Henrietta Who?

there.'

'Did you get his background?'

'It seems all right, sir. Second son of middling-size farmers with quite a good name locally. Lived in Larking all his life. Known Henrietta ever since she was a child. Been home from Agricultural College for about two years.'

'Found the body with the postman, could have knocked it down, stuck to the girl like a leech since it happened, wants to marry her quickly.' Leeyes's rasping tones supplanted Sloan's matter-of-fact report. 'Could have killed Cyril Jenkins. Could have known the whole story. Could have wanted money…'

'Why, sir?'

'He's the second son, Sloan. You've just said so.'

'Yes, sir.' It was futile to argue with the Superintendent.

Leeyes grunted. 'And this other fellow—the one with the money. What about him?'

'Hibbs?' said Sloan. The Superintendent was always suspicious of people with money, assuming it—in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, to be ill-gotten. Sloan cleared his throat uneasily. 'He and his wife went into Calle-ford for the day.'

'They did what?'

'Went into Calleford,' repeated Sloan, going on hastily, 'they had a meal at The Tabard. She went to a dress shop and he called in at a corn chandlers in the morning…'

'Whatever for?'

'He's hand-rearing some pheasants this year, sir.' Sloan himself had always wondered what you did at a corn chandlers. 'And he visited a wine merchant just after lunch.'

'When was Jenkins shot?'

'Roughly about three o'clock.' The two pathologists had been as agreed on this as on everything else.

'Could he have done it?'

'Easily. So could Bill Thorpe. Anyone could have done it. Even Arbican if he had had a mind to—to say nothing of Major Hocklington. Always supposing he exists.'

Leeyes was thinking, not listening. 'Sounds as if it could have been someone Jenkins knew fairly well—all this business of back doors and sitting down at the table together.'

'Yes, sir.' Inspector Blake had cottoned on to that fact, too, as he went methodically about his routine investigation. 'The only trouble is that we don't know who it was that Cyril Jenkins knew.'

'No.' Leeyes frowned. 'Or what.'

'The whole story, I expect,' said Sloan gloomily. 'That's why he had to go.'

The telephone rang. Leeyes answered it and handed it to Sloan. 'The hospital,' he said. 'Dr. Dabbe.'

Sloan listened for a moment, thanked the pathologist, promised to let him know something later and then rang off.

'The late Cyril Jenkins's blood was Group AB,' he announced.

'And the girl's?' asked Leeyes.

'We don't know yet. We're going to ask her if we can have some to see.'

'Tricky,' pronounced Leeyes. 'Be very careful…'

'Why, sir?'

'Because if this case ever gets to court'—he stressed the word 'if heavily, and implied if it didn't it would be Sloan's fault—'if it does then you will probably find some clever young man arguing that you've committed a technical assault, that's why.'

'But if the putative father…'

'Get as many witnesses to her free consent as you can,' advised Leeyes sourly. 'That's all.'

'Yes, sir,' promised Sloan, 'and then we're going to Camford to see the bursar of her college.'

He and Crosby got up to go but Sloan turned short of the door.

'That AB Blood Group, sir…'

'What about it?'

'It's the same as Grace Jenkins's.'

'Well?'

'If the girl hadn't said the woman's maiden name was Wright, I could make out quite a good case for Grace Jenkins and Cyril Jenkins being brother and sister.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

'Dead?' said Henrietta dully.

'I'm afraid so.' Sloan wished her reaction could have been more like the Superintendent's. It couldn't be doing her any good sitting here in Boundary Cottage, hanging on to her self-control with an effort that was painful to watch.

'Inspector,' she whispered, 'I killed him, didn't I?'

'I don't think so, miss,' responded Sloan, surprised.

'I don't mean actually.' She twisted her hands together in her lap. 'But as good as…'

'I don't see quite how, miss, if you'll forgive my saying so…' It occurred to Sloan for the first time that this was what people meant by wringing their hands.

'By seeing him.' She swallowed. 'Don't you understand? If I hadn't seen him yesterday and recognised him, then he wouldn't be dead today.'

This, thought Sloan, might well be true.

'Perhaps, miss,' he said quietly, 'but that doesn't make it your fault.'

'I haven't got the Evil Eye, or anything like that, I know, but'—she sounded utterly shaken—'but if he was my father and rve been the means of killing him… I don't think I could bear that.'

Sloan coughed. She had given him the opening he wanted. 'That's one of the reasons why we've come, miss. About the question of this Cyril Jenkins being your father.'

'Do you know then?' directly.

'No, miss. We don't think he was but we can't prove it either way… yet.'

'Yet?' she asked quickly.

'Dr. Dabbe—he's the hospital pathologist, miss—he says a blood test can prove something but not everything.'

'Anything,' she said fervently, 'would be better than this not knowing.'

'If you agreed to it,' he said carefully, 'and I must make it clear you don't have to, it might just prove Cyril Jenkins wasn't your father and never could have been.'

'Then,' said Henrietta in a perplexed way, 'who was he and what had he got to do with us?'

'We don't know…'

'Just that he's dead.'

'That's right, miss.'

She looked at him. 'How soon can you do this blood thing?'

'If you would come with me to the telephone and ring Mr. Arbican—he's entitled to advise you against it, if he thinks fit—then I could ring Dr. Dabbe now.' He grinned. 'It won't take him long to get here.'

It didn't.

A stranger would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary should he have chanced to visit the village of Larking the next morning. Not, of course, that there were any strangers there. Larking was not that sort of village. A Sunday calm had descended upon the place and the inhabitants were going about their usual avocations. About a quarter of them were in church. At Matins.

Henrietta was there.

She was staying at the Rectory now. She had been in that pleasant house on the green since late last night. Just before he had left, Inspector Sloan had said he would be greatly obliged if Miss Jenkins would take herself to