The Superintendent glanced sharply at the Scotland Yard man.
“You don’t suppose she was brought and put here, do you, sir?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” retorted Parker, “I merely drew attention to a point which I think you should consider. What are these wheel-marks?”
“That’s our car, sir. We backed it up here and took her up that way.”
“And all this trampling is your men too, I suppose?”
“Partly that, sir, and partly the party as found her.”
“You noticed no other person’s tracks, I suppose?”
“No, sir. But it’s rained considerably this last week. Besides, the rabbits have been all over the place, as you can see, and other creatures too, I fancy. Weasels, or something of that sort.”
“Oh! Well, I think you’d better take a look round. There might be traces of some kind a bit further away. Make a circle, and report anything you see. And you oughtn’t to have let all that bunch of people get so near. Put a cordon round and tell ’em to move on. Have you seen all you want, Peter?”
Wimsey had been poking his stick aimlessly into the bole of an oak-tree at a few yards’ distance. Now he stooped and lifted out a package which had been stuffed into a cleft. The two policemen hurried forward with eager interest, which evaporated somewhat at sight of the find—a ham sandwich and an empty Bass bottle, roughly wrapped up in a greasy newspaper.
“Picnickers,” said Walmisley, with a snort. “Nothing to do with the body, I daresay.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” said Wimsey, placidly. “When did the girl disappear, exactly?”
“Well, she went off duty at the Corner House at five a week ago tomorrow, that’s Wednesday, 27th,” said Parker.
“And this is the Evening Views of Wednesday, 27th,” said Wimsey. “Late Final edition. Now that edition isn’t on the streets till about 6 o’clock. So unless somebody brought it down and had supper here, it was probably brought by the girl herself or her companion. It’s hardly likely anyone would come and picnic here afterwards, not with the body there. Not that bodies need necessarily interfere with one’s enjoyment of one’s food. À la guerre comme à la guerre. But for the moment there isn’t a war on.”
“That’s true, sir. But you’re assuming the death took place on the Wednesday or Thursday. She may have been somewhere else—living with someone in town or anywhere.”
“Crushed again,” said Wimsey. “Still, it’s a curious coincidence.”
“It is, my lord, and I’m very glad you found the things. Will you take charge of ’em, Mr. Parker, or shall I?”
“Better take them along and put them with the other things,” said Parker, extending his hand to take them from Wimsey, whom they seemed to interest quite disproportionately. “I fancy his lordship’s right and that the parcel came here along with the girl. And that certainly looks as if she didn’t come alone. Possibly that young man of hers was with her. Looks like the old, old story. Take care of that bottle, old man, it may have fingerprints on it.”
“You can have the bottle,” said Wimsey. “May we ne’er lack a friend or a bottle to give him, as Dick Swiveller says. But I earnestly beg that before you caution your respectable young railway clerk that anything he says may be taken down and used against him, you will cast your eye, and your nose, upon this ham sandwich.”
“What’s wrong with it?” inquired Parker.
“Nothing. It appears to be in astonishingly good preservation, thanks to this admirable oak-tree. The stalwart oak—for so many centuries Britain’s bulwark against the invader! Heart of oak are our ships—not hearts, by the way, as it is usually misquoted. But I am puzzled by the incongruity between the sandwich and the rest of the outfit.”
“It’s an ordinary ham sandwich, isn’t it?”
“Oh, gods of the wine-flask and the board, how long? how long?—it is a ham sandwich, Goth, but not an ordinary one. Never did it see Lyons’ kitchen, or the counter of the multiple store or the delicatessen shop in the back street. The pig that was sacrificed to make this dainty titbit fattened in no dull style, never knew the daily ration of pig-wash or the not unmixed rapture of the domestic garbage-pail. Observe the hard texture, the deep brownish tint of the lean; the rich fat, yellow as a Chinaman’s cheek; the dark spot where the black treacle cure has soaked in, to make a dish fit to lure Zeus from Olympus. And tell me, man of no discrimination and worthy to be fed on boiled cod all the year round, tell me how it comes that your little waitress and her railway clerk come down to Epping Forest to regale themselves on sandwiches made from coal-black, treacle-cured Bradenham ham, which long ago ran as a young wild boar about the woodlands, till death translated it to an incorruptible and more glorious body? I may add that it costs about 3s. a pound uncooked—an argument which you will allow to be weighty.”
“That’s odd, certainly,” said Parker. “I imagine that only rich people—”
“Only rich people or people who understand eating as a fine art,” said Wimsey. “The two classes are by no means identical, though they occasionally overlap.”
“It may be very important,” said Parker, wrapping the exhibits up carefully. “We’d better go along now and see the body.”
The examination was not a very pleasant matter, for the weather had been damp and warm and there had certainly been weasels. In fact, after a brief glance, Wimsey left the two policemen to carry on alone, and devoted his attention to the dead girl’s handbag. He glanced through the letter from Evelyn Gotobed—(now Evelyn Cropper)—and noted down the Canadian address. He turned the cutting of his own advertisement out of an inner compartment, and remained for some time in consideration of the £5 note which lay, folded up, side by side with a 10s. Treasury note, 7s. 8d. in silver and copper, a latchkey and a powder
