sound was light and hollow. “Not very substantial, just a shell to go inside the stone. That should be Treverra. But this one—”
“There appears to be some injury to his head,” said the Vicar, low-voiced. “Do you think—?”
“I
Tim illuminated the bony, dark-skinned face. A darker, mottled stain covered the outer part of the socket of the left eye, the lower temple and the cheek-bone, the mark of a large, broken bruise.
“Could he have got that in the sea?” Sam’s big voice was muted.
“I don’t think so. I think it was done before death. And I think,” he said, looking round them all and stepping back from the coffin, “we’re going to have to turn this over at once to the Maymouth police. They’d better have a look at the whole set-up. Because it looks very much as if they’ve got a murder on their hands.”
There was a moment of absolute silence and stillness; then Simon heaved a cautious breath and dusted the powdering of stone from his hands.
“One of us had better take the car and go and telephone,” he said in the most practical of voices. “Will you go, George, or shall I?”
But the most incomprehensible thing of all about the St. Nectan project came later still, past noon, when the photographers and the experts and the police surgeon had all had their way with the Treverra tomb, and the long, lank body of Zebedee Trethuan, verger and jobbing gardener, had been taken out on a covered stretcher and driven away in an ambulance, watched silently and avidly by a gallery of fishermen, children, respectable housewives and solid townspeople from all the dunes around, and no doubt just as eagerly by all the trebles of St. Mary’s choir, fighting over the Vicar’s binoculars on top of the Dragon’s Head.
They were left with the plain, light wooden coffin on which he had lain; and at the first touch the lid of it gave to their hands, and came away, uncovering—surely, this time?—the last resting-place of Jan Treverra. And there they were, the expected bones.
This body had certainly been there longer than its bedfellow. It was almost a skeleton, shreds of perished clothing drifted about the long bones and the dried and mummified flesh that remained to it. But had it, on closer inspection, really been there for two centuries and more? It had a hasty and tumbled appearance, with no composed, hieratic dignity. The fragments of cloth still had enough nature left in them to show a texture and a colour; a colour which had been very dark navy blue, a texture that looked suspiciously like thick, solid modern woollen, meant to withstand all weathers. And here, about the chest, clung bits of disintegrating knitted stuff.
Among Treverra’s eccentricities it had never been recorded that he wished to be buried in a fisherman’s Meltons and a seaman’s jersey.
By the middle of that Friday afternoon it was all over Maymouth that Jan Treverra’s tomb had yielded not one body, but two; and that, positively though quite incomprehensibly, neither of them was Jan Treverra.
CHAPTER IV
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
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DETECTIVE-SERGEANT HEWITT was pure Maymouth from his boots to his sober utilitarian hair-cut, a stocky, square man of middle age with a vaguely sad countenance, who used few words, but in some curious fashion turned other people voluble. In taking his last look round the Treverra vault before they locked it and left it to its ravished quietness, he said nothing at all. Only his solemn eyes lingered thoughtfully along the propped edge of the stone lid, with its specks of pallor where the iron had bitten into the stone; and Tim, following their reproachful survey, said apologetically: “I know, it’s a pity we had to use crowbars and foul up the possible traces. But we couldn’t possibly have
“Yes, well—if you gentlemen will go along with Snaith to the police station, right away, we’d like to have statements from all of you. Your individual observations may help us.” He didn’t sound hopeful, but he probably never did. “Mr. Felse, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to have you along with me for a call on the way. We’ll join the others in half an hour or so.”
“Glad to, if I can be any help,” said George.
“And I’ll take the key, Mr. Towne.” Simon surrendered it, and watched it turned in the great lock, with a soundless efficiency which did not fail to register with the Detective-Sergeant. “I see you’ve been preparing for to- day. This is the key from the Place?”
“Yes, the only one, as far as I know. I’ve had it three days now. Miss Rachel gave it to me when I wanted to bring down some of the gear”
“Yes, I gathered from what you said just now that you’d been in the vault before to-day. How often?”
“Twice. On Wednesday morning—the Vicar was with me that time—we came down to clear the steps and clean and oil the lock, and tried the key to be sure how it worked. But we didn’t go farther then than just inside the doorway.” And that, thought George, was probably when Simon spotted the illicit stores there, hence his discreet withdrawal, and the public declaration of his programme that evening. Nor had he actually said that they had in fact cleaned and oiled the lock, merely that they had come here with that intention. This job at least had proved unnecessary. “Then I came in again yesterday afternoon, and dumped those sheets of felt.” To make sure that the hint had been taken?
“Notice anything at all different then? Or when you came in to-day?”
Simon considered. “Not that I recollect.”
“You didn’t sweep the floor clean of sand?”
“No. Never occurred to me, even if I’d had a broom. I was surprised how dry and clean it was in here, only a blown layer of sand. Just like now—except for our hoof-marks, of course,” said Simon ruefully.
“Ah, well, you’ll have time to think it over. Mr. Felse and I will be with you shortly.”
They climbed the narrow steps on which the sand whisked softly like blown spray, and closed the latchless gate upon the solitude so bewilderingly void of Treverra, and so over-populated with others who had no business there. The Land-Rover and the Porsche set off for the police station in Maymouth, Detective-Constable Snaith, son of a
