A second shoe came into view.
It, too, had a foot in it.
Unwillingly her eyes travelled beyond the shoes to the grubby trousers above them. She could see no more than that because of the apple boxes. Driven by some nameless conception of duty to the injured, she lifted another round of apple boxes. The full figure of a man came into view then. He was lying prone on the floor. And she needn’t have worried about her duties to the injured.
This man was dead.
15
This is death without reprieve.
« ^ »
Unlike the sundial, Superintendent Leeyes did not only record the sunny hours. There were some stormy ones to be noted too.
“Dead, did you say, Sloan?”
“I did, sir.”
“That means,” he gobbled down the telephone, “that we’ve got two dead men on our hands now.”
“It does, sir,” admitted Sloan heavily. “There’s no doubt about it either, sir. The local general practitioner confirms death.”
After death, the doctor.
That was part of police routine too.
“One, two, that’ll do,” growled Leeyes.
“Sir?” Sloan had only heard of “One, two, buckle my shoe” and even that had been a long time ago now.
“It’s a saying in the game of bridge,” explained Leeyes loftily. “You wouldn’t understand, Sloan.”
“No, sir.” Sloan kept his tone even but with an effort. There was so much to do and so little time… and something so very nasty in the woodshed.
“What happened this time?” barked Leeyes. “Not, I may say, Sloan, that we really know yet what happened last time.”
“I should say that he was killed on the spot. In an unlocked garden shed, that is.” It was Sloan’s turn now to sit in the window-seat in the hall of Collerton House and use the telephone. A white and shaken Elizabeth Busby had led him there while Frank Mundill stayed with Crosby and Dr. Tebot. “Hit on the head,” said Sloan succinctly. “Hard.”
Leeyes pounced. “That means you’ve got a weapon.”
“There’s a spade there with blood on it,” agreed Sloan.
“But not fingerprints, I suppose,” said Leeyes.
“I doubt it, sir,” said Sloan, “though the dabs boys are on their way over now.”
“Fingerprints would be too much to ask for these days.”
Sloan was inclined to agree with him. Besides there was a pair of gardening gloves sitting handy on the shelf beside the spade. Sloan thought that the gloves had a mocking touch about them—as if the murderer had just tossed them back onto the shelf where he had found them.
“When did it happen?” snapped Leeyes.
“He’s quite cold,” said Sloan obliquely, “and the blood has dried…”
Congealed was the right word for the bloody mess that had been the back of the man’s head but he did not use it.
A red little, dead little head…
“Yesterday, then,” concluded Leeyes.
“That’s what Dr. Tebot says,” said Sloan, “and Dr. Dabbe’s on his way.” Too many things had happened yesterday for Sloan’s liking.
“Yes, yes,” said Leeyes testily. “I know he’ll tell us for sure but you must make up your own mind about some things, Sloan.”
He had.
“And don’t forget to get on to the photographers, Sloan, will you?”
“I won’t forget,” said Sloan astringently.
“Who is he?” asked the superintendent. “Or don’t you know that either?”
But Sloan did know that. “He’s lying on his face, sir, and we haven’t moved him, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But I think I know.”
Leeyes grunted. “You’ll have to do better than that before you’ve done, Sloan.”
“Yes, sir.” Truth’s ox team had been Do Well, Do Better and Do Best. Sloan decided that he hadn’t even Done Well let alone Better or Best.
“I think I’ve seen those clothes before, sir.” And the body did look just like a bundle of old clothes. You wouldn’t have thought that there was a man inside them at first at all…
“Ha!”
“Yesterday afternoon.” said Sloan.
“That’s something, I suppose.”
“I think it’s the man who found the body.” Strictly speaking he supposed he should have said “the first body” now.
“The fisherman?”
“Horace Boiler,” said Sloan.
“The man in the boat,” said Leeyes.
“The doctor here thinks it’s him too, sir.” Last seen, Sloan reminded himself, with Basil Jensen on board.
“So there’s a link,” said Leeyes.
“There’s a link all right,” responded Sloan vigorously. “He’s got a barbary head in his pocket too.”
“What!” bellowed Leeyes.
Sloan winced. They said even a rose recoiled when shouted at let alone a full-blown detective inspector.
“At least,” declared Leeyes, “that means we’re not looking at a psychological case.”
“I suppose it does, sir.” There was nothing the police feared so much as a pathological killer. When there was neither rhyme nor reason to murder, then logic didn’t help find the murderer. You needed luck then. Sloan felt he could have done with some luck now.
“Have you,” growled Leeyes, “missed something that he found, Sloan?”
“I hope not,” said Sloan. But he had to admit that it had been his own first thought too.
“If he was killed because he knew something, Sloan,” persisted Leeyes, “then you can find out what it was too.”
“I’m sure I hope so, sir.”
“He’d have known about
“He’d have known all the village gossip for sure, too, sir, a man like that.”
“Dirty work at the crossroads there,” said Leeyes, even though he meant the sea.
It had been highwaymen who waited at the crossroads to double their chances of getting a victim. They used to hang felons at the crossroads too in the bad old days. Perhaps the dirty work had sometimes come from hanging the wrong man. A police officer had an equal duty to the innocent and the guilty.
Then and now.
“Don’t tell me either,” said Leeyes tartly, “that men explore valuable wrecks for the fun of it.”
Sloan wasn’t so sure about that but he was concentrating on the bird in the police bush, so to speak.
“Boiler wasn’t a very attractive man,” he said slowly. “Ridgeford said you had to watch him.”
“Are you trying to suggest something, Sloan?”
“If he knew something that we didn’t know he might have been—er—trying to put the pressure on a
