‘I feel that it would be the best thing to do, Reginald,’ she announced. ‘I shall have time to drive you home to Culminster if we start now. Otherwise I shall not be in time to do so. Will you come?’
The bishop, looking back longingly at the skull, which was lying in the crook of Wright’s arm, followed her out to the waiting car. Wright chucked the skull affectionately under the chin, and walked home with it pressed between his elbow and his side. He carolled blithely as he went along.
True to his promise, he brought a complete head back next day. He had reconstructed in clay the features and lineaments of a man.
‘Rather a curious resemblance, don’t you think?’ he said casually to the Reverend Stephen Broome, holding out the reconstructed head.
The vicar gasped. Low forehead, fleshy jowl, straight Norman nose, and sensual lips! – it was the head of Rupert Sethleigh.
CHAPTER VIII
‘THAT wretched policeman,’ complained Mrs Bryce Harringay petulantly, ‘is here again, and wants to see the car. I suppose he means the Bentley, but I don’t know, and why he should want to see it I don’t know, and why he should require to see it on Sunday of all days, I don’t know, but I suppose he must be humoured. Take him round to the garage, Aubrey, will you?’
‘Where is he, mater?’ asked Aubrey, grinning.
‘In the shrubbery, looking for footprints and cigarette ash,’ growled Jim Redsey, without glancing up from an old newspaper which he was pretending to read.
‘Do not be foolish, James,’ said his aunt. ‘He is in the hall. And whatever happens, Aubrey, do not allow him to annoy Cooper. The only really reliable chauffeur,’ she observed as Aubrey went out, ‘that poor Rupert ever had.’
Cooper, however, was breakfasting, so Aubrey returned for the keys and unlocked the garage door.
‘Want her jacked up?’ he enquired professionally of the inspector.
‘No, Mr Harringay, I thank you.’
Detective Inspector Grindy was large, like all policemen, good-natured, like most, and very fond of boys, but duty was duty. Very deliberately he turned his back upon Aubrey and made an entry in his note-book. Then he walked all round the car and wrote in his note-book again.
‘Thank you, Mr Harringay. That’s all,’ he said cheerfully.
‘But you haven’t looked at the tyres to see what sort of a track they’d leave. And you – and you haven’t found out how much petrol there is in the tank and whether she’s been filled up since the mater went out yesterday.’
The inspector roared with laughter, and drew out a folding map.
‘Never mind, Mr Harringay,’ he said. ‘Come here and point me out the route they took to get to Rams Cove yesterday.’
‘I say,’ remarked Aubrey, when the inspector had made a note of the route, ‘I wish I’d seen that skull that chap found. What was it like?’
‘When we had duly admired the work of art with which Mr Wright had surrounded it, we packed same in the safe ready to peel off the clay which has dried rather hard. But I’ve no doubt that when we do peel it off we shall find that the skull underneath is exactly like any other skull, Mr Harringay.’ And the inspector winked solemnly. ‘We laughed quite a good bit, Superintendent Bidwell and me, over that skull.’
‘Oh, did you? Why?’
‘Well, Mr Harringay’ – the inspector coughed judiciously – ‘we know Mr Wright, you see. A very pleasant gentleman. Humorous, too! Must have his little joke, whatever happens, as you know. That’s why we aren’t in any hurry to peel off the clay. Won’t help us much when we do.’
‘I don’t know the fellow from Adam, except by sight,’ remarked Aubrey.
‘No? Well, people round here know him well for his joking ways. It was him that dressed up as the ghost of Dicky Tell, who was hanged at the crossroads in chains for highway robbery way back a hundred years or more, and nearly frightened the folks into fits as they came home from Bossbury Fair one night. Oh, he’s a rare funny chap, is Mr Wright.’
‘Yes, but what about the skull?’
‘Well, Mr Harringay, a skull’s a skull, isn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’
The inspector grinned.
‘Just what I say. I can’t say any more. Even the police have to keep one or two things to themselves sometimes, you see. Now, before I go, I want a word with Mrs – with your mother, and then I suppose I must go over to Rams Cove and interview the young chap who actually found the damn thing.’
The last words were addressed to himself rather than to Aubrey, for in concluding them he walked out of the garage and stepped briskly towards the house. Aubrey looked up and raced along to rejoin him.
‘I say,’ he said eagerly. ‘I’ve got a bike. Couldn’t I come with you to Rams Cove and – and sort of have a snoop round, you know?’
The inspector settled his cap.
‘I don’t think you’d better come with me, Mr Harringay,’ he said. ‘I shall be there kind of official, you see.’ Then, at sight of the boy’s disappointed face, he added good-naturedly, ‘But, of course, if you should happen to be there quite accidental’ – he paused and winked solemnly – ‘well, I couldn’t hardly object, could I?’
Aubrey left him with Mrs Bryce Harringay and raced off to get his bicycle.
‘I understand you were with his lordship the bishop when he found the skull, madam,’ said the inspector to a very frigid lady.
‘You have been misinformed on two points, inspector. I was not with the bishop, and he did not find the skull.’
‘That’s illuminating, madam.’ The inspector licked the point of his pencil and reflected comfortably that the more of a fool this type of woman thought him to be, the more information he could get out of her. ‘Will you kindly give me the facts? Begin at the beginning, if you please.’
‘Well, since you ask me, I suppose I must. Sit down, inspector, sit down. But you know it is all most upsetting and annoying, most! If I had had any idea that that wretched object would turn out to be Rupert’s skull, I would never have allowed the bishop to bring it home, never! What is it you wish to know?’
‘First,’ said the inspector, glancing down at his note-book, ‘I want to know whether it is true that you accompanied the Bishop of Culminster to a spot called Rams Cove on the morning of Friday, June 27th?’
‘It is correct to say that the bishop accompanied me. I ordered the car at nine-thirty, and Cooper, the chauffeur – my late nephew’s chauffeur, I should say – drove me into Culminster, where I picked up the bishop at ten-fifteen. He kept the car waiting twenty minutes, I remember.’
‘Then you actually drove out of Culminster at ten-thirty-five, madam?’
‘No, no! At ten-fifteen! I was waiting for him from five minutes to ten until a quarter past!’ Her brow clouded at the recollection of that wasted twenty minutes. The inspector clicked his tongue sympathetically.
‘Had you any special reason for choosing Rams Cove as the – er –’
‘Object of our journey? None at all. The bishop insisted upon bringing his bathing things, and so, knowing from sad experience what babies men can be when they have set their minds upon some triviality of the kind, I instructed Cooper to take us to a seaside locality which was sufficiently safe and quiet for the purpose, because the bishop is a most mediocre swimmer, most! – and the spectacle of an Older Man in his bathing-costume is never, I feel, a particularly edifying spectacle. Well, very sensibly and suitably, Cooper drove to Rams Cove, as I think you said the spot is called, and – much too soon after lunch, in my opinion! – the bishop bathed.’
The inspector stared thoughtfully at the fireplace. Apparently the vision of the bishop bathing was too entrancing to be lightly dismissed from the mind.
‘Then, it appears –’ continued Mrs Bryce Harringay.
‘Ah!’ said the inspector, rousing himself. ‘The next bit of the story I shall have to get from his lordship, I think. Thank you, madam. Perhaps we could come now to the return journey.’
‘Very well. Although I can probably tell you the bishop’s part of the story far more lucidly than he will.
