'And they're quite different. This one was a white enamcross pattee with a slightly convexed face. The edge of the cross was gold.'
'And the D.C.M.?'
'Circular and made of silver,' replied the Rector promptly. 'It's connected to a curved scroll clasp, too. The one that was in the bureau has a ring which fits on to a straight clasp.'
'You saw the ribbons on the photograph?' said Sloan, thinking quickly.
'I did indeed. And they're not even similar…'
'Oh?'
'The D.S.O. ribbon,' said the Rector, warming to his theme, 'is red with an edging of blue. The D.C.M. one is crimson, dark blue and crimson in equal widths.'
'Yes,' said Sloan thoughtfully, 'there's all the difference in the world, I can see that. What about the other two?'
'The M.C. and the M.M., Inspector? The M.C. ribbon is white, a sort of purply blue, and white in three equal strips.' The Rector paused. 'I think I'm right in saying the Military Medal has a narrow white centre stripe with narrow red, then I think it's narrow white, and then two edging strips of rather wider dark blue on each side.'
'Six—no seven stripes,' said Sloan.
'That's right.'
'Not easily confused even on a photograph.'
'No. It's not the different colours then, of course, it's the widths which you can see.'
'And you can't very well confuse three broad stripes with a ribbon with seven small ones on.'
'No,' agreed the Rector. 'Not easily.'
'I see,' said Sloan slowly.
'The other one was a cross, too,' went on the Rector. 'Whereas the Military Medal is round and attached to a curved scroll clasp.'
'Didn't they have any names on?' asked Sloan. 'I thought they sometimes did.'
'Sometimes,' said the Rector. 'The owner's name, rank and date are usually engraved on the reverse of the M.C.'
'Usually?' No one could have called Sloan slow.
'Yes, Inspector. Not on this one. I'm no expert, of course, but I should say…'
'Yes, sir?'
'I should say that—er—steps have been taken to remove the owner's name from this one.'
'Would you, sir?' Sloan became extremely alert.
'The back is almost smooth—but not quite.'
'I understand, sir. You've been most helpful. There'll be an explanation, of course, but in the meantime perhaps you would be kind enough to keep them under lock and key until I get to you. I daresay,' he added heavily, 'there will be rhyme to it as well as reason. If you know what I mean, sir.'
'Indeed, yes,' affirmed Mr. Meyton. 'There are, of course, matters which are properly mysterious to us in the religious sense but—er—finite matters are always…'
'No, Inspector,' Henrietta shook her head. 'I can't tell you anything more than that because I don't know anything more.'
'I see, miss. Thank you.' Sloan and Crosby were back in the parlour of Boundary Cottage, sitting where they had been sitting the day before. Then, Henrietta had looked as if she hadn't slept much the previous night.
Now she looked as if she hadn't slept at all.
'The Rector,' she went on wearily, 'just said that they weren't the right medals for the photograph.'
'Yes, miss. He rang me.'
'He took them away.'
'Yes.'
'Inspector…'
'Yes, miss?'
'Why weren't they taken on Tuesday?'
'On Tuesday, miss?'
'By whoever broke into the bureau.'
'I couldn't say, miss.'
'They must have seen them. They weren't locked up in their cases or anything.'
'No.' He cleared his throat and said cautiously, 'If they'd gone then, of course, you would have missed them.'
'Naturally.'
'Well, that—their absence—might have served to call your—call our attention to—er—any irregularities in the situation between you and your—er—parents.' Sloan felt himself going a bit hot under the collar. It wasn't a sensation he was accustomed to. 'I don't think it is generally appreciated that the—er—fact of childlessness is— er—established at a routine post-mortem.'
He hadn't appreciated it himself, actually.
Until yesterday.
To his relief Henrietta smiled wanly and said, 'I see.'
'I mean,' expanded Sloan, 'the chances of your discovering that they were the wrong medals…'
'Wrong?' she said swiftly.
'Wrong for the photograph.'
'Go on, Inspector.' Warily.
'The chances of them being handled by anyone knowing quite as much about the subject as Mr. Meyton were really very slight.'
Since putting down the telephone Sloan had sent Crosby to check up on the Rector's standing as an historian and found it high. Particularly in the field of military history.
'Inspector, are you trying to tell me that someone has been unlucky?'
'That's one way of looking at it, miss. But for the accident of the Rector seeing them you might never have known.'
'Known what?' she said with a sigh. 'What exactly does it mean we know now that we didn't know before?'
'That the medals are significant,' said Sloan promptly.
She looked up. 'Do you think so, Inspector?'
'I do, miss, though I don't know what of just yet. Give us a little time.' He hesitated and then said, 'I think we may be going to find the answer to a lot of questions in the past.'
She nodded. 'Twenty-one years ago.'
'Why then?'
'I'll be twenty-one next month. At least I think I will be if my mother…' she corrected herself painfully, 'if what I've been told is correct.'
'Twenty-one?' Sloan frowned. 'That could be important.'
'To me, Inspector.' Her voice had an ironic ring. 'The key of the door perhaps. But not to anyone else.'
'I shouldn't be too sure about that, miss. Not just yet.'
'And it rather looks,' she went on as if she hadn't heard him, 'as if I'm not the only one to have a key to the front door of Boundary Cottage, doesn't it?'
'True.' He paused. 'Yesterday you told me as much as you could remember being told about your father.'
'Yes?'
'What all do you know about your… about Grace Jenkins?'
It was pitifully little in terms of verifiable fact—if she was telling him the truth. Her mother had been a children's nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell, somewhere over the other side of the county. Henrietta didn't know the exact address but she had been brought up on stories of the Hocklington-Garwell children. There had been two of them—both boys. Master Hugo and Master Michael. Then Grace Wright had met Cyril Jenkins, and
