gregory bit his lip.
“He missed him in front, then went into a skid and hit him… probably with his rear end.” Gregory lifted his head.
“How badly is Williams hurt?”
“He’s still unconscious, sir. The doctor — the one from the ambulance — was very surprised that he managed to keep walking afterwards — he didn’t fall down until he got over… oh, over here.”
“How do you know that’s where he collapsed?”
