However –! The bishop wrapped the Loathsome Object up in his towel and suggested leaving it at what he is pleased to call the Culminster Museum – you know it, I expect? The large room over Brown’s antique shop at the corner of the High Street opposite the confectioner’s? But on the way he changed his mind and determined to return by way of this village and show the skull to Mr Broome at the Vicarage.’
‘Why was that, madam?’
‘I understand that Mr Broome is something of an authority upon Gruesome Relics of this type. The bishop wanted his opinion.’
‘I see. Whose suggestion was it that Mr Wright should build the rest of the head on to the skull?’
‘Mr Broome suggested it. He disagreed with the bishop as to the probable antiquity of the Wretched Bone.’
‘Yes. Well, our own experts will tell us all about that. And Mr Wright brought the head back –?’
‘Early yesterday morning, I understand.’
‘And the vicar has seen it, and yourself, and the bishop? Who else? We have it up at the station now, of course.’
‘The vicar’s daughter may have seen it. I am not sure. The vicar’s servant certainly saw it. I would not permit Aubrey to view it. I do not believe in Harrowing the Feelings of the young.’
The inspector remembered Aubrey’s disappointment, and hid a smile.
‘Anyone else?’ he enquired.
‘To my knowledge, no. Oh,’ she added, after a second’s thought, ‘a ridiculous woman called Bradley saw it. The vicar sent over to her house. And I imagine Mr Savile and his – er – and his companion must have seen it, as Wright shares their house. He would certainly have shown them the finished model, I should think.’
‘His companion?’ said the inspector, puzzled.
‘A Creature,’ observed Mrs Bryce Harringay, ‘who cohabits with Savile and Wright, but whose exact relationship to either or both of them will always, I imagine, remain veiled in mystery. Perhaps it is better so.’
The inspector made rapid notes of the names, enquired the addresses, and took his leave. In accordance with previous arrangements, he met Superintendent Bidwell at the crossroads, and together they drove in the police car to Rams Cove. From the top of the cliffs the red-striped tent on the shore was easily visible. The inspector left the superintendent in the car and himself descended to the beach.
The big young man, still in shorts and a shirt, but this time barefooted, was having his dinner.
‘Hullo,’ he said hospitably, ‘you’re just in time. Bread and cheese and pickles and beer. Help yourself.’
The inspector grinned.
‘Food will have to wait,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t like to deceive you. I’m a police inspector.’
‘By Jove! I’ve got permission to be here, you know. You can’t bung me off.’
‘No, nothing like that.’ The inspector drew out his note-book. ‘On the afternoon of Friday, June 27th,’ he announced, ‘you gave a skull – a human skull – into the possession of the Bishop of Culminster.’
‘Good old gaiters!’ remarked the young man, with a glance at his own bare legs. ‘What about it?’
‘How did you come to get hold of it?’ asked the inspector.
‘If you’ll let me finish my grub, I’ll come and show you the exact spot where I dug it out of the face of the cliff.’
‘What’s your name? I might as well get the formalities over while I’m waiting.’
‘Look here, though!’ cried the young man. ‘What’s the game?’
‘Nothing to do with you. I don’t suppose that for a minute. So don’t make a fuss about all the little things I shall have to ask as a matter of routine. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘Haven’t seen one for ten days, thank heaven.’
‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, Mr –?’
‘Markham, John Ecclestone Markham, of Canby House, Slough, Bucks.’
‘Thank you, Mr Markham. Finished? Good. Now then, sir.’
Markham led the way along the shore for about a quarter of a mile. Then he began to climb the cliffs. Twice the inspector’s foothold crumbled away and he shot down to the beach again with a smother of loose earth and stones. The third time he managed to gain the place where Markham, who seemed to have a genius for avoiding loose places in the face of the cliff, sat astride a stunted bush which was leaning out over the thirty-foot drop to the shore.
‘Here you are,’ he said, when at last Grindy reached him. ‘I had my brother and sister down here for the day on Friday, and my sister was very keen to take back one or two seaside plants with her to show her botany teacher, so Tim and I clambered about up here collecting things while she scouted on top of the cliffs and down on the beach. Well, Tim spotted a fine clump of sea-pinks – thrift, don’t they call it? – and was going to jack up the whole lot when I yelled to him not to be a Hun, but only to take a bit of the stuff. I climbed across to him, opened my pocket knife, and tried to separate off a bit of the plant from the main clump. Unfortunately the soil was loose and up came the whole mass of it, and embedded next to it, but hidden until then by the spreading plant, was the skull. Of course, Tim was frightfully bucked. We clambered down to the beach and washed the dirt out of the eye-sockets and took up a little plant which was growing merrily out of the jaws –’
‘What?’ said the inspector. He began to laugh. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Markham. We shan’t need to trouble you again. And you found the skull on Friday – in the morning, I suppose? – and handed it to the Bishop of Culminster the same afternoon.’
‘And we finished cleaning the thing by boiling it in the old saucepan,’ said Markham, grinning.
The ground gave way beneath the inspector once more, and in a shower of earth and stones he slid to the beach. . . .
‘Oh, well, the date is possible, but the plant in the mouth – jaws, I mean,’ said the superintendent when he heard the news, ‘is proof positive. It couldn’t have been Sethleigh’s skull. I never thought for an instant it was! Still, I suppose we must go and see what the bishop has to say.’
‘I suppose we can give him back the skull this young Markham found?’
‘When we’ve pulled off the clay young Wright has modelled round it, the meddling young devil, and always supposing the bishop wants it back. It’s no good to us. Our next job is to trace Sethleigh. Who saw him last, I wonder, apart from Mr Redsey, who went with him into the woods?’
‘Mrs Bryce Harringay. Didn’t she say she was watching them out of her bedroom window?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t help us. I want somebody who saw them
‘If Redsey would tell the truth about what happened in the woods that evening,’ said Grindy, ‘we might get somewhere. Something convinces me that the corpse was Rupert Sethleigh.’
CHAPTER IX
PRECEDED by Jim Redsey, the inspector entered the library.
‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘another word or two with you, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t promise to answer questions,’ said Jim at once.
‘No, sir, no.’ The inspector’s voice was soothing as he lowered himself into a chair and placed his cap on the carpet beside it. ‘There’s no obligation at all.
‘That’s a threat, you know,’ said Jim, reddening.
‘By no means, sir. Well now. I understand that you were the last person to see your cousin, Mr Sethleigh, before his’ – he made a slight but suggestive pause – ‘his sudden disappearance.’
‘You can’t prove that,’ said Jim. ‘And look here, inspector, there’s no sense in going over all that ground again. You asked me that the last time you came.’
‘Very good. So I did. Well now. What was Mr Sethleigh wearing when you walked into the Manor Woods together at’ – he consulted his note-book – ‘at five minutes to eight on the evening of Sunday, June 22nd?’
‘I’m not swearing to the time, mind!’ cried Jim jumpily. ‘I don’t know what the time was. The date is all right. Rupert was in dark brown, I think.’
‘Plus fours, sir?’
