The Murder in Romney Marsh

Roy Glashan's Library
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EDGAR JEPSON

THE MURDER IN ROMNEY MARSH

First published by Herbert Jenkins, London, 1929

Reprinted by Lythway Press, Bath, England, 1970
This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2024
Version Date: 2024-10-31

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ABOUT THIS BOOK

ROBERT GARFIELD, a rich City business-man, is found dead from three bullet wounds near Applecross Farm in Romney Marsh. There was no apparent motive for the crime. Young Detective Inspector Carthew perceived that he had an uncommonly difficult problem to solve.

But, once in the Marsh, curious facts that seemed to have a bearing on the murder came to light. The sedate Robert Garfield of the City seemed a very different man from the popular country gentleman of Applecross Farm. And where did the large sums of money which Garfield had paid into his bank after each visit to the farm come from? And, above all, how came the Rector's charming daughter, without a penny to her name, to be wearing a Persian Lamb coat worth eighty guineas? This is a very clever detective story.

Chapter I. The Crime and the Victim
Chapter II. The Persian Lamb Coat
Chapter III. Miss Carr Talks
Chapter IV. The Lace Handkerchief
Chapter V. One .22 Rifle
Chapter VI. The Other Rifle
Chapter VII. The Two Lamps
Chapter VIII. I Search the Church
Chapter IX. Giuseppe
Chapter X. Another Talk With Pringle
Chapter XI. Joan Talks
Chapter XII. M. Maurice Fermoye Calls For His Money
Chapter XIII. I Get Rid of Chardon
Chapter XIV. Kate Talks
Chapter XV. A Compact
Chapter XVI. Tyrwhitt Comes to St. Joseph's
Chapter XVII. Giuseppe Again
Chapter XVIII. Fermoye
Chapter XIX. The Man Who Shot Garfield

CHAPTER I
The Crime and the Victim

"BECAUSE the local fat-heads can't make anything of it, it doesn't follow that it isn't quite easy; so when the Commissioner asked me who he should send down I told him to send you," said Superintendent Goad in his pleasant way. "You're to go down to Romney Marsh and get on with it."

Goad did not like me. One of the old brigade, he preferred men of his own kind, men who had put in from seven to twelve years as ordinary police constables before they passed into the C.I.D., whereas, after being demobilized and spending my gratuity, I had only spent two years as an ordinary constable before I passed into it. Also he did not like in me what I once heard a business man call "The Public School taint"; he had said as much. So that I had more than a fancy that if he could put in a bad word for me with the Commissioner he would. He did.

However, he was my senior, and in any career it is no use kicking against the pricks with bushy moustaches; I took up the papers dealing with the case and said cheerfully: "Right," and walked out of the office, looking as pleased, for his benefit, as if the Commissioner had put me in charge of the murder of a Cabinet Minister.

After all, the Romney Marsh murder, as it was called, had received a certain amount of attention from the Press, owing chiefly to its having been committed in that out-of-the-way and desolate country, and I told myself that one never knew, that the most unlikely cases sometimes gave one a really good chance to show what one was made of. I wanted that chance.

I found that a train left Charing Cross for Hythe in ten minutes, took the suit-case I keep in my office ready packed against a sudden call into the country, and in less than a quarter of an hour was leaving London in the Hythe train, studying the report from the Ryeford police on the murder of Robert Garfield of Applecross Farm in the parish of St. Joseph in Romney Marsh.

It was not a long report, and it was as discouraging as it was short. Nothing had been discovered that threw any light whatever on the crime; no one had been found who had any motive—greed, hate, or fear—for murdering Robert Garfield. Accident and suicide were out of the question. At half-past six in the morning on the 9th of October, a shepherd had found him lying twenty yards south of a wooden hut used in the lambing season, in a forty-acre field a quarter of a mile from Applecross Farm, with a bullet in his head and two in the region of his heart.

The bullets had been fired, the experts declared, from a .22 automatic pistol. Doctor Clayton, of Pyechurch, was of the opinion, when he examined Robert Garfield's body at seven o'clock, that he had been dead between six and seven hours, wherefore, the report went on to say that it was evident that he had been shot soon after midnight, and since it had been a dark night the shots must have been fired at short range, for there had not been enough light to see him from any distance away. No one in the village had heard the shots fired; the pistol had not been found.

I went on to the facts they had learnt about Robert Garfield. He was not a farmer but a business man with an office in the City, and he had not lived at Applecross Farm but only stayed there. The house had not been used as a farm-house for fifteen years, and was falling to ruin when he bought it in 1918. He had had it thoroughly repaired and fitted with modern conveniences—a bath-room, a telephone, and a plant for making acetylene gas to light it. He had used it as a shooting-box, coming down from London for a week every month of the year, and employed Mrs. Holdsworth and her daughter, Daisy, who lived in the village, as daily servants. He had been popular with his neighbours, rich and poor, was a regular attendant at church, and at his own expense had had the church and the rectory lighted by gas from his plant.

It seemed unlikely that anyone in St. Joseph's had any reason to murder Robert Garfield, and I went on to the results of the inquiries of the London police, made at the request of the Ryeford police, and learnt that he had carried on the business of agent for two Peruvian firms which exported guano, a firm in Valparaiso which exported hides, and Messrs. Fermoye & Goldberg, chemical exporters of Havre, in a three-roomed office with two clerks in Turpentine Court, Liverpool Street, for nine years. His private address had been 19, Waterton Street, Bayswater, where he had occupied a four-roomed service flat for four years. For five years before that he had lived in a similar flat at Alexandra Mansions, Tankerville Street, South Kensington. He was a member of the Eccentric Club. His two clerks knew nothing about his private life; the servants of both blocks of flats had described him as a man who had lived a regular life. He dined at home three times a week, was nearly always in bed before twelve o'clock at night and off to business before nine in the morning, and once a month he gave a bridge party. He had few visitors, and those ladies and young.

No relations had come forward when the news of his murder, and later his portrait, had been published in the papers; the police advertisements had brought none forward. It looked as if his property would revert to the Crown. The police had had his books and accounts examined by the Yard auditors, and discovered that he was a rich man, making between eight and nine thousand a year, with sixty thousand pounds in gilt-edged securities. The profits from his business averaged £876 a year. The rest of his income had been paid into his bank in cash. The auditors had been unable to discover the source of these cash payments. They had been paid into his account, sums varying from £600 to £1,500, monthly, every month of the year, except May, June and July, for over nine years. No private papers had been found, not even a letter.

It looked to me as if Robert Garfield had been a very careful man, even secretive. It also looked to me as if his murderer was far more likely to be found in London than in Romney Marsh, and that if we could discover the source, or sources, of the cash he paid into his bank every month except May, June and July, it might throw a good light on the murder. I thought of blackmail. The only other apparent source from which light could come was those ladies, young, who visited him. I was quite certain that Goad had been wrong when he said it was probably quite an easy case. But he was busy; perhaps he had not found time to read the reports carefully; perhaps the Commissioner had not given them to him to read before asking him who should handle the case.

I then examined the photographs. Robert Garfield had been a good-looking man, with strong, regular features, eyes wide apart, and a square chin. I got the impression that he was on the hard side and domineering, and sized him up as a bully and woman-hunter. I could safely take it that the Black Museum had been searched carefully for his photograph and his finger-prints, and that he had not passed through our hands. It seemed probable, since his business career ran back nine years, that he had been through the war and started his agency with his gratuity.

That was that, and it was little enough from my point of view. But the X-ray photographs of the wound in his head and the two wounds in the region of his heart showed me a couple of facts which the Ryeford police had missed. Firstly, he had received the wound in his head when facing the pistol directly; but he had been sideways to it when he received the wounds in the region of his heart. Secondly, the angle at which those two bullets had penetrated his body was odd if they had been fired at short range: it was not acute enough. Studying the wounds in the X-ray photograph, I formed the opinion, from the course of the bullets, that he had been standing up when he was shot through the head, and had fallen down and was lying on the ground when he was shot through the body. Also, from the course the two bullets had taken, I was pretty sure that the pistol had not been fired from less than a hundred yards away.

Extraordinary shooting for a short-barrelled .22 automatic! And where was the light on a dark night for the man who fired it to see his target a hundred yards away? The gunsmith who had declared that those bullets had been fired from a .22 automatic pistol had been wrong. Now there is a .22 sporting rifle with which you can shoot straight, if you are anything of a shot, up to two hundred yards and more. Of course a man living in a lonely part of the Marsh might keep a .22 automatic for the benefit of improbable burglars; but he would be far more likely to keep a .22 sporting rifle for the benefit of probable rabbits.

That was the first point that made it seem probable to me that the murderer of Robert Garfield might be found in the Marsh and not in London.

The next exhibit was Garfield's diary for 1928. It was a small pocket diary and full of entries—for the most part business appointments. But there was, at intervals of about three days, entries of the following kind: E#, i.e. a capital letter and #. Sometimes it was E#, sometimes K#, sometimes J#. Perhaps they referred to the ladies, young, who visited him in London. It was unlikely that I should ever know.

Garfield's visits to Applecross Farm, his going and his return, were entered, and I gave them my earnest consideration. He had spent a few days there every month except May, June and July, but at different times of the month. Then I perceived that they were not at different times of the month, but always the week or during the week before the full moon, the few days when there is no moon at all. It was a point.

I compared those dates with the list of the dates, the last document in the case and furnished by the Yard auditors, at which he had paid those sums in cash into his bank. Those payments had been made from three days to a week after his return from Applecross Farm, never during the fortnight before he went to it and during the months in which he did not go to it there had been no payments in cash at all. There might be something in that; it was worth noting.

I had studied the reports, the photographs and the diary at length, and they had made the journey seem short. At Hythe I found that there was no bus to Pyechurch for an hour, and I took a taxi. It was dark when I reached the "Plough." I did not wish to excite unduly the interest of the Marsh folk till I need, and I dropped the "Detective-Inspector" and wrote "James Carthew, London," in the register. Some people part with information more readily to the detective from Scotland Yard; some do not. I would pick up all the information I could in my private capacity as a visitor to the Marsh before I questioned persons who might be able to throw light on the crime, in my official capacity. Besides, if anyone, as seemed not improbable, was playing a crooked game in the Marsh, the mere fact that a man from the Yard was in the neighbourhood would bring it to an abrupt stop. I would rather it went on.

After a wash I changed into plus-fours, and after writing a line to the Superintendent of the Police at Ryeford to send the inspector who was in charge of the case to me at Applecross Farm next morning, and posting it, I stuck my eyeglass in my eye—nothing gives a man an air of greater simplicity than an eyeglass properly used—and went into the saloon bar of the "Plough" and ordered a gin and It.

Six inhabitants of the village were in the bar, settling their stomachs for their supper, apparently, with the ale of Mr. Mackeson, and talking about local affairs. Presently I asked the old gentleman next to me about the best way to get some sea-fishing and rough shooting. The inquiry went well; it was at once taken for granted that I was a young gentleman who wished to amuse himself on a holiday. I do not look like a detective; my eyes are too blue, and I look too young and slim and simple. I have become good at looking simple by practice, for people are readier to impart information to the simple-looking than to those who look wide-awake. Information how to get sea-fishing was showered on me by five of the six inhabitants, and then we came to the matter of the rough shooting.

A young man advised me to apply to Mr. Carter at St. Mary's, and the richly-bearded old gentleman said: "There's that shooting of Muster Garfield's—two thousand acres it were—at St. Joseph's. It should be going a-begging."

"Garfield?" said I. "Isn't that the man who was murdered near here a little while ago?"

"The police don't seem to be getting much forrarder in finding the murderer," said I.

"You may well say so," said the old gentleman, rising briskly to the bait. "An' what I say is, having let it go so long, they never will find 'im now."

"Why 'him' and not 'her'? When there's a mystery, cherchez la femme—look for the lady," said I, and I bleated an uncommonly silly laugh, "at which, thanks to hard practice, I am also good.

"Why, blessee, sir, there aren't no ladies in St. Joseph's—not ladies what Mr. Garfield would have taken up with," said the old gentleman.

"Now, how can you say that, Mr. Losely?" said the young man who had been fullest of information about the sea-fishing. "There's the two Miss Pringles at the Gate Farm, and the Miss Bolsovers at the Rectory, and Miss Carr at the 'White Horse.'"

"Snips o' gals!" said Mr. Losely scornfully. "As if a gen'leman ripe of his years like Mr. Garfield would take up with such chits as them!"

"Maybe—maybe. But young Harry Winter, before he went to London, did tell me as he were pretty sure that he saw Mr. Garfield walking with a girl down by the canal one night in April, but it was too dark to be certain," said the young man.

"An 'ussy from 'ythe an' her soldier, not Mr. Garfield it weren't," said Mr. Losely, again scornfully. "'E was a generous-'earted gen'leman, 'e was."

Evidently Mr. Losely saw an incompatibility between generosity of heart and taking an evening walk with a girl which I did not, but the words brought tributes from three or four of the others round the bar to the virtues of Robert Garfield. It seemed that when he was at Applecross Farm, he had made a practice of driving into Pyechurch for a drink and a chat in the saloon bar of the "Plough" two or three evenings a week, and had been generous, even lavish, in the matter of standing drinks. I let them talk about his virtues and gathered that they had found him a genial and jovial fellow, talking freely about his doings, the day's sport, and how his business was going in London, and interested in their local affairs. The picture they painted of his geniality and frankness did not seem in keeping with the fact that no private papers, not even a letter, had been found at the Farm, or his flat, or his bank; it was not at all in keeping with that photograph of a hard and domineering man I had in my pocket, and it was certainly not the picture of a man whom anyone would desire to murder. I wondered whether he had been playing a part, for the simplest way of preventing people from being curious about you and your doings is to tell them all you want them to know about yourself.

A maid came to say that my dinner was ready. After it I went back to the saloon bar, but I got nothing helpful to my business from the further talk of the inhabitants of the village, and I came to the conclusion that it was hardly probable that any light could be thrown on the crime by anyone in Pyechurch—certainly not by those to whom Garfield stood drinks at the "Plough." I went to bed early because there was nothing else to do, but before going I went into the empty coffee-room, looked through the reports again and, as I always do, jotted down the chief points in the case in what seemed to me the order of their importance. I placed them thus:

(2) Those payments had each been made a few days after a visit to the Marsh—no visit to the Marsh, no cash payments.

I had thought at first that the source of those payments could only be found in London; I saw now that it was not improbable that it might be found in the Marsh.

(3) The angle at which the bullets had penetrated the dead man's body. A .22 automatic would be a natural weapon for a murderer from London; a .22 sporting rifle would be a natural weapon for a murderer from the Marsh, and the angle at which those bullets had penetrated the body made the rifle the more likely.

(4) The ladies, young, who had been his visitors in London. The statement of this young man, Harry Winter, in Pyechurch, that he had seen the murdered man walking by the canal at night with a girl seemed to show, if so vague a statement were worth anything, that the ladies, young, were not confined to Garfield's London life. It was a pity that Winter had not made sure of his facts.

CHAPTER II
The Persian Lamb Coat

I GOT to bed and was pondering these points when I fell asleep. No solution of the problem came to me either in my dreams or from my subconscious self while I slept. I awoke fit and eager to get to work, and dressed quickly and went for a stroll along the sea wall to take a look—my first look—at the Marsh and put a yet firmer edge on my excellent appetite. There had been a white frost in the night and the sea was still and misty; the Marsh was mistier and looked like a yet stiller and whiter sea, above which rose clumps of trees looking like islands. The little villages in it are set among the trees, and all I could see of them were two church towers, though I could see clear across the Marsh to the mist-draped hills on the other side of it, six or seven miles away.

Half an hour later, with my pipe in my mouth and an ash-plant I had bought in the village in my hand, I set out for Applecross Farm at a good pace. The sun was bright and warm and the mists were vanishing; I walked briskly along, pondering the four chief points in the case as I now had it. I was little more than a mile from Pyechurch, when, quite suddenly, I became aware of the extraordinary bare desolation through which I was moving. The village was hidden among its trees, and north and south and east and west I looked over thousands of acres, flat and bare and drab, without a human being in them, given up wholly to sheep, a few cattle, and gulls. They were as silent as they were desolate; now and then a sheep bleated shortly or a bird trilled a few notes. There was no need to wait for night, I thought, to commit a murder in a desert like that.

Then two aeroplanes came over the hills from the aerodrome at Lympne, and they looked for all the world like dragons flying over a primeval waste. They made a circuit over the sea and returned to the aerodrome.

An hour and a half's steady walking brought me to St. Joseph's, and a small village it was. At the entrance to it on my right was a farmhouse with a well-filled rick-yard. It stood about a hundred yards from the road, and in front of it, about ten yards from the road, was a row of five ugly, slated-roofed, middle-nineteenth century cottages. On my left were two small red brick houses, then the school-house, small and also of red brick, beyond it were three cottages, two of them tiled and old, then another, smaller farm with a rick-yard. Facing the schoolhouse was the church, small, old and weather-beaten, with a queer little tower, which looked as if it would hardly hold one bell, and I was sure that that bell would be cracked. Fifty yards from the church was the rectory, a large grey, modern house in a well-kept garden, and beyond it the village shop and post office. A hundred yards further on stood the village inn, the "White Horse," an old two-story building with one of those long, tiled, Kentish roofs, that ran down at the back to within eight feet from the ground. The village looked as empty of life as the open expanse of the Marsh; I reckoned that the population could not be more than a hundred souls, and not one of them was in the street.

It seemed to me a queer place for a London business man to get murdered in. I did not know where Applecross Farm was, and I did not wish to ask. It was certainly neither of the two farms in sight, for they were plainly farms in use. The telephone lines had run beside the road all the way from Pyechurch, and I saw that a line ran at right angles across the field between the rectory and the inn. I walked through the village without seeing a single person, not even a face at the window; but a droning from the school-house told me where the children were. When I came past the trees in which the rectory stood, I saw a house in the meadows about a quarter of a mile from the road, and since the telephone line ran to it I turned down the narrow lane which led to it, sure that it was Applecross Farm. When I came to it I found that it was as old as the "White Horse," or older. It looked to have been in bad condition when Garfield bought it, for there were large patches of new tiles in the roof and of new bricks in the walls. A trim garden surrounded it; the farm buildings at back were unsightly ruins.

I knocked at the door, and it was opened by a Police-inspector, a young man with an important looking, self-satisfied air and a moustache already bushy, given, I fancied, to premature cocksureness. He looked at me sternly and officially till he learnt that I was the Detective-inspector from Scotland Yard whom he had come to meet; then he looked surprised, even startled, and disappointed. I took it that it was my youthful and simple air that startled him, my lack of a moustache that disappointed him. His name was Collins.

I learnt that there had been no fresh developments, that no new facts had been discovered, and asked him where the murder had been committed.

He pointed to a small black erection in front of the house and about a quarter of a mile away, and said: "Twenty yards south of that hut, in the forty-acre field."

When I said I would take a look at it, he made to come with me, but I told him that I had no intention at the moment of making my official status public and would rather go alone. I told him also to keep the fact that I had come from Scotland Yard to himself, that to the people in the Marsh I proposed to appear, at any rate for the time being, a young gentleman on his holiday, looking out for some rough shooting.

I crossed two dykes on my way to the forty-acre field; a plank was the simple bridge across either. The tarred wooden hut was at the side of the field nearest to Applecross Farm. I had no expectations of finding any trace of the murderer, certainly no clue missed by the Ryeford police near the hut, but I started my investigations from the spot twenty yards south of it on which the body had lain.

The Ryeford police had not found the cases of the cartridges from which the fatal shots had been fired, for they had searched the ground for only about thirty yards in a circle round the body because they believed that those shots had been fired at short range. In the photograph taken from thirty yards away, which showed the hut and the fallen body of the murdered man, I studied carefully the position in which his body was lying and worked out the direction from which the bullets must have come. Then I paced a hundred yards in that direction and at the end of them dropped my hat. Given that the shots were fired from a sporting rifle, the murderer must have almost certainly fired from a spot not very far from where I dropped it. Somewhere in the acre of ground round me the cartridge cases should be found. The coarse grass was thick and I looked into it carefully for them only, since, so many days after the crime had been committed, there was little chance of finding anything else to mark the spot on which the murderer had stood, or lain, to fire the shots.

I searched every foot of that acre and I was a good two hours doing it; I did not find the cartridge cases. But in one corner I found a score of mushrooms, and fetched my hat and filled it.

I went back to the house not greatly disappointed, for if the murderer was a careful man and not too greatly rattled, he would have picked up the cartridge cases and taken them away with him. Collins had been watching me through the dining-room window, and he asked me what I had been looking for.

"The cases of the cartridges," I said. "My idea is, judging from the angle at which the last two bullets penetrated the body, that they were fired at least a hundred yards away and from a .22 sporting rifle."

I took from my pocket-book the X-ray photograph of the wounds and showed him what I meant.

"And that wasn't difficult," said I. "But I shouldn't wonder if it turned out to be quite important. If it was a rifle and not a pistol, it makes it much more likely that the murderer belongs to the Marsh."

"It does, indeed, sir," he said. Then his face brightened and he added: "But it couldn't be done, sir. There was no light to see anyone a hundred yards away."

"But the angle of those bullets shows that it was done—so there must have been a light," said I.

Then I put my mushrooms in a pudding basin, and we went over the house. Most of the rooms were of moderate size and low and luxuriously furnished. Only three of the bedrooms had been furnished; the others were empty. In the room in which Garfield himself had slept, besides the acetylene gas bracket, there was a motor-car headlight on a standard, and ingeniously fitted with a flexible tube attached to another gas-tap in the wall above the bed; it was standing by the bed but could be moved to any part of the room.

"We decided he must have used it for small print, sir," said Collins. "He left that lamp alight the night he was shot, which made it look as if he'd been called out just as he'd gone to bed, for he hadn't been to bed, or even started undressing; he had all his clothes on and his shooting boots."

"Well, that lamp would give a good light, but it wouldn't be bright enough to light him up a quarter of a mile away plainly enough to let anyone, a hundred yards further on still, get a comfortable shot at him. The light he was shot by was a good deal nearer to him than this," said I.

I went all over the house, tapping the walls at every likely place on the chance of finding a secret cupboard or smaller receptacle, in which Garfield might have kept papers which would throw more light on him generally and in particular on those cash payments, for being an old house, it might have had such a hiding-place made when it was built. Collins and his Ryeford colleagues had not thought of this, and he put his heart into the search. But we did not find one.

When we gave it up he said rather solemnly: "It looks to me, sir, as if Garfield's not keeping any private papers, not even a letter, shows he couldn't have been up to any good."

"I don't know about that," said I. "He doesn't seem to have had any relations, so he may not have had any private correspondents."

"But there were those young ladies as visited him at his London flat. You may depend upon it they wrote to him, sir," said Collins with conviction.

"And if they did, any intelligent man would have burnt their letters, especially as there seems to have been more than one young lady," said I.

"And not one of them come forward, though his picture was in all the papers," said Collins.

"Which makes it all the more natural that he should have destroyed the letters," said I. "Did any young lady visit him alone here?"

"No; a good deal of visiting could be done in this desolate country after dark without anyone being the wiser," said I.

I went over the whole case—not that there was much of it—with him, especially the questioning of the two women, Mrs. Holdsworth and her daughter Daisy, Garfield's servants, who must have seen more of him than anyone else in the village. I could not think of any useful question that had not been put to them. The daughter had liked him, the mother had not, but either could not or would not give her reasons for disliking him. I would certainly have a talk with her about that. I learnt all that Collins could tell me, and it was little more than I knew already.

Then I said: "Well, I'm going to put up here for a day or two. As far as I can see, this house is only overlooked by the back windows in the top story of the rectory and the two side-windows of the farm at the entrance to the village. I can use the kitchen as a sitting-room; the oil-stove will warm it, and since the window is on the opposite side to the village, no one will see that it is lighted up."

"It's what they call the shepherds in the Marsh," said Collins. "But, after all, they won't be out after dark—not at this time of year."

"But I shall," said I. "I want to see if there are any doings in the Marsh at night."

Collins sniffed faintly; evidently he thought it very unlikely. I felt that I should have to do him good.

Lunch I could get at the "White Horse"; Collins would bring me my suit-case from the "Plough" and a hamper of provisions to the farm at seven that evening. With a little luck I might, if I wished, be in the house a couple of nights before anyone knew that I was in residence. I bade him good day and strolled up to the "White Horse."

It was the ordinary country inn. The bar was dingy, furnished with wooden chairs, some of them with arms, adorned with brightly coloured advertisements and stale with the smell of shag and inferior beer. An old shepherd and a farm labourer stood at the bar, with half-pint mugs before them, smoking shag in short clay pipes. Carr, the landlord, a small, plump man of fifty, with a bright and twinkling eye, was talking, with a Cockney accent, about the price of sheep at last week's market as I entered. I was pleased to see that he was plump, for I ought to get better food at an inn kept by a plump landlord than at one kept by a thin one, and I was pleased to see his bright and twinkling eyes, for they were the eyes of the born gossip.

I asked him if he could give me dinner, and he said that he could, and looked me up and down and then suggested that if I did not mind eating it with him and his family in the kitchen, I should be really warm and comfortable. I said that I should much prefer to eat my dinner in the kitchen, and in ten minutes I was at table with him and his wife and daughter, a good-looking, intelligent girl of twenty, with her father's eyes, before a plateful of stuffed loin of pork with apple sauce and plenty of well-cooked vegetables.

