They moved round the rock a little. The inspector’s face lighted up at the sight of the footprints.
“Rubber soles, sir; and a fairly well-marked set of screws to check anything with. If they do belong to the murdered man, we’ll have no trouble in identifying them.”
Sir Clinton agreed.
“Don’t bother taking casts of them yet. We may not need them. Let’s go on to the next tracks.”
They had to cut across Billingford’s trail and walk to the far end of the rock before they reached their objective.
“This is the other end of the track we noticed before,” Wendover pointed out. “It’s the woman in golfing-shoes who came down from the road near the groyne.”
The inspector fell to work on his casting, whilst Sir Clinton took another series of measurements of the length of pace shown by the footprints.
“Twenty-six and a half inches,” he reported, after several trials of comparison. “Now, once the inspector’s finished with his impression-taking, we can have a look at the body. We’ve just done the business in time, for the tide’s almost washing the base of the rock now.”
VII
The Letter
Followed by Wendover and the inspector, Sir Clinton mounted the platform of Neptune’s Seat, which formed an outcrop some twenty yards long and ten in breadth, with the landward part rising sharply so as to form a low natural wall. The body of the murdered man lay on the tiny plateau at the end nearest the groyne. It rested on its back, with the left arm slightly doubled up under the corpse. Blood had been welling from a wound in the breast.
“Anybody claim him?” inquired Sir Clinton. “He isn’t one of the hotel guests, at any rate.”
Armadale shook his head.
“I don’t recognise him.”
Sir Clinton lifted the head and examined it.
“Contused wound on the back of the skull. Probably got it by falling against the rock as he came down.”
He turned to the feet of the body.
“The boots have rubber soles with a pattern corresponding to the tracks up yonder. That’s all right,” he continued. “His clothes seem just a shade on the flashy side of good taste, to my mind. Age appears to be somewhere in the early thirties.”
He bent down and inspected the wound in the breast.
“From the look of this hole I guess you’re right, inspector. It seems to have been a small-calibre bullet—possibly from an automatic pistol. You’d better make a rough sketch of the position before we shift him. There’s no time to get a camera up here before the tide swamps us.”
Armadale cut one or two scratches on the rock as reference points, and then, after taking a few measurements, he made a rough diagram of the body’s position and attitude.
“Finished?” Sir Clinton asked; and, on getting an assurance from the inspector, he knelt down beside the dead man and unfastened the front of the raincoat which clothed the corpse.
“That’s interesting,” he said, passing his hand over a part of the jacket underneath. “He’s been soaked to the skin by the feel of the cloth. Did that rain come down suddenly last night, inspector?”
“It sounded like a thundershower, sir. Dry one minute and pouring cats and dogs the next, I remember.”
“That might account for it, then. We proceed. I can see only one wound on him, so far as the front’s concerned. No indication of robbery, since his raincoat was buttoned up and the jacket also. Help me to lift him up, inspector, so that we can get his arm free without scraping it about too much. If he wore a wristwatch, it may have stopped conveniently when he fell, for he seems to have come rather a purler when he dropped.”
Armadale raised the left side of the body slightly, and Sir Clinton levered the twisted arm gently into a more normal position.
“You’re right, sir,” the inspector exclaimed, pointing to the strap on the dead man’s wrist. He bent forward as though to turn the hand of the body, but the chief constable stopped him with an imperative gesture.
“Gently, inspector, gently. We may need to be cautious.”
Very carefully he manoeuvred the dead man’s wrist until they could see the face of the watch.
“It’s stopped at 11:19,” Armadale pointed out. “That gives us the moment when he fell, then. It doesn’t seem of much use to us yet, though.”
Wendover detected a flaw in the inspector’s assumption.
“Some people forget to wind up their watches now and again. Perhaps he did, the night before last; and it might have stopped of its own accord at 11:19, before he was shot at all.”
“Dear me, squire! This is a breakaway from the classics with a vengeance. I thought it was always taken for granted that a watch stopped conveniently at the very moment of the murder. But perhaps you’re right. We can always test it.”
“How?” demanded Wendover.
“By winding it up now, counting the clicks of the rachet as we do it; then let it run fully down and wind up again, also counting the clicks. If the two figures tally, then it’s run down naturally; if they don’t it’s been forcibly stopped. But I doubt if we’ll need to bother about that. There must be some better evidence than that somewhere, if we can only lay hands on it.”
Wendover’s eyes had been ranging over the surface of the rock; and, as Sir Clinton finished his exposition, Wendover drew his attention to a shiny object lying at the other end of Neptune’s Seat.
“Just have a look at it, squire, will you? I’m busy here just now. Now, inspector, it seems to me as if some of this watch-glass is missing. There doesn’t seem enough to cover the dial. Let’s have a look under the body and see if the rest’s there.”
Armadale raised the dead man sufficiently to enable Sir Clinton to examine the spot where the watch had struck the rock.
“Yes, here’s the rest of the glass,” the chief constable reported. “And
