It was anything but a simple route along which the dog led them; for it seemed to wind backwards and forwards almost at haphazard.
“Nobody who knew the Maze would have tried to get out this way,” Stenness commented at last.
His remark was hardly needed; for already the dog had more than once halted in the middle of an open alley and then retraced its course for no obvious reason. It was Howard Torrance who saw the meaning of these intricate tracings before the remainder of the party.
“Of course!” he explained. “The murderer didn’t go straight out of the Maze immediately. Probably he found Miss Forrest and myself blocking the road again and again as we wandered about. And he’d got to avoid being seen by us. That’s why he had to turn and wind about like this.”
At last the dog led them to the edge of the Maze, passed out through the iron gate, and went on eagerly across the grass. The track had brought them to the river side of the labyrinth, where a tiny clump of trees had been planted; and into this the dog plunged. A few paces further on it halted for a moment at the foot of a tree.
“Perhaps he climbed that,” Wendover suggested, going up and examining the trunk. “Look! There’s a faint mark here on the trunk, just about the height that a man could reach with his foot.”
Sir Clinton examined the mark, which was very slight indeed. Then he looked at the dog, which had set off in a fresh direction.
“I suppose he must have got tired of the view and come down again, in that case. One usually does come down. One rarely climbs higher than the top.”
He set off after the dog, which was now making for the road running past the Maze. But here it seemed to go astray. It snuffed about with the utmost eagerness, casting wider and wider in its attempt to recapture the scent; but soon it was clear that it had lost the track. Sir Clinton took it back to the tree once more and allowed it to start afresh. This time he followed closely on its track; and his companions noticed that he had pulled some paper from his pocket and was scattering tiny fragments on the grass to mark the animal’s route. But this attempt also ended in failure. Beyond the road, the trail seemed to be lost.
“We may as well give it up,” Sir Clinton admitted. “One can’t expect infallibility from a dumb animal.”
As he called the beast off, a motor-horn sounded, and they saw a car coming from the direction of the house.
“That’s our doctor, I expect,” Sir Clinton surmised; and Stenness confirmed the guess.
In a few minutes they had all made their way to Helen’s Bower, under Stenness’s guidance. Once there, the doctor proposed to begin his examination of the bodies; but the Chief Constable intervened.
“Just a moment, doctor. Before you shift anything, I want to take one or two photographs. Nothing like a permanent record for future reference.”
He took a case which one of the constables had carried and produced from it one of the largest-sized Kodaks. Then, by the marks of the feet in the grass, he replaced the overturned chair in its proper position; and finally he marked the position of the loophole in the hedge by means of a scrap of paper.
“I want something to give the scale,” he explained, at the last moment. “Would you mind sitting in the chair, Mr. Stenness? And perhaps you’d stand by the loophole, Mr. Torrance?”
He looked round the enclosure for an instant.
“And here, Costock, you get over into that corner. It’ll give some notion of the distance.”
When they had placed themselves, he took several photographs from various positions.
“Now, doctor, you can get to work if you like.”
The doctor made only a cursory examination.
“I think it would be best to shift the body up to the house. The light’s not very good here, now the sun’s going down. Besides, I’ll need to do more than I can do in this place.”
“There’s a second body waiting for you,” Sir Clinton explained. “We’ve the whole thing to do over again.”
The doctor, a taciturn man, shrugged his shoulders without making any audible comment and they made their way, guided by Stenness, to the Pool of Narcissus. Sir Clinton gave some directions to his constables and despatched the gardener to the house to bring down something on which the bodies could be carried. Then the photographic procedure was repeated; and the doctor made his examination of Neville Shandon’s corpse.
“There must be a loophole in this hedge as well,” the Chief Constable mused aloud, “but it’s not worth while hunting for it at present. It won’t run away.”
The constables reported the discovery of several fresh darts which had fallen either into the hedge itself or among the roots on the outer side. Skene, it appeared, had secured all those on the inner border. Sir Clinton counted the tiny projectiles carefully, dropped them into the tin box, and put the box in his pocket.
“That’s eleven altogether. Go back and hunt for anything more. I must have every one of these darts if you have to finish the search by lamplight. Make absolutely certain that you miss nothing.”
Skene arrived shortly afterwards with two other gardeners carrying hurdles; and the two bodies were transported to the cars and so conveyed to the house. Two more constables had arrived, and these were put under the guidance of Skene and given instructions to search the whole of the Maze for anything suspicious.
When the bodies had been taken up to a bedroom, Sir Clinton and the doctor carried out a minute examination. Each victim had been struck by three darts. In the case of Neville Shandon, the wounds suggested that the shots had been fired from the front and rather to