I went gently with the talk, for if Carr looked a gossip, he also looked shrewd enough. I made myself agreeable to Mrs. Carr and her daughter, and again I asked how I could get some rough shooting, and learnt that Garfield had rented his shooting for at any rate the rest of the year, and I should have to write to his executors about it.

"It looks as if it would mean a lot of delay," I said doubtfully. "Is there anything to be done in the way of getting some rabbit-shooting on any of the farms round about?"

Carr thought that that might be done, and I said that I was fond of potting rabbits with a small rifle, and asked if anyone in the neighbourhood went in for this kind of thing.

That was odd. I had seen two double-barrelled guns at Applecross Farm, but no rifle, nor any .22 cartridges. Had Garfield been shot with his own rifle, and if he had, where was it? And if he had not, where was it?

"And young Jack Pringle at the Gate Farm used to have one, but whether he has it now or not, I don't know," Carr added.

"And Mr. Garfield was teaching the Miss Bolsovers to shoot with that little rifle in the summer; shooting at a target they were, but I don't know whether they shot any rabbits," said Miss Carr.

Garfield had been on good terms with his neighbours, of course; the report of the Ryeford police had said so.

"A queer business, that murder," I said. "The police don't seem to get much forrarder in finding out who did it."

"And they won't get any forrarder till they look hard enough for him in the right place," said Carr with conviction. "Mr. Garfield wasn't done in by no Marshman—London's where his murderer came from. There's no one about here who has a hautomatic pistol."

"I'm sure of it," he said confidently. "What would anyone in the Marsh want with a hautomatic? I doubt there's been a burglary in the Marsh for fifty years."

He went on to talk about the dead man in much the same terms as the frequenters of the saloon bar of the "Plough," and again I was struck by the discrepancy between the picture he drew of him and the photograph; again I wondered whether Garfield had been playing a part.

"It's queer how keen some people are on a sport at which they're complete duffers," I said.

"But he wasn't keen on shooting," Carr protested. "He'd be down here for a week or ten days at a time in the shooting season, and he'd go out two mornings at the most and then only for a couple of hours."

Again he was talking; if Garfield did not come down to the Marsh to shoot, what did he come down for?

"Blest if I know," said Carr. "He'd motor into Folkestone once or twice, and the rest of the time he must have read or loafed."

"It was different in the summer," Miss Carr broke in. "He used to take the Miss Bolsovers and Miss Pringles in his car to Littlestone to bathe on fine mornings, and in the afternoons there was always tennis at the Gate Farm or at Applecross."

"In the summer?" I said quickly. "But I'd got it into my head that he didn't come down much in the summer—must have read it in one of the papers."

"He didn't come much other summers, though he always came. But this summer he was here most of June, and July and August," she said.

Then why, I asked myself, had there been no entry of that long stay in his diary, when all his shorter visits had been entered in it? And what had brought him down for so long this summer and not the summers before it? There were certainly points to be cleared up.

We finished our dinner; I paid my bill and lit my pipe. Carr came with me to the door of the inn. The sun was now hidden by heavy, flying clouds, and the Marsh looked emptier and more desolate than ever. A big aeroplane was crossing it towards the sea, and again I had the impression of a dragon flying over a primeval waste.

"Plenty of aeroplanes," I said. "I have already seen as many in a day as I see in London in a week."

"What with that aerodrome at Lympne and their coming down in the Marsh when they get into trouble coming across the Channel, it is a great place for aeroplanes. Mostly they come down, when they have to, in the fifty-acre field at Jesson, but every now and then they come down close here; I've heard one once or twice at night," said Carr, and he looked up at the machine and added wistfully: "Going to Paris, she is, and I wish I was on her—gay Paree."

Of course she was. I remembered now that one flew over the Marsh going from Croydon to Paris. I had done it.

I said good-bye to him and turned down the street towards the church. Just before I came to the Rectory a girl came out of the garden gate, a girl with a slim figure and a graceful, swinging walk, carrying a can and a large bunch of flowers. She wore no hat on her dark, wavy hair; but she wore a Persian lamb coat. I opened my eyes and stared at it. If I knew anything about women's clothes, that coat had cost eighty guineas.

Well, if the womenkind of the parson of St. Joseph's wore eighty-guinea coats, I could see no mortal reason why Robert Garfield should not have made seven thousand a year out of the Marsh!

CHAPTER III
Miss Carr Talks

THE girl turned into the churchyard and went up the path and into the church. I walked past the church, considering whether I should wait till I had learnt something about her from Carr, or someone else in the village, or try to make her acquaintance at once. I made up my mind that I would at any rate take a look at her; sometimes one learns a lot just from taking a look at a person, and to my mind a young lady who came out of a parsonage in the Marsh in an eighty-guinea coat, half a mile from the spot at which a mysterious murder had been committed, deserved attention. I turned, stuck my eyeglass in my eye, and walked back to the church and into it.

It was a very small church; I did not think it would hold a hundred people; but, unlike most village churches, it did not look bare and cold, owing to the fact that the light came through old stained glass, richly coloured, in the two small windows on either side of the nave and the large window, displaying three incidents in the life of St. Joseph, at the end of the chancel, and that the altar was bright with brass candlesticks and flowers and a large brass crucifix, and a scarlet and gold altar cloth, and the walls were bright with more than a dozen large brasses.

The air was fragrant with incense. Evidently the parson was High Church indeed—rather odd in so out-of-the-way and so small a village. The girl was at the altar, changing the flowers in the vases, and at the sound of my entry she half turned her head, and I caught a glimpse of a pretty, pale face. She just glanced at me and turned back to the altar to fill a vase. I looked round the church, then walked a few steps down the aisle, reading the brasses; they were all memorials of one family—the Maylings. I did not get much of a look at the lady; if I had I should have looked round the church and gone out. But business was business.

"Pardon me, but could you tell me whether these old pews have been cut down?" I said. "All the other old oak pews I remember seeing in country villages when I was a boy were about six feet high and exactly like pens, so that if grown-ups wanted to see one another they had to stand on hassocks, and children only got a view of members of their own family."

I was not discouraged; few men get more rebuffs than a detective, and when I was on a case they had no more effect on me than water on a duck.

"I hope they weren't carved," I went on. "You don't happen to know whether they were carved?"

"If they were carved they might have been worth picking up at a reasonable price," I said.

"You don't happen to know what became of them?" said I, sticking to it and looking very simple.

"That's a pity," said I, and I walked another three steps down the aisle and read the inscription on another brass.

"Is the Mayling family extinct?" I asked. "I've heard of Maillings—met them—but not Maylings."

That did it; she turned sharply and snapped irritably and scornfully: "And when are you coming to the murder?"

I got a look at her and saw that she had a pretty face and large dark eyes that seemed to take up more of it than they should. Her expression at the moment was one of furious irritation, much too furious, I thought, to have been provoked by my harmless archaeological questions, unless her nerves were very much on edge.

"Oh, I know all about these antiquarian questions!" she said, still scornfully. "We've had about five dozen amateur detectives down here—young men and middle-aged men and old men, and young women and middle-aged women and old women, and they all lead up to the crime with simple questions just like yours. Why, I've been asked those questions about the age of the church and the extinct Maylings at least ten times when I've been doing this very thing!"

"I didn't know the profession was so overcrowded; but I'm not an amateur detective," I said peaceably.

"And you spent all that time in the forty-acre field looking for mushrooms?" she said incredulously and still scornfully.

Eyes were busier in the village than I had thought. But why had she bothered to watch me all that time?

Her face relaxed, and I got the look at it I really wanted. There was wilfulness in it and recklessness and a certain hardness; her mouth and chin were set a trifle obstinately. A young woman who would go her own way, I thought, and impossible to drive, but all the same one who could be led, for, in spite of that slightly obstinate set, her lips were sensitive and her eyes, now that the irritation had gone out of them, were kind. A nice girl, but obstinate and badly worried—oh, very badly worried. There was no doubt about that. The lines of worry, though faint, were plain enough, and I had an idea that the recklessness and hardness had come into her face recently. I wondered if she were paying for the Persian lamb coat.

"I'm sorry if I annoyed you," I said politely. "I can quite understand that those meddling amateur detectives must have got on your nerves. Good afternoon."

I had reached the door when she called after me a trifle reluctantly in a penitent tone: "Good afternoon. I—I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"My fault—casual stranger—oughtn't to have bothered you without an introduction," I said, and went out of the church.

A nice girl. But she was, or had been, in a devil of a mess, or I know nothing about the human face. Also, with that wilfulness and obstinacy in her face, a girl to make trouble for other people as well as herself. If there were a lady in the case, it almost looked as if I had stumbled on her. Of course, she did not look the kind of girl to commit a murder—too intelligent to take that way out of a mess and not passionate enough for a crime of passion. But one never knows; there is always the tangled web racket; men and women get led on and on so. All the same, a nice girl—and certainly pretty enough for the right, or rather wrong, kind of man to shoot a rival about. Her face rather stuck in my mind.

I had turned back and was passing the "White Horse," for I had seen the country on the Pyechurch side of the village, and I wished to see it on the other side. I had all the afternoon and evening before me, for if there were doings in the Marsh they took place late at night, to judge from the hour at which Garfield had been murdered, and it was not much use looking for them earlier. I tramped along, considering the case and studying the ground, and enjoying the changes of colour in the Marsh and the clouds above it. I had never seen a place of so many moods; it seemed to change every half-hour.

I fetched a circuit right round the village, and it was a long one, for the roads ran at right angles, and came into Pyechurch Road and back past the church to the "White Horse," quite ready for tea. Carr welcomed me with a colourable imitation of screams of joy, and begged me to have my tea also in the warm kitchen. I fancied that the Marsh weighed on his London spirit, and the presence of someone who could talk about the world outside it was pleasing. I accepted the invitation with all the greater pleasure because people talk more easily in a warm room than in a cold one.

Over my tea I talked about my walk and complained that I had seen very few rabbits. Carr told me that there were plenty when you had learnt the right places and times to look for them, and then we talked about London for a while. Then I brought the talk back to St. Joseph's.

"That's an old church you've got in the village," I said. "And from what I saw of the inside of it the services must be pretty high."

"They are that. The parson goes the whole hog in highness. But there, the women like it, and he fills the church, and I'll lay that's more than any parson has done for the past fifty years," said Carr in an indulgent tone. "Not that I trouble him much."

"There was a nice-looking girl in the church when I went in, putting fresh flowers on the altar—one of the parson's daughters, I suppose," I said.

"No—one of his stepdaughters, one of the Miss Bolsovers. The parson's name is Paton," said Carr.

"Of course—one of the young ladies who were so friendly with the chap who was murdered—Garfield," said I.

"No, not Miss Kate. She wasn't so very friendly with him. And it would be Miss Kate you saw. She always attends to the flowers in the church," said Miss Carr. "It was Miss Joan that he saw most of. They were always partners at tennis."

"Yes. It was young Jack Pringle and Miss Kate who were so keen on one another, wasn't it?" said Carr.

"He was keen on her, but she wasn't keen on him but only very friendly. And he's still keen on her, as you can see by the way he looks at her in church, though she hardly gives him a look nowadays. She isn't nearly so friendly with him as she used to be, and hasn't been for months," said Miss Carr.

"Well, the course of true love never does run smooth," said I. "The young lady was wearing a very pretty coat."

"Ah, she does have lovely clothes nowadays!" said Miss Carr with enthusiasm. "She's been having them ever since March, when she went as a travelling companion to a lady—a very rich lady who took a fancy to her and gave her ever so many things—clothes, and jewellery, and an Austin Seven car. Such a piece of luck it was, for they're as poor as church mice, the Miss Bolsovers and Mr. Paton."

"Only for a month. They went abroad, to Paris among other places," said Miss Carr. "But three or four times she's been up to stay with her since they came back to England."

That accounted for the Persian lamb coat, or it did not account for it. This rich lady had behaved in an unusual way, more like a rich gentleman, to look at it with the cynicism proper to a member of the C.I.D. It was a story that might be worth looking into, seeing that Garfield had taught the young lady to use a small sporting rifle, and that I had felt so strongly that she was badly worried.

"Oh, no, it wasn't. She was plain Mrs.—Mrs. de Carteret. She lives at the Sloane Crescent Hotel when she's in London, and that's where Miss Bolsover stays with her," said Miss Carr.

"And I suppose that Mrs. de Carteret sometimes came down to the Rectory for a few days in the summer?" said I.

"Oh, no, she didn't," said Miss Carr. "Miss Bolsover always goes to London. Mrs. de Carteret's a very rich woman, and the Rectory wouldn't be nearly good enough for her to stay at."

Now the de Carterets are a Jersey family, and I knew enough about Jersey to doubt that anybody very rich ever came out of it. If the name had had a Manchester or Oriental tang to it, it would have sounded better. I made up my mind that on the whole it would be worth while to have inquiries made at the Sloane Crescent Hotel.

I chatted with the Carrs till it was dark, but learnt nothing more; then I went to Applecross Farm and let myself in. Garfield seemed to have had a fondness for detective stories, and I read one which dealt with a murder in the States, and admired American police methods. At seven o'clock I went up to the top of the lane, and Collins arrived punctually with the hamper of food and my suit-case. I arranged that he should come to Applecross Farm at ten the next morning, carried the hamper and suitcase down to the house, and made myself comfortable for the evening.

At eight I dined, and half that hatful of mushrooms went very well with the steak. After dinner I settled down to my book till eleven o'clock, then borrowed an overcoat of Garfield's, which was hanging up in the hall, and went out into the Marsh. I came out into a stormy night. The wind had been murmuring away in the kitchen chimney, but I had thought nothing of it; now I found that half a gale was blowing from the south-west and driving heavy clouds across the Marsh, through gaps in which the moon shone down at rare intervals. The wind had blown away the mist, and when the moon did break through the clouds it made the Marsh too bright for my liking. When, therefore, I came to the lambing hut in the forty-acre field, I stopped and leaning my back against its lee side and more or less merged in its blackness, I waited to see if anything would happen, I confess that I did not feel quite easy on that wild night at being so near a spot on which a man had been murdered.

It was about half-past eleven when a bright light shone out over the Marsh from somewhere behind me. I stepped quickly round the corner of the hut and saw that it came from a window in the village. Then I made out that it came from a window on the top floor of the Rectory. I was surprised at its brightness; it seemed almost as strong as a searchlight—and then I guessed what it was; it was a lamp of the same kind as that in Garfield's bedroom at Applecross Farm—the headlight of a car. Then a blind was drawn down, dimming its brightness. I said to myself that it was odd that two people in St. Joseph's liked very strong lights to read in bed by.

Sheltered from the wind by the hut, I waited and watched. When it looked as if the moon would be hidden for a good while, I took the chance and walked to the end of the forty-acre field, found the plank across the dyke into the next field, walked to the end of that, and waited and watched there. The light in the Rectory had been put out. I saw no one and heard no one; indeed, the only sign of life was an aeroplane which came from over the sea, and went over the hills, and from the noise it made it must have been a big one, loaded doubtless with passengers from France.

At half-past one I gave it up; there was nothing doing in the Marsh that night, and I thought it unlikely that there would be till the nights were moonless. I went back to the house, mixed myself a whisky-and-soda, and made a note of the points of interest in the case, in the order of their importance:

(2) He had only entered in his diary his stays at Applecross which had been followed by cash payments into his bank.

(3) He was no shot and looked to have taken the shooting to account for his staying at such a place in the autumn and winter.

(4) He looked to have gone out in a hurry on the night he was murdered, leaving that powerful light burning.

(5) Miss Kate Bolsover had an eighty-guinea Persian lamb coat and an Austin Seven, though she was as poor as a church mouse, and she was greatly worried.

CHAPTER IV
The Lace Handkerchief

WHEN I awoke next morning the first thing my eye rested on was that motor-car headlight, and an odd bedroom lamp it was. Now if Garfield had wanted to signal——

Also his taste in bedroom lamps was the same as that of someone who slept at the Rectory. If that someone was Miss Bolsover, here was another point of contact between them.

Bacon, eggs, mushrooms and coffee were my breakfast, and the country air had given me a fine appetite. After breakfast I searched the house for Garfield's small rifle. I did not expect to find it, for I should surely have seen it when I was searching the house the day before for that secret hiding-place. I did not find it.

I considered for a while how I should act on the facts I had learnt, and made up my mind that the sooner I assumed my official status the quicker I should get on. But I would have one more dinner at the "White Horse," and try to draw a few more bucketsful from that well of information, Miss Carr, before I let that status be known. She had indeed saved me time and given me a wider view of the state of things at the time of the murder than I might have obtained from questioning half the village. After dinner I would go to the church and take rubbings of two or three of the oldest Mayling brasses. I felt pretty sure that in a church as high as St. Joseph's the flowers would be changed every day, and I might get another talk with Miss Bolsover. I wanted that talk; also I had an odd hankering to see her again; her face had stuck in my mind; I had been seeing it during my vigil in the Marsh and again when I awoke.

HAVE MRS. DE CARTERET, MISS KATE BOLSOVER, MR. AND MRS. ROBERT GARFIELD STAYED AT SLOANE CRESCENT HOTEL THIS YEAR? IS THERE A SMALL SPORTING RIFLE IN GARFIELD'S FLAT.—CARTHEW, RYEFORD POLICE STATION.

It would never do to wire this from St. Joseph's, for if I did the whole of it would be known to the village before dark. Collins must take it into Ryeford at once and wait till the inquiries and search had been made, and bring the answering wire to me.

I had just folded the telegram form when I heard the front door open and shut, and for the moment I thought that it was Collins, and then remembered that if it had been I must have heard his motor-cycle come to the house. Footsteps came down the passage, and I twisted round in my chair to face the door. It opened, and there entered a respectable woman of middle age, with a cheerful, kindly, but not too intelligent face, and I guessed it was Mrs. Holdsworth. She would probably have the job of keeping the house clean and dry.

She exclaimed "Oh!" And then she added: "I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't know there was anyone here."

"Good morning, Mrs. Holdsworth. It is Mrs. Holdsworth, isn't it? I was coming to see you. I'm now in charge of the Garfield case, why did you dislike Mr. Garfield?" I said with official briskness.

She was taken aback, as I had expected, and she stammered: "I d-d-didn't d-d-dislike Mr. Garfield, sir."

"Well, you didn't like him," I said. "What did he do to you that you didn't like him?"

"He didn't do anything to me—ever, sir. He was a very good gentleman to work for—never no complaints, nor nothing," she said quickly, and I knew she was telling the truth.

She hesitated and said: "He never did anything to anybody as I ever heard of, sir." And I knew she was not telling the truth.

"If he hadn't done something to somebody sometime, he wouldn't have been murdered," I said. "If he was such a good master, why didn't you like him?"

"Never to your daughter? You never told her that you couldn't bear him?" I asked her sharply.

She hesitated again and frowned—wondering, I took it, if her daughter had been talking; then she said reluctantly: "I never went so far as to say I couldn't abear him."

"Now, come, come, Mrs. Holdsworth. This murder is a very serious business, you know, and we're never going to get to the bottom of it unless the people who knew Mr. Garfield are perfectly frank with us about him, and any little thing may turn out to be of immense importance. I'm sure you're too intelligent not to realize that. You do realize it, don't you?" I said very seriously indeed.

"And you realize too that it's your duty to give us all the help you can in unraveling this mystery?" I said, still very seriously.

"Yes," she said again reluctantly, and then she added quickly and in a tone of relief: "But it hadn't anything to do with the murder, sir. It happened—I mean, I found the handkerchief months ago—last May, it was."

"Oh, was that all?" I said in a tone of disappointment, and then I made the obvious shot, adding: "So you found a lady's handkerchief in Mr. Garfield's bedroom?"

And then it rather burst out, as if she had found it a strain to keep it to herself: "I did, indeed, sir. Under his pillow, it were, and you could have knocked me down with a feather. I don't 'old with goin's on of that kind, an' never did. And I'm a mother with a daughter of my own, and what I say is a man like that is just a wolf in sheep's clothing, going about and seeking who he may devour, and I can tell you I kept an eye on Ann and never left 'er alone in the 'ouse with him, I didn't, sir; not but what he always did look that kind of man when you came to look at him, and in a quiet place like this I was that surprised I didn't know whether I was standin' on me 'ead or me 'eels."

She pulled herself together, and the excited indignation vanished from her face, which became absolutely blank, and she said: "Oh, no, sir. I didn't know who the 'angkerchief belonged to."

Again she was not telling the truth; but it did not matter at the moment. The fact that she had found a woman's handkerchief under Garfield's pillow, when there was no woman openly in his life, was the important thing.

"Well, I don't think you had a very good reason for not liking Mr. Garfield. A lady's handkerchief under one's pillow is neither here nor there. He might have stolen it from the lady he was in love with, and put it there," I said carelessly. "Or she may have come to tea and turned faint and gone up to his room to lie down. She may have had half-a-dozen friends here with her."

"But no friends did come to tea or dinner with Mr. Garfield the day before I found the handkerchief, and there was no things to wash up but what he'd used 'isself," said Mrs. Holdsworth.

At once she was on her guard again, and she said: "I can't rightly remember, sir."

I told her to light a fire in Garfield's den and clear away my breakfast things and make my bed, and arranged that she should come to do my cooking for me. I moved into Garfield's den as soon as she lit the fire, and then Collins came. I had nothing I wished to discuss with him and I sent him straight back to Ryeford with the wire to Goad, telling him to bring me the answer as soon as it came. I expected it before lunch, for it would not take them much more than an hour to make the inquiries at the Sloane Crescent Hotel and search Garfield's flat for the missing rifle.

He went, and I went up to my bedroom to tell Mrs. Holdsworth that she was not to tell anyone that I was in charge of the Garfield case or that I was staying at Applecross Farm. I was very impressive about this.

Then I said casually: "By the way, I shall want some washing doing. Can you do it for me?"

I went downstairs again and wrote my report to Goad. It was a short report, for I had not so far discovered a scrap of evidence about the murder; I had not even established the fact that Garfield had been shot with a sporting rifle. I had not found anyone with a motive for murdering him.

But I did not feel that my time had been wasted; I had done some useful spade-work.

The handkerchief under Garfield's pillow at any rate went to show that there had been a woman in his life at Applecross Farm, even if it did not show that there was a woman in the case, and the fact had been kept secret, which went to show that she very well might be the woman in the case. Also the fact that it was a lace handkerchief showed that it was not a village girl. But somehow I felt sorry that Mrs. Holdsworth did the Rectory washing.

I walked down to the forty-acre field again, and strolled round it, keeping to the edge along the banks of the dykes, and I paid particular attention to the dyke along the bottom of it. It was not unlikely that the missing rifle was in one of these dykes, and that was the dyke it was most probably in. There was little chance of its being visible, for if it had been thrown into the middle of the dyke it would have sunk into the mud. But it was possible that it might have been thrown without sufficient care into the middle of it, and the end of the barrel or the butt might be visible against the bank. They were not. I made up my mind that the Ryeford police should rake the dykes; they might very well have done it when they started to handle the business. The weapon had to be found.

Then I crossed the dyke into the next meadow, for I wished to know whether the murderer had been able to return to the village without coming back past the lambing hut and the body. I found that he could; crossing the dyke at the bottom, I came into a path that ran into the village near the "White Horse." The murderer would have no difficulty in leaving the scene of the crime well behind him; he could only have come under human observation nearly a mile from it on the dark night.

I retraced my steps and stopped to take a look at the lambing hut. The door was padlocked. The padlock gave me no trouble: I carry two or three small, but useful, tools with me. The floor of the hut was of wood, and it was covered with a layer of old straw, dried up into short lengths and dust. I turned it over but found nothing. The Ryeford police had of course already searched the hut, and the murderer might not have come within a hundred yards of it.

I crossed the dyke, went back to the farm and up into the village and turned towards the "White Horse"; coming towards me was a tall, deep-chested, large-limbed, red-haired man in a cassock; I knew him. It was the Padre of the Tenth South Kents, Ambrose Paton. When Miss Carr had told me that the parson's name was Paton, I might have guessed that it was him. I had been attached, as liaison officer, to the Tenth South Kents for most of the last year of the War, and had met him many times in the Mess, a rather silent man—dour, as the Scotch say—with the long upper lip of the fanatic, and a tremendous stickler for the dignity of the Church. There had been many stories of his firm handling of his flock and one of his meeting eleven escaping Germans on his way back from ministering to a dying man in No Man's Land, and knocking the heads of several of them together and bringing the whole lot in, "out of harm's way," he said. In spite of his dourness, he had a charming smile and would take any amount of trouble to help anyone. We all liked him—better perhaps than we should have liked a cheerier, less sincere man—though we did pull his leg a bit about the powers of the Church.

He came along, frowning thoughtfully, and did not see me till he was right on me, and I raised my hand to my cap and said: "How are you, Padre?"

He looked at me for all the world like a man suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, so hard was he thinking, and then his eyes cleared, and he knew me.

"Why, it's Major Carthew!" he said and held out his huge hand and rather crushed mine with his grip. "What has been happening to you all these years? What are you doing with yourself?"

He looked surprised, as all my old friends do when I tell them, because they do not consider me solid enough for the job, I suppose, and stared at me; then he said: "Well, well. That's a queer business for you to have gone into."

"I like it," I said. "It suits my turn of mind; and, after all, it's very select; there aren't many of us."

"No—no," he said, and he seemed to be thinking hard again, but not about me. "I suppose you've come down about the murder of that man Garfield?"

It was rather an odd way to put it, for Garfield must have been, if not a friend, a pretty close acquaintance.

