[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening

and anxious to get away from him. In other words he was the village idiot, but an older brother protected him and Our Sarah would not permit any of her gang to tease him when his brother was at work. Neither, however, would she have him as a member of her group, although he was always, in a hopeful spirit, trying to become a camp-follower. I suppose he must have had the mentality of a retarded child of four. I believe his age in years was twenty-three.

'Even if we had Poachy we still haven't got a spade,' I said.

'There's Uncle Arthur's in the shed. You go and get that, and I'll go and find Poachy.'

'Uncle Arthur might be waxy.'

'Not he. He let us dig in the garden with it.'

Digging in Uncle Arthur's garden and digging up the floor of the hermit's filthy hovel seemed to my mind two very different things, but I did not say so. I sneaked back to Aunt Kirstie's while Kenneth went out by the front door of the cottage. Luckily the shed was at the bottom of the garden next to the earth closet, so I did not need to go near the house. I secured the heavier of Uncle Arthur's two spades, added the iron crowbar we had borrowed when we forced the palings apart, and returned to the garden of the cottage.

I waited there for what seemed a very long time before Kenneth re-appeared. He came back through the cottage and found me poking about among the bushes with the crowbar.

'What are you doing?' he asked.

'Nothing. I've found something, though. Show you later. Where's Poachy?'

'In the road. Come and help me make him come in.' He picked up the spade, I followed with the crowbar and we dumped them on top of the filled-in hole. Poachy was writhing about and talking to himself. I took one arm and Kenneth took the other and we persuaded him into the cottage. Kenneth showed him the spade, handed it to him and indicated the place where we wanted him to dig. I picked up the crowbar and retreated towards the kitchen. I think I had some vague idea of protecting Kenneth in case Poachy turned nasty-not that he ever did.

Apparently the suggestion conveyed by the spade and the newly tramped-down earth appealed to something in the idiot's memory. He fell into a series of weird contortions, grinned and slobbered, picked up the spade and fell to work. Soon earth and stones were flying in all directions, so Kenneth and I took cover in the kitchen doorway, peeping out every now and again to see how he was getting on.

'What were you poking in the bushes for?' Kenneth asked, while Poachy delved and heaved. 'You said you found something. What?'

'A boot,' I said, 'elastic-sided. I believe it's one of Mr Ward's.'

Chapter 11

Our Special Correspondent

With no desire or intention of being facetious, for, in the circumstances we are about to describe, such an attitude on the part of this newspaper would be in the worst possible taste, we have to admit that, if the horror films want it, Hill village has it. Figure to yourself, as the French are supposed to say, two murders, each as bizarre as the other, in a village of under three hundred inhabitants and within a space of less than three weeks! Does your mind boggle? Not half as much as the mind of the local inspector of police, we dare swear!

Our readers will remember-indeed, who, knowing the facts, could ever forget?-the death of Miss Merle Patterson, a stranger from London who was found brutally done to death at the end of a grassy thoroughfare known locally as Lovers' Lane.

Miss Patterson, it will be recalled, had strayed away from a party held at Hill Manor House, just outside the now notorious and fateful village of Hill, and was found battered and bathed in blood at round about three o'clock in the morning.

Her cruel death was and remains a mystery. It is clear that Hill village must house an undetected homicidal maniac. He has now claimed another victim in the person of a quiet, inoffensive, elderly man said to have been related to the chatelaine of Hill Manor, Mrs Emilia Kempson, the Great Lady of the village and the hostess at what has become known as the fateful birthday party. The facts relating to this second apparently motiveless murder are obscure. For two nights Mr Ward had not slept in his bed or returned to his lodgings for his supper. Interviewed by us, his landlady, Mrs Christine (Kirstie) Landgrave, told us:

'Mr Ward was not the sort to make enemies. Whoever killed him must be a madman. I do not know any more about Mr Ward than what Mrs Kempson told me, which was that he had lived many years in Canada and the States and had come back to England to find work, but was too old, she thought, to fend for himself and as he was a distant relative-that is how she described him-she was prepared to pay me to look after him and would provide him with his bit of spending money.

'That is all I know about Mr Ward. He was not one to talk about himself. If you got as much as a good morning from him it was quite a surprise. I had a terrible shock when I heard he was dead, especially when I heard where he was buried. I did not want to go to the mortuary, but my husband lost half a day's work to come with me and Mrs Kempson made that up to us, seeing that, if we had not gone, it would have had to be her, I suppose.

'Yes, I have my sister's children