Mallalieu followed without a word. But once outside the Town Hall he turned to his companion.
“Have you made aught out of it?” he asked. “He’s been away, so his landlady says, since Saturday afternoon: I sent round to inquire for him when he didn’t turn up this morning. What do you know, like?”
“It looks as if it had been an accident,” answered the superintendent. “These men that found him noticed some broken railings at top of the quarry. They looked down and saw a body. So they made their way down and found—Stoner. It would seem as if he’d leaned or sat on the railings and they’d given way beneath him, and of course he’d pitched headlong into the quarry. It’s fifty feet deep, Mr. Mayor! That’s all one can think of. But Dr. Rockcliffe’s with him now.”
Mallalieu made a mighty effort to appear calm, as, with a grave and concerned face, he followed his guide into the place where the doctor, an official or two, and Cotherstone were grouped about the dead man. He gave one glance at his partner and Cotherstone gave one swift look at him—and there was something in Cotherstone’s look which communicated a sudden sense of uneasy fear to Mallalieu: it was a look of curious intelligence, almost a sort of signal. And Mallalieu experienced a vague feeling of dread as he turned to the doctor.
“A bad job—a bad job!” he muttered, shaking his head and glancing sideways at the body. “D’ye make aught out of it, doctor? Can you say how it came about?”
Dr. Rockcliffe pursed up his lips and his face became inscrutable. He kept silence for a moment—when he spoke his voice was unusually stern.
“The lad’s neck is broken, and his spine’s fractured,” he said in a low voice. “Either of those injuries was enough to cause death. But—look at that!”
He pointed to a contusion which showed itself with unmistakable plainness on the dead man’s left temple, and again he screwed up his lips as if in disgust at some deed present only to the imagination.
“That’s a blow!” he said, more sternly than before. “A blow from some blunt instrument! It was a savage blow, too, dealt with tremendous force. It may—may, I say—have killed this poor fellow on the spot—he may have been dead before ever he fell down that quarry.”
It was only by an enormous effort of will that Mallalieu prevented himself from yielding to one of his shaking fits.
“But—but mightn’t he ha’ got that with striking his head against them rocks as he fell?” he suggested. “It’s a rocky place, that, and the rocks project, like, so—”
“No!” said the doctor, doggedly. “That’s no injury from any rock or stone or projection. It’s the result of a particularly fierce blow dealt with great force by some blunt instrument—a life preserver, a club, a heavy stick. It’s no use arguing it. That’s a certainty!”
Cotherstone, who had kept quietly in the background, ventured a suggestion.
“Any signs of his having been robbed?” he asked.
“No, sir,” replied the superintendent promptly. “I’ve everything that was on him. Not much, either. Watch and chain, half a sovereign, some loose silver and copper, his pipe and tobacco, a pocketbook with a letter or two and suchlike in it—that’s all. There’d been no robbery.”
“I suppose you took a look round?” asked Cotherstone. “See anything that suggested a struggle? Or footprints? Or aught of that sort?”
The superintendent shook his head.
“Naught!” he answered. “I looked carefully at the ground round those broken railings. But it’s the sort of ground that wouldn’t show footprints, you know—covered with that short, wiry mountain grass that shows nothing.”
“And nothing was found?” asked Mallalieu. “No weapons, eh?”
For the life of him he could not resist asking that—his anxiety about the stick was overmastering him. And when the superintendent and the two policemen who had been with him up to Hobwick Quarry had answered that they had found nothing at all, he had hard work to repress a sigh of relief. He presently went away hoping that the oak stick had fallen into a crevice of the rocks or amongst the brambles which grew out of them; there was a lot of tangle-wood about that spot, and it was quite possible that the stick, kicked violently away, had fallen where it would never be discovered. And—there was yet a chance for him to make that possible discovery impossible. Now that the body had been found, he himself could visit the spot with safety, on the pretext of curiosity. He could look round; if he found the stick he could drop it into a safe fissure of the rocks, or make away with it. It was a good notion—and instead of going home to lunch Mallalieu turned into a private room of the Highmarket Arms, ate a sandwich and drank a glass of ale, and hurried off, alone, to the moors.
The news of this second mysterious death flew round Highmarket and the neighbourhood like wildfire. Brereton heard of it during the afternoon, and having some business in the town in connection with Harborough’s defence, he looked in at the police-station and found the superintendent in an unusually grave and glum mood.
“This sort of thing’s getting beyond me, Mr. Brereton,” he said in a whisper. “Whether it is that I’m not used to such things—thank God! we’ve had little experience of violence in this place in my time!—or what it is, but I’ve got it into my head that this poor young fellow’s death’s connected in some way with Kitely’s affair! I have indeed, sir!—it’s been bothering me all the afternoon. For all the doctors—there’s been several of ’em in during the last two hours—are absolutely agreed that Stoner was felled, sir—felled by a savage blow, and they say he may ha’ been dead before ever he fell