"A mysterious business," he said. "The Superintendent of the Ryeford police seemed to think that the man who shot him came from London."

He looked at me again in an absent-minded way, as if he were thinking of something else, and said: "It seems a puzzling affair; but perhaps if you're not too hard at work you'll come to tea with us at the Rectory. I should like to introduce you to my stepdaughters."

"I shall be delighted," I said. "As a matter of fact, I was coming to see you officially. I have to question Garfield's friends and acquaintances, you know."

"Then you can question us at tea," he said. "And when you've done we can talk about old times."

At dinner with the Carrs, I talked about London and London doings for a while; then I said: "I met Mr. Paton and found that I knew him in France."

"Yes: all right in the Army, but he's too high-handed for the people about here, too fond of taking the law into his own hands, and he's a bit too partickler about women."

"Oh, yes, you can," said Carr. "There was a fuss about a girl in the village and the Rector gave a young man a dam' good dressing down and made him marry her."

"P'r'aps—if it had been the right young man," said Carr. "And of course the chapel people don't like him at all; they wouldn't, of course, he being so High Church; so they don't really count. But the women don't like him, though they go to his church."

"They don't like him, the women about here—it seems that there's something about his face that gives them the creeps. I don't know what it is. It seems a good enough face to me. Not, mind you, that he cares a dam' whether anyone likes him or not. If he thinks he's in the right he goes straight ahead without consulting anyone, and if other people don't like his way they can get out of it."

"That's what makes it so odd the Miss Bolsovers disliking him so, for he goes out of his way for them often enough—if he were their own father he couldn't fuss about them more; they do not, and he never gets any thanks for what he does for them—never. The most they are is barely civil to him, and often they're not even that."

"Perhaps they took a dislike to him when he married their mother—jealous, you know," I suggested. "It takes most women a long time to get over a dislike, and his being so kind to them is as likely as not to make them dislike him more."

"They're young; that's what it is," said Carr. "The young 'uns never think of anyone but themselves, most of them; and if you offend a young woman she's a dam' sight longer getting over it than an old one. That's my experience. And what's more, I fancy that Miss Bolsover would take longer getting over a dislike than nine young women out of ten, and if she did dislike anyone, I'd be really sorry for them if they'd given her good reason to dislike them."

CHAPTER V
One .22 Rifle

IT was a quarter-past two when I came out of the "White Horse." Collins should be back with the wire from the Yard, and I went straight to Applecross Farm. He was there with the wire. It ran:

NONE OF THE PERSONS NAMED IN YOUR TELEGRAM KNOWN AT SLOANE CRESCENT HOTEL. RIFLE NOT IN FLAT. GOAD.

That was that. I read the wire again, and it seemed to go a bit far. All that the Yard could really have learnt was that those persons were not known by those names at the Sloane Crescent Hotel; they might very well be known there under other names. The wire established the fact that the story Miss Bolsover had told was not the true story, and it was unlikely that she should have given the name of the hotel at which she had stayed; but on the other hand that is just the kind of silly slip that people who are out to deceive do make, and I am always on the look out for that slip. I do not believe in leaving a stone unturned and I thought that the Yard might very well go further into the matter.

"You seem to have got on to a line we missed, sir," he said, in a tone that invited an explanation of what I was after.

I did not give it to him, for I saw nothing to be gained by it: I could not conceive his being of any great use to me. In an ordinary case I might have told him what I was doing. But I felt a reluctance, which I did not wish to go into, in this case. At the moment I needed no helpers in St. Joseph's; I could wait till I did to be communicative. Also the fact that Paton was an old comrade, so to speak, weighed with me. If there had to be a scandal in his family, there had to be; but as long as I kept the business in my own hands, I was the judge of the necessity. I meant to keep the business in my own hands; it looked to me that it needed gentle handling, not rough.

"Well, you've certainly got on to something that we didn't, sir," said Collins, in a tone that made it yet plainer that he would like my confidence.

"That's what I was sent down for," I said. "But unfortunately I haven't really got on to anything yet."

He looked disappointed and rather put out by my reticence. But he was there to carry out my instructions, and it was for me to decide how much or how little he should know about the lines I was working on.

I let the subject drop and went on: "I suppose you questioned the Pringles at the Gate Farm? They were friends of Garfield's and saw as much of him as anyone about here."

"Yes, sir. At least, I questioned young Pringle, and precious little I got out of him. He wasn't going to be mixed up in a murder, he wasn't—that was the line he took," said Collins, and I had an inkling that the manner in which young Pringle had taken that line had ruffed his sense of his own importance.

"Well, sir, he's been to Rugby School and all that, but it hasn't gone very deep, and at bottom he's a regular Marshman," said Collins.

"They keep themselves to themselves, and everyone who isn't born in the Marsh is a foreigner," he said slowly. "And they're hard and they're tough, and the good-tempered ones is good-tempered enough, but the bad-tempered ones is very bad-tempered, and they don't mind letting themselves go—in the Marsh. I think their surroundings have a lot to do with it, sir; it's a bleak and bitter place is the Marsh in winter time."

"Yes, sir—one of the bad-tempered ones. But I didn't pay partic'ler attention to him at the time because we'd made up our minds more or less that the man who murdered Garfield came from London, owing chiefly to the automatic, and young Pringle wouldn't have an automatic. I've been thinking about his being shot by somebody round about here since you started the idea, and now I should pay partic'ler attention to young Pringle; in fact, I should pay more attention to young Pringle than anyone else about here."

"What would his motive for murdering Garfield be? Weren't they friends?" I asked.

"No. At least, that's what I gathered from the way he spoke of him—not that he actually went so far as to say anything against him," he said, weighing his words.

The statement that Garfield was popular with his neighbours, at any rate his male neighbours, seemed to be uncommonly ill-founded—first Mrs. Holdsworth and the Rector, and now this young fellow. The Ryeford police seemed to have been a trifle hasty in setting that popularity down in their report.

"And now there's the matter of the weapon," I said. "Of course you searched all round Garfield's body for an automatic pistol, but did you rake the dykes?"

"No," said Collins, and he looked at me unhappily. "As a matter of fact we never thought of dredging the dykes. You see, a man from London would most likely take his automatic away with him."

"It's useful to have the weapon—if at least you can find out who it belonged to—and a sporting rifle should be fairly easy to trace. But I don't see any need to dredge the dykes. Long rakes would hoik out a pistol, or a rifle," said I.

"They should, and I'll get on to it at once, if you'd like it done," he said quickly, as if he were rather jumping at the chance of doing something.

He started for Ryeford, and I decided that the next step was to go into the matter of young Pringle and the second rifle, and I walked to the Gate Farm. The front of it did not look on the village street, which was fortunate, seeing that, had it done so, it would also have looked on to the backs of that row of ugly cottages. It looked over the Marsh towards the hills, and it was the usual Marsh farm, old and picturesque, but set in a larger and better garden than the others I had seen, with a tennis lawn at the end of it, level and with its grass closely cut, though it was so late in the year. I walked round it and knocked at the front door. It was opened by a pretty, fair-haired girl. She looked a bit downtrodden, I thought.

"I am Detective-Inspector Carthew, from Scotland Yard, investigating the murder of Mr. Garfield, and since your family knew him, I have come to ask some questions about him," I said pleasantly.

She looked startled and asked me to come in, and took me into a large, low room, poorly lighted by two small windows too small for it, comfortably and solidly furnished. A stout lady, with a round and kindly face, sat knitting in an easy chair beside the fire; another pretty, fair-haired girl sat at the table with a drawing-pad in front of her, and they too looked depressed and downtrodden—not a happy home, I fancied. Miss Pringle introduced me to them and told them why I had called. They too looked startled, and Mrs. Pringle asked me to sit down.

I sat down in the easy chair facing her and said pleasantly, to reassure them: "You mustn't be alarmed, ladies. This is part of the official routine. I don't suppose for a moment that you can throw any light on the murder, but it is necessary for me to have all possible information about Mr. Garfield, and since he was a friend of yours I want you to tell me what kind of a man he was from the social point of view."

They looked relieved, and Mrs. Pringle said that her daughters had seen much more of Garfield than she had, but all the ladies in the neighbourhood had agreed that he was a charming man, and the younger Miss Pringle added that he had been a great acquisition to the society of the neighbourhood and shown himself a gentleman to the finger-tips, and would be greatly missed.

"I thought from what I've heard of him that he would be a loss," I said sympathetically. "Were his social activities down here confined entirely to the Marsh, or did he have friends from London to stay with him?"

"No," said Miss Pringle. "He never once, all the time he's been here, had anyone staying with him."

"Did he show any signs of settling down permanently at Applecross Farm, or was he going on using it merely as his country house? Was he thinking of getting married and being attentive to any lady in the neighbourhood?" I asked.

"Oh, no. He treated all the young ladies about here just the same," said Mrs. Pringle in a tone of certainty.

I laughed pleasantly and said to Miss Pringle: "You don't think he treated them all the same."

"But one of them attracted him more than the others, and it did seem probable that he would settle down here permanently?" said I.

Plainly I was going to get nothing definite out of her; but her hesitation had been enough, Garfield had been attracted by a lady in the neighbourhood, and the lady by him.

"It's as I thought," I said. "Mr. Garfield seems to have been popular with the ladies in the neighbourhood but not so popular with the gentlemen."

"Oh, yes; of course," said I. "I don't suggest for a moment that he had actual enemies. But men are so apt to be a bit jealous of the popular man in every society."

I asked a few more questions about the parties that Garfield had given, and learnt, as I had supposed, that they had been chiefly tennis parties in the summer, and dinner parties, followed by threepenny bridge, in the autumn and winter.

Then I said: "I should like a few words with your brother. There's a point he might be able to throw a little light on."

"He's in the shed, cleaning the motor engine. I'll take you to him," said Miss Pringle readily, rising.

Evidently she had no suspicion of her brother. She took me out to the shed, which stood among the farm buildings next to the barn, and introduced me to her brother and told him my errand, and left us.

He was a stout fellow was John Pringle, of middle height and broad and thick. He had none of his sisters' good looks; his features were heavy and roughly cut; his grey eyes were small and set back under beetling brows; his lips were full and shapeless. Bull-necked, he looked like a bull and about as sweet-tempered. I knew why his mother and sisters looked depressed.

He looked at me with a lowering, not to say truculent and suspicious air, and said in a harsh, unpleasant voice; "So you're from Scotland Yard?"

"Yes, as your sister told you, I'm from Scotland Yard, investigating the murder of Mr. Garfield, and I want to ask you a question or two."

"I don't know anything about Garfield's murder, so your questions would be wasted; and if I did I don't mean to be mixed up in it—least said soonest mended is my motto—and you can't force me to answer your questions, anyhow," he said in as offensive a manner as he could.

It was not my business to take offence, and I said quietly and pleasantly: "I shouldn't try to force you to answer any questions, and of course if you could throw any light on the murder you would have come forward with your information long ago. But you are one of the few men with whom Mr. Garfield came into contact, outside business and his club, and I should like to know what impression he made on you."

The question seemed to take him aback, as if it was not at all the kind of question he had expected, and he hesitated, scowling.

Then he said: "You'd better ask the women. They were the ones he made an impression on."

"He was a lady's man, was he?" said I. "Charming and fascinating, I suppose—a man with what they call a way with him?"

"He didn't charm me, I can tell you!" he said in a kind of explosive way. "He never took me in—not for a moment!"

"He took in the women, did he?" said I. "So that I may take it that if he had an enemy it would be a man?"

He looked at me with fresh suspicion; then he growled: "I've told you once and I tell you again it's no good your trying to pump me. I don't intend to be mixed up in the business, and I won't be."

"It's a very natural attitude," I said peaceably. "But I don't see how your telling me your impression of Garfield can mix you up in his murder, while it may help me to find the man who murdered him. But I take it that you have your reasons for not telling me, and doubtless you consider them good and sufficient, and would prefer to keep them to yourself."

"I mean to keep them to myself," he growled. "And what's more, I don't want to hear any more about Garfield and his murder. I'm fed up."

He fairly glared at me and snapped: "Weighing on my mind? Why should it weigh on my mind?"

His eyes were blazing at me now and he almost roared: "Look here: because a blackguard goes and gets himself murdered, why should it weigh on my mind?"

He had certainly given me his impressions of Garfield, all of them, and what was more, he had given me his violent dislike of Garfield.

"Why should it, indeed?" said I slowly, looking at him hard. "You have a small sporting rifle, haven't you?"

That question did take him aback, also it made him a bit uneasy; he said more quietly: "Yes, I have; what about it?"

He hesitated and the fury in his eyes was almost murderous; then he broke out almost in a bellow: "I've had enough of it! I told you I wouldn't answer any questions, and I won't! You can clear out!"

For a moment he looked as if he would help me to clear out; then he manifestly changed his mind, turned his back on me, and got busy with the engine again.

John Pringle had a dislike of Garfield, a nasty temper, and a .22 sporting rifle.

CHAPTER VI
The Other Rifle

I HAD certainly found a .22 rifle, and that attached to a man of vile temper, not unlikely to use it for a purpose for which sporting rifles are not intended, if he were badly provoked, and that Garfield had provoked him was plain enough, Probably, almost certainly, considering what Miss Carr had said, jealousy was the reason of that dislike, and it looked not at all improbable that I might be dealing with a commonplace crime of that passion. But, though I was pretty sure that many of my moustachioed colleagues would look no further for the murderer, but at once devote all their energy to finding the evidence to hang that bellowing lad, I kept an open mind. It is a far cry from dislike to murder.

I wanted more light on the matter of Pringle's temper. The crime had almost certainly been premeditated. Was he one of those whose anger flares up and dies down and away, or one of those whose anger goes on smouldering until some fresh incident fans it to a murderous explosion? Plainly the fellow was naturally cantankerous and truculent, so that his refusal to answer any questions about Garfield, and his fury at having let some information slip from him, might have arisen merely from that cantankerousness; he might not be really vindictive or a stubborn hater. Also there was always the chance that he knew or guessed who had murdered Garfield and was determined to keep the whole of his knowledge to himself and shield the murderer, in which case the least said was certainly soonest mended.

Moreover, the theory that Pringle had committed the murder did not account for Miss Bolsover's Persian lamb coat, or the anxious strain under which she had been living, or the seven thousand a year Garfield had paid into his bank in cash. Also Pringle's .22 rifle was not the only .22 rifle in the Marsh, and the other had yet to be accounted for. Therefore I could very well keep an open mind, and while I realized that Pringle was to be gravely suspected, I need be in no hurry to call on him to tell me where he was and what he was doing at midnight on October 9th. He was always at hand at the Gate Farm to be questioned; if he should bolt it would go far to settle the question of his guilt, and he would not get any great distance. He had not the brains for it.

I decided therefore to do everything I could to find that other rifle, and it looked as if it was going to be a difficult job. Thinking over Pringle's temper and the things he had let slip, I had walked rather more than a mile beyond the village; I turned and paused to look at it from the point I had reached. I was looking straight across the forty-acre field, and I studied the position of Applecross Farm and the Rectory. It was not very odd that no one in the village had heard the shots which killed Garfield fired, for I remembered that the wind had been in the south for a fortnight about the date of the murder, and would blow the sound of them away from the village; also at that hour everyone in the village would have been in bed and apparently asleep.

The "White Horse" was the nearest house to the spot from which the shots must have been fired, and I was sure that the Carrs were sound sleepers; but the Rectory was not very much farther off, and I fancied that the Misses Bolsover would sleep more lightly. I wished to know what, roughly, had been the intervals between the three shots. I thought that there had been a longer interval between the first and the second than between the second and the third. It had certainly been as deliberate a murder as ever I heard of; the murderer had not only lain in wait to shoot Garfield, but he had made as sure as he could of killing him. A really cold-blooded crime, and Pringle had a hot temper. I must certainly find out whether it was the kind of hot temper that cools or that remains hot.

I looked at my watch and found that it was nearly half-past four—time to be going to tea at the Rectory. I walked briskly back to it and was fifty yards away when Paton came out of the churchyard gate and waited for me at the gate of his garden, and we walked up the path to the house together.

"My two stepdaughters live with me. There are only the three of us," he said. "It's unfortunate that my living is in this out-of-the-way place, for they're young, and it's very dull for them."

"I spoke to one of them in the church yesterday—she was putting fresh flowers on the altar—and she took me for an amateur detective and was uncommonly short with me," said I.

"Well, we were a good deal bothered by amateur detectives for a little while after the murder," he said. "They did get on our nerves, and her nerves have been bad. She used to be——"

He stopped, as if he was saying too much, and opened the front door and ushered me into a rather bare, cheaply furnished drawing-room, in which Miss Bolsover and her sister were sitting, Kate knitting, and her sister making some silken garment which she whisked out of sight when she saw me entering.

"I have brought a friend to tea," said Paton. "Let me introduce Mr. Carthew, a friend of mine in France and now of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, and investigating the murder of Mr. Garfield. "Mr. Carthew—Miss Bolsover and Miss Joan Bolsover."

The two girls looked at me in a natural surprise—Miss Bolsover, indeed, looked more than surprised, much more startled than the Pringles had been—and greeted me stiffly; a detective does not come to tea in many drawing-rooms.

"Mr. Carthew told me that he was coming to ask us questions about Mr. Garfield; so I invited him to question us comfortably at tea," Paton added, ringing the bell.

"It's one of the drawbacks of my profession that when I'm investigating a case I'm an official on duty the whole time," I said in my pleasantest voice by way of warning.

"Then we shall have to be careful not to say anything that incriminates us," said Paton, smiling.

"So I was not so very far wrong about your profession when I thought you were an amateur detective, yesterday."

"Oh, very far wrong. The professional detective and the amateur are miles apart—miles. Nearly all my colleagues will tell you so," said I.

"It must be very exciting work," said Joan Bolsover in a tone of interest and no hostility.

"It's like any other profession; it has its moments," said I. "But there's a lot of commonplace routine work which is not at all exciting to be done between those moments."

A young and trim maid brought in the tea; Miss Bolsover poured it out; we settled down to polite conversation. I made most of it; I talked about the Marsh. Apparently it was not the most fortunate subject, for I found that both the sisters detested it; they had no longer my interest in the extraordinary variety of pictures it presented. Kate did not say much about it; she seemed content to let the rest of us do the talking. But Joan grew almost eloquent about its dreariness and dead-and-aliveness during three parts of the year. I thought that she was about a year and a half younger than her sister—between eighteen and nineteen, that is—and of the same type, prettier, perhaps, but not nearly so attractive. She was more vivacious and seemed much fuller of life and energy; beside her Kate seemed subdued and rather colourless; yet, to judge from her far more intelligent face, she should have been the more spirited of the two.

I wondered if she had been before the trouble, which was putting such a strain on her, had happened. That strain was plainer than ever to me, for I was looking for it: she had shown herself absent-minded, as we talked, and more than once it had seemed to me that she was in quite a different world and not a pleasant one, for her forehead was constantly furrowed by a worried frown.

Paton also disliked the Marsh; he said that there was very little scope in it for a man of energy, and very little work to be done. I expressed my sympathy with them, and it truly was hard lines, especially since there was very little chance of the girls finding husbands, unless John Pringle could be considered a possible husband, in a place where there were no men of their class. It seemed to me that the natural revolt against such an empty life might carry a girl of spirit to dangerous lengths, and looking at Kate Bolsover I wondered—or rather, to be exact, I did not wonder.

All the while I was noticing their curious attitude to their stepfather, the attitude of which Miss Carr had spoken. He took very little part in the talk except to say those few words about the lack of scope for a man of energy, and when he did say anything the two girls either ignored him altogether, or if what he said afforded them the slightest chance of snubbing him, snubbed he was. It did not seem indeed to have any effect on him, and more than once I saw him look at one or other of them with fond eyes, looks that made me believe that he was really attached to them.

It was he who, when tea was over, introduced the matter of Garfield; he said: "We mustn't forget Mr. Carthew really came to get information that might throw light on the murder of Mr. Garfield. What was it you wanted to ask Carthew?"

"I want to know what kind of man he was," said I, looking at him. "What did you think of him yourself?"

"I didn't see much of him myself. He was much more the friend of my stepdaughters," he said slowly, and quite suddenly I perceived that his features had assumed the mask I know so well, the mask of a man who has no intention of telling what he knows. He went on smoothly: "I always found him quite genial enough when I did have any dealings with him, always ready to subscribe to any charitable object to which I drew his attention, and he lighted the church and the Rectory with acetylene gas from his own plant at a considerable expense." He paused and added: "I wondered at it rather."

He hesitated a moment before replying: "Well, of course I only came across him in a social or official way—as one of my parishioners, I mean. But I did form the opinion that there was very little he'd stick at to get the thing he wanted." He paused again and then added, in a tone of astonishing bitterness and disgust: "The man wasn't a gentleman. He was a cad and a ruffian!"

The words seemed to come from him as if he hardly knew that he was uttering them, and I saw Kate start and stare at him as if she could not believe her ears, and Joan looked immensely astonished.

The mask settled on his features again, and he looked astonished at what he had said; but he replied quietly enough: "Oh, it was—an impression—just an impression."

It was nothing of the kind; I knew that he had been telling the truth when he had said that Garfield was a cad and a ruffian, but was telling it no longer, and that statement was founded on no impression, but on some fact or facts.

I knew that I was not going to be told the fact on which his unfavourable opinion of Garfield had been founded, not at the moment at any rate, and before the two girls, and I said: "You don't happen to know if he had any enemies in this part of the country?"

"I don't," he said. "In fact he seemed to be very popular. He was always hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, and did most of the entertaining in the neighbourhood and was very free, I'm told, with his money at the local inns."

"What about young Pringle at the Gate Farm?" I asked. "He seems to have a pretty strong dislike of Garfield and a really ugly temper."

He shot a glance at Kate, and Joan glanced at her too, quick, short glances, and then at once both of them averted their eyes.

"He does dislike Garfield, does he?" said Paton quietly. "But I don't think he would let that dislike go beyond incivility to the man's face and abuse behind his back. I think he'd be too careful of himself."

"It never occurred to me that Mr. Pringle murdered Mr. Garfield," she said quickly, frowning as if the suggestion had startled her. Then she added slowly, as if considering it carefully in her own mind: "I don't think he would—he has a bad temper—I dare say he might have tried to knock Mr. Garfield about, if they had quarrelled. But he would never have shot him—no. He is too cautious."

Looking at her I wondered how on earth she could have brought herself to be so friendly with that bellowing young boor as to give him cause for his violent jealousy of Garfield. But there, the young farmer had been the only man in the neighbourhood except Garfield, who after all only came and went, and a young woman of spirit must try her hand on somebody.

The mask settled on her face also, as I had guessed it would, and she said quietly: "He was always very nice to my sister and me, always arranging bathing parties and picnics and tennis parties at Applecross two or three times a week."

Joan broke in, saying: "And he'll be a dreadful loss to the neighbourhood, and we shall miss him terribly, especially in the summer. And it's worse for my sister than it is for me, for she was getting some fun outside the Marsh. And now the friend she used to stay with in London has gone away to America for at least a year. So she'll have just as rotten a time as I do."

"I see," said I. "And have you any idea why Mr. Garfield spent most of last summer down here, when every other year he has gone away for June, July and August?" I asked.

Joan hesitated and glanced at her sister before she opened her lips, with very much the same glance as the Miss Pringles had exchanged when I asked if Garfield had showed a preference to any of the girls in the neighbourhood.

But Kate spoke first and quickly; she said: "Because it was the first really fine summer since he bought Applecross Farm."

"Of course it was," I said, and paused and added: "Well, at any rate none of you had any cause to dislike Mr. Garfield."

For an instant a queer expression flickered over Kate's face, dislike, and more than dislike, gleamed in her eyes and was gone.

"There's just one other point you might throw some light on," I said. "Mr. Garfield had a small sporting rifle, a .22."

"It can't be found in Applecross Farm or in his flat in London," I went on. "I was wondering if either of you two young ladies could tell me where to look for it, since Mr. Garfield taught you to shoot with it."

"Oh, it's in the cupboard under the stairs," said Joan quickly. "It's been there ever since we last practised with it—one day early in September."

"I don't know," said Kate. "I lost my gardening gloves one day, and I thought Annie might have put them away in the cupboard; and when I was looking through it I noticed that the rifle wasn't there. I expect Mr. Garfield took it away. He might have called for it one day when we were out, or just stepped in and taken it—he knew where it was, of course—or Annie may have given it to him."

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind asking her if she did give the rifle back to Mr. Garfield," said I.

"But I thought the Ryeford police had made up their minds that Mr. Garfield had been shot with a .22 automatic pistol?" said Paton, and I noticed a queer, uneasy note in his voice.

"That's their theory," I said, and I turned to Kate and added: "Can you remember exactly when you found that the rifle was no longer in the cupboard?"

She appeared to be trying to remember; then she said: "No, I'm afraid I can't. It might have been three weeks ago, or it might have been a month."

Paton fidgeted on his chair and said a bit impatiently: "Is it of any importance?"

Joan came back and said that Annie had said that she had not given the rifle back to Mr. Garfield, but he might have taken it the day he came in to put a new tap on the big lamp in Kate's bedroom.

I thanked her and said to Kate: "Can you remember whether it was before or after Mr. Garfield had been murdered that you found the rifle was no longer in the cupboard?"

"Why, it must have been before, or how could he have taken it away?" she said quickly. "Of course it was before."

Joan said that she would look, and went. She had only to step across the hall, and came back with a box of cartridges and handed it to me.

