“A strong clue!” repeated Cotherstone, and said it yet again. “A good ’un! And if it’s right, it’ll clear matters up.”
“What is it?” asked Bent. He, too, seemed to be conscious that there was something odd about his prospective father-in-law, and he was gazing speculatively at him as if in wonder. “What sort of a clue?”
“It’s a wonder it didn’t strike me—and you, too—at first,” said Cotherstone, with a queer sound that was half a chuckle. “But as long as it’s struck somebody, eh? One’s as good as another. You can’t think of what it is, now?”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking about,” replied Bent, half impatiently.
Cotherstone gave vent to an unmistakable chuckle at that, and he motioned them to follow him into the cottage.
“Come and see for yourselves, then,” he said. “You’ll spot it. But, anyway—Mr. Brereton, being a stranger, can’t be expected to.”
The three men walked into the living-room of the cottage—a good-sized, open-raftered, old-fashioned place, wherein burnt a bright fire, at either side of which stood two comfortable armchairs. Before one of these chairs, their toes pointing upwards against the fender, were a pair of slippers; on a table close by stood an old lead tobacco-box, flanked by a churchwarden pipe, a spirit decanter, a glass, and a plate on which were set out sugar and lemon—these Brereton took to be indicative that Kitely, his evening constitutional over, was in the habit of taking a quiet pipe and a glass of something warm before going to bed. And looking round still further he became aware of an open door—the door into which Miss Pett had withdrawn—and of a bed within on which Kitely now lay, with Dr. Rockcliffe and the police-sergeant bending over him. The other policemen stood by the table in the living-room, and one of them—the man who had picked up the pocketbook—whispered audibly to Cotherstone as he and his companions entered.
“The doctor’s taking it off him,” he said, with a meaning nod of his head. “I’ll lay aught it’s as I say, Mr. Cotherstone.”
“Looks like it,” agreed Cotherstone, rubbing his hands. “It certainly looks like it, George. Sharp of you to notice it, though.”
Brereton took this conversation to refer to the mysterious clue, and his suspicion was confirmed a moment later. The doctor and the sergeant came into the living-room, the doctor carrying something in his hand which he laid down on the centre table in full view of all of them. And Brereton saw then that he had removed from the dead man’s neck the length of grey cord with which he had been strangled.
There was something exceedingly sinister in the mere placing of that cord before the eyes of these living men. It had wrought the death of another man, who, an hour before, had been as full of vigorous life as themselves; some man, equally vigorous, had used it as the instrument of a foul murder. Insignificant in itself, a mere piece of strongly spun and twisted hemp, it was yet singularly suggestive—one man, at any rate, amongst those who stood looking at it, was reminded by it that the murderer who had used it must even now have the fear of another and a stronger cord before him.
“Find who that cord belongs to, and you may get at something,” suddenly observed the doctor, glancing at the policemen. “You say it’s a butcher’s cord?”
The man who had just whispered to Cotherstone nodded.
“It’s a pig-killer’s cord, sir,” he answered. “It’s what a pig-killer fastens the pig down with—on the cratch.”
“A cratch?—what’s that?” asked Brereton, who had gone close to the table to examine the cord, and had seen that, though slender, it was exceedingly strong, and of closely wrought fibre. “Is it a sort of hurdle?”
“That’s it, sir,” assented the policeman. “It is a sort of hurdle—on four legs. They lay the pig on it, don’t you see, and tie it down with a cord of this sort—this cord’s been used for that—it’s greasy with long use.”
“And it has been cut off a longer piece, of course,” said the doctor. “These cords are of considerable length, aren’t they?”
“Good length, sir—there’s a regular coil, like,” said the man. He, too, bent down and looked at the length before him. “This has been cut off what you might call recent,” he went on, pointing to one end. “And cut off with a sharp knife, too.”
The police sergeant glanced at the doctor as if asking advice on the subject of putting his thoughts into words.
“Well?” said the doctor, with a nod of assent. “Of course, you’ve got something in your mind, sergeant?”
“Well, there is a man who kills pigs, and has such cords as that, lives close by, doctor,” he answered. “You know who I mean—the man they call Gentleman Jack.”
“You mean Harborough,” said the doctor. “Well—you’d better ask him if he knows anything. Somebody might have stolen one of his cords. But there are other pig-killers in the town, of course.”
“Not on this side the town, there aren’t,” remarked another policeman.
“What is plain,” continued the doctor, looking at Cotherstone and the others, “is that Kitely was strangled by this rope, and that everything on him of any value was taken. You’d better find out what he had, or was likely to have, on him, sergeant. Ask the housekeeper.”
Miss Pett came from the inner room, where she had already begun her preparations for laying out the body. She was as calm as when Bent first told her of what had occurred, and she stood at the end of the table, the cord between her and her questioners, and showed no emotion, no surprise at what had
