“That’s easy,” said Miles. “Don’t you remember, Henry? Grumpy came to pieces easiest.”
The Earl’s head came up as he said sharply, “Who knew that?”
“Everyone,” said Miles helpfully.
Laura Cremond looked round. “Someone put him in there who didn’t mean him to be found, I suppose?”
The Earl nodded. “I think so, Laura. And the police want to talk to you all as soon as they can.”
After his encounter with Lady Maude, Inspector Sloan found it a positive relief to be talking to a trained specialist.
He met Dr. Dabbe and his assistant, Burns, in the Great Hall. It hadn’t taken the fastest (living) driver in Calleshire long to get from Kinnisport on the coast to Ornum, veering into Berebury to pick up his assistant. His black bag went with him everywhere.
“The weather was just right for sailing,” said the doctor reproachfully. “Sunday, too.”
Sloan said, “If it had been as warm down there as it is up here, I fancy our chap would have been found a bit sooner.”
“Like that, is it?” The pathologist took in the Great Hall at a glance and followed Sloan down the spiral staircase. Burns brought up the rear.
Dabbe waved his free hand. “Did he walk down here or was he carried?”
“I couldn’t say, Doctor. Not yet. I’ve only seen his face so far.”
“I see.” Dabbe reached the bottom step. “This the basement?”
“Dungeon level,” Sloan corrected him gloomily. After all, this was not a department store. “I don’t know if they go lower than this.”
“Moat?” suggested Dabbe. “They usually had moats.”
Constable Crosby let them into the armoury.
“Ah…” said Dabbe, looking round appreciatively. “Do I take my pick?”
“Second on the right,” said Sloan, and not for the first time.
Perhaps he should have put a fresh notice beside the one that was already there, (man in armour, perhaps, Or human remains, circa now.)
Aloud he said only, “We’ve put a chalk ring on the floor, Doctor, round him… er… it…”
“Armour for the tilt, circa 1595,” read out the pathologist. “Well, well, well…”
It wasn’t well at all, though Sloan forbore to say so.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a corpse… er… girded before,” said Dabbe.
“No.” Neither had Sloan.
The pathologist advanced and looked the armour over. That was one of the things Sloan admired in him. He came, he looked, he examined—then he spoke.
“The deceased?”
“Mr. Osborne Meredith.”
“Wasn’t a very tall man.”
“No,” agreed Sloan. The suits of armour—though intimidating—were not large. Both policemen looked down on them without difficulty.
“Too much school milk, that’s what it is,” said Dr. Dabbe.
“Pardon, Doctor?”
“We’re all taller now. People were smaller then.” He walked round behind the armour. “It’s a pretty complete job. He didn’t intend to be stabbed in the back.”
Sloan nodded in agreement. From where he was standing it looked as if the man in armour hadn’t intended to be stabbed anywhere at all.
“No chinks,” said Detective Constable Crosby.
Sloan favoured him with a withering stare, and the pathologist’s assistant, Burns, who rarely spoke, got out a large thermometer.
“Cold but not damp,” observed Dabbe generally.
“Yes,” agreed Sloan. It was one of the hottest days of the summer outside, but the heat hadn’t penetrated down here. All in all a good place to park a body if you didn’t want it found too quickly.
Dabbe was still circling the armour rather as a terrier spoiling for a fight will go round and round his adversary.
“Either, Sloan, they popped him in here pretty smartly after death or else they waited until rigor mortis passed off.”
“Oh?”
“Regard the angle of the arms.”
Sloan took a fresh look at the man in armour. The boy, Michael Fisher, had said something about the arms.
Dr. Dabbe pointed to—but did not touch—the right arm. It was bent at the elbow in a half defensive position. “He’s still on guard.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Before rigor mortis or after. Not during.”
“I see.”
“After, I expect,” said Dabbe mordauntly. “By the time you got all this… er… clobber on, it would have begun to set in.”
That was another thing to think about. Sloan mentally added it to a very long list of matters to think about. Some of them required action, too, but not until the pathologist had finished. Sloan had been at the game too long not to know that the medical evidence was always of primary importance.
“That’s another thing,” said Dabbe.
“What is?” Inspector Sloan came back to the present with a jerk.
“How he got into all this.”
“Quite so, Doctor.”
“And how we’re going to get him out.” The pathologist gave a fiendish grin. “I can’t do a post-mortem with a tin opener.”
“No, Doctor.”
“Of course,” went on Dabbe, “You had an armour-bearer in the old days.”
“So you did.” Sloan had forgotten that.
“What you might call a body servant, eh, Sloan?” The pathologist’s morbid sense of humour was a byword throughout the Berebury Force.
“Quite so”—weakly.
“I shouldn’t have said he’d got into this on his own though, even in this servant-less day and age,” said Dabbe.
“No.”
“And I think,” said the pathologist, “that we can rule out natural causes, too. Unless coincidence is stretching out a particularly long arm.”
“Yes.”
“That,” said Dabbe cheerfully, “leaves us the usual Coroner’s trio. Misadventure, suicide, or murder.”
“Misadventure?” said Sloan.
“Commonly known, Inspector, as pure bad luck.”
“I don’t quite see how…”
“The trap for the unwary pathologist, that’s what misadventure is,” said the doctor feelingly. “Suppose this chap got into this rigout for some perfectly sound reason, and then found he was trapped in it”
“Well?”
“He could have shouted his head off and no one would have heard him through the visor, let alone through the twelve-foot walls they seem to go in for down here.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think he did get into it himself and then call for help, Doctor.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“You see, we’ve checked the floor for footprints. It’s all been swept perfectly clean round the armour. Too
