So much for that. But there was something more. Mallalieu was Cotherstone’s partner. Mallalieu went to Northrop’s house to play cards at ten o’clock. It might be well to find out, quietly, what Mallalieu was doing with himself up to ten o’clock. But the main thing was—what was Cotherstone doing during that hour of absence? And—had Cotherstone any reason—of his own, or shared with his partner—for wishing to get rid of Kitely?
Brereton sat thinking all these things over until he had finished his cigar; he then left Bent’s house and strolled up into the woods of the Shawl. He wanted to have a quiet look round the scene of the murder. He had not been up there since the previous evening; it now occurred to him that it would be well to see how the place looked by daylight. There was no difficulty about finding the exact spot, even in those close coverts of fir and pine; a thin line of inquisitive sightseers was threading its way up the Shawl in front of him, each of its units agog to see the place where a fellow-being had been done to death.
But no one could get at the precise scene of the murder. The police had roped a portion of the coppice off from the rest, and two or three constables in uniform were acting as guards over this enclosed space, while a couple of men in plain clothes, whom Brereton by that time knew to be detectives from Norcaster, were inside it, evidently searching the ground with great care. Round and about the fenced-in portion stood townsfolk, young and old, talking, speculating, keenly alive to the goings-on, hoping that the searchers would find something just then, so that they themselves could carry some sensational news back to the town and their own comfortable tea-tables. Most of them had been in or outside the Court House that morning and recognized Brereton and made way for him as he advanced to the ropes. One of the detectives recognized him, too, and invited him to step inside.
“Found anything?” asked Brereton, who was secretly wondering why the police should be so foolish as to waste time in a search which was almost certain to be nonproductive.
“No, sir—we’ve been chiefly making out for certain where the actual murder took place before the dead man was dragged behind that rock,” answered the detective. “As far as we can reckon from the disturbance of these pine needles, the murderer must have sprung on Kitely from behind that clump of gorse—there where it’s grown to such a height—and then dragged him here, away from that bit of a path. No—we’ve found nothing. But I suppose you’ve heard of the find at Harborough’s cottage?”
“No!” exclaimed Brereton, startled out of his habitual composure. “What find?”
“Some of our people made a search there as soon as the police-court proceedings were over,” replied the detective. “It was the first chance they’d had of doing anything systematically. They found the banknotes which Kitely got at the Bank yesterday evening, and a quantity of letters and papers that we presume had been in that empty pocketbook. They were all hidden in a hole in the thatch of Harborough’s shed.”
“Where are they?” asked Brereton.
“Down at the police-station—the superintendent has them,” answered the detective. “He’d show you them, sir, if you care to go down.”
Brereton went off to the police-station at once and was shown into the superintendent’s office without delay. That official immediately drew open a drawer of his desk and produced a packet folded in brown paper.
“I suppose this is what you want to see, Mr. Brereton,” he said. “I guess you’ve heard about the discovery? Shoved away in a rat-hole in the thatch of Harborough’s shed these were, sir—upon my honour, I don’t know what to make of it! You’d have thought that a man of Harborough’s sense and cleverness would never have put these things there, where they were certain to be found.”
“I don’t believe Harborough did put them there,” said Brereton. “But what are they?”
The superintendent motioned his visitor to sit by him and then opened the papers out on his desk.
“Not so much,” he answered. “Three five-pound notes—I’ve proved that they’re those which poor Kitely got at the bank yesterday. A number of letters—chiefly about old books, antiquarian matters, and so forth—some scraps of newspaper cuttings, of the same nature. And this bit of a memorandum book, that fits that empty pocketbook we found, with pencil entries in it—naught of any importance. Look ’em over, if you like, Mr. Brereton. I make nothing out of ’em.”
Brereton made nothing out either, at first glance. The papers were just what the superintendent described them to be, and he went rapidly through them without finding anything particularly worthy of notice. But to the little memorandum book he gave more attention, especially to the recent entries. And one of these, made within the last three months, struck him as soon as he looked at it, insignificant as it seemed to be. It was only of one line, and the one line was only of a few initials, an abbreviation or two, and a date: M. & C. v. S.B. cir. 81. And why this apparently innocent entry struck Brereton was because he was still thinking as an undercurrent to all this, of Mallalieu and Cotherstone—and M. and C. were certainly the initials of those not too common names.
XI
Christopher Pett
The two men sat staring silently at the paper-strewn desk for several moments; each occupied with his own thoughts. At last the superintendent began to put the several exhibits together, and he turned to Brereton with