I opened it with a faint hope that only three had been used. It had held fifty; it held twenty.

"Why?" said Kate. "He probably had plenty of cartridges at the farm, and he may have meant to bring the rifle back. We might have taken into our heads to practise any afternoon."

"Probably it's at Applecross Farm. Men are not very good at looking for things," said Kate a bit maliciously.

CHAPTER VII
The Two Lamps

THIS information that Garfield's missing rifle had been at the Rectory, and no one could say how or when it had left it was interesting, and I sat silent, thinking it over, and they sat watching me. I was not sure that it had not been at the Rectory on the day, the evening even, on which Garfield had been murdered. Kate might be telling the truth about the date at which she had missed it; she might not. I had not known, as I often do, whether she had been telling the truth or not. She had answered my questions readily enough and with apparent frankness; but I had reason to have a higher opinion of her cleverness than her veracity.

"Well, I shall find it," I said at last confidently. "And I'm very much obliged to you all for answering my questions."

"I'm afraid we haven't been of much use to you," said Paton, and he heaved a sigh that sounded to me uncommonly like a sigh of relief.

"But you have," I said. "You've cleared the ground a good deal and told me several things I wanted to know badly."

I rose to go, but he said he wanted to hear about old friends, and invited me to come to his study. I went with him to a small, bare room at the back of the house, furnished with a desk, an arm-chair, and two other chairs. His books, not more than fifty or sixty, were ranged on rough, home-made shelves. He insisted on my taking the arm-chair, and we lighted our pipes and talked about this man and that we had known in France. He could tell me where some of them were and what they were doing, and I could tell him about others. We talked too about those who had never come back from the War.

We were talking of them when he said: "I was sorry to read in the paper that poor old Carruthers-Moffat died last month, the father of the lad you carried out of No Man's Land under fire."

"I never saw it," said I. "I was afraid that the poor old boy would never get over the loss of his son."

And I was sorry to hear it: the boy had been a nice boy and he had lived on for nearly two years after he had been wounded, and his father had been very nice to me and wanted to help me, to set me up in life, because I had saved his son for that two years. I told Paton of his kindness.

"This confounded business of money!" he said bitterly. "Here we are, cooped up in this dreary hole. I don't mind it; but it's very hard on two young girls so full of life as my stepdaughters."

"They evidently do hate it," I said. "Wouldn't it be better for them to learn some business or other and get a job—shorthand and typewriting or something of that kind?"

"No—no," he said thoughtfully, and his face set in the obstinacy I knew so well. "Such jobs lead to nothing. They'd be no better off at the end of them. And then it would mean their living alone in a big town and long hours and poor pay and associating with people of a lower class, and I should not be able to look after them. They have broached the idea once or twice, but I've always discouraged it. I promised their mother that I would always look after them and do my best for them, and I mean to do it at any cost to myself. After all, they're getting a quiet and healthy life—at least, they were; and I have reason to believe that I shall get a living in a less out-of-the-way place in the course of the next two years. It's unfortunate that both of them dislike me so because I married their mother. But it makes no essential difference. I'm going to look after them as well as I possibly can." He paused and added bitterly: "Not that I've been very successful so far."

"They seem very nice girls. It's a pity that they have this prejudice against you," I said in a sympathetic tone.

"It is," he said. "But they can't help it, and it doesn't prevent my being fond of them."

I said that I must be going to get on with my job, and went back to Applecross and found Collins waiting for me with the wire from the Yard. It said that Garfield had not stayed at the Sloane Crescent Hotel, but that his photograph was being taken to other hotels to discover whether he had stayed at any of them. That was satisfactory; something might come of it.

Collins told me that he had arranged that four policemen should help him to rake the dykes next morning for the weapon with which the murder had been committed; and to make sure that we had not overlooked Garfield's rifle we searched the house carefully for it and did not find it. After that I had nothing to keep him for and let him go. It was nearly half-past seven, and I walked up to the "White Horse" for some supper and went into the bar and ordered a gin and It.

Carr shook his head at me and said: "Nicely you took me in, never telling me where you came from and what your business at St. Joseph's was. I took you for a gentleman on a holiday."

He said thoughtfully: "Oh, no, I shan't do that, for it was your manner that prevented me guessing that you were from Scotland Yard—not that I mean that detectives aren't gentlemen. But it's a matter of style, you know."

"Also I hope that your discovery won't prevent you from letting me have some supper, for I'm hungry," said I.

He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Want to do a little more pumping, I suppose. Well, well——"

He went to the door behind the bar and called to Mrs. Carr that Mr. Carthew was coming to supper.

By the time I had finished my drink it was ready, cold pork and pickles and potatoes, followed by cold apple pie. Now that Carr knew that I was from Scotland Yard and in charge of the Garfield Case he talked about it for some time, telling me his theory of it and the villagers' theory of it and telling me nothing that I did not already know.

When he came to the end of these theories I said: "I haven't seen as many aeroplanes to-day as I saw yesterday. When am I going to see one crash? You said that this was one of the places where they were in the habit of crashing, didn't you?"

"No," said he. "I said that they sometimes landed here, not that they crashed. But you won't see them, because they land at night."

"Oh, no: very seldom. I haven't heard them come down more than three or four times during the last three years, and always at night."

"But how do you know that they actually landed? They might just have been passing, flying very low," I suggested.

"I suppose I ought to say that I heard them go up," he explained. "I'd wake in the middle of the night, and everything would be quite still. Then suddenly an aeroplane would start going close by—in the forty-acre field, in fact—and go off. It's odd it never woke me as it landed. But it never did."

"I see. Did they go away over the hills or out to sea?" said I, but I could not see why he had not heard them come down. But of course he must have been asleep.

"The last one went out to sea: so it must have landed on its way from London," he said. "I don't remember exactly about the others, but I think that they went out to sea too."

I considered this a moment; then I said: "I don't see how you make out that it must have landed on its way from London. It might just as well have come from over the sea."

I wondered how many people in the village had heard those aeroplanes land, or rather leave. There must be lighter sleepers than Carr in the village. I said no more and got on with my dinner; evidently he had told me all he knew about the aeroplanes; then it occurred to me that he might very well tell me a little more about young Pringle.

"He doesn't seem at all a pleasant fellow, young Pringle doesn't," I said. "The thing I asked him wasn't of much importance, but he was uncommonly grumpy about it."

As long as we had talked of aeroplanes, the two women had left the talk to us; now Miss Carr broke in, saying: "Mr. Pringle has a perfectly dreadful temper. He has been summoned twice for assaulting people—people who were staying at Pyechurch in August and got on to his land when they were out walking."

"That's what it is—just jealousy," said Miss Carr quickly. "I believe he's eaten up with it—the way I've seen him scowl at poor Mr. Garfield in church, when he thought Kitty Bolsover and he were looking at one another! He looked as if he could murder him."

There came an odd pause in the talk; no one said anything for a good minute, and I knew that her words had suggested the same thing to all three of them.

He hesitated, staring at me; then he said: "It was just an idea that occurred to me—nothing partickler."

"I never thought of it either, and I can't think why I didn't. I wonder," said Miss Carr.

"Least said soonest mended—especially when you gentlemen from Scotland Yard are about," said Carr gravely.

"But I do wonder why it never occurred to us before," said Miss Carr, frowning thoughtfully.

I also wondered why it had never occurred to them before. But I was quite sure that half the village, if not all of it, would hold the theory before noon next day that John Pringle had murdered Garfield.

"Of course it was everybody's saying that the murderer came from London that put us off," said Mrs. Carr.

"Has young Pringle's temper ever got him into worse trouble than appearing before the magistrates for assault—ever get him into any serious lawsuits?" I asked.

"Well, if you ask me, I should say he'd have got into one pretty bad lawsuit, one that would have cost him a lot of money, if the man he hounded out of St. Joseph's had had the money to pay lawyers," said Carr. "That looker—what was his name?"

Apparently they were not going on to tell me about it; so I said: "And what did William Lincoln do to him?"

"It wasn't what William did to him; it was what he did to William," said Carr. "William was one of his lookers, and they had a row about a sheep which got drowned in a dyke, and Pringle said it was William's fault, and William said that it wasn't. And it wasn't. But he told Jack Pringle what he thought of him and what everybody else thought of him, and Pringle sacked him and turned him out of his cottage, and went about giving him a bad name and threatening him till he had to go right away to St. Mary's and settle down there."

"Vindictive isn't the word for it. I shouldn't like to get into his black books," said Carr.

I thought that the theory that John Pringle had murdered Garfield would be rather strengthened by my recalling these facts to their minds, and I wondered what would be the effect on him. I had no doubt that he would learn that he was suspected: would it upset him to the point of making him do something foolish—if, that is, the theory was the right one? But I could not understand why the village had not suspected him at once. Of course the police theory that the murder had been committed by a stranger to the Marsh, and the fact that Pringle had never, apparently, quarrelled openly with Garfield, had put his neighbours off that track. Certainly this evidence that he was vindictive as well as hot-tempered had made things look blacker against him.

It was ten o'clock when I reached Applecross Farm, and I had just time to smoke a pipe before I made the experiment I had in mind for some hours. At five and twenty past ten I went up to Garfield's bedroom and lit the motor head-light and left the blind up, then I walked down to the end of the forty-acre field and waited. At a few minutes to eleven someone lit the lamp that matched it in a bedroom of the Rectory—Kate Bolsover's, to judge from what the maid had said about Garfield's having come to the Rectory to put a fresh tap on the big lamp in her bedroom. The two lights glared out a quarter of a mile apart and practically in a straight line a quarter of a mile beyond the forty-acre field. They could not be seen from high above, but an aeroplane using the lights of the fifty-acre field at Jesson and those of the aerodrome on the hills at Lympne as guides, could come down low enough to see them four or five miles away. Once landed, of course, any cargo that it brought could be unloaded, and it could be up and away in a few minutes.

Such aeroplanes had come: else why these guiding lights? Carr had heard them go away. Nine times in the year they had come. And what had they brought? Whatever it was it had given Garfield seven thousand a year and Kate Bolsover her Persian lamb coat.

CHAPTER VIII
I Search the Church

MY guess had been accurate, and now I knew. There was nothing to wait for and I walked slowly back to the house, thinking hard. What had those aeroplanes, or that aeroplane—possibly the same aeroplane had made all the journeys—brought? There was no seven thousand a year for one man out of nine cargoes in one aeroplane of silk or saccharine, for there would certainly be others to share the profits. It had brought something far more valuable. I thought of cocaine and then remembered Garfield's agency for the firm of Fermoye and Goldberg, Chemical Exporters of Havre. Cocaine it was.

I was a bit elated. This was a much bigger affair than the murder of Garfield, an affair which would bring me far more kudos with the Commissioners than the discovery of the man, or woman, who had murdered him. With Garfield dead, that aeroplane might never come again. But fortunately the secret of its coming had not perished with him: Kate Bolsover knew it; she had again and again lighted one of the lamps that enabled it to land safely in the forty-acre field.

It would be a devil of a job to get the secret from her, if I had not misread her character. She had only to declare that she knew nothing about it and go on declaring it, which is exactly what a woman can do and most men cannot. But I would get it from her: the lace handkerchief and the non-existence of Mrs. de Carteret ought to help to persuade her to give me the information. I was sorry for the girl—very sorry. But there were the more unhappy wretches who were being wrecked by the dope.

But of course I must go gently. It was not likely that Messrs. Fermoye and Goldberg would lose such a landing ground without an effort to keep it, if there were all those thousands in it. Probably they were waiting for the inquiry into the murder of Garfield to be brought to an unsuccessful, or successful, end before they made a move. Once the fuss was over, Applecross Farm would have a new tenant, a tenant also working with Kate Bolsover, and the aeroplane would come again. I meant to be there to receive it, and not alone.

Well, the question of where Garfield had obtained the £7,000 a year he paid into his bank in cash, had been answered, and for the moment the discovery of this cocaine smuggling had diverted my attention from the murder. I came back to it. Was there any connection between the smuggling and the murder? Had he been shot by a confederate? If he had been shot with an automatic pistol at close range, that might very well have been the case. Indeed, he might have been shot from the aeroplane itself—just as it was leaving, probably, for I took it that Garfield was the man who swung the propeller.

It was possible but not probable. Garfield had been shot from a distance, of that I had no doubt, and it was impossible that he should have been shot from the aeroplane itself as it was leaving, for there must have been some seconds' interval between the first shot and the second, and at least a couple of seconds between the second and the third. The finest shot in the world could not have put that second and third bullet into the fallen man from a wobbling machine just starting. It was quite unlikely also that a confederate had been lurking a hundred yards away ready to shoot him after the aeroplane had gone.

It was possible, of course, that he had been shot by a hijacker, as the Americans call the man who robs the smuggler of his cargo; by someone from London, probably, who had learnt that a valuable cargo of dope was to be landed, and had not stuck at murder to get possession of it. It was possible, and I must bear the possibility in mind; but I did not think that there was any need to go so far for the murderer, since my theory that Garfield had been shot with his own rifle, and that by someone in the neighbourhood, had not been in any way shaken by this new discovery.

Then another point presented itself: what had become of the aeroplane's cargo? Taking it that Garfield had been shot during the landing of the consignment of cocaine, had he been shot before it had been unloaded, or after? If it had been unloaded, it would hardly be likely that the pilot, having brought the cocaine all that way, would pause to reload and take it back again, with a gentleman or lady firing freely from the middle of the field; he would be much more likely to clear off directly the shots were fired. Had Kate Bolsover taken it to London in her Austin Seven, as I suspected she had taken other cargoes? If she had, she must have known how Garfield disposed of it; she must have sold it, and had the money. But somehow I could not see Garfield letting anyone but himself handle that part of the business; he would be almost certain to keep it in his own hands. If she had not taken it to London, it must still be in the neighbourhood—a large packet of cocaine, worth probably two or three thousand pounds. Where, if she had it, had she hidden it? In the Rectory? In the church? It wouldn't be the first church to serve as a hiding-place for smuggled goods; probably that very church had served that purpose many a time in the old smuggling days.

Yes; the murder of Garfield had certainly brought me upon a big criminal business, and I thought that that business and the murder must be connected, and that I should find that Miss Bolsover was the connecting link between them. I had better get on with the murder.

Accordingly I fetched my notebook from my suit-case and jotted down the points of importance in the case that I had discovered since my last entry. They were:

(2) Kate Bolsover's story of her visits to a Mrs. de Carteret in London was a fabrication.

(3) John Pringle's vindictive and jealous temper, and his evident hostility to Garfield.

(5) Garfield's rifle had been at the Rectory, and no one could say who had taken it away or when it had been taken.

Then it occurred to me that I could also get on with the dope smuggling, or at any rate that the Yard could get on with it for me. I might have wired, but I had a fancy to keep this part of the affair to myself for a while; therefore I wrote to Goad to let me know the sources from which the notes had come which Garfield had paid into his bank in the big cash payment in September—if they could be traced. I walked up to the post office, posted the letter, and came back to bed.

I had just finished breakfast next morning when Collins arrived in a car with four policemen and the rakes, and we went down to the bottom of the forty-acre field and began to rake the dykes. There had been plenty of rain, and the mud was soft, and old boots and tin cans, and bones and what not, came ashore in profusion. Collins was happy; half the village came to look happily on; I left him to it, with instructions to go to the next meadow and rake the twenty yards on both sides of the plank across the dyke at the bottom of it, which put you on the footpath to the village. If the murderer had been too rattled to take the rifle right away, it would probably be found in one or other of those dykes. If it were not, the others round the forty-acre field must be raked, but I saw little chance of finding it in them.

I crossed the forty-acre field and came into the lane from Applecross Farm to the village, and met Paton coming down it.

He greeted me and said: "I hear you're having the dykes raked for traces of the murderer. Had any luck?"

"I'm not expecting to find anything. I'm only hoping. I might find Garfield's rifle, or I might find the cases of the cartridges that were fired at him," I said.

"But the cartridge-cases would surely be on the ground at the spot on which the rifle was fired," he said.

"No; they certainly wouldn't," he said thoughtfully. "But if he were cool enough to do that, he'd never throw the rifle into the dyke near the scene of the murder."

"I'm afraid he wouldn't," said I. "But he would have to hide the rifle somewhere; and it's not an easy thing to hide. Can you suggest a likely place? I'm always ready to accept help."

"A dyke is certainly the likeliest place, but not a dyke near the scene of the crime. But I don't understand why you're taking so much trouble to find the rifle. If you did find it in one of the dykes, it's hardly likely that there would be any finger-marks on it; so I don't see how you're going to connect the murderer with it."

"I'm not taking any great trouble about it," I said. "But if it were found in one of the dykes close to the scene of the crime, it would establish definitely my theory that Garfield was shot by a .22 rifle and not a .22 automatic pistol. But if, as you suggest, the murderer took the trouble to walk a mile or more before throwing the rifle into a dyke, the odds are that it will not be found for months, if ever."

"If he knew the Marsh, it certainly wouldn't be found for a year or two, because he would have taken it to one of the big dykes which have been recently dredged and will not be dredged again for two or three years, or perhaps longer."

"Let's see," he said, thinking. "I should think the nearest big dyke recently dredged is the Elmer dyke—about a mile down the road to Rye."

"Right," said I. "I'll have that raked, too—half a mile of it on both sides of the Rye road."

It was not very likely that the murderer had walked to the Elmer dyke; but one must neglect nothing, and raking it would keep Collins happy and look well in my report to the Yard.

"There's nothing for me to do till those dykes are raked; so I was going to take another look at the church, if it's open. It interests me, your church does," I said.

"It's always open," he said. "I'll come along with you. I don't suppose I shall see any treasure raked out of the dykes."

"The church is a much more likely place for treasure—at least it was in the old smuggling days," said I. "By the way, are you a light sleeper?"

"Carr, the landlord of the 'White Horse,' tells me that three or four times during the last three years, in the middle of the night, he has heard an aeroplane rise from the forty-acre field and go away over the sea. Have you heard anything of the kind?"

I turned to him as I spoke and found him staring at me with a sudden surprised intentness, and with a startled air, as if I had given him a real jolt. It was queer, very queer: did he know about the cocaine smuggling?

He hesitated and then he said: "Yes. I've heard one once or twice. But aeroplanes in trouble are always landing in the Marsh."

He was staring at me again very earnestly, and again he hesitated before he said: "Yes—somewhere about then."

"Did you hear one on the ninth of October—the night Garfield was murdered?" I said.

"I believe I did," he said, and now he was looking in front of him with his face quite composed.

It was queer. I had more than a hunch that he did know about the cocaine smuggling.

I had said enough, and I had learnt enough; there was no need to press the question at the moment, for I should probably get no more, and I said: "Oh, I've been wondering about those aeroplanes," and changed the subject quickly, adding: "By the way, what gave you the impression that Garfield was a ruffian?"

Again he looked at me with startled eyes, and hesitated, then he said: "If you'd ever seen the man, you'd have had that impression yourself."

I dare say I should, but it wasn't Garfield's looks that had made the Padre the day before declare with that bitterness that he was a cad and a ruffian. He had a better reason than that.

We came to the church and went in. He made the genuflexion to the altar, and crossed himself as the Catholics do, and then told me about the church, saying that a good deal of it was thirteenth century, and that the glass in the side windows was fourteenth century and that in the east window early fifteenth century; that the church had been the chapel of a small abbey, the rest of which had been carted away piecemeal to build farms and cottages.

"Is the bell as old as the rest of the church? It sounds as if it had been cracked several hundred years," I said—not that I wished to decry anything belonging to the church, but because I wished to see the belfry. It was just possible that that packet of cocaine might be in it. The chamber from which the bell was rung would be of course in constant use, but the belfry itself might not be entered for months at a time.

He took me up the little tower, and the chamber from which the bell was rung was well kept and free from dust. In the middle of the ceiling was a trap-door, and in the corner were the wooden steps by which you mounted to it and into the belfry.

"Let's," he said. "As a matter of fact I never have looked at the bell, though I have always wanted to have it recast and that crack taken out of it."

We moved the steps under the trap-door, and I mounted them and raised it. It was stuck and took a good deal of raising. I thought that it had not been raised for months, perhaps years—not much chance of finding the packet of cocaine there. It was a small belfry and low, not above five feet high, and standing on the ladder I looked round it. The floor was an inch deep in untrodden dust; no one had trod on it for months. Up in the roof I saw a dozen or more bats hanging. I came down the steps, and Paton mounted them and stepped into the belfry and examined the bell.

"If it's as old as that it ought to be worth recasting," I said. "They made bells of very good metal in those days."

"It never will be recast. There'll never be enough money in St. Joseph's to recast it," he said in a glum voice.

He came down, and we were moving towards the church door when I said: "But where did the smugglers of a hundred years ago hide those famous kegs of brandy?"

"There's no record or legend that they hid them in the church," he said. "But if they had there were plenty of vaults to hide them in. They not only run under the church but a hundred feet beyond it—the length of the abbey that has disappeared."

He took me into the vestry, opened a door at the back of it, took a hurricane lamp that was hanging from a big, rather dusty spike—it was larger than a nail—in the wall, lit it, and led the way down a narrow flight of stone steps, and we came into the vaults—small, empty chambers, into which the light came very dim through gratings high up in the walls, and when we passed beyond the church the gratings had been choked by the earth and stones from the fallen walls, so that no light came into them at all. In three cells, nearly at the end of the long passage, I noticed staples in the walls, and from two of them hung short lengths of chain, the links of them eaten very thin by rust.

"Oh, no; they weren't monks they imprisoned here. The Abbots of St. Joseph's were the chief dignitaries of the Marsh from the end of the thirteenth century till the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth, with the rights of high and low justice. They imprisoned criminals in these cells."

"And of course I have those rights still; for the Rector of St. Joseph's is obviously the successor of the Abbots of St. Joseph's," he went on quite seriously.

"But hang it all!" said I. "No one has had the right of high and low justice in England for hundreds of years!"

"The secular powers cannot rob the Church of its rights," he said firmly. "The Abbots of St. Joseph's had those rights, which naturally devolve upon their successor, and only the Church itself could deprive him of them. I should think, indeed, it could only be done by an edict of the Pope himself."

It was astonishing, but I knew that where the Church was concerned he had a bee in his bonnet, and that nothing that I could say would shake his conviction in the slightest. It did not really matter as long as he did not start exercising those rights and come into violent contact with the present law of the land. At the same time I could see him chaining a parishioner up in one of those cells and keeping him there, if he thought it his duty.

"I should think you'd find it difficult to find a private hangman," I said, smiling. "Though I dare say something could be done with your agreeable young neighbour, Mr. John Pringle."

"Well, I shan't use him to hang Garfield's murderer if you can catch him," he said.

"I shall really have to take some rubbings of some of those old Mayling brasses," I said as I left him.

I walked on down the village, thinking about his curious character. He seemed to me to be a kind of bigoted and fanatical throwback to the Middle Ages, and I believed that he looked at things in exactly the same way as those Abbots of St. Joseph's who had kept criminals in chains in the church vaults. His present attitude was also quite in keeping with his attitude during the war as Padre of the South Kents, when he used to say that he regarded himself as part of the Church militant and would act accordingly if the occasion presented itself, and I remembered a story about him, the truth of which I had rather doubted, that he had come across an enemy detail maltreating a wounded Tommy during a German push, and gone for them bald-headed with the butt of a rifle and smashed up half a dozen of them and driven the rest out of the trench and brought in the wounded man. Certainly he had been treated for a bayonet wound in the arm, and no one would believe that any German would have tried to stick the Padre, unless he was in a deuce of a hole, badly cornered, and trying to get out of it.

The only thing that was not mediaeval about him was the way he was looking after those thankless girls, who never apparently lost a chance of snubbing him; an Abbot would, I fancied, have had them whipped. At any rate he would have made a dam fine Abbot, if he had had the luck to be born in his proper time. I could see him, a magnificent figure in first-class armour, resolving a mêlée into its constituent parts with a mace.

And what did he know about that smuggling aeroplane? The way he had looked at me when I questioned him about it had been so queer that I had a hunch that he knew a lot more about it than his stepdaughter guessed. Well, I must keep his name out of the business, if it turned out as bad as seemed likely, if it could possibly be done, even if he had run pretty near to condoning a felony. I was disposed to allow a certain latitude to a man who was keeping a young girl out of a mess, however big a fool she might be, and he had been a good man during the war, a very good man.

And what had become of that cargo of cocaine? I had no doubt about the size of it, for from Garfield's cash payments into his bank I knew that his share of it would be from six to fifteen hundred pounds and that was not likely to be more than a half-share, if as much, and two or three thousand pounds' worth of cocaine makes a good-sized packet to hide. It was not in the church. Probably it was in the Rectory. I could not think that that unfortunate child would be living under such a strain if she had got it safely to London in her Austin Seven. If it was in the Rectory, there it must stay for the present. I hadn't a shred of evidence on which to apply for a search warrant, if I had wished to, as I didn't. A Persian lamb coat may be a very suspicious object in a Marsh, but it is not evidence of cocaine smuggling. It was open to me to disregard the law of trespass and search the Rectory without having obtained that search warrant. But I was not in a hurry to do that. I could do with more information.

