growing lighter every minute he was absolutely certain.
Her Majesty's Mails being his prime concern he poppedhis bicycle safely in the deep hedge that same deep hedge that made this a blind corner, then he came back and stood squarely in the middle of the road. He would be seen by anyone coming now. Not, he decided, that there was ever likely to be much traffic on this road-still less so early in the morning.
This line of thought proved productive.
Not only, now he came to think of it, would there be almost no vehicles using this road first thing in the morning but it was equally unlikely that anyone would be walking along it either.
Still less a woman…
A man, perhaps, walking up to one of the farms to do the milking, but not a woman.
He considered in his mind the houses beyond. There were about six of them before you could say you were really out of Larking and then there was a two mile stretch with just three big farms, then Belling St. Peter.
Harry Ford advanced a little.
He might know her himself come to that—he knew most Larking people.
But he hadn't taken more than a step when he heard somecoming. It was too soon for the ambulance; besides the direction was wrong. He cocked his head, listening. It wasn'ta car either, he decided, getting out into the middle of the road ready to wave anything on wheels to a standstill. Quite suddenly the oncoming noise resolved itself into a tractor which pulled up to a quick halt as the driver saw him.
'Accident?' shouted the man at the wheel above the engine noise.
' 'Fraid so,' shouted back Ford.
The tractor engine spluttered and died and there was a sudden silence.
'She's dead,' said Ford.
The young man got down from his high seat. It was one of the sons of the farmer from farther down the road, by the name of Bill Thorpe.
'I found her,' said Ford.
Not that it looked as if she'd been hit by a bicycle.
'She's from one of the cottages, isn't she?' said Thorpe, peering down. 'You know, Harry, I think I know who she is.'
Ford, who to tell the truth, hadn't been all mat keen on having a really close look on his own, was emboldened by the presence of the young man and bent down towards the cold white face. 'Why, it's Mrs. Jenkins.'
'That's right,' said Thorpe.
'Boundary Cottage,' responded the postman automatically. (The odd letter, no circulars, very few bills.)
Thorpe looked round. 'Hit and run,' he said bitterly. 'Not even a ruddy skid mark.'
'It's a nasty corner,' offered Ford.
Thorpe was still looking at the road. 'You can see where he hit the verge a bit afterwards and straightened up again.'
Ford didn't know much about cars. 'Too fast?'
'Too careless.'
'You'd have thought anyone would have seen her,' agreed Ford.
'Walking on the wrong side, though.'
'Depends whether she was coming or going,'said Ford, who was the slower thinker of the two.
'I should have said she was walking home myself,' pronounced Thorpe carefully. 'Last night.'
'Last night?' Ford looked shocked.
'If that mark on the grass is his front tyre after he hit her when she was walking along the left hand side of the road towards her home.'
'But last night,' insisted Ford. 'You mean she's been here all night?'
Thorpe scratched an intelligent forehead. 'I don't know, Harry, but she isn't likely to have been walking home this morning in the dark, is she?'
Harry Ford shook his head. 'A very quiet lady, I'd have said.'
'And,' continued Thorpe, pursuing his theory, 'if she'd been going anywhere very early she'd have been walking the other way. No, I'd say myself she was going home last night.'
'Off the last bus, perhaps,' suggested the postman.
'Perhaps.'
'Her daughter's not at home then,' said Ford firmly. 'Otherwise she'd have been out looking for her.'
'No, she's away still. Back at the end of term.' He looked down at the still figure in the road and said, 'Sooner now.'
'I rang the ambulance,' said Ford, for want of something to say.
Thorpe moved with sudden resolution. 'Well, then, I'll go and ring the police. Don't you let them move her until they come.'
'Right.'
Thorpe paused, one foot on the tractor. 'Poor Henrietta. No father and now no mother either.'
Police Constable Hepple came over from Down Martin on his motorcycle and measured the road and drew chalk lines round the body and finally allowed the ambulance men to take it away. He, too, knew Mrs. Jenkins by sight.
'Widow, isn't she, Harry?' he said to the postman.
'That's right. Just the one girl.'
He got out his notebook. 'Does she know about this?'
'She's away,' volunteered young Thorpe. 'At college.'
'Do you know her exact address?'
But young Thorpe went a bit pink and said rather distantly that he did not So P.C. Hepple made another note and then measured the tyre mark on the grass verge.
'I'd say a 590 X14 myself,' offered Thorpe, who was keen on cars. 'That's a big tyre on a big car.' Now that the body had gone he could talk about that more freely too. 'Those were big car injuries she had.'
P. C. Hepple, who had reached much the same conclusions himself, nodded.
'Tisn't what you'd call a busy road,' went on Thorpe.
'Busy!' snorted Harry Ford. 'I shouldn't think it gets more than a dozen cars a day.'
'Even the milk lorries all go the other way,' said Thorpe, 'because it's a better road.'
'Did you have any visitors at the farm last night?' Hepple asked Thorpe.
'Not a soul.'
'Perhaps it was someone who'd taken the wrong turning at the Post Office.' That was the postman.
'Wrong turning or not,' said Hepple severely, 'there was no call to be knocking Mrs. Jenkins down.'
'And,' said Thorpe pertinently, 'having knocked her down to have driven on.'
It seemed to Henrietta Jenkins that she would never again be quite the same person as she had been before she stepped into the cold, bare police mortuary.
A sad message, telephoned through a series of offices, had snatched her from the Greatorex Library where she had been working. A succession of kind hands had steered her into the hastily summoned taxi and put her onto the Berebury train. She had been barely aware of them. She vaguely remembered getting out at Berebury more from force of habit than anything else. A police car had met her—she remembered that—and brought her to the police station.
Voices had indicated that there was no need for her to identify the body just now. Perhaps there were some other relatives?
No, Henrietta had told them. There was no one else. She was an only child and her father had been killed in the war.
Perhaps, then, there was someone close in Inking who would…
Henrietta had shaken her head.
Tomorrow then?
