“If you mean by that, sir, that it’s none of my business, I respectfully agree with you. It’s just habit, noticing these things, and-”
They had reached the junction with the new main road, the presence of which on the moor had distressed Pettigrew so much three days before. As Mallett slowed down before turning to the right, in the direction of Bolter’s Tussock, a car coming at great pace shot across their front from left to right. Mallett had to slam on his brakes abruptly to avoid a collision.
They took the corner soberly and followed up the slope behind the other car, now a hundred yards ahead and increasing its distance every moment. It vanished from their sight round the bend at the crest of the hill, beyond which the road levelled out to cross the comparatively flat Tussock.
“That fellow is in a bit of a hurry,” observed Pettigrew.
Mallett said nothing, but the frown had returned to his face and he took one hand off the steering wheel to administer a tremendous tug to the end of his moustache. About fifty yards below the top of the hill, he seemed to come to a decision. He slowed down, changed into low gear and swung left-handed off the highway onto a narrow, rutted track which came into the road at that point.
The car bucketed violently on the rough surface. Pettigrew, Eleanor and the picnic basket were flung from side to side as Mallett remorselessly drove his car onwards and upwards across the flank of the hill on a course more or less parallel with the road below them. Then, at a comparatively level spot, he stopped the car and switched oft the engine.
Pettigrew was the first to speak.
“I thought we were going to Bolter’s Tussock,” he said in an aggrieved tone.
“So we are, I hope, in a minute or two,” said Mallett. “It’s just an idea I’ve got, Mr. Pettigrew, if you’ll excuse me. Do you see anything down there?”
From the windows of the car there was a good deal to be seen “down there”-a large slice of Exmoor, the whole width of the Bristol Channel and several miles of the coast of Wales. The one thing that was invisible from this particular point was the part of Bolter’s Tussock for which they had been making, as it was hidden from them by the bank lining the road immediately beneath their position. Pettigrew said as much, and Mallett nodded placidly.
“Just so,” he said. “Just so. But we can see the road where it leaves the Tussock to go down the hill. You can follow it half the way to Whitsea. Do you see anything on that?”
“Yes,” said Pettigrew. “There’s a bus, or a coach- I’m not sure which-and a motor bicycle overtaking it.”
“Quite right, sir. The coach coming back from taking the children into school at Whitsea. And a motor bike, as you say. Both coming up to meet us. But nothing going our way-away from us, I mean?”
“No.”
Mallett sighed.
“I was afraid so,” he said.
It was Eleanor who saw the point first.
“That car in front of us,” she said. “It ought to be somewhere down the road by now. We should be bound to get a view of it if it had gone on. It must have stopped on the Tussock.”
“Just so, madam.”
“All the same,” said Pettigrew, “I don’t see why-”
“It’s the divisional detective inspector’s private car, sir. With the inspector in it.” He looked back along the way they had come. “And here comes the constable on his bike,” he added. “He’s made pretty good time up the hill. What do you make of that, Mr. Pettigrew?”
“I’m reminded of a text from the Bible,” said Pettigrew.
“And that is-”
“Do you mind awfully if I don’t tell you just now? I have a feeling it would be unlucky. Can’t we try to find out what this high-powered policeman is up to on the Tussock?”
“Quite right, sir.” Mallett jumped from the car with a nimbleness Pettigrew could only envy, and opened the door for Eleanor to alight. “If you don’t mind a bit of a scramble,” he said, “I think the place for us is up there.”
He waved his arm to where, a short distance ahead and above, the smooth sweep of the hillside against the sky was broken by an outcrop of granite rocks. Pettigrew and Eleanor set off with him in their direction, but they had not gone far before, with a muttered excuse, Mallett turned back to the car. Halfway to their objective he overtook them again, tenderly bearing the picnic basket in his arms.
“Might want to be here for a little time,” he explained. “No reason why we should starve.”
A solitary blackcock flew off as they came near the rocks. Apart from him, they had the place to themselves. Following Mallett’s lead they approached the rocks, keeping them between themselves and the skyline. The outcrop was in the form of a rough semicircle, and once within the perimeter it was possible to sit or lie in comfort and peer over its edge down the steep hillside on to the flat saddle below. Immediately beneath them ran the road, snaking across the Tussock before plunging down into the valley beyond. Midway along the road, perhaps two hundred yards away, a car was drawn up close into the side. Just beyond the car, on the opposite side of the road, was a small group of men. Pettigrew could distinguish the blue uniforms of two of them. One man seemed to be in a khaki shirt and shorts, the others in what are so quaintly called “lounge suits”. They were looking at something on the ground.
Mallett dropped back from the rock on which he was lying to where he had deposited the basket, which he proceeded to open; From it he took a small leather case, and from the case a telescope. For some time he studied the group through the glass without speaking, then he handed it to Pettigrew. Pettigrew was not accustomed to a telescope. It took him some time to focus the instrument and even when he had done so, he found it almost impossible to keep it steady. But at last he conquered its difficulties, and the figures in the field of vision showed up clearly and far larger than he had expected. When he had done, he proffered the glass to Eleanor, but she shook her head.
“I can’t work a thing like that,” she said. “Tell me.”
Still Pettigrew said nothing. He was rather pale, she noticed, and he had wrinkled up his nose in a way that always meant that he was puzzled or unhappy.
“All right, then,” said Eleanor softly. “Shall I tell you? The text you thought of just now. It was: Where the carcase is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s what happened-literally?”
“Not quite. The eagles are only metaphorical, unfortunately. But the carcase is literal.”
“Well, it’s all very interesting, but it can’t be the one you saw on Saturday.”
“That’s what you’d think, isn’t it?” said Pettigrew.
In the brief silence that followed, they saw the motor bicycle that had been approaching from Whitsea come to a standstill beside the police car. It did not stay there long. The uniformed constable, evidently posted there for the purpose, waved it on, and the rider went on his way, looking dangerously back over his shoulder as he did so. Then came the coach, to be dealt with in the same fashion.
“There’ll be a lot more eagles about in a minute, I’m thinking,” said Mallett. “There’ll be photographers and an ambulance and men to take casts of footprints. They’ll block the view as best they can with police cars until they’ve got enough hurdles and screens to keep the place private. By that time there’ll be a queue of cars and buses right across the Tussock, trying to stop and being moved on, and trying to move on and being stopped. It’s wonderful how even an out of the way place like this fills up when there’s a corpse involved. We only got here just in time to see anything.”
“And what exactly have we seen?” said Eleanor. There was an awkward little pause, and then Mallett said, “Well, Mr. Pettigrew, as your good lady said just now, it can’t have been what you saw when you were having your little trip on horseback.”
“It was exactly the same,” said Pettigrew flatly. “You told me he had on a bluey-grey coat, I remember. This one’s green.”
“I was wrong, that’s all. I told you at the time my recollection was very vague. Now I’ve seen it again, I’m quite positive it’s the one I saw before.”
“Well then, sir, it is the same man, and he’s been lying there ever since Saturday. You made a mistake about the place when you went back, that’s all.”
“I didn’t make a mistake,” said Pettigrew stubbornly. “He’s in the same spot now that he was in when I first