I thought I would drop the cocaine smuggling for the moment and get on with the murder. I had not yet made the acquaintance, or questioned, Mrs. Holdsworth's daughter, and since her mother was at Applecross Farm this seemed an excellent time to get her to myself. I crossed the road and knocked at the door of their cottage. A girl opened it, a strapping, fat-cheeked wench with a high complexion, and a good deal more intelligent to look at than her mother. She knew of course who I was, but did not seem at all timid or embarrassed. I questioned her, as I had questioned her mother, about Garfield. Evidently she did not share her mother's dislike of him, and I gathered that she had not been told of the discovery of the lace handkerchief and also that she could tell me nothing about him.

Then I said: "Do you remember Mr. Garfield's having a small rifle? I don't mean either of those guns which are still at Applecross Farm, but a small rifle?"

"Oh yes, sir. You mean the rifle he taught the young ladies at the Rectory to shoot with," she said quickly, with that complete knowledge of everyone's doings they all seemed to possess.

She hesitated, considering; then she said: "It hasn't been at the farm for months, sir."

That settled the question of whether Garfield had taken that rifle away from the Rectory. He had not. I thanked her and came out of the cottage. Walking, or rather toddling, along the footpath on the other side of the road was Giuseppe!

CHAPTER IX
Giuseppe

OF all the people I might have expected to see walking in the heart of Romney Marsh, Giuseppe was the last. But when my eyes did fall on that astonishing sight, I was a good deal more pleased than surprised: it absolutely settled the question of the cargo that aeroplane landed in the forty-acre field and, what was more, it settled the question whether it had gone to London or not. It was cocaine and it had not gone to London.

Giuseppe had been known to the police for years as one of London's most undesirable aliens and as undeportable as he was undesirable because he carried on a quite reputable business as a wine merchant in Lemon Street, W.1, and went to Mass every Sunday morning at the Oratory in the immaculate morning dress, silk hat and all, of the English gentleman—the infernal little hypocrite! For of all the blackguards in the underworld of London who have thriven and grown bloated on the follies and vices of their fellow-citizens, Giuseppe was one of the most mischievous and most successful. Since the War he had drawn the profits from at least a dozen disreputable night-clubs or actual gambling-dens in the West End of London. But since he had always remained far away in the background, running them through agents on whom he had such a hold that they dared neither swindle nor betray him, keenly as the Yard had hankered to lay hands on him and put him away for ten or fifteen years, it had never been able to get the evidence to connect him with one of them.

What on earth had brought him into the open this way? What had I stumbled on? Something much bigger than I had guessed. Of course the police had never doubted that selling dope had been one of his most profitable sidelines, or, for that matter, that the White Slave Traffic had been another. But his presence in St. Joseph's could mean nothing less than a serious dislocation of the dope traffic, a dislocation so serious indeed that it had rendered it necessary that the master mind should go to the spot where the murder of Garfield had brought that dislocation about to straighten things out.

Another thing was certain: Giuseppe could not know that Scotland Yard had taken up the investigation of the murder, or he would never have risked coming here; he must be believing that it was still in the hands of the Ryeford police, who would not know him. I wished to goodness that I had remained a young gentleman on a holiday a little longer.

But even while these considerations were running through my mind I was doing what I could to repair that error. Giuseppe did not know me—at least, I had no reason to suppose that, though he had been pointed out to me, I had been pointed out to him, for I had never handled any night-club work—but in case he did, I took out my eyeglass and stuck it into my eye. I thought that the eyeglass and my plus-fours should do the trick. I had been walking towards him and I looked at him as long and as curiously as a resident in an out-of-the-way village would look at an interesting stranger. He showed no signs of recognising me.

He was an interesting sight, well on the grotesque side, for he had surrounded his short, fat figure with a plus-four suit that looked as if it had been hired at an emporium in the Mile End Road to wear on a trip to Southend for the day.

And now that he had come to St. Joseph's, what was he going to do? Taking it that he had come to find the missing cargo and arrange for the landing of others, did he know to whom to apply, or had he to find out? Almost certainly he had to find out, or he would never have come himself but sent an agent. How was he going to do it? He ought to have guessed that with his Neapolitan appearance he was the last person in the world to inspire confidence in English villagers and get information from them. He must have a pretty high opinion of his diplomatic powers.

I had gone about forty yards past him when Miss Carr came out of the "White Horse" and up the street towards me. It occurred to me that she was the very person to take a message to Collins, and as I did not wish to draw Giuseppe's attention to myself, Collins was the man to watch him. He would pay little attention to an Inspector of the Ryeford Police Force. As I crossed the road to her I saw that Giuseppe had toddled along as far as the church.

But as we met and I opened my lips to speak to her, she said in great excitement: "Oh, Mr. Carthew, such a strange-looking foreigner has come down in a big car—there he is, up by the church—and he's been asking for Mrs. Garfield. Pa didn't like the look of him, so he sent him along to the Gate Farm to inquire there. He thought it would keep him busy till he could let you know, and I've come to tell you.

I laughed: the thought of an interview between Giuseppe and Mr. John Pringle amused me.

"That was a great idea of your father's, and I'm very much obliged to him," I said. "And now will you do something else for me?"

"Will you go to Inspector Collins, who is in charge of the police who are dredging the dykes in the forty-acre field, and describe that foreigner to him and tell him to watch him and let me know his movements? Tell him not to be too conspicuous about it."

"Certainly," she said again, and her eyes sparkled at the idea of being mixed up in something mysterious and helping the police.

We walked briskly together to the top of the lane to Applecross Farm, and she turned down it. I took the opportunity of getting another look at Giuseppe. Toddling away in the distance against the background of the Marsh, his short, round figure looked positively pathetic.

I walked on to the "White Horse" and saw a Voisin saloon standing in front of the door. The driver's seat was empty, and since I did not wish him to see me before I had seen him, I went round to the back-door and found Mrs. Carr in the kitchen and told her that I wished to get a peep at the foreigner's chauffeur unobserved. She took me along the passage and opened the door at the back of the bar about an inch. I peeped through it; leaning over the bar with a pint of ale before him stood Wally True. The last time I had seen him he had been in the dock of the Old Bailey on the occasion on which he had received a sentence of eighteen months' hard labour for burglary. To his neighbours in Hoxton, Wally was a hard-working taxi-driver; but the Yard knew him as one of the most able cat-burglars in London, who found his taxi uncommonly useful to get to the cribs he cracked and even more useful to get away from them in; for while a policeman may take notice of a car in the small hours, a taxi moves practically unnoticed in any neighbourhood at any hour.

I had no reason to suppose that Wally knew me, for I had nothing to do with the burglary for which he had been convicted, so that I need not fear recognition. But it was astonishing that Giuseppe should be travelling about the country with such a notorious thug as Wally, and I could not conceive why he had taken the risk. It could only be that he felt that he needed a scrapper to protect him, or supposed that the cocaine had fallen into the hands of someone who would not part with it and wished to have it stolen from him. Certainly he would never have been seen in London with such a disreputable chauffeur.

But the awkward thing was that Giuseppe was seeking Mrs. Garfield. I was sure enough that, though apparently he did not know it, he was really seeking Miss Kate Bolsover. The question for me was: should I let him find her, or not? It seemed likely that I should have to let him find her sooner or later, or I could make no progress in the business of the cocaine. But it seemed to me that at present it was too soon. I was not in the position to direct or even handle the developments of the affair that would follow their coming together. He might know her by sight, or he might not; but if he came across her wearing that Persian lamb coat in the village, a man of his shrewdness was not less likely than I to wonder how a young lady in a rectory in Romney Marsh came to be its owner, and connect her with Garfield. It was even probable that he had had her described to him and would recognise her as soon as he saw her. I had better try to prevent them from meeting.

Also it would be a good thing to put any obstacles I could in the way of Giuseppe's obtaining information about Garfield, and I at once sealed up the chief source from which my information had come. I asked Mrs. Carr to call her husband into the kitchen, and when he came I thanked him for having sent word of the foreigner's arrival to me, begged him to keep in mind any questions the foreigner or his chauffeur might ask about Garfield, to be careful how he answered them, and to get everything out of them he could, giving away as little as possible. I came away sure that they would get nothing out of Carr, but not at all sure that Carr would get nothing out of them.

Then I went quickly to the Rectory. Annie opened the door, and I asked if I could speak to Miss Bolsover. She showed me into the drawing-room and in a couple of minutes Kate came.

She looked at me with hostile, uneasy eyes and said in a voice in which there was no welcome: "Good morning, Mr. Carthew. What did you want to speak to me about?"

She did not look as if my coming to St. Joseph's had eased the strain for her at all; indeed she was looking almost frail. I felt uncommonly sorry for her: she was so young to be in such trouble. How she must detest me! Then I saw a smudge of flour on the back of her right hand and realised that I had disturbed her in the middle of some cooking.

"Good morning," I said in my pleasantest voice. "There's a curious-looking foreigner, who is known to Scotland Yard as a thoroughly bad lot, going about the village inquiring for Mrs. Garfield. I have come to ask you, as a friend of Mr. Garfield, whether you have any reason to suppose that there is a Mrs. Garfield. It might be very helpful to us to get into touch with her."

She hesitated, and I guessed that her mouth had gone pretty dry at hearing about Giuseppe's inquiries, and goodness knows I did not wish to worry her; but she had to be warned.

Then she made up her mind and said angrily: "Mrs. Garfield? What should I know about Mrs. Garfield? Why should you come to me?"

She cut me short, saying more angrily: "I was nothing of the kind! No closer than half a dozen other people! I wasn't in his confidence!"

"Of course you weren't," I said quickly. "But you saw a good deal of him, and it is possible that he let something drop that led you to suppose that he was a married man, and as I say, it might be very useful to us to get into touch with his wife."

"He didn't," she said more quietly. "I had no reason whatever to suppose that he was a married man. In fact I took it for granted that he was a bachelor—everybody did."

"Then it looks as if he had been masquerading as a bachelor—if, that is, Giuseppe has any grounds for his inquiries," said I.

It evidently struck her that she had said too much, for she did not answer me for a moment; then she said angrily: "What does it matter what I think? And what's the good of bothering me with questions? What could I know about Mr. Garfield?"

"You might know a lot! And you might be helpful," I said, and paused. Then I added slowly: "And I might be helpful too. I'm quite willing to be."

She looked at me for a moment with startled eyes, then she said: "What on earth do you mean? How can you be helpful? Who to? What about?"

"Well, it's a good long time since I saw anyone who looked to want help more than you do," I said. "But I'm sorry I bothered you about Giuseppe's inquiries. Please don't tell anyone that I know this rascal's name and who he is. I must be getting along to see whether that rifle has been found in the dykes."

She was staring at me with puzzled eyes. "You are mysterious," she said. "I don't know what you're talking about." She paused and added scornfully: "But I suppose policemen have to be mysterious."

"They do—they do. Good morning," I said, and cleared out of the room and out of the house.

But I was worried about her, badly worried. I was sure that she was a nice girl, though she did look a bit wilful and obstinate. In fact I had been worrying about her ever since our first meeting. There were law-breakers and law-breakers; with some one sympathises, with others one does not. I had no doubt that she had played the fool and got into a devil of a mess; but I had no doubt also that the mess was of Garfield's making and not wholly her own. I could not blame a girl of spirit for making a bid for life, as I guessed she had done. Here she had been, buried in the desolate Marsh with no proper outlet for her energies or natural instincts and no prospect of finding one. It was just her misfortune that Garfield had come along and led her apparently into all kinds of mischief.

There might possibly be something to be said for her shooting him, if she had shot him. But I thought that the murder had been too deliberate to be her doing; if she had shot him out of hand on the spur of the moment, it would have been a different matter—more womanly. Besides, the theory that she had shot him was difficult to reconcile with the fact that the cargo of cocaine was missing. But with women you never know: they are as a rule tougher than men and do the most extraordinary things without an effort, and then stick at a quite ordinary thing; in fact they always seem to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

I was not standing still while I was thinking this; I was being busy. When I came out of the Rectory I saw Giuseppe coming away from the Gate Farm. Even at that distance he looked to me depressed, as if he was coming away with a flea in his ear, and I grinned. John Pringle was certainly capable of putting one in it in a very forcible way. But though I should not have wondered if that boorish and cantankerous bumpkin had referred him to Kate for the information he was seeking, I was not bothering about it; after my warning Giuseppe would never see her.

What I was bothering about was Mrs. Holdsworth and her daughter. Garfield's servants were the obvious persons of whom to make inquiries, and they might tell him all they liked about Garfield, but they must not tell him about me. I walked quickly to their cottage and told the girl that, if a foreigner came making inquiries, she was to say nothing about there being a detective from Scotland Yard in the village, and above all not to tell him that I was the detective. Then I went down to Applecross and gave her mother the same instructions. I was sure that they would follow them.

Then I went down to the policemen who were raking the dykes. They had finished raking the dyke at the bottom of the forty-acre field, and were at work on the dyke at the bottom of the meadow beyond it. Collins was not with them; he was watching the movements of Giuseppe, and considering the smallness of the village and the sparseness of the cover, he could not be finding it easy to watch him without being seen by him. I was pleased to see that most of the villagers had lost their interest in the raking, and drifted away to their work or their homes; the fewer of them there were about to be questioned the less Giuseppe would learn. I went back to Applecross and smoked a pipe, and thought about Kate and how I was going to get the information I wanted from her, till my lunch was ready. Collins did not join me, so I took it that he was still following Giuseppe.

I finished my lunch and then I bethought myself to question Mrs. Holdsworth about the smuggler's aeroplane, She could not add to the information that had already come my way; like Carr, she had heard aeroplanes go away in the middle of the night three or four times, but since she also had supposed always that it was a machine which had made a forced landing, she paid little attention to them and did not know whether they had gone away over the sea or over the hills.

I had just finished questioning her when there came a knocking at the front door.

She went to it, came back, and said: "Mr. Walter Johnson would like to speak to you, sir," and ushered in Giuseppe.

I did not rise from my chair, but I was quick getting my eyeglass into my eye, and I looked at him steadily, the proper English and-who-the-devil-may-you-be look.

He was used to a lack of deference, I fancy, for he came into the room with a cringing air, bowing and smiling and rubbing his hands together, and said: "Pardon me, sir. But I see from ze smoke in ze chimney zat someone leeve in ze 'ouse of my ol' frien', Mr. Garfield, and I call to make an inquiry. You are 'ees son, eh? Or 'ees nephew?"

"No. I'm only the nearest heir who has turned up so far," said I. "What is it you want to know?"

"Eet ees 'ees vife—'ees lofely vife—I inquire about. Ees she vell and vare she 'ees?" he said, smiling in a sickly way.

"Then I'm up a tree," said I. "But are you sure that he had a wife? Do you know her?"

"No, I do not know 'er. But I know zat 'e 'ave a lofely vife. 'E 'as told me, an' ozzers zey tell me too," he said.

"But hang it all! If he had a wife she'd have turned up and claimed his property before now!" I exclaimed.

"Yes: eet ees strange. But she veel come—she veel come soon," he said. "I expeck to find 'er 'ere. Yes."

"Well, this is nice hearing!" I said. "She'll turn up, will she? A lovely woman, you say. What's she like?"

"She 'ees dark and pale and not very tall, but wiz a beautiful figure an' splendeed eyes," he said.

"Oh, nozzing important or in a 'urry—just a leetle matter of busines I come about. She may be able to tell me, or not," he said, sticking out his hands palms upwards in a funny gesture, and smiling very agreeably. Then his face changed, and his beady black eyes sparkled with a sudden sharpness. "'E did not speak to you about 'ees busines, eh—my ol' frien' Garfield?"

I hesitated. Should I let him gather that I was in the secret of the cocaine, or should I not? No: I would not. I should get nothing out of him; he was far too cute to give anything away unless he was sure of his ground.

He looked depressed; then he shrugged his shoulders and said glumly: "Zen zare ees nozzing to do—not now—not teel 'ees lofely vife come." He paused, looking at me hard and hesitating; then he went on: "Yes. She veel come, an' would you oblige? Veel you write to me an' say zat she 'ave come? Or best steel eet would be eef you would vire. Eet veel be no trouble. Look, I veel myself write ze vire and put a stomp on. Eet veel only be to tak' eet to ze post offeece."

He thanked me warmly, drew out a large pocket-book, took a stamped telegraph form from it, wrote on it with a gold fountain pen, and handed it to me. It ran:

So he did write his aitches. I put the form in my note-case, and he thanked me warmly with his voice and hands, and turned to go.

He was certainly speaking the truth, but I went on: "You don't think it was a busines rival by any chance?"

Again he was speaking the truth, as far as he knew it; but I went on: "But how do you know he hadn't?"

"Then it must have been his lovely wife, and that's why she hasn't turned up," I suggested brightly.

He frowned till he scowled; then he said, keeping his hands quite still: "I 'ave thought of eet. Dam 'er! Eef eet ees so, I veel not rest nevare——"

He stopped short, as if he were saying too much, bowed, and said: "Good-bye, sir," and slithered out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

He would have done better to stay in Soho, I fancied; but he had been useful. His coming for the cocaine had made it clear that it had not gone to London. His certainty that Garfield had not been murdered by a business rival—and it had been real certainty—had disposed of the theory that Garfield had been murdered by a hijacker who had got away with the cocaine. I had never taken that theory very seriously, but there it was, disposed of. Giuseppe would come back, whether I sent his wire or not; he would come back to make sure whether Garfield's "lofely vife" had turned up or not; he might so easily hold up the wire. I sat thinking out ways of taking him back to London myself—with the cocaine.

Whether I did so or not rested with Kate Bolsover. Confound it! How her unhappy face did worry me!

I had sat there for half an hour thinking of Giuseppe and the cocaine, and ways of getting both, when Collins came. He had few movements of Giuseppe to report. After leaving the Gate Farm he had called at the Rectory and stayed there for a quarter of an hour, and then he had gone to the "White Horse" and lunched, and after lunch he had come to Applecross Farm, and after leaving it had returned to his car and driven away—to London, he had told Carr.

"What did he want with you, sir?" said Collins when he came to the end of his report.

"The same thing as he wanted from everyone in the place—Mrs. Garfield's address," said I. "I told him there wasn't any Mrs. Garfield, as far as I knew. And he said that there was. But as he'd never seen her and only heard from somebody or other that there was, he was most likely wrong."

"He wanted to see her on business; but I couldn't get out of him what the business was. But he's a queer-looking bird to want to talk to a lady on business, is Mr. Walter Johnson—Walfredo Johnsono should be nearer the name he was christened," said I. "But I thought you had better keep an eye on him."

"No. He believes that I'm Garfield's heir," said I. "It may come in useful when he comes down again."

"Yes, sir—if he does come down again," said Collins. "Well, I'd better be getting off to rake the Elmer Dyke on both sides of the Rye Road. And I met an officer from Ryeford at the top of the lane bringing this telegram for you, sir." And he handed it to me.

GARFIELD STAYED FIVE WEEK-ENDS GREAT CENTRAL HOTEL WITH WIFE DARK PALE GOOD FIGURE WORE PERSIAN LAMB COAT IN SPRING.

CHAPTER X
Another Talk With Pringle

IT certainly never rains but it pours, and here inside an hour were two descriptions of Mrs. Garfield which applied very well to Kate Bolsover. I was more pleased than ever that I had given her that warning. I was also pleased that I had kept most of the points of interest in the case to myself.

That girl's unhappy face was beginning to haunt me. I let Collins go to superintend the raking of the Elmer Dyke, and sat on, considering the wire. There was a thing about it that needed explaining: why had Garfield stayed at the Great Central with this dark lady when he might have stayed at his flat? It told rather against Giuseppe's belief that the dark lady was his "lofely vife." If she had been his wife, whatever was the objection to his taking her to his flat? It does not do to neglect anything: I must have inquiries made about his marriage.

But for no reason that I cared to look into, I found myself with no desire that the Yard should make them. I was more determined than ever to keep things as much in my own hands as I possibly could, and I told myself that I was afraid if I bothered Goad too much about the case, he might come to think it so complicated as to need a more experienced Inspector to deal with it, and instruct one of the boys of the bull-dog breed to take it off my hands, and he might bungle it. I did not really think that the Persian lamb coat, which was a point that had not got into any of my reports, would say anything to the man who superseded me, but he might get on to something else and cause a scandal that would hurt the Padre badly. I certainly should not put anyone who took over the case on to the Persian lamb coat. I had certainly points enough to give anyone who took over the case, without putting him on to that; neither did I think that I should inform him that Garfield's missing rifle had been at the Rectory.

Confound the girl's unhappy face! It would certainly get me the sack from the Yard before I had done.

But this matter of Garfield's wife had to be gone into, and of course it might turn out that the dark lady in a Persian lamb coat was not Kate Bolsover. But I did not write to Goad to get the information—I wrote to my sister Amy, who was an uncommonly clever girl and had helped me once or twice before in details of cases, and asked her to go to Somerset House and find out whether Robert Garfield, of 19, Waterfield Street, Bayswater, and Turpentine Court, in the City, and Alexandra Mansions, Tankerville Street, Kensington, had been married, and if he had, how many times, and whether any of his wives had died. I could rely on her doing the job thoroughly, for she was always eager to help me; in fact it was the dream of her life that I should raise some capital and retire from the Yard and start a private enquiry agency with her as my right-hand woman.

I finished the letter and lit a pipe. So far I had not obtained, as far as I could see, a scrap of evidence as to who murdered Robert Garfield, or a scrap of evidence that an aeroplane had ever landed a dram of cocaine in Romney Marsh, but all the same I congratulated myself on the progress I had made. I had undoubtedly had astonishing luck to have tumbled on two such illuminating points in the case as the angle of the bullets and the Persian lamb coat. I was pretty sure that the evidence I needed would come, and that, when it did, it would come with a rush.

Giuseppe's visit had given me an excellent pretext for another interview with Mr. John Pringle, and after posting the letter to my sister, I walked on to the Gate Farm. Again Miss Pringle opened the door and showed no uneasiness at the sight of me; indeed she smiled, timidly.

"Good morning," said I. "A Mr. Walter Johnson called on you this morning, and I have reason to believe that he was making inquiries about Mr. Garfield, and I've called to ask what those inquiries were."

"Yes," said I. "He was a short, stout gentleman, wearing a bright plus-four suit, and he had a dark, greasy-looking face and black eyes and black hair."

"Oh, that foreigner. I didn't know his name was Johnson. Yes; he did call and saw my brother. But I don't know what he said to him. Jack hasn't said anything about it," she said.

She hesitated; then she said uneasily: "I don't think Jack's in a very good temper."

"I should think that must be as trying as it's rare, and Mr. Johnson's plus-four suit might be a shock to anyone. But all the same duty is duty, and I think I'll see your brother," said I, smiling pleasantly.

Apparently the smile established a certain sympathy between us, for she smiled back at me and said: "Oh, well, I've told you."

She led the way down the passage to a small room at the back of the house, which was apparently Mr. John Pringle's den. At least it would have been difficult for a room in which Mr. John Pringle was sitting not to look like a den, for he himself was at the moment looking like one of the larger carnivora, with a touch of the bull in him, and twice as savage. She showed me into it, and shut the door behind me. Mr. John Pringle greeted me with a scowl but I perceived that it was rather a doubtful scowl, and I fancied that the sinister looks I had given him on my last visit had sunk in a bit.

"Good morning, Mr. Pringle," I said in my firmest official manner. "I'm informed that Mr. Walter Johnson called on you this morning, making inquiries about Mrs. Garfield."

He swallowed hard, and I felt that he had swallowed some such suggestion as that I should go to hell; then he growled: "If you mean that dirty little foreigner, he didn't get anything out of me. I sent him away with a flea in his ear."

"Yes; I dare say you did," said I. "But what I want to know is: what did he inquire about?"

He swallowed another suggestion with even greater difficulty, and growled: "He wanted to know if I knew Mrs. Garfield and where she was, and I told him that I didn't know any Mrs. Garfield, and I'd never seen any Mrs. Garfield, and I didn't know where she was, and if I did know I shouldn't tell him, and I was fed up with the whole business, and he could go, and he went."

"I can't understand why you get so excited when the Garfield case is mentioned," I said quietly.

"I don't get excited!" he said in a very excited way. "The thing is, I'm fed up with it! I've told you I was!"

"Yes. But I don't see why you should be so fed up with it that you start making a tremendous fuss whenever you're asked a simple question about it," I said severely.

"I've been bothered about it all I want to by detectives and people who call themselves detectives, and reporters, just because I seem to be the only man in the village anybody thinks of bothering, and I've had enough of it. A man can't call his life his own with all you people about, and then this dirty little foreigner came this morning, and started bothering me again," he said, still excited, and now rather purple with his excitement.

"Had you ever any reason to suppose that there was any Mrs. Garfield? Did Garfield ever say anything that led you to think that he had a wife?" I asked.

"No, he didn't. But if you ask me, I shouldn't be surprised if there were three or four Mrs. Garfields," he replied.

"He was that kind of man, and I knew it—always messing round with a lot of women. You could see he was that kind of man," he said savagely.

"You could, could you?" said I. "Did he ever mess round with any particular woman in St. Joseph's?"

He swallowed another suggestion and hesitated; then he seemed to shrink into himself a bit and growled: "No: I never noticed his messing about with any particular woman—no more did anybody else, or I should have heard about it."

These lovers have strange intuitions; also they can lie. But Mr. John Pringle did not lie well.

He glared at me, half furious, half frightened at having given himself away, and said: "I didn't hate him; I just didn't like him. He wasn't the kind of man I wanted to know."

