He had, and look where it got him!
“Alix, the police ought to hear this from you, and as soon as possible. Are you free, if I come along and collect you now?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “How soon can you be here?”
“In about an hour and a quarter.”
“Good, I’ll be waiting.”
Opportunity dazzled him, suddenly turning the tragedies of Mottisham bright side out. “And then come home and meet my sister. Have tea with us. You needn’t hurry back, need you?”
“No,” said Alix, “I needn’t hurry back.”
It was somewhat after three o’clock that afternoon when Alix and Dave left the temporary police office at the vicarage. Sergeant Moon closed the door upon them reverently, and let out a great breath of mingled wonder, elation and achievement.
“The door! I always said it was the door! As simple as that! Who says we never get any luck? A very nice little witness, that!”
Detective Constable Reynolds, who had taken down Alix’s brief and brisk statement at her dictation, and was now watching her furtively through the window out of the corner of his eye, as she walked away with Dave down the vicarage drive, also thought her a very nice little witness, but reflected sadly that she seemed to be already booked. She had certainly tossed a fire-cracker into the workings of the case.
“Well, do we get the thing off?” asked Sergeant Moon practically.
“We do, and right away,” said George. “We also get a check on the question of whether it does or doesn’t belong where it is.” He lifted the telephone and dialled the forensic laboratory. “Your young Crowe is the man of his hands around here, Jack, isn’t he? Get hold of him and tell him what the job is, and he’ll tell us what tools he wants.”
“He’s already got all the tools there are,” said Sergeant Moon.
“That’s the style!” He turned to the telephone as the distant voice hailed him. “Hullo, Joe? George Felse here. Can you get hold of Professor Grazier for me, and get him out here as soon as possible? If he’s not available, find me somebody else who knows about ironwork—especially medieval ironwork. And I mean
It took the expert an hour and a half to get out to Mottisham, but it took Constable Crowe, that solid, silent, deft-handed countryman, just about as long to detach the four heavy bolts that secured the knocker to the door. Their heads were buried among the burgeoning leaves that sprouted from the mane of the mythical beast, and spread out into a round plaque flattened against the oak. Crowe dealt with them one by one, delicately and slowly, reluctant to deface even the black paint with which—surely misguidedly?—they had been coated along with the knocker. Evidence was evidence; and besides, they might find nothing beneath, and be faced with the necessity of restoring what they had displaced. The first minor revelation came when he had removed two of them, and the whole mass of iron submitted to being moved slightly in its place, to reveal a frilled edge of thick, soiled varnish beneath. The knocker had not been disturbed when the door was cleaned. Therefore the knocker had not been restored to its place only when the move to the church was contemplated, and the necessary cleaning begun, but at some previous time and for some other reason. After Alix Trent’s visit; yet before the transfer to the National Trust was contemplated.
The third bolt came away with a slight, grating protest, and was laid aside on a sheet of newspaper beside the other two. The beast’s head, sanctuary ring and all, could now be turned in a half-circle before it jarred and stuck, and Crowe turned it gently back again.
The fourth bolt was tenacious, but subject to manipulation because it was the last. Crowe withdrew it, laid it beside its fellows, and used both hands reverently to dislodge and lift away the entire weighty mass of the knocker, beast, ring, leaves and all. It left the wood with an audible sucking sigh, and he placed it upon the extended sheet of polythene set to receive it.
Shoulder-high to a man of medium height, chest-high to a man a little taller, the irregular, rounded blot of old varnish darkened like a wen against the pale, scoured oak. At first glance that blank, uncleaned surface appeared to be all they had uncovered; on closer inspection there was one minute freckle on its smoothness, a little to the left of centre, a round mole where the glancing light clotted, as though the varnish had been applied over an oblique knothole. Only this knothole was not darker, but faintly paler than the surrounding wood.
“Touched up,” said Crowe, and gouged delicately at the spot. The varnish flaked. He scraped a few shreds of dry matter into his palm. “Plastic wood. Somebody filled up—a hole.” He didn’t want to name it more exactly, not yet. No one else wasted words on it, either. It was plain that this had been done some time before the restoration was undertaken. “Want me to drill it out?”
“Do that,” said George, “and go carefully.”
Busy as a terrier at a rat-hole, the drill kicked back pale, powdery shreds of plastic wood, and buried itself deeper and deeper into the mass of the door. What can you hide in a door? George had asked earlier. And where? There it is, a slab of wood with two sides, everything about it visible to the naked eye. No, not quite everything.
In a very short time they had a deep, narrow hole, disappearing obliquely into more than five inches of hard, ancient oak, but not emerging on the inner side. A very minute, staring hole, the significance of which there was no mistaking. The drill changed its tune, emitted a brief, indignant whine, and was halted on the instant. Crowe looked at George, and slowly withdrew the drill in a fine flurry of dust.
“We’ve got something besides wood in here, sir.”
George selected a long, slender screwdriver from among the tools, and probed gingerly down into the tunnel. A faint, metallic scratching jarred through his fingers like an electric shock.
