found the coffin empty, once when he filled it.”
“There was still the boat to dispose of,” said George.
“That wouldn’t be any problem. Trethuan was an amphibian like all the rest of Maymouth. His folks were fishermen. He had a dinghy of his own. To scuttle Ruiz’s boat by night and get back to land safely wouldn’t cause him much trouble. You don’t have to go far off this coast to find deep water. And he had time. Ruiz lived alone, nobody was going to raise a hue and cry immediately he didn’t come home to supper. We’ll go through all the circumstances again. We’ll find out who first called attention to the fact that he hadn’t come in from fishing. And when. It may even have been a couple of days later, time enough to wait for a pretty blowy night.”
“And wouldn’t there be a certain risk in rushing to claim a corpse, like that?” suggested George. “Suppose he said it was Ruiz, and then somebody else really did recognise it—by a ring, or something?”
“Ah, but he didn’t rush! He was canny. He waited for one nobody else was claiming. Henry tells me—it wasn’t my department—the police had been appealing for help in identifying that body for several days before he stepped in. And even then, if it had been obviously the wrong height or age, or shape, he only had to let well alone and say no, I don’t know him. No, he had everything sewed up. And he lay low with his thefts for a year or so, and left the stuff where he thought it was safest, before he started hawking pieces round the buyers in this country. And then you came along, Mr. Towne, and heaved a brick through all his plans and precautions. Nobody’d ever shown any interest in the tomb before. He made haste to shift the rest of the valuables, but he was terrified to move the body. No wonder he tried all he dared to scare you off. He knew it wouldn’t pass for Treverra, once the scholars and antiquaries got their noses into it.”
Simon lifted a dazed face from between his hands, and stared before him. George had not noticed until this minute the blue rings under his eyes, the copper shadows hollowing his lean cheeks. He might not have noticed even now, if he had not possessed knowledge acquired by the accident of being with Phil Rossall on the evening of Paddy’s disappearance. Not everybody had reason to see beyond the bright, handsome public image of Simon Towne to the marginal failures and deprivations that crippled his private progress.
“Look, do you really mean to say that whoever killed Trethuan took him in there, and dumped him into the coffin with—
“That’s exactly what I mean to say.” Hewitt was triumphant. “I haven’t the slightest doubt that that’s what happened. And a supreme bit of irony it is!”
“A supreme bit of cheek!” said Simon furiously. “If I wrote that and published it, I’d be hooted out of journalism. Nobody, not even a novelist, could get away with a bare-faced coincidence like that.”
“Not a coincidence at all,” Hewitt objected brusquely. “There were completely logical reasons why Ruiz should be disposed of precisely there, and in that way. As we’ve demonstrated. And there’ll be equally logical causes leading to the precise effect we’re left with, the presence of Trethuan’s body in the same hiding-place. Don’t forget there’s a waste of sand all round it. Don’t forget that a stone coffin is good cover. But I grant you we’ve still got to find out what the precise causes were in Trethuan’s case. He drowned in the sea, that’s definite. He was taken dead into the vault. Why, and how, we don’t know yet. It may have been through the door, with one of the two keys. Or it may have been through the tunnel. If young Paddy really saw him in the water about half past five, then the body might well be brought ashore on the Mortuary after the next high tide. He might be cast up fairly close to St. Nectan’s. And anyone who didn’t know the vault was going to be opened might still think it a pretty safe hiding- place.”
“There couldn’t have been many who didn’t know,” said Simon. “I advertised my intentions loudly enough, for obvious reasons.”
“Well, that’s just one of the things we shall have to look into. That case remains. But this one is as good as closed. A few details to fill in, some back history to verify, but I’m in no doubt of the result myself. It’s kind of tantalising,” he said thoughtfully, “to know the middle of a story, and not the beginning or the end.”
“That’ll come, all in good time,” said Simon, rising. He felt through his pockets for a crumpled packet of cigarettes, and offered them, and again began to search for matches. “Lord, I’m forgetting what I came for!” It was some small object at the bottom of his trouser pocket that had reminded him. He fished it out, a tiny, folded square of tissue paper.
“Paddy forgot to mention this last night, what with all the excitement, and to-day he’s on duty, Tim being his own cowman on Sundays. I said I’d bring it in to you. They found it yesterday in the tunnel, not far from the entrance into the vault.”
He leaned across to the lighter George was offering, and drew in smoke deeply and gratefully before he completed the unwrapping of the minute thing, and held it out on his open palm. A thin, broken gold ring, bent a little out of its true circle, the two ends pulled apart about a quarter of an inch. Hewitt took it up between finger and thumb, and stood staring at it warily, as though it might close on him and bite.
“I don’t suppose it means a thing,” said Simon apologetically, “but I said I’d deliver it, and I have. Can I run you back to the Dragon, George? It’s on my way.”
“Mr. Towne!” Hewitt had threaded the ring on the tip of his large brown forefinger, and was still gazing at it, a small, smug flare of pleasure in his eyes. “Where did you say this was found?”
“In the tunnel from the Dragon’s Hole to the vault. Only about twenty yards from the vault end, Paddy says, but I daresay he can show you the exact spot. Tamsin actually found it. Does it matter?”
“The spot where this was found may very well be the actual spot where Ruiz was killed,” said Hewitt happily, “that’s all. It happens to be the identical twin to the one ring he’s still wearing in his left ear.”
CHAPTER X
SUNDAY NIGHT
« ^ »
ON THEIR WAY up through the quiet Sunday reaches of the town they passed the narrow opening of Church Street, and Simon suddenly braked hard as they overshot it, and began to reverse along the empty road.
“You don’t mind a few more minutes’ delay, George? I suddenly thought I’d like to have a look at the other fellow’s grave, the one who isn’t Walter Ruiz.” He slowed the car beside the small lunette of gravel at the churchyard gate. The young lime trees, leaves just ripening into the yellower green of autumn, leaned over them.
“A sad sort of end he had,” said Simon, threading the maze of little paths between the graves, “dying solitary in the sea, and then cast up here among humankind again, only to be used as a pawn in a dirty game, and have another man’s name wished on him for all time. That’s the sort of ghost I’d expect to haunt us. Somebody we’ve