That sent him well up into the air, and once more he told me that he was fed up with the Garfield case and would not say another word about it. Evidently he would not say another word about it; so I left him and came away, feeling strongly that, if I was superseded, his unfortunate manner would probably get him hanged. If Garfield's rifle had still been in the cupboard under the stairs in the Rectory, I should be hunting for the evidence to hang him myself, and a business it would be to get any! But till the matter of that missing rifle was cleared up, I was not going to get to work on John Pringle, for it might prove a waste of time. All the same, Pringle knew things about Garfield that his other neighbours did not know, but I did not think he knew anything I had not guessed.

I walked up to the Elmer dyke and watched the raking. It was easier work than raking the dykes in the forty-acre field, and was producing a much poorer harvest of boots, kitchen-ware and tins. Mostly the rakes moved easily through soft mud, bringing up only rotting sedge; but they did not bring up the missing rifle. It was nearly sunset before they had raked the dyke for a hundred and fifty yards on both sides of the road to Rye, and after consulting with Collins I stopped the work. We were agreed that if the murderer had not thrown the weapon into that three hundred yards of the dyke, it was so unlikely that he had thrown it into that dyke at all that it was waste of time and labour to rake more of it.

We walked back to the village, discussing other places worth searching for the weapon, for Collins, I felt sure, was only happy working, and I wanted to keep him happy, and we could think of no other place. It seemed most likely that the murderer had taken the weapon away with him. Collins and his men went into the "White Horse" to refresh themselves after their labours, and I went with them. When they had gone I questioned Carr about Giuseppe. As I expected, when he returned to lunch, Giuseppe had questioned Carr at length about Garfield and his habits. But Carr had told him nothing. There was really no need for him to have been so guarded, for really he had nothing to tell that mattered. He, or rather Miss Carr, had told me so much because I knew, or had guessed, so much that Giuseppe would never have the chance of knowing.

I went back to Applecross Farm and wrote my report to the Yard. The questioning of the Holdsworth girl and John Pringle, and the raking of the dykes for the weapon, made a good enough show, especially the raking of the dykes. I made no mention of the visit of Giuseppe because I needed some more definite facts about the landings of the aeroplanes and their cargoes before I informed Goad of my theory, and the mere fact that Giuseppe had come to St. Joseph's might easily cause him to send down one of the detective-inspectors who deal with the dope traffic to look into the matter. It was only fair that since I had guessed at the cocaine smuggling, I should have the credit of it. When I had developed that guess into a real discovery so that the credit became worth claiming, I could inform Goad of it. I could certainly do as much in the matter as any other man who might be sent down.

I went back to the "White Horse" and supped and listened to the Carrs on the subject of Mrs. Garfield; they seemed to think that the fact that there was a Mrs. Garfield put quite a different complexion on the murder.

Indeed, with that proneness to think well of their own sex which is a characteristic of women of a class, Miss Carr said: "I can't see why she couldn't have come down from London and shot him."

"But how did she get into the forty-acre field at twelve o'clock at night?" I asked.

"What beats me is how did anyone or anything get into the forty-acre field at twelve o'clock at night," said Carr.

I discussed the question, and so the conversation moved from the possible criminality of Mrs. Garfield.

After supper I bethought myself of the Rector's invitation to spend the evening at the Rectory, and I went. Annie opened the door to me and showed me into the drawing-room. The two girls were sitting by the fire, Joan sewing, Kate idle. I guessed she had been looking into the fire, brooding unhappily.

They looked rather startled at my entry—at least Joan did; Kate looked at me rather with an air of inquiry—gloomy inquiry.

I greeted them and said: "Mr. Paton invited me to come in when I had finished my day's detecting, and since I have finished it, I came."

"Give me a little time," I said. "Look how long the Ryeford police had before I was sent along."

"Well, I can't think who murdered Mr. Garfield, and I've thought and thought," said Joan. "It can't have been anyone we know."

"Did you see that odd little foreigner who called this morning inquiring for Mrs. Garfield?" said Joan. "We were surprised when Mr. Paton told us what he wanted. We didn't see him, for Kate saw him coming and told Annie to show him straight into the study."

"Well, he came to Applecross Farm and saw me. He is under the impression that I am Mr. Garfield's heir," I said.

"But don't let's talk about detecting; I've had a day of it, and you've no idea how raked dykes can smell," I said.

Joan laughed and Kate smiled, relieved to get away from the subject, and I began to talk about the society of the Marsh and why it was so small. The reason Joan gave me applied to every part of the country: the men who would then be of an age and a position to marry had perished in the War. The discussion put us on a friendly footing; Joan had forgotten the errand on which I had come to St. Joseph's, and it was no longer prominent in Kate's mind, for she smiled quite easily at the methods I suggested of producing a brighter Marsh. Then Paton came in, cheerful at having finished his sermon, and a shadow seemed to fall on us with his coming.

But I would not have it, and I began to chaff him about his rights of high, low and middle justice. He stuck to it that he had them and would exercise them if he thought it proper to do so and the opportunity came his way. I suggested a number of cases, most of them ridiculous, in which he might have the opportunity, and had them all, except Kate, laughing. But I was pleased to see her smiling: it would do her good. With that gloom cleared off her face and some colour in it, and smiling, she was entrancingly pretty. It was no wonder that her face stuck in my mind, and I was almost sorry that I had not shot Garfield myself. But perhaps it was better as it was.

Then we talked about the Marsh itself. I fancied that it was impossible to live in the Marsh without talking about it. Paton did most of the talking; it seemed to have cast a kind of spell on him. I could understand it: its wildness and desolation must have suited his violent moods when they came on him; probably it brought them on oftener than the atmosphere of a village in the more peaceful Midlands would have done.

"I don't know what it is. I suppose the configuration of the ground has some peculiar effect on the waves which carry sound—the sound-waves or whatever they are. But in places in the Marsh you can hear people talking in their ordinary voices on a spot a quarter of a mile away as clearly as if they were in the room with you."

"That's extraordinarily interesting," I said. "I should like awfully to hear them doing it. Are there many of these whispering galleries? Are they very far away?"

"I don't know whether there are many of them. As a matter of fact I only know of one, but if there's one, there must be more," he said, and hesitated. Then he went on: "From a place in the Rectory garden, you can hear every word that is spoken on part of the tennis lawn at Applecross Farm."

I happened to be looking at Kate's face and I saw how astonished she was, and Joan said reproachfully: "And you never told us!"

"I meant to," he said, and then he added with a sigh: "But you don't care much whether I tell you things or not."

"And it isn't the right night. You must wait for a still day with the wind in the north-east," he said.

"Well, we shan't have to wait long for a north-east wind. We never do," said I. "And of course it's with a north-east wind that you get still days."

He went on talking about the Marsh, of the lost gold communion plate at New Church, of the strange birds that sometimes came into it, such as golden ibises, and of its people. I listened to him, watching Kate's face; the light and colour had died out of it; the look of strain had come back; her brow was furrowed by painful thought; now and then she gave him a stealthy, inquiring look. He did not seem to notice them.

At half-past ten Annie brought in tea and whisky-and-soda, and broke the thread of the Padre's talk. I turned it into a lighter vein, and at last, working hard, made Kate smile again. But it was not a very bright smile. At eleven I rose to go; but they would not hear of it, and I stayed till half-past. They did not often get a bright evening—not in the autumn, at any rate.

As I walked down to Applecross Farm I told myself that my hunch, or I suppose I should say my intuition, that the Padre knew a good deal more about the Garfield case than he had admitted, was right. How much had he heard in that whispering gallery? And why the devil hadn't he acted? He had not acted, I was sure, or Kate would not still be showing that dislike of him. But why hadn't he? Action was his strong point. And he had been through the war.

But he had known more of the business than I. Perhaps he had thought that if he did act he might be one of the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.

CHAPTER XI
Joan Talks

THE next day was Sunday, and I went to church. My reason for going was not wholly devotional; I also had in mind the fact that I should see a number of the other inhabitants of St. Joseph's, some of whom might also have been connected with Garfield, and I did not think that I ought to neglect the opportunity. Also I should have together under my eye the people whom I knew to have been connected with him. I arrived at the church just after the service had begun, and slipped so quietly into the nearest pew that only two or three people at the back turned their heads to see who had come in. The congregation in the front pews did not even know that I was in the church.

The Padre's unpopularity with the women of St. Joseph's, of which Carr had spoken, did not seem to keep them away from the church, for it was nearly full. Everyone in St. Joseph's whom I knew to be acquaintances of Garfield, including John Pringle, was there. I should have to wait till the service was over to get a look at the other men of the better class—I took it that they were farmers—when they came out of church, for they were in the front pews with their backs to me.

The service, considering the modest means at the Padre's disposal, was very well done. The small choir of four men and six boys had been well picked and well trained for a village choir. There were enough of them as regards volume of sound for the little church, and I have heard much larger choirs of more pretentious churches who did not sing half as well. The small boy who swung the censer of incense knew his job and was in his right place, doing the right thing, all the time, and since there was a great deal of ceremonial he had quite a job to do. It was evident that the Padre had put his heart into getting the church as good as could be, and he was himself, as always, a splendid figure, and in his robes, or vestments, or whatever they are called, he did indeed look like one of those old militant churchmen who rode about with a mace, beating up the enemies of the Church. His sermon was short.

With regard to the probable actors in the Garfield case, I saw a thing I expected to see, and nothing fresh. The pew of the Pringles was right in front and on a level with the Rectory pew. All through the service and the sermon John Pringle kept turning his head to look at Kate Bolsover, and he did not just glance at her and turn away; he looked at her for anything up to half a minute at a time, stared, in fact. Of course he could only see her profile, unless she turned her head towards him. She did not turn her head; indeed, I could almost have sworn that he never once saw anything but her profile. It was plain enough that he was still very keen on her, but that she, if Miss Carr was right and she had at one time been interested in him, was thinking of quite other things now. My own feeling was that few things worse could happen to her than to be married to that vile-tempered lout. At any rate his absorbing interest in her might very well have proved a pretty strong motive for his murdering Garfield. However, there was still that missing rifle to be found. But for that, and perhaps the dope traffic, I should not have bothered to look farther for the murderer. Very likely I was wasting my time by doing so.

The service came to an end, and the congregation came out of the church. I stood beside the path a few yards from the door and watched them come. There was no one among those of the congregation I had not yet seen who looked at all likely to be a possible murderer of Garfield. They were farmers and their families, and their labourers and their families. Kate Bolsover actually smiled faintly as she greeted me when she came out of the church, and I fancied that she had had a better night than she had been having.

I had my dinner at the "White Horse," and in the afternoon I went for a long walk in the Marsh. I had plenty to think about, and the question whether I was not wasting my time in hunting for the missing rifle, when so many things pointed to John Pringle, kept my mind busy for a long while.

It was fine and sunny when I started, and the Marsh looked almost cheerful. But a bank of heavy clouds drifted up, and a misty dreariness settled down over its grey and drab flatness, and when the darkness came on it grew uncommonly eerie. It was a place of queer sounds, never close to, but at a distance. I was glad to get back to the warm fire in Garfield's sitting-room, and I cooked my own supper of sausages and bacon, and after it settled down to read and smoke. I did not settle down very well; I was wishing, till it grew too late to go, to go to the Rectory. But though the Padre had invited me to come in any evening, and Joan had said, "Yes, do," I did not like to go again so soon.

Next morning I had a pleasant surprise; indeed, it was almost a shock. Three letters, redirected by my sister Amy, came from our flat; two were bills, but the third was from Messrs. Gates & Gould, a firm of lawyers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, informing me that poor old Carruthers-Moffat had left me five thousand pounds.

It was indeed splendid news, and how pleased Amy would be! Here was the private inquiry office she had so wanted, and for me a new and promising opening in life; I should be taking on a job I had really learnt, and with fair luck should soon be making a much larger income than ever I could make at Scotland Yard. I should be realizing the dream of many leading detectives about twenty years earlier in life than most of them had the money to make it come true.

But I did wish to leave the Yard with one really striking coup to my credit, and if, before resigning, I could get to the bottom of this dope smuggling so as to put Giuseppe away for a few years, I should have made one; it afforded me, indeed, a greater opportunity than the murder of Garfield, for it was really much more important that a good many dozen men and women should be deprived of the means of wrecking themselves than that somebody, say John Pringle, should hang for the blackguard who had provided them with the drug. Nevertheless the Garfield murder must not be neglected, and probably if I got to the bottom of one I should get to the bottom of the other; therefore when Collins arrived, eager for work, at half-past nine, I informed him of John Pringle's bitter dislike of Garfield and of his being the possessor of a small sporting rifle, the bore of which he had refused to divulge, and of his furious refusal to answer any questions whatever about the murdered man.

Collins was surprised that I had discovered this entirely new group of facts, for the Ryeford police had paid very little attention to John Pringle, and had accepted his assurances that he could throw no light on the matter readily enough. He seemed to have treated them more civilly than he treated me. Collins was more than ready to start on this fresh trail, and the keener to handle John Pringle since I had failed to get anything out of him. He went off to the Gate Farm in great feather, and I was pleased to have once again made him happy, and I was rather more pleased to have arranged an unpleasant hour or more for that violent bumpkin. I was sure that Collins's suggestion that he should inform him how and where he had slept on the night on which the murder had been committed, would exasperate him beyond words, and it was possible that in his fury he would make admissions that would throw new light on the case.

I could think of nothing that I myself could do till I heard from Amy about Garfield's marriages, if there had been any, for I could see no one left to question except Kate Bolsover, and I must know whether she was Garfield's wife before I had the crucial interview with her. If I knew that he had married her, I should be in a much more advantageous position, though I was in an advantageous position as it was, to force the truth from her. I must have the whole truth to be able to get her out of the hole into which she had fallen out of ignorance or wilfulness or pure foolishness, unless she had been forced or tricked into it by Robert Garfield.

There was indeed one more person I might have questioned, and that was Annie, the maid at the Rectory. But I did not think that she could throw sufficient light on the relations between Garfield and Kate to outweigh the disadvantage of putting Kate on her guard when it was most important to take her by surprise. Also it was hardly worth while to worry the Padre with so little to be gained by it, for I felt that what he had learnt in his whispering-gallery had worried him enough. Besides, it was better not to put him more on his guard.

I waited therefore at Applecross for the return of Collins, and he was a long time returning. Indeed, it was half-past eleven before I saw him coming down the lane from the village. I perceived that he was walking briskly and with the spirited air of a man who had been successful in an errand. Mrs. Holdsworth opened the front door for him, and he came to the sitting-room almost at a run.

He scarcely gave himself time to shut the door behind him before he said: "That's our man, sir! I'm sure of it! How did you get on to him?"

"But surely he was an obvious person to question—the man in the neighbourhood of whom Garfield saw most socially. He was at all Garfield's tennis-parties and Garfield at all his," said I.

"Was he now? We ought to have paid more attention to St. Joseph's," said Collins with a worried air.

"And when I questioned him I thought his manner very queer," I went on. "In fact when I asked him, or rather tried to ask him, some perfectly simple questions about Garfield, he went right up into the air."

"That's what he did with me, sir; he did go up into the air and stayed there for a long time. I should think I questioned him for an hour before I got anything but language, and there was plenty of that. But I went on till I wore him down a bit."

"I didn't get much, sir—nothing but refusals and denials. It was the way he refused and denied that made it plain to me that we had got on to the right man at last."

"He refused to let me see the rifle, sir, or to tell me what he was doing, or where he was on the night of the murder. In fact he refused to answer any questions at all. And he denied that he had ever shown any dislike of Garfield. But the way he did it absolutely convinced me that he was our man."

As I had expected, Collins had just got as much out of John Pringle as I had; but he was far more confident that that explosive bumpkin was our man than I was, for he did not know about Garfield's rifle. Nevertheless, his certainty had some weight with me, and I instructed him to try to get evidence about Pringle's movements on the night of the murder.

Then it occurred to me that it was possible that Garfield had been shot with his own rifle by Pringle. Pringle was a friend of the girls at the Rectory—probably he was often in and out of it. He might easily have known where Garfield's rifle was, have even taken part in the shooting lessons and seen it put away in the cupboard. But that was not a matter for Collins; I must inquire into that myself.

Collins went off to try to learn from Pringle's mother and sisters where he had been and what he had been doing on the night of the murder; I went up to the village with him, trying to think out a way of learning from someone at the Rectory whether it had been possible for Pringle to get away with Garfield's rifle from the cupboard under the staircase without anyone knowing that he had taken it. As I was passing the village shop, I saw Joan Bolsover in it, and waited till she came out.

"A clue? Dozens," said I. "In a case like this there are always lots and lots of clues. The only drawback is that most of them lead you nowhere or into blind alleys, and you have to follow them all up till you find the right one; and if the right one is the last you follow, it takes a long time to get to the heart of the mystery. Which reminds me that I haven't heard your particular theory of the crime."

"Oh, I haven't got a particular theory of my own; I thought, as the police and everybody else did, that somebody from London had shot poor Mr. Garfield. Isn't that what you think?" she said.

"It's one of the theories I've got to consider, but what I've really got to do is to find the evidence that someone from London shot him; how that somebody came here and went away, and whether anybody saw him here or going or coming," said I.

We had passed the Rectory and were passing the church; plainly she was inclined for a stroll, and that suited me very well.

"I should have thought you would have been more likely to find that somebody in London itself," she said. "Haven't the police in London found anybody likely?"

"I'm not concerned with that end. I'm looking for evidence against the murderer down here," I said.

We were coming to the Gate Farm, and I went on: "It's rather hard to get information out of people in St. Joseph's—at least from people who know something. Now that young fellow Pringle at this farm here has shown the greatest reluctance to be of any help at all."

"Oh, Jack? Jack's always as cross-grained as he can be about everything, and I'm sure he wouldn't do anything to help you to discover Mr. Garfield's murderer because he hated him so," she said thoughtfully. "In fact I expect he's really glad somebody did murder him."

She looked at me and smiled and said: "Ah, that would be telling, and it hasn't got anything to do with the case."

"You never know what has to do with the case and what hasn't," said I. "I suppose young Pringle is a great friend of your family?"

"Yes. At least he used to be much more of a friend than he is. When there are so few people in a place they naturally see a good deal of one another," she said.

"And if young Pringle had wanted something and come round to your house and found no one in, would he have stepped in and got it?" I went on.

"Oh, that's quite likely," she said. "But why do you want to know? What is it he could have come for?"

"But what kind of thing could he have wanted out of the Rectory that had anything to do with Mr. Garfield's murder?" she said with a puzzled air and frowning. Then the frown cleared from her forehead, and she exclaimed: "Of course! The rifle! But what would he want with Mr. Garfield's rifle when he had one exactly like it of his own? Oh, I see! But you're quite wrong—absolutely. However much Jack had hated Mr. Garfield he'd never dream of shooting him. He's much too careful of himself."

"But could he have got that rifle out of the cupboard without anyone knowing?" I said.

"Well, he's a nice lad," said I. "I suppose it's that carefulness of his which makes him refuse to have anything to do with the business?"

"That's right," she said with certainty. "It might be right and it might not. We should know more about it later—or we should not."

"But how cunning you are to question me like that and get it all out of me," she said reproachfully.

"I'm sure I was most open with you," said I. "I suppose you've seen more of young Pringle since the murder than you were seeing before it?"

"I hope so," I said. "At least my friends have never been complimentary about my looks."

We walked on for another half-mile, talking about other things of no importance, and we did not talk about her sister, though I tried twice to turn the talk on to her: I had made Joan too wary. Then she said that she must be turning back, for it was her turn to superintend the cooking, and I left her at the Rectory.

She had made it plain that it would have been fairly easy for John Pringle to take Garfield's rifle from the cupboard unseen, and of course if anyone had seen him in the village street with it they would have supposed that it was his own; and admitting that Pringle had made up his mind to murder Garfield, it was quite on the cards that such a very cautious man might take that rather imbecile precaution.

As I turned down the lane to Applecross a taxi passed the top of it with a couple of men in it. I did not see their faces, but I saw that they were wearing foreign hats. I went into the house and waited for Collins till lunchtime; then, since I did not wish my lunch to be spoilt by being kept waiting, I strolled down to the "White Horse." When I came into the village street I saw the taxi standing in front of the inn door, and before I reached it, it came away and passed me, empty. I thought it just as well to go round to the back door and into the kitchen.

CHAPTER XII
M. Maurice Fermoye Calls For His Money

IT was just as well that I had come into the inn by the back door, and I took a peep at the two foreigners through the door into the dining-room. They were sitting at the table, ordering their dinner and consulting one another and Carr and Miss Carr about it in French and broken, badly broken, English.

I did not need to hear them speak to know that they were French, for the bigger of the two was Achille Chardon, a well-known French ace who had been working from an aerodrome near Chateau-Thierry when I was in the district, in 1918.

He was easy to recognise, for his big hooked nose was crooked and his right eyebrow an inch higher than the left. A sulky-looking, dangerous man I had thought him in the old days, and ten years did not appear to have softened him at all. It was lucky that I had never come into contact with him; it was a thousand to one that he would not recognise me, and if he did he would not know that I was a member of the C.I.D. But when I recognised him I knew that the cargo of cocaine had not gone back to France.

I was convinced of it, but before many hours had passed I ought to be sure of it, and I stepped back from the door, smiling, and Mrs. Carr asked me if I knew them.

"One of them—by sight," I said. "But he won't know me. And it's most important that he should not know that I'm from Scotland Yard."

"I'm sure no one will tell him, if you don't want it told, sir," said Mrs. Carr.

Carr and Miss Carr came back into the kitchen, looking rather heated, for they had been talking very loudly in order to be understood, and I asked them not to let the two Frenchmen know that there was a detective from Scotland Yard in the village.

"We'll be careful, sir," said Carr. "But it's precious little English they understand. I've made myself sweat, making myself clear."

"They may understand a good deal more than they pretend, so please be careful what you say before them," I said. "When is that taxi coming back for them?"

"Oh, they won't learn anything," said Carr. "I'm sure their English isn't good enough, and I don't know anyone in St. Joseph's who speaks French, unless the Rector and the young ladies do."

But I could see nothing to be gained by a conversation between the young ladies at the Rectory, especially Kate, and the two Frenchmen.

We sat down to our dinner, a boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce, and Miss Carr waited on the two Frenchmen. Thoughtfully she did not quite close the door between the two rooms, and I could hear their talk. They talked in astonished voices about the food and about their journey and the Marsh; they were too careful to talk about the business which had brought them into it.

Then I had a happy thought: I asked Carr if he had a visitors' book. He said that he had, but that he had so few visitors that he seldom bothered about their names. I asked him to take it to the two Frenchmen and insist on their registering. He went into the dining-room and took it from a drawer, and asked them to do so.

They showed themselves reluctant to register, and there was a parley. Carr said that it was the regulations, and he grew hot again as his voice rose in the effort to make them understand what a regulation was. In the end he succeeded in a shout. At last they wrote their names in the book, and he brought it to me. They had registered as M. Maurice Fermoye and M. Louis Durand, of 19, Rue de la Paix, Havre. I chuckled; I had Chardon all right.

As I ate my dinner I pondered their errand to St. Joseph's. It seemed to me that they must have come for the money for the cocaine, or the cocaine itself, or to arrange for the landing of more consignments. They might have come knowing to whom to apply for the money or the cocaine, or just to spy out the land and search for the person to whom to apply. I had a fear that Chardon might know Kate, that she might have been present, helping Garfield, at the landing of the cargoes.

Should I let them meet, or should I warn her, as I had warned her about Giuseppe? It might be two or three hours before the news that there were two Frenchmen at the "White Horse" reached the Rectory, and they might run across her in the village. It was a difficult question to decide; but I was inclined to let them meet: I might get something. I could not see that any harm could come to her if I was there, or thereabouts, when they met. It was possible, but not likely, that Chardon knew that she was to be found at the Rectory. If he did, I did not think that he would go straight to it, either alone or taking Fermoye with him, to interview her; they would probably prefer a more private meeting-place. If they did go to the Rectory, I should certainly join them. But I thought it more likely that they would hang about the village on the chance of meeting her, and decided that it would be best that I should be within fifty yards of them as long as they stayed at St. Joseph's. I could do that without their observing that I was doing it.

I finished my dinner peacefully, and so did they. Falling in with the customs of the country, they drank beer with their dinner, and since they drank a quart apiece, I gathered that they liked it. But after dinner they asked for coffee, and Mrs. Carr made it, and they had my sympathy. I was not surprised that they did not linger long over it, but strolled up the village. I watched them from the side window of the dining-room, and gathered plainly from their gait and gestures that they were reconnoitering. When they came to the top of the lane to Applecross they stopped and studied the lie of the land. I could have sworn that Chardon pointed out the lambing hut to Fermoye.

They did not turn down the lane, they went on up the village, and I was rather relieved when they passed the Rectory. If Kate saw them from a window there would be no need of a warning from me. They passed the Rectory and then the church, and went right on to the Gate Farm, and I gathered that they were studying the lie of the land all the way, and it set my mind at rest about their knowing who Kate was and where she lived. They walked as far as the Gate Farm and turned back. I came out of the inn and walked quickly down to the lane to Applecross Farm, and turned down it and watched them through the hedge. They came past the church and past the Rectory again, and went into the post office. I thought it likely that they would ask for Garfield's house and come down to the farm to make inquiries, or go to the forty-acre field. In any case the house was the place for me, and I went into it. Sure enough they turned down the lane, and I went into the sitting-room to find Collins waiting for me.

"I fancy that a couple of Frenchmen are coming here to make inquiries," I said. "You had better retire to the kitchen till they've gone. I'm more likely to get something out of them, if they have no suspicion that anything in the way of a policeman is about."

