Sergeant Moon came over to join them at a little before ten. In the antechamber to the cellar they had set up trestle tables and rigged their lights for an on-the-spot examination of suitcase, contents and coat, before they were passed on to the forensic laboratory. Within, Constable Barnes and Detective Constable Reynolds continued to sift the heap of soil doggedly for further treasures, before consigning it again to the depths of the trench. But what they already had, as George saw when the locks of the suitcase had been sprung and the clammy lid carefully raised, was going to be more than enough. The case contained, and in a remarkably good state of preservation though pulpy to the touch and smelling of graveyard clay, everything a man would ordinarily take with him on a journey, a man not overblessed with money or goods, but still sufficiently provided, and in fact rather neat in his packing. The case itself had once been the most imposing item in the collection; it bore all the marks of its burial, but singularly few others, no scratches defacing a surface which was still smooth and dark once the soil was wiped away.
“New,” said Sergeant Moon with admirable brevity, thumbing earth away from the corner of blue. “Bought for his last trip.”
The clothes, however, were not new. The underclothes were mended, the shirts had slightly frayed collars. Shaving tackle, handkerchiefs, sweaters—some of the things bore laundry marks, some makers’ tabs.
“Whoever put him there thought that was the last of him,” said George, “or they’d have had all these off. Still…” He cast a glance at the impregnable cellar, the massive flags of the floor. “Yes, you can see their point. They’d hardly expect him to get out of there again.”
“But no papers,” pointed out the sergeant.
There was not a letter, not a personal document of any kind, anywhere in the case.
“Nothing in the coat, either.” Nor had there been any wallet in the pockets of the rotting jacket; if there had been any leather or plastic object there, something would still have remained of it. “No, somebody cleaned him out of all identification—the quick ways, anyhow.”
George lifted out, layer after layer, the contents of the case, and ran his fingers into the pleated pockets in the back. Nothing there. Well-padded pockets, though. The strong elastication that held the mouths of the compartments closed had still a little spring left in it, and the tough plastic had pulled the cloth lining away from the frame at its outer corners, the adhesive being long ago denatured by damp. Something showed between lining and outer covering, the edge of a wad of paper and a thin rim of black, like the spine of a notebook. George was sliding his finger delicately along the sticky, folded hem of beige cloth to enlarge the opening, when Sergeant Moon leaned down from the hall to announce that Dr. Goodwin was on the line from the hospital mortuary with a preliminary report. George abandoned the suitcase, and went up to take the call.
“I won’t go into clinical details now, George, you’ll be getting the lot in writing as soon as I can get it to you. But in a nutshell—what you’ve got here is an adult male about five feet seven tall, rather lightly built, one or two medical points that may help an identification—a finger-bone in his left middle finger broken at some time, probably before he was fully grown. And his teeth are his own, and show some dental work that could be a clincher if you get a lead on his locality and can trace the right dentist. I’d say somewhere in his late thirties—not above forty. How long dead? That’s rather a hard one, but at least three years. But the upper limit could be as much as eight or nine. There are contradictory factors—or ambiguous ones, anyhow—there always are in these long-distance cases. I may be able to improve on that estimate, though, when I’ve finished with him.”
“And the cause of death?”
“Your sergeant has it in a neat little pillbox, signed and sealed and headed for ballistics. A bullet in the brain, my boy. Entered through the left temple, probably at close range—a few feet at the most. Looks like a .25 to me, one of the vest pocket jobs.”
“Yes,” said George, “that sounds right. The first shot missed him and buried itself in the door, the second, fired at shorter ranger still, took its time and got him. He couldn’t get away, not from there. There wasn’t any way out— it only looked as if there was.”
“Thanks very much for that instalment, George. Tell me the whole thrilling story some time over a bottle.”
“Certainly,” said George, “if you’re paying.”
“On my derisory fee?”
Dr. Goodwin rang off with his usual aplomb; and George returned, not elated but encouraged, to his cellar. Sergeant Moon had scrupulously refrained from touching the lining behind the pockets in the case.
“You could have gone ahead,” said George, raising the clammy blue lid again. And in answer to Moon’s look of inquiry: “He was shot. Seemingly with the same type of cartridge by the same gun and at the same time. He was the reason for the hole in the door, for the floor being taken up and refusing to lie down properly again, for the knocker being put on to cover the hole, and for the door being moved in the hope of avoiding any investigation into why it dragged. A very, very important man. I really wonder why! What made him so important?”
“And how long does Goodwin reckon he’s been here?” asked Sergeant Moon, watching George’s probing finger slide into the gap where the adhesive had perished, and ease its way along the back of the pocket.
“Anything from three to eight or nine years, on present estimate. Which could put him right back into old Robert’s time, of course…”
Gummily the lining parted from the frame, and now there was not mistaking what the victim had secreted there. Behind the twin pockets were aligned two damp and odorous wads of paper, engraved in steely blue. Not a fortune, but still quite a respectable little nest-egg in five-pound notes. And behind them a thin, dark-blue book with a coat of arm in gilt, and two little oval windows, the upper of which presented them with a still perfectly legible name in a printed hand:
“Mr. T.J. CLAYBOURNE.”
“Well, well!” said Sergeant Moon reverently. “Somebody who put him here got rid of every direct identification they knew about, but they didn’t know about this. Pretty cagey, wasn’t he? He had his passport with him, and he had his savings, and it looks as it he was heading for somewhere healthier, only not fast enough.” He peered curiously at the cover. “L. Issued at Liverpool. Pity passports don’t actually carry the owner’s address anywhere, but we can soon get it from Liverpool. Better than a dental chart, any day.”
George was carefully parting the bluish pages, spotted with mildew and limper than originally, but still capable of being turned cleanly, and still retaining their text. “Profession! Sales representative. Covers a multitude of sins and virtues both. Place and date of birth: Kirkheal Moor, Lancashire, September 15th, 1931. Height: 5 feet 1/2 inches. Description— what do we want with a description, there he is!”
And there he was, in the two by one-and-a-half inch photograph opposite, a small-featured, oval, slightly ferrety face topped with wavy dark hair worn short and parted on the left. Rather startled eyes stared wildly, as usual in passport pictures, but their colour seemed also to be dark, and their setting well-shaped and spacious.
