“That’s it,” Wendover exclaimed with some relief. “I knew I hadn’t smelt that perfume for ages and ages; and yet it used to be familiar once upon a time.”
Sir Clinton seemed to have passed to an earlier line of thought. He turned to the constable.
“Peter Hay suffered from apoplexy, the doctor told me. Had he any other troubles? Bad digestion? Asthma? Anything you can think of?”
Sapcote shook his head decidedly.
“No, sir,” he said without hesitation. “Peter was as sound as a bell, barring these turns of his. I never heard tell of his having anything else wrong with him these last ten years.”
The chief constable nodded, as though the information had satisfied him, but he refrained from comment.
“I think we’d better get him carried into his own bed now,” he suggested with a glance at the body. “After that, we can look round the place and see if there’s anything worth noting.”
They carried the remains of Peter Hay into the cottage and laid the body on the bed, which had not been slept in.
“You’d better examine him, inspector,” Sir Clinton suggested.
As the inspector set to work, the chief constable invited his companions to come into the second room of the cottage; and he left the bedroom door open, so that the inspector could hear anything of interest while he made his examination.
To Wendover, the tiny room seemed to offer little of interest. It was obviously kitchen and living-room in one. An oil cooking-stove; a grate; a sink; a dresser; two chairs and a table—these made up the more obvious contents. His eye wandered upwards and was caught by the movement of a tame squirrel in its cage on one of the walls.
“I heard he kept some pets,” he remarked to the constable who had gone across to inspect the squirrel with a rather gloomy expression on his face.
“Yes, sir,” Sapcote answered. “He took a lot of pleasure in the beasts. Some of them are in cages out behind the cottage.”
He reflected for a moment, then added:
“Somebody’ll have to look after the poor beasts, now he’s gone. Would there be any objection to my taking them away, sir? They’ll have to be fed.”
Sir Clinton, to whom the question was obviously addressed, gave permission at once.
“We mustn’t let the beasts starve. You’ll have to take the cages too, of course?”
“Yes, sir. I can put them in my backyard at home.”
The constable paused for a moment, then, a little shamefacedly, he added:
“Peter was a good friend to me; and I wouldn’t like to see his pets fall into anybody’s hands that might be cruel to them or neglect them. He was real fond of them.”
Wendover’s eye fell upon a small white paper bag on one of the dresser shelves. He stepped across, opened the parcel, sniffed for a moment, and then handed the thing to Sir Clinton.
“Here’s where the perfume comes from, Clinton—a bag of pear-drops, just as the constable said. He must have been eating some just before he died.”
The chief constable looked at the crumbled paper.
“Not much chance of getting any fingerprints on that, even if we wanted them. You’d better hand the bag over to the inspector. We may as well get them analysed. Poison’s always a possibility—Ah, inspector, you haven’t been long over that.”
Inspector Armadale emerged from the bedroom and stolidly made his report.
“Nothing that I can see on the body, sir, except the marks we noted already. No wounds of any sort, no bruises—nothing suspicious whatever. It almost looks like a mare’s nest, except for these four marks.”
Sir Clinton nodded as though he had received confirmation of some very doubtful hypothesis. He moved across the room and seemed to become engrossed in a study of the squirrel’s antics. In a few moments he turned to the constable.
“You knew Peter Hay well, constable. I want some notions about his habits and so forth. What did he do with himself all day?”
The constable scratched his ear, as though to stimulate his memory by the action.
“To tell you the truth, sir, he didn’t do much. He was only caretaker here, you understand? When the weather was fine, he’d go up to Foxhills and open some of the windows in the morning, to air the rooms. Then he’d take a look round the grounds, likely, just to see that all was as it should be. He might have to go down to the village for tea, or butter, or something like that. Then he’d come home and take his dinner. In the afternoon he’d have a bit of a sleep for a while—he was getting on in years—and then perhaps he’d dig a while in his garden here; look after his flowers; then he’d have his tea. Some time or other, he’d go up and look round Foxhills again and shut any windows he’d opened. And then he’d come back here; water his garden, most likely, if it needed it. And perhaps some of us would drop in for a chat with him. Or else he might take a walk down to see me or somebody else in the village. Or sometimes he’d read.”
Sir Clinton threw a glance round the barely furnished room.
“He had books, then? I don’t see any.”
“He read his Bible, sir. I never saw him read anything else.”
“There’s a Bible in the bedroom, Sir Clinton,” Armadale confirmed.
“An uneventful life, apparently,” the chief constable commented, not unkindly. “Now I want to hear something about what sort of man he was. Polite in his manners, you said?”
“Very polite,” Sapcote insisted. “I remembered hearing some visitor once saying that Peter was a natural gentleman, sir.”
“They do exist, here and there, even nowadays,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Now let’s come down to dots, constable. I want to get a picture of him in my mind and you seem to have known him well enough to help. Let’s see, now.