He went to the kitchen, and three minutes later there came a knock at the door. I opened it, and Chardon and Maurice Fermoye were standing on the steps. Chardon did not recognize me, for I had my eyeglass in my eye and was looking a harmless and guileless country gentleman.

M. Fermoye, an ordinary looking, fat, hard, middle-class Frenchman, introduced himself as the head of the Havre firm, for which Garfield had acted as agent, and introduced Chardon as his assistant manager, Durand. I greeted them pleasantly and asked them to come in—in French—and took them into the sitting-room. They sat down, and Fermoye at once became voluble in explanation. He had been profoundly distressed to hear of the shocking death of his esteemed and valuable agent, M. Garfield, and had come to offer his condolences to Madame Garfield.

They were indeed taken aback, and looked at one another in astonishment and perplexity.

Fermoye cut him short, saying quickly: "But it is strange. I have always been told that there was a Madame Garfield—a very pretty Madame Garfield."

"I know of no Madame Garfield," I said. "She did not live here, or in Garfield's flat in London, and she has not come, or I should not be here."

They looked at one another, at a loss and hesitating; then Fermoye, who had been sizing me up with his hard eyes all the while, said slowly and in a hesitating way: "There is also a matter of business—not an important matter—but it would be convenient to settle it. There is a consignment of goods for which we have not been paid. It is not a large affair—merely forty pounds of a drug used in a manufacturing process, in a packet—not a very large packet—square—about this size." He held out his hands about eighteen inches apart.

"But you ought surely to inquire at Monsieur Garfield's London office—such a packet should go there. This was his country house, and he did no business here," I said.

Again they looked at one another with an air of disappointment; then Chardon said: "No; it was sent here. Monsieur Garfield wished it."

"That's it. It was delivered on the very day on which he was murdered, and we were afraid that in the confusion it may have been set aside. Besides, no one would know what to do with it after Garfield died," said Fermoye.

"But yes—certain," said Fermoye. "But is it not in the house—in some corner? Someone may have pushed it out of the way.

"No; it isn't in the house," I said confidently. "Naturally I have examined the belongings of Monsieur Garfield thoroughly. There is no such packet in the house."

They looked at one another gloomily; then Fermoye said in a depressed tone: "It must be that Monsieur Garfield took it away at once and sent it to the manufacturers."

"That was how it was, undoubtedly," said I. "If you will give me the name and address of the manufacturers, I will write to them at once to ascertain if they have received it. What is the drug called?"

"But no," said Fermoye. "You must not have the trouble of doing that. It is for us to do it. Also there are several manufacturers, and we must write to all of them. You are quite sure that it is not in the house, or in the garage?"

They looked at one another very gloomily indeed; then Fermoye said with a feeble show of cheerfulness: "It does not really matter; it is not important at all. But we were in Folkestone, and after our long business relations with poor Monsieur Garfield we wished to render our condolences to Madame Garfield. It was only proper. But we wished also to clear this matter up, and take the packet away with us, if it had not gone."

"I'm sorry you've had your journey for nothing—no Madame Garfield and no packet," said I.

"But it is not for nothing," said Fermoye. "We are overworked, Monsieur Durand and I, and we are taking a few days' holiday. We have decided to take it here, at your excellent inn, and explore this so interesting Romney Marsh."

"The air is good, very good, better than the inn," said I. "I hope you will derive great benefit from it."

"Many thanks. We hope that we shall," said Fermoye, smiling sadly, as they rose.

I went with them to the front door, telling them that I should be charmed to do anything in my power to render their stay more pleasant; they thanked me, and we parted with expressions of mutual esteem.

I stood with the door open, politely watching them to the end of the garden path, congratulating myself on their having taken me at my face value. Indeed, I doubted that, if I had not looked so guileless, with my eyeglass in my eye, Fermoye would have been so open about that forty-pound packet of a drug for manufacturers. Forty pounds of cocaine at £5 an ounce! No wonder they drooped as they went.

Well, they had settled definitely for me the question whether the cocaine had gone back to France in the aeroplane that brought it, just as Giuseppe's visit had settled the questions whether it was cocaine and whether it had gone to London. It was cocaine, and it had not gone to London or France. It was any odds that it was still in St. Joseph's.

I shut the door and took Garfield's field-glasses from their peg in the hall, and went up to his bedroom. I was not surprised to see Fermoye and Chardon, after pausing for a minute or two at the stile at the bottom of the lane, to discuss what they should do next, climb over it and go along the path to the forty-acre field. They did not go far into it—not forty yards beyond the lambing hut—and I could have sworn from his gestures that Chardon pointed out to Fermoye the spot on which he had landed in his aeroplane on the night of the murder. Then he pointed to Applecross and then to the Rectory; he was pointing out the position of the motor headlights in the two bedrooms which had been the signal lamps which showed him where to land. I cursed those signal lamps. The lamp in Kate's bedroom would inform them where they should look for the very pretty lady who had been Garfield's confederate.

Then I saw them examine the lambing-hut, and Chardon tried the door and, after examining the padlock, shook it hard. They talked for a minute or two, and I guessed they were debating whether they should force the door and examine the inside of the hut. Well, they would find nothing inside it. Evidently they decided that that was not the time to search it, or that it was not worth while, for they came back along the path to the lane, and walked up it. I called to Collins to stay where he was and keep out of sight, and I was not fifty yards behind them when they came into the village street. To my relief they did not go to the Rectory but went back to the "White Horse." I took it that they had gone to inquire who lived at the Rectory.

I thought it as well to call at the Rectory myself. Joan saw me coming from the drawing-room. Kate was sitting idle, apparently, in her easy chair, and greeted me, if not warmly, at any rate pleasantly. I thought that she was looking rather less worried.

"There's another foreign development of the Garfield case," I said. "This time a couple of Frenchmen are asking for Mrs. Garfield. Did either of you ever see any Frenchmen with Mr. Garfield?"

"No," said Joan with decision. "We never saw any Frenchmen with him, did we, Kate?"

Kate shook her head; she was looking worried enough now; then she said: "But why do you always come to us for information, Mr. Carthew?"

"Oh, I didn't expect any information from you—at least I didn't think it likely that you would be able to give me any. But naturally I come to you first because you're much the most intelligent people in the village and saw more of Mr. Garfield than anyone else. You don't happen to know whether any Frenchmen ever stayed with him?"

Joan shook her head. "No. No Frenchman ever did," she said. "We should certainly have known about it, if he had."

I turned to Kate to find her looking at me with a queer, searching gaze; I fancied even that there was just the beginning of fear in her eyes; but she said quietly: "I believe he did say something to me once about a French firm with which he did business—at Havre, I think it was—but I don't remember the name of it."

"Hang it all! Here they are!" I said. "They've seen quite enough of me for one day. I don't want them to see me again."

We heard her call Annie to show the two gentlemen into Mr. Paton's study, and then she ran upstairs.

"I hope Mr. Paton won't bring them in here," I said anxiously. "I can't clear off: his study window looks on to the garden."

"I'll let you out of the back door, and then you can fly for your life," said Joan, smiling.

She took me down the passage, through a bright, clean kitchen, out of the back door, and along the kitchen garden to a little gate at the bottom of it.

I laughed and thanked her and said goodbye. The path did lead straight across a couple of meadows to Applecross Farm. It had been pretty well used, and I wondered how often Kate had hurried down it in the darkness. I thought, too, that I should have liked to examine it the night after Garfield's murder.

I found Collins waiting in the kitchen of the farm to inform me of the result of his inquiries from Mrs. Pringle and her two daughters about young Pringle's movements on the night of the murder. He was not looking cheerful.

He shook his head and said: "Not very well, sir. It was all right at first; neither Mrs. Pringle nor the two girls could remember anything particular about the night of October the ninth till they tumbled to what I was up to; then they remembered too much. All three of them remembered that they had not gone to bed till nearly twelve, and that young Pringle had gone to bed at the same time. His eldest sister remembered that she had heard him snoring before she went to sleep at about half-past twelve; then the youngest remembered it, and his mother remembered that she had lain awake till nearly one o'clock, and he was snoring all the time."

I laughed and said: "I knew he snored; I could have sworn it. That's a pretty strong alibi to get round."

"Yes. But I don't believe that a single one of them remembered a thing about that night really," said Collins.

"And that will take a bit of proving," said I. "We shall have to find someone who found him awake and out-of-doors at about twelve to half-past to get over that."

"But nobody in this village is up and about at twelve o'clock at night," he said dismally.

"That's why they're so healthy and wealthy and wise," said I. "The evidence as to motive will also take a bit of finding. So far we have nothing to go on but a few words he let slip when he was in a very bad temper. In fact, there isn't anything against him except his having a small sporting rifle of the bore that takes the bullets found in Garfield's body—nothing like enough to induce the magistrates to commit him for trial, which wouldn't matter so much if I could see my way to getting more. I don't know where it's coming from, do you?"

He shook his head ruefully and said: "No, sir; I don't. But it must be somewhere, for I'm certain young Pringle's our man."

"It's one thing to be certain of your man, and another to get the evidence, as you very well know," said I.

"But you're never going to give it up, now that we've got on the right track, sir?" he said quickly and anxiously. "Maybe some of the people who were friendly with both of them know something. Garfield was very thick with the people at the Rectory, I'm told. They may know something about it."

"They don't know anything about young Pringle's dislike of Garfield, and they laugh at the idea of his having murdered him. They say he is much too fond of himself," I said.

"Of course I've tried them! Who else was there to try?" I rather snapped. "What we've got to do is to find someone who saw Pringle somewhere near the forty-acre field at about twelve o'clock on the night of October the ninth. You'd better hunt around for him; there are a good many of these lookers in the village and in cottages round about it; we'll get on to them. You had better start at once. You'll find most of them out in the meadows."

He went off on his bicycle briskly, eager to get to it. He might find a shepherd who had seen Pringle on or near the forty-acre field at midnight on the ninth of October. It would be useful if he did. I went up into the village to keep an eye on Fermoye and Chardon. I could not see them, and I went down to the "White Horse." They were not there, and Miss Carr told me that they had not gone past it along the Rye road. I came out of the door, and there they were, coming through the gate of the Rectory garden. They had been there a good while, and I wondered what had happened; had the Padre excited their suspicions? I stepped back into the inn before they saw me, and went into the kitchen.

Presently they came into the inn and went into the dining-room and rang the bell. Miss Carr went, and Fermoye asked for brandy. I told Carr to let them have all they wanted, and he let them have a bottle of Three Star Hennessey. They seemed excited and talked fairly loudly. Though I knew that the Padre spoke French as well as I did, I learnt that he had talked to them in English. It was significant; but it did account for the length of their call and also for the fact that they had learnt nothing from him. Then I learnt with great pleasure that Chardon was not certain that the other signal lamp had been in the window of the Rectory. I had not noticed it, but the windows in the side of the Gate Farm were almost in a line with the windows of Kate's bedroom from the spot in the forty-acre field where he had made his landings.

They were hopeful, however, that he would be able to make sure that night, when the dwellers in both houses went to bed, and the windows were lit up. I was hopeful that he would not; I must certainly find a way of preventing it. They drank and talked for a while; then they called for Carr; before he went I told him that they had seen me at Applecross Farm and believed that I was Garfield's heir. They questioned him at length in their broken English, and it was amusing. He came away again heated by energetic vociferation; but he went a long way to convincing them that there was no Mrs. Garfield. When they had done with him, they went out, looking uncommonly depressed, and set about a tour of exploration.

When they found the path from the village that ran along the dyke of the meadow beyond the forty-acre field and came into the forty-acre field from that direction, they went up the lane from Applecross Farm to the village and up the street to the Gate Farm. I guessed that they were calling to inquire for Mrs. Garfield, and I smiled. Mr. John Pringle would be feeling harried and was unlikely to make a secret of it.

I contrived to be near the entrance to Gate Farm, but not visible in the dusk, when they came out of it, and they came out of it hurriedly.

As they passed within ten feet of me, Fermoye said with intense conviction: "That young man was Garfield's confederate! I do not doubt it!"

"Nor I too; I do not doubt it at all," said Chardon. "It was from the window of his bedroom that the second light shone."

I followed them, keeping about twenty yards behind, along the other side of the hedge. They ought to have known that hedges have ears.

After a moment or two's silence Chardon said: "But who was the woman I saw—the woman who helped Garfield?"

The hedge came to an end, and I heard no more of their talk. Doubtless they went on to plan how they might get an interview with Miss Pringle apart from her relations. They must indeed waylay her, and I could imagine her astonishment at being invited in badly broken English to divulge the whereabouts of a forty-pound packet of a drug for a manufacturing process.

I went back to Applecross and waited for Collins to report on his attempt to find a looker who had been in the meadows between the Gate Farm and the forty-acre field about twelve o'clock on the night of October the ninth. It was in the highest degree unlikely that he would find one—October is not the lambing season, and they go to bed early—but I did not wish him to suspect me of lack of interest in his work. He came at a few minutes past seven and told me that he had questioned three lookers, and all three of them had gone to bed before ten on that night. But he had learnt that the looker who minded the sheep in those meadows was Pringle's man, Henry Fisher. We agreed that it would be inadvisable to go to his cottage now and question him in the presence of his wife and family, and that it would be better that Collins should again do the questioning, since he had more experience of the Marsh folk. He went off to Ryeford happy in his activities, and I too was pleased—they made matter for my reports to Goad.

I went down to the "White Horse" for supper, and learnt that the two Frenchmen had been playing cards since they came in. At supper I discussed with the Carrs this curious business of these different foreigners searching for Mrs. Garfield, and I told them that so far neither I nor Scotland Yard had found any traces of Mrs. Garfield. I was pleased to find that they could throw no light on the matter; plainly the only person beside myself in St. Joseph's who suspected any intimate relations between Garfield and Kate Bolsover was Mrs. Holdsworth, and she was keeping her mouth shut. I thought that she would keep it shut.

Then Carr tried to pump me discreetly about "the young feller we were talking about the other night," Mr. John Pringle, of course—how I was getting on in the matter of getting evidence against him. I told him frankly—for Collins's interrogation of the Pringle family might be all over the village—that Collins and I were hard at it but that evidence was not easy to get. It seemed probable, since Carr would be pretty sure to spread the news that, now that our interest in John Pringle's doings was known, anyone who had any evidence to give would come forward with it.

After supper I went up to the Rectory and Annie showed me into the drawing-room. Again only the two girls were there, and I wondered whether the poor Padre spent all his evenings lonely in his study. He joined me when I had been there a few minutes, wearing that air of feeling that he was not welcome, which was so painful in a man of his size and bearing. I should have liked to give the young minxes a good dressing-down for the way they treated him. I did my best to improve their spirits; but Kate did not smile often that night. I was careful not to broach the subject of the Frenchmen's inquiries for Madame Garfield, and when Joan broached it I showed no interest in it, so that it was dropped at once. Plainly enough their coming had awakened afresh all the unfortunate Kate's anxiety, and the Padre was in a frowning worry a good deal of the evening.

All the while I was looking for my chance, but it did not come till the moment I was leaving. Then Joan and the Padre came into the hall, as they had done the first night, and the Padre had his hand on the handle of the front door.

I went quickly across the hall and into the drawing-room. Kate, looking almost broken, had sagged down in her chair with her hands clasped; she pulled herself together with a jerk.

"My pipe," I said, crossing to the mantel piece, and then I added in a clear whisper: "Don't light that confounded motor-lamp tonight! Go to bed in the dark!"

CHAPTER XIII
I Get Rid of Chardon

I SAW Kate's look of the blankest amazement as I turned to go quickly out of the room, said good-bye to Joan and the Padre, and left the house.

I had come to it under a cloudy sky with a few stars shining; I came out into a pitch-black night and a howling wind and pelting rain. I turned up my coat-collar and stepped out. As I went down the village I told myself that as soon as she got over the astonishment she would understand that she could look for considerate treatment from me, and I hoped that she would take heart; she might even grasp the fact that I was her friend.

It was a confounded nuisance that I had been compelled to disclose part of my hand by warning her. I had wished to wait till I received the result of Amy's search at Somerset House for Garfield's marriages; but warned she had to be.

The next thing to do was to get Chardon out of St. Joseph's. That would be easy enough.

I did not go straight home. I went down to the "White Horse." At first I thought that everyone was in bed, but coming round it I saw a light in the kitchen window, and went to it and peeped through an opening in the curtains. Carr sat in an arm-chair, smoking gloomily. I tapped on the window; he came to it and opened it.

He cursed all Frenchmen, then said that his two guests had gone out at a quarter to ten to explore the Marsh at night—"said they wanted to get impressions, they did. Leastways that's what I made of it."

"What they will get is impressions of a bad cold, if they're not jolly well wrapped up," said I.

"Then it's my belief that what they have in their belfries is bats. The idea of looking for a woman out in the Marsh on a night like this!" said I.

"You take it from me that they know a sight more about that murder than what you think, sir. That tall one with the twisted face wouldn't stick at much," he urged.

"No motive that I can think of," said I. "But I'll go and look for them and send them home to bed. Good night."

I went on, took the path to the right, crossed the plank into the meadow beyond the forty-acre field, and then the plank into the forty-acre field itself. I was nearly blown into both the dykes as I crossed them. The wind was coming from over the sea and the level at about sixty miles an hour, and the driven rain stung my right cheek and ear. I could see barely ten yards ahead of me. But I had a pretty strong notion about where I should find Fermoye and Chardon—on the lee of the lambing hut.

Then, a good way ahead on the right I saw a light. It was not in the Rectory; the Rectory was dark; it must be shining from a bedroom in the side of the Gate Farm. And that suited me quite as well.

It gave me a line to the lambing hut, or I might have missed it. As it was I saw it in time not to blunder right into it, crept up to it quietly, and round it quietly. As I came to the back of it I heard a murmur and stuck my head round the corner. It was within two feet of one of the figures huddled against the back of the hut.

"Sapristi! It is enough, I tell you! There is your light! It is enough!" said the voice of Fermoye in a high, complaining voice.

"Not yet. We said we would wait till midnight. It may yet be the nearer house," said the deeper voice of Chardon.

"Till midnight! But I have a chill in the back and legs already! And there is no tisane at that cursed inn, and my shoulders are soaked. Is it that I must die for this cursed woman? Never in my life!" said Fermoye.

"Go back alone? I could not! I should never find the inn in this terrible storm. I should drown in one of these sacred ditches! You must come with me! I order you to come!" Fermoye almost shouted.

"And lose my eight thousand francs for a few drops of rain? Never in my life!" said Chardon firmly.

It was childish; but I really could not help it. I wailed a long-drawn, lugubrious, eerie wail right into his ear. The middle-class Frenchman is quite free from superstition, so he gave one yell and bolted straight in front of him. Chardon swore and then came rushing round the hut. But I had left, with about four seconds start, and I sprinted for the middle of the field, sure that in that storm I could neither be heard nor seen.

I had gone about sixty yards when there came a succession of piercing yells from the top of the field that did rise above the noise of the storm. It was plain that the bolting Fermoye had tripped over the raked-out mud and pitched head foremost into the dyke.

The yells went on for a while, but I had lost interest in the two rogues. Guided by the light in the Gate Farm, I found the plank and the path to Applecross, and presently reached it, soaked but cheerful. I was the more cheerful because I had thought to bank up the kitchen fire before I went out, and the water in the kettle was nearly boiling.

My first thought on waking next morning was that Chardon must go at once. Fermoye might go did not care; he could not recognize Kate.

I lay in bed a little longer, thinking about her. It was odd how clearly I could visualize her face. I am good at faces—one has to be at my job, and practice had improved me—but I had never visualized a face as clearly as that before. Then I went downstairs for my letters.

Amy had written, and she had found out what I wanted to know. Garfield had been married twice. On June 7th, 1920, he had married Theresa Eleanor Dent, spinster, of "Ravenshoe," Gladstone Road, Tooting Bec, at the office of the Registrar of St. Pancras; and on March 10th, 1928, he had married Katherine Bolsover, spinster, of the Rectory, of St. Joseph's, Romney Marsh, at the office of the Registrar of Paddington. So that was that.

I was glad he had married her, and I told myself that I ought to have known she was married to him; she was not the kind of girl not to be married to him. But why on earth had she made such a secret of it? I did not pause to puzzle over it. I should know before the day was out. I meant to know.

I went on reading Amy's letter. Theresa Eleanor Garfield, wife of Robert Garfield, of "The Myrtles," Upper Cliff Road, Hastings, had died at that address on December 15th, 1925. So there was no bigamy in the business; Kate's marriage was perfectly good. Why on earth had it been a secret marriage in the beginning and been kept secret after his death? The first concealment must have been the crook's doing, not hers; but the second——

Mrs. Holdsworth came to get my breakfast, and I dressed and came down to it in a very good temper.

When she brought in my porridge I said: "Oh, by the way, I suppose you've heard about those foreigners who have come to the village to inquire about Mrs. Garfield?"

"What should you say to them if they, or anybody else, came asking you questions about Mrs. Garfield?" said I.

She hesitated, then she said: "I should say I didn't know anything about any Mrs. Garfield, but I was glad to hear that there was one."

I had just lit my after-breakfast pipe when Collins arrived, very eager to get to his search for a looker who had seen young Pringle outside the Gate Farm about midnight on October 9th.

I rather damped his spirit when I said: "I've another job for you before you get on with that. There's a Frenchman at the 'White Horse' who has registered there as Louis Durand, but his real name is Achille Chardon. You ought to be able to make all kinds of trouble for him for that."

"And I suppose before you have finished with him you'd have his complete dossier, and I should be able to learn everything about him," said I.

"You could—we could get everything, or at any rate hold him for a good long while," said Collins.

"That's what I want; I want him held. So make all the trouble you can. Examine his passport, and I'm pretty sure that you will find that it is made out in the name of Achille Chardon, and that should make everything easy."

"It certainly will," said Collins. "And if there's anything shady in the background, he may get quite a stretch. Do you want him for the murder of Garfield, sir?"

"He may have been mixed up in it," I said. "Fermoye, the other man, has probably registered in his right name; but of course you'll ask for both their passports, and make sure. I'm not bothering about him; but if he has registered under a false name, collar him too."

"I'll give you a quarter of an hour to get things well started, and then I'll turn up," I went on. "But you know me only as Garfield's heir who has come down to Applecross Farm to go into his affairs."

I could not have found a better man to rid me of Chardon, for the Folkestone police know everything that is to be known about undesirable aliens and their habit of false registration.

It was quite true also that I was not bothering about Fermoye for the moment; he had never seen Kate, as Chardon had. But I had not finished with him. I was not content with Giuseppe, and I thought I saw my way to getting Giuseppe. I meant to have a good try to stop this channel of the dope traffic at both ends.

I gave Collins time to get things started, and then I went down to the "White Horse." He had worked quickly; already he had examined the passports, compared them with the visitors' book, and arrested Chardon. I walked into the dining-room to find Chardon sullen and scowling and Fermoye excited to raving point. Collins was in the act of telephoning to Folkestone for a police car.

Fermoye sprang to me as to a friend. He told me all about it furiously. What was all the fuss about a gentleman on a voyage making a little slip like this? Chardon had preferred to travel incognito: what did that matter? Chardon snarled at him; I learnt that it was Fermoye who was responsible for the one precaution too many. At the same time I could understand his reluctance to travel on his particular errand with a man who bore the name of an airman who might be known. I guessed that he was full of that kind of reluctance, but his greed was stronger.

I sympathized with him; I deplored the unfortunate occurrence; I put his simple explanation clearly before Collins, but I was forced to admit that regulations were regulations. I assured Fermoye, however, that all would be well as soon as the facts were established, and Chardon would be released. I calmed him. It was arranged that he should go with Chardon to the police station at Folkestone.

CHAPTER XIV
Kate Talks

I LEFT them gloomy, but pleased myself that I had put Chardon out of the way of doing mischief, and went back to Applecross. I met Mrs. Holdsworth at the top of the lane, for since I dined at the "White Horse" she went home to cook her daughter's dinner and her own. When I came into Garfield's sitting-room I went to the telephone—the telephone runs all over the Marsh—and rang up the Rectory. Kate answered it.

"It's Carthew. I want to see you, and we must not be interrupted," I said in a tone that should make it pretty clear that I meant business.

"What do you want to see me about?" she said, and her voice sounded as if she had none too much breath to ask the question with.

There was a pause; then she said in a shakier voice: "B-but I've told you all I know about it."

I could see her white and frightened face as clearly as if I had stood beside her at the telephone, and I was sorry for her, very sorry.

But I did not change my tone when I said: "Very well; I'll come to the Rectory."

"It's no use wasting time; I have to see you, and the sooner the better. So come along," I said roughly.

"Don't come along the village street. Those two Frenchmen are going to be taken to Folkestone police station, and I don't want them to see you. Come by the path from the Rectory garden," I said, for I knew that she would be some time getting ready, and that Collins would lose no time putting Chardon into the police car, which might soon arrive.

She rang off. I went upstairs to a bedroom window, from which I could see, with Garfield's field-glasses, the Rectory. It would be useful to observe beforehand in what temper she came.

It was nearly twelve minutes before I saw her coming down the Rectory garden, and she came slowly, stooping a little. She was wearing the Persian lamb coat. I had known she would want to look her best. She came through the gate and across the meadow; two or three times in her absorption she swerved from the path into the thick wet grass, after a few steps perceived what she was doing, and came on to the path again. Half-way across the second meadow she stopped and looked back at the Rectory, and I thought for a few seconds that she would turn round and go home. But she did not; she pulled herself together, and came on. I could see her face now; she was looking very firm and defiant, and it did not change. So I knew what to expect and how to begin.

