The Skeleton in the Clock

reporter at the tram. The area's not so large that a few ‘phone-calls wouldn't cover it' Masters tapped the cardboard folder. They sent a copy of the press-cutting by hand.''

H.M. pressed his hands hard to his forehead.

'Here's the burnin' question,' he snapped. 'You or I got testimony, today or yesterday evening, from all the witnesses who weren't dead or out of reach. Does it agree with what they said twenty years ago?'

'Ah. Almost to a T.' Masters's eye grew thoughtful. 'Almost too close, don't you think?'

'No, son. Oh, my eye, no! You're not likely to forget the first HE bomb that fell close to you; now are you? Or the circumstances? No. And that's a great help.'

'It's a great help to know there aren't any contradictions?'

'That's right.'

Masters shut his eyes. 'Anything else?'

'You don't mention Dr. Hugh Laurier as bein' there. Or wasn't he qualified for medicine yet?'

'He'd qualified a few years before; he was helping his father. But he was in London that day. He missed the train, and didn't get back till later.'

'I see,' observed H.M. in a colourless tone, and dropped his hands. 'Finally, son, in that brief-case you got the Scotland Yard dossier, in a blue folder, with the statements of Simon Frew and Arthur Puckston. One with the binoculars, the other with the telescope.' H.M. stretched out his hand and waggled the fingers. 'Gimme that folder!'

And now they both saw, with growing alarm, the extent of H.M.s disquiet

This folder? What for?'

'I'm goin' on a little errand,' said H.M. 'It'll be short, but it won't be sweet I'm dreading it like the Old Nick.', He put the folder under his arm.'

'Ready when you are, then!'

'You're not goin', Masters.'

Masters stared at him. 'In case it's slipped your memory, Sir Henry, I'm the police-officer in charge of this case.'

'You're still not goin',' H.M. said simply. 'You'd only scare him. Don't argue, burn it! This is the first card we play; and I got to play it Now that young feller,' he nodded towards Martin, 'is the one I want to go with me. If he’ll do it Hey?'

Martin staggered up from the sofa, crushing' out his cigarette.

'I'll go with you to Land's End,' he said, 'if you. don't mind my ringing up Jenny first I've been intending to do it all night; and every time somebody walloped out with something I had to hear.' H.M. spoke sharply.

'You can ring her up, son, but you won't get any answer.'

'My God, she hasn't gone away with Grandmother?' Martin thought back. 'The old lady said she was going away overnight Did Jenny go?'

'No, no, no,' H.M. told him in a fussed and malevolent way. 'I made her promise, before the old hobgoblin sent her away from here, to take two nembutal pills as soon as she got home. Son, it wouldn't wake her if the whole town of Brayle fell down. All right: you be stubborn and cloth-headed. Try it!'

Martin did try it He sat at the telephone-table in the dark rear of the hall, listening to ghostly little ringing- tones which had no reply. Surely Dawson or somebody must be about? Never mind. It was late. He put down the 'phone.

Suddenly Martin realized he was in the dark. A gulf of mist in his imagination, opened in front of him; somebody's hands lunged out; the solid floor melted away for a plunge outward…

None of that! Martin went back towards the lighted drawing-room, timing his steps slowly. Himself: a focus of hatred. And again, everlastingly, why? The atmosphere of the drawing-room intensified this thought since Masters and H.M. had evidently been talking rapidly. It seemed to Martin that the Chief Inspector, in utter incredulity, had just opened his mouth to protest. Afterwards they did not speak.

They turned off the lights in the drawing-room. They went out of the house softly, Martin slipping the latch of the front, door. In a fine night the quarter moon dimmed by a sweep of stars, they crossed the road.

At the Dragon's Rest whose front showed no light what might be called the hotel-entrance was in its south side, the narrower end of the building. As Martin made for the hotel-entrance door, Masters preceding him and H.M. following him, he glanced southwards because Brayle Manor was somewhere there.

It seemed to him that in the distance the sky had a faintly whitish glow, conveying a sense of movement No sounds; or were there? The glimmer wasn't fire. He could tell that But…

'Oi!' whispered H.M., and shoved him inside.

A narrowish passage ran the length of the inn from south to north. Beyond the left-hand wall lay the three bars. In the right-hand wall was a cubicle for signing the visitors' book, then a door to the dining-room where Martin remembered having had lunch on Saturday, then more doors to the end. The wails, white-painted, had at one side a design of brass warming-pans framing a sixteenth-century crossbow; and the light of a shaded lamp shone on ancient scrubbed floorboards.

'See you later,' whispered Masters, and tiptoed up the narrow staircase towards the bedrooms.

H.M., taking Martin by' the arm, impelled him down the passage to the far door at the right end. H.M. knocked gently.

'Come in,' said a voice which Martin guessed must be Mrs. Puckston's.

Mr. and Mrs. Puckston, whose child had been murdered and hacked last night, were in there. If H.M. had not gripped his arm, Martin would have turned and bolted.

H.M. opened the door.

It was an old-fashioned kitchen-sitting-room, its brick walls. painted white. In what-had once been the immense embrasure of the fireplace, there now stood a big coal cooking-stove with many lids, and a kettle simmering on one of them. In the middle of the room, with a frayed yellow-and-white cloth and an electric light hanging over it, was a table set for an untouched supper.

Arthur Puckston, back to the door, sat on the other side of the table and faced the stove. His freckled bald head, with its little fringe of grey-reddish hair, and his thin drooping muscular shoulders, were motionless. Mrs. Puckston, dark-haired and stoutening, sat in a corner chair and sewed.

Then Puckston looked round.

The tears were running down his face despite his spasmodic blinkings. His eyes remained gentle. He saw who was in the doorway. First startled, then deeply ashamed, he whipped his head away and began swabbing desperately at his eyes with his coat-sleeves. But grief had beaten him. His arms dropped. He did not care.

'Mr. Puckston,' said H.M., in so gentle a tone that Martin could not have thought it possible, 'I know we're intruding. Will you believe I only came because I know I can help you?'

Mrs. Puckston, tearless but dull-glazed of eye, looked up.

'Won't you sit down, please?' she asked quietly. 'We understand. Arthur suspicioned — at least, he hoped — you'd come.'

The two visitors sat down on their side of the table, their eyes fixed on the cloth.

'Norma,' Puckston said in a slow, dull monotone, 'I've got to explain.' -

'That's not necessary, Arthur.' 'I've got to explain.'

With great care Puckston slowly hitched his chair round. He too looked down. His right hand, blue-veined, automatically brushed and brushed and brushed at the table-cloth.

'What I've got to explain, sir, is that we only opened the 'ouse tonight because I'd promised the Choral Society they could have the two parlours for their practice after chapel. Because it was hymns, you see. We thought that was only right and proper. Because it was hymns. And Mr. Bradley, from the Chapel, he said so too.

'Of course, we didn't go out there. But Norma and me, we reckoned it would be right and proper if we sat out in the passage, there, and listened to the hymns through the wall. And we did. And I was feeling fine, I was feeling just as fine as I could be, until it came to that part of the hymn about while the nearer waters roll, while the tempest still is high.

'And I don't know,' he went on, shaking his head while he brushed and brushed at the table, 'I can't just rightly say, what made me make such a fool of myself. Breaking down like that, and coming in 'ere so they wouldn't know about it. I didn't know I was so soft I reckon it was just that part of the hymn, that's all.'