I watched her till she came to the garden gate; then I went down to the sitting-room and set paper and ink on the table. Twenty seconds later she knocked at the door, and I opened it.

"Good morning," she said even more frostily, and just glanced at my face and dropped her eyes. "I don't know what you can have to bother me about. I've told you everything I know."

I did not say anything; I showed her into the sitting-room and pulled forward an easy chair for her, so that her face would be in a good light. She sat down in it, and I sat down at the table, and took from my pocket Amy's letter and the wires from the Yard. She glanced again at my face and again dropped her eyes. I looked at her. Lord, the poor child was thin! Her shoulder-blades had deep hollows under them, and there was so little flesh on her haggard face that the outlines of the skull were plain. There was a spot of colour in both her cheeks, and her lips were only a faint pink. If she had shot Robert Garfield, she had paid for it.

"Now, look here, Miss Bolsover," I said in a not unkind voice. "I want to make this as easy for you as I can. But I must have the truth to be of any use to you."

"Why should you be of any use to me? Why should you want to be of any use to me?" she said quickly in a defiant tone, and looking me in the face for the first time with defiant eyes.

I was rather at a loss for a reason to give, and rather taken aback, but I said: "Well, I—do. I hate to see a child like you looking so unhappy."

She looked at me with less defiant eyes, but she said suspiciously: "I wonder what you want from me."

"I don't want anything from you but the truth," I said sharply, for things were not going the way I had planned, and we were not getting on.

"I've told you the truth, I don't know who murdered Robert Garfield. I haven't the slightest idea," she said stormily and defiantly.

"Then you won't mind answering my questions," I said in a pleasanter voice. "Where did you get that Persian lamb coat?"

It must have been the last question she expected, for she looked positively aghast; the defiance went out of her eyes and fear came into them.

"Now this won't do," I said, again sharply. "There never was any Mrs. de Carteret, and neither she nor you ever stayed at the Sloane Crescent Hotel. That story was a blind; it served its purpose; but it is no use now—not with me at any rate."

"Do realize that I know a great deal—nearly everything—ever so much more than you could dream I do—and let's get on. You can't gain anything by telling lies," I said in a gentler tone. "Now that coat—it really hasn't got anything to do with it, as you said—it's last year's model, but you haven't had it a year. It was given you this spring—in February, or March—by Robert Garfield."

"And on the tenth of March you married Robert Garfield at the Paddington Registry Office," I went on.

"I don't know—now," she said slowly and dully. "I—I suppose I was fond of him—in a way. He was—or at any rate he pretended to be—in love with me, and he was ever so much better than anyone I was meeting—or likely to meet. He had been about the world and done things and seen things, and he was going to take me to see them, and he always seemed so genial and good-hearted, though he wasn't a gentleman, of course. And oh, I was so fed up with St. Joseph's! And I seemed to be stuck here for good. I suppose I really married him to get away. But there were lots of reasons. Besides, a secret marriage seemed such fun."

That was pretty much as I had thought, and she was right: there were lots of reasons, more reasons, in fact, than for most marriages, and not one good one.

"He wanted it kept secret. I didn't know why, though he did a lot of explaining about his position and how we could work better and more safely if no one knew we were married. I never understood quite. And, of course, it did seem romantic our being married and living three hundred yards apart, and my slipping away to Applecross and getting back without being seen was exciting."

"He said you would work more safely if no one knew you were married?" I said. "Did you help him with the cocaine smuggling before you were married?"

"Cocaine? But it wasn't cocaine! I would never have smuggled cocaine! Nothing would have induced me to! It was saccharine," she said quickly and earnestly, in great surprise at the idea.

I looked at her hard; she really was surprised and she was telling the truth. I was surprised too. But what a hog the fellow was—to trick a young girl into a vile business like that!

But I said sternly: "Look here; do you expect me to believe that you believed that a man could make seven thousand a year out of small packages of saccharine, when he would have to pay through the nose to get it smuggled across the Channel, and never get anything like a proper price for it when he got it here?"

"Yes, I do. He was always complaining about what he paid for it and what he got for it. But, you see, he didn't make seven thousand a year; he made about seven hundred—I worked it out. He used to make from sixty to a hundred and fifty pounds profit on the sales of it. He paid a hundred pounds a package for it. I know, because my share of the profits was ten per cent., and I used to get from six to fifteen pounds every time he made a sale," she said.

"Well, I'm hanged! Of all the swine! To cheat you in this measly way when you were risking penal servitude to put seven thousand a year into his pocket!" I said pretty hotly.

"He cheated me in that too, did he?" she said, making a face as if she had a nasty taste in her mouth. "It doesn't surprise me a bit—now. I learnt what he was really like."

"Oh, what's the harm in a little smuggling?" she said. "It doesn't hurt anybody."

"In this case it hurt scores of people—destroyed them body and soul," I said severely, and paused, and then went on: "Well, you've learnt that the way of the transgressor is hard."

I paused again, considering; then I said: "You were helping Garfield on the night of October the ninth. What happened? And for goodness sake do tell the truth! I really want to help you out of this infernal hole!"

She looked at me for quite a while—nearly half a minute—sizing me up half suspiciously, half hopefully; then she decided to trust me and said: "He rang me up at nine o'clock and asked me if he had left one of his pipes at the Rectory. That was the signal we had arranged for that night—we had a different signal every time, of course—that everything was right and a cargo was coming. We all three went to bed about eleven, and at twenty to twelve I lit the guiding lamp in my bedroom and went down to the forty-acre field."

I nodded, and she went on: "I went across the field to the lambing hut, and he was already there. We didn't say much; we were hardly on speaking terms; and then the aeroplane came down, almost gently, out of the darkness like a great bird, making no noise, as it always did. It always gave me a thrill."

"I never knew. I asked him once; but he wouldn't tell me; he only laughed and said: 'Oh, no! you might start on your own account.' But he did once say that it was just under an hour's run."

"It was. He told me that it was the only one in the world with wings like it had, that it could plane down without a sound from five or six miles away, and that if the airman who invented it hadn't a grievance against the French Government, the French would be able to dictate to Europe," she said.

I made up my mind on the spot that the French had better not find Chardon's aeroplane; that our Secret Service had better see to it that an English expert had a good look at it first and learnt the principle of it. If any nation was to dictate to Europe, it had better be England.

"No, I shouldn't," she said. "I've never seen his face; he never took his goggles off once."

"Oh, yes. I never took any trouble to hide my face. He never told me to," she said.

I noticed that she had never once spoken Garfield's name, or spoken of him as her husband. It was always "he."

"Oh, yes; he never thought about anyone but himself. He was utterly selfish," she said simply.

She looked at me in surprise. I suppose my tone surprised her. Then she said: "I've told you."

"Yes; only one that time; but sometimes there were two and sometimes three. You mustn't think only one came at a time because he only sold one at a time. The aeroplane didn't come every time he sold cocaine; it only came about four times a year, you know."

I did not know. But the information solved a problem that had been puzzling me: how had an aeroplane been able to come nine times a year without anyone tumbling to what was going on? It had not come down nine times a year. Also it explained why that aeroplane had been so seldom heard as it went away. Also it knocked a part of the reasoning on which I had built up my case, endways. It was only the sales, not the coming of the dope, that took place at the moonless period of nine months of the year, and it seemed odd that Giuseppe should buy it chiefly during the autumn and winter and not during the London season. But it was possible that during the early part of the year, when his chief customers would be away on the Mediterranean shores, he laid in his stock, or it might be safer to get it to London on those moonless nights.

"And he sold different quantities at a time," she went on. "Sometimes he'd sell only a package at a time, sometimes he'd sell a package and a half, or two packages. It depended on the demand. That was why I never knew how much money I was going to get."

"Well, the airman dropped the package on the ground, and we went up to the machine to pick it up," she went on. "Then the airman switched on his light to see if he could get away clear of the lambing hut, and called to him to swing the propeller. He stepped forward and swung it and stepped clear. Then there was a flash in the middle of the field and a crack, and he shouted and fell down. Then there was another flash and crack, and another, and the aeroplane went off. I dropped down beside him, and he just shivered and grunted and choked and stretched himself, and was quite still, and I knew he was dead, and I screamed—just once. And there was I in that field in the dark, almost touching his dead body, and a murderer in the middle of the field with a rifle coming towards me. I knew he was creeping up in the dark. And I lost my head completely; I got up and ran as fast as I could run. I had nearly reached the Rectory when my breath gave out, and I had to stop. I listened—I never listened as I did then—and I heard nothing; but I shouldn't hear anything on that soft grass, and he must be coming after me. Then I ran on—it was more like a tottering crawl than running—and somehow I got to the Rectory and into it and I sat on a hall chair and panted and panted."

"Horrible for you," I said. "And you ran home and left that package lying in the field! But what became of it?" I said.

"Oh, not at once," she said, and stopped and dropped back in the chair and shut her eyes.

She put out her hand and said: "I—I'll be better in a minute—a little faint."

She had not much strength left after her troubles, and she had come to the end of it. I jumped for the whisky and soda, and mixed a drink and made her drink it.

She lay back with her eyes shut for a couple of minutes, then she opened them and sat up.

"There's no hurry. Take your time," I said. "Have a cigarette. It will help the whisky to steady your nerves."

I lit one for her, and when she had smoked a little, and I saw that the whisky had put some life in her, and she was looking even better than when she came, I said: "Well, you went back?"

"Yes; but not for a long while. I sat up in my room and put out the light and looked out to the forty-acre field, and listened and looked and listened, and I saw nothing and heard nothing. I must have done that for nearly an hour, and all the while I was puzzling and puzzling what to do; but I knew of course that I'd got to go back."

"But what a thing to do! Why on earth did you do it? No one was likely to connect you with the cocaine smuggling," I said.

"Oh, well, of course, there is that," said I. "But if you'd just left the package of cocaine lying there and the cache open, I should never have come into the matter. They would have provided a perfect explanation as to how your husband was shot—a smugglers' quarrel. No one would have looked an inch further."

"Oh! Of course! What a fool I was!" she said bitterly. "But I never thought of that. I felt that I had to do everything I could to hush it up. I couldn't let Joan down and I couldn't let Mr. Paton down—I disliked him so. So about three o'clock I started. I wasn't afraid of the dark or his dead body; it was the murderer I was afraid of. And I remembered the rifle and went to the cupboard to get it, but it had gone."

"But I had to have something, and I went to the kitchen and got the carving-knife," she went on. "Silly, wasn't it? It wouldn't have been any use against a rifle. But somehow it was comforting. I didn't go very fast; I stopped to listen ever so many times. But I got to the lambing hut at last. And how I hated it! But I thought that the murderer might come round it at me. Luckily I had the sense to go right round it and into it, and make sure that he wasn't lurking behind it or in it. And when I found that he wasn't, most of the creepiness went, and I told myself that I had been right when I thought that he'd clear right out at once. He must have been gone about two hours, I suppose. But I made haste. I didn't go any nearer his body than I could help; I carried the package to the hut and dumped it into it, and shut down the floor. It shuts with a patent lock, and you just press a spring to open it. There's another cache in this house—where he kept the cash he meant to bolt with if he had to bolt. I'll show you. The whole thing didn't take me three minutes, for we had left the door of the hut and the cache open—so that he could just rush with the package and drop it into it and there'd be nothing to be seen, if anyone came to see what the aeroplane was doing. I kicked the straw over the lid of the cache and felt it with my hands to make sure it was covered. Then I came out and locked the padlock and ran home. I didn't run so fast, but I ran all the way; and even then I didn't sleep well. I haven't slept well since. I think it was the shock at the beginning and then the fear of it coming out that I had been mixed up with him, and the police accusing me of murdering him, and your coming down and then the foreigners."

"I don't wonder you didn't sleep well," I said, and then added: "And of course under the circumstances you couldn't come forward and say he was your husband."

CHAPTER XV
A Compact

She shook her head. "No," she said. "We had a row—more than once. I found soon that he wasn't at all the kind of man I had thought him. He—he—oh, well, he's dead, and I won't say what he was. But I came to detest him. I wouldn't go to Applecross at all. He used to get furious, and one day in a fury, after swearing at me, he burst out with it: I wasn't his wife at all, only his mistress. He had a wife when he married me. He didn't know where she was, or what she was doing. But she was alive somewhere. That was why he had humbugged me into keeping our marriage secret: he didn't want to run any more risks than he could help of being run in for bigamy. And he finished by saying: 'And what's more, you're just the same kind of silly, finicking little fool as Theresa!'"

"Well, he was wrong," I said. "You are his wife. Theresa Eleanor Garfield died years before you married him."

She went on staring at me, frowning, almost scowling; then she said: "I suppose I ought to be pleased. But I'd got quite pleased that we never had been married—that I didn't belong any more to him in any way."

"I can quite imagine you did. But of course it is better now that you should have been married to him—there's the money," I said. "And what did you say when he told you?"

"Oh, I lost my temper altogether; I told him that he was a coarse blackguard and brute, and I swore I'd never rest till I had paid him out for it. I was in a really frightful temper, and I frightened him. I must have done, for the next time I saw him he actually said that he'd taken precautions, that he'd written to a friend of his and sent him a letter to be opened if anything happened to him, and in it he'd said that if anything had happened to him I had done it, and it was to be sent to Scotland Yard.

"I was worried to death. That letter was hanging over me all the while, and there was no one to say I hadn't killed him, except the pilot of the aeroplane, and he wouldn't come forward and have it all come out about the smuggling—that kind of man wouldn't. And there was the shock of that night, and I was afraid, too, that the smuggling would somehow come out, and then you came and those foreigners, and there was nobody to go to for advice or help—I should think I was worried to death. She paused and blinked several times, and then she said: "You don't know what a relief it is just to have told you, whether you believe me or whether you don't."

"I believe you all right," I said. "But I don't understand why, after having had this row with Garfield, you helped him with that last smuggling venture."

"Well, I couldn't let him down. I'd had a lot of money out of it—and there was the excitement. It was always exciting. But you've never lived in the Marsh in the autumn and winter, so you wouldn't understand how one jumps at a little excitement; and then there was the money. It might be fifteen pounds. I meant to make him pay me. But perhaps you've never been hard-up," she said.

We looked at one another a bit earnestly. She was already looking better—just the getting it off her mind. And I could see she knew she had found a friend.

Then she went on: "Of course I couldn't think that it was some enemy from London, though I saw that a man like that would be sure to have enemies, and bad ones, because I saw that it couldn't have been a pistol. The flashes were too far off. And when I saw that you'd seen that and were looking for that rifle, I was more frightened than ever. Ever so many people knew I could shoot with a rifle, and you might have had that letter."

"He never wrote any such letter, or I should have heard of it. He was just frightening you," I said. "The murderer must be someone who suspected that there must be something between you and him, and watched you. Also, whoever it was, had found out about the smuggling too, and waited for that night. It looks like jealousy—and John Pringle."

She blushed and said quickly: "But he hadn't any reason to be jealous—not any real reason."

"Different people have different opinions of what a real reason for being jealous is," I said.

I had my doubts of that, and I said: "Pringle wouldn't want much of a reason to be jealous; he's the type. Did he ever kiss you?"

"Oh, well, Pringle can wait," I said. "The point is, without knowing exactly what you were doing, though you knew you were breaking the law by smuggling, you've committed a very serious felony indeed. The only way you can put yourself right is by doing everything you can to help me to catch these foreigners who are playing this blackguardly game. With your help I think I can stop up for good this channel of the cocaine traffic. Are you willing to help me in every way you can? It will mean your going into the witness-box and probably an unpleasant time in it, for Fermoye knows you were present at the landing of the cocaine."

"I'll do it—of course I'll do it. I shall be glad to, even if it's ever so unpleasant. I do assure you, if I'd known it was cocaine and not harmless stuff like saccharine I'd never have had anything to do with it—never," she said earnestly.

"Right," I said. "And now you might show me the hiding-place in the house in which your husband——"

"Please don't call him my husband," she broke in. "I'd got into the way of thinking I'd never been married to him at all."

"——in which Garfield kept the money to bolt with. There may be something besides money in it—letters, papers, which may throw a little more light on things."

She took me up to the top floor into one of the empty bedrooms, and stooped down and pressed a knot in a short plank in the niche to the left of the fire-place. The plank sprang up about six inches; she raised it—it was hinged—and revealed a hiding-place four feet long, the breadth of the plank, and eight inches deep. In it was a thick wallet.

I picked it up and opened it. It held nothing but bank-notes—not a scrap of paper. I counted the notes—a hundred fives, twenty-five twenties, a hundred fifties—six thousand pounds.

"Well, these must be yours. In fact I suppose all Garfield's property will be yours unless some belated kinsman turns up to claim some of it," I said, handing the wallet to her.

"Mine?" she said, taking it and staring at it as if she could not believe her ears.

She stared at me; then she said: "But I don't want his money—not money made like that."

"Oh, yes, you do," I said. "You'll be able to marry somebody decent for a change, and you'll be able to give your sister a chance of marrying properly, and you'll be able to do something for the Padre whom you've treated so rottenly, instead of all of you being stuck in St. Joseph's, everlastingly hard-up. Besides, if you don't have it the Crown will, and a silly Chancellor of the Exchequer will muddle it away on some silly scheme."

"Yes, think it over. In the meantime we've got to catch these foreigners, Giuseppe and Fermoye. We shan't catch Chardon: you can't identify him and it's as well you can't, because he can identify you. But he doesn't matter. He's only an agent, and pretty poorly paid, I gather. It's the other two who have been making the money. They'll make no more at this game. You must keep out of Fermoye's way; he's sure to come back to look for you. Also go into Folkestone and get yourself a complete outfit of widow's weeds. You must dress the part for these blackguards. Also I'm going to wire to my sister to come down and support you, if you don't mind. She has helped me in several cases."

"Right," I said. "And the sooner you get those widow's weeds the better. You'll have to get them ready-made, of course—for you may want them to-morrow."

I rose and she rose too; she was already looking a rather different girl, a little dazed still, but that strained air had gone. We went into the hall, and I opened the front door.

She went through it and turned and looked up at me with eyes full of thankfulness, and said: "You have been kind to me."

"And who wouldn't, you poor little skeleton?" I said cheerfully but rather thoughtlessly.

She stared at me, and then her eyes flashed, and she said indignantly: "Skeleton? Skeleton! Oh! And I was beginning to like you ever so much!"

"But I do like you ever so much," I said. "And if I like you so much when you're a skeleton, think how much more people will like you when you're not a skeleton."

She walked down the path with a very dignified air. But when she turned to latch the gate she glanced back at me. I was looking quite serious, and I did not think that she looked very angry.

CHAPTER XVI
Tyrwhitt Comes to St. Joseph's

I LET Kate get back to the Rectory; then I went up to the village to wire to Amy to come at once. I went on to the "White Horse" and found that Fermoye had left his suit-case. I had been right when I thought that greed would bring him back. When he arrived soon after four, looking very gloomy and exasperated, and found me in the bar, he cheered up a little at the sight of me, for he was in need of someone to whom he could talk of the trouble he had had with the police and the French Consul, who had been unsympathetic, and how, after making every effort, he had been compelled to leave Chardon in custody. He found me sympathetic enough, and I did not press him too hard to tell me why Chardon had registered under a false name.

He had decided to stay at St. Joseph's for two days to hunt for Madame Garfield. On the third morning Chardon was to appear before the magistrates and he proposed to be present in court. I told him that I was certain that there was no Madame Garfield in St. Joseph's—I did not think that Kate had yet torn herself from the Folkestone shops—and I called Carr, who not only confirmed my statement but declared that there never had been. But Fermoye only became mysterious; he said that he knew her by description and would most likely recognise her if he saw her, but that he must wait till Chardon was liberated to identify her for certain. I had an idea that he would wait some time, for there would be no difficulty in getting Chardon remanded for inquiries; the Folkestone police would want to know more about him; I would see that they did. Also he might get a longish sentence, which would further postpone this meeting.

I did not try to dissuade him from staying; I took a leaf out of Giuseppe's book and offered to write to him to tell him that Madame Garfield had turned up, if ever she did turn up. He thanked me warmly and gave me his address. I left him easier in mind, and as I went out I told Carr that it would not be wise to let him stay too long, for I had reason to believe that he and Chardon were up to no good.

"No. To-morrow will do," I said. "It isn't much of a night to turn a man out on. Besides, you may as well have something out of him. After all, he brought the police into your house—at least his confederate did."

"That's true," said Carr, brightening. "Brought discredit on the house, he did. It's only right he should pay."

I came out cheered by the thought that Fermoye would pay. What though he did carry back to Havre a story of the exorbitant charges of English country hotels? It was right that he should pay for his greedy stupidity in coming himself to St. Joseph's. Besides, I wanted him out of the place.

On my way back to Applecross I bought a tongue and some peaches in tins at the village shop. As I went down the lane I saw a light in Garfield's sitting-room, and when I went into it I found Amy there, entirely at home, knitting a jumper and smoking a cigarette. We were glad to see one another, and I lit a pipe and told her about my discovery of the cocaine smuggling and how things stood, and how I wanted her to help Kate. She was tremendously bucked at the thought of being such a help in the business, and with her flushed face and shining blue eyes, she looked even prettier than usual.

We were discussing the best way of handling Giuseppe when Collins came. He had returned after depositing Chardon in the police station, and finding me out, had continued his search for a looker who had seen John Pringle in or near the forty-acre field on the night of the murder. He had found no such looker, and I did not think we ever should find one. I was more strongly than ever of the opinion that Pringle had murdered Garfield, but I was also more strongly than ever of the opinion that the evidence to prove it would not be forthcoming.

"Well, I don't see how we're going to get our evidence," I said to Collins. "All those women are going to swear that he went to bed and stayed in bed. I think that in swearing he went to bed, they'll be telling the truth. He went to bed all right; but he got up again, and nobody heard him."

"That's what I think, sir. I'm as certain as I am that I'm sitting in this chair that he's our man. His manner when he's questioned settles it," said Collins.

"A man's manner isn't evidence, though it may tell against him in the witness-box," I said. "Why do you think he murdered him?"

"I don't think it would take much to make him murder anybody," said Collins with conviction. "Why, he'd murder me and enjoy doing it. Maybe he quarrelled with Garfield, and nobody knew about it."

"That's just it—nobody knew about it," said I. "I've questioned, everyone in the village who knew both of them, and nobody has any suspicion that they were on bad terms. Of course, I knew they were from what Pringle said to me. But what's that?"

It did not seem that there was anything more to be done, though we would go on ransacking the neighbourhood for evidence that Pringle had been in the meadows about the time of the murder.

"Well, he won't be the only murderer I know who goes about the world quite secure, and I expect you know some too," I said.

"I only know of two between here and Dover, and one between here and Rye, sir," said Collins.

I did not wish to have him about the village while I had a try to get Giuseppe. It would take very little to frighten that cunning little brute away for good. Also I did not want Giuseppe to go to Ryeford—the Old Bailey was the place for him. Even more, if I did get him, I wanted the coup kept quiet till I got Fermoye as well, and the Yard would keep it quiet. Therefore I told Collins not to come to St. Joseph's till I telephoned him to come to me. He seemed a trifle surprised by the order, but he evidently took it that I had my reasons.

At half-past seven I rang up the Rectory, and when the Padre came to the telephone I asked him if I might bring my sister after dinner to make the acquaintance of his family. He said that he would be charmed. So Amy made the acquaintance of Kate, and they seemed to take to one another, and Kate offered to take her out in her Austin Seven and show her the Marsh, which would give them an opportunity of conferring quietly about methods of handling Giuseppe. Kate was cold with me, but I did not mind; she was, indeed, looking another girl.

As we were saying good night to them I got my chance, and said in a low voice: "Did you eat a good dinner?"

At breakfast next morning I discussed with Amy the matter of handling Giuseppe, and we agreed that it ought to be possible to make him take away the cocaine in his car the very next night. After breakfast I kept watch on the village street and saw a taxi come down it to the "White Horse," and after a few minutes come away and take the road to Pyechurch. So Fermoye was out of the way.

Then Amy went to the Rectory, and I went to Ryeford Post Office, rang up the Yard, and was put through to Superintendent Tyrwhitt, who was handling the dope traffic. I told him what I had discovered and how I proposed to trap Giuseppe, and asked for a car and four good men.

"I'll come myself," he said. "This looks like a big business. In fact I'll motor down at once and take it over and look over the ground."

"You'd better come straight to Applecross Farm, then. To-day doesn't matter, but tomorrow there shouldn't be any strangers in St. Joseph's. Giuseppe's a very shy bird."

I was back in St. Joseph's for lunch, and found that Kate was lunching with us. I was pleased to see that she had too much sense to be put off making a good lunch by my question about her dinner the night before, and since Amy is a good cook and had superintended the cooking of it, it was evidently food that appealed to her. After lunch we strolled to the lambing hut. There might have been eyes in the village watching us, but they could not see what we did; so Kate showed us the cache under the floor and four packets in it that held twelve thousand pounds' worth of cocaine. I was fairly hopeful that Giuseppe had only to see it and the profit it meant for him to take the risk of taking it away himself, a risk that looked so small in that so empty country.

There was still more than half an hour before Tyrwhitt could arrive, and since the wind was from the north-east, we went up to the Rectory and fetched out the Padre and Joan, and he showed us the whispering gallery. Kate and Amy and I stood in the right-hand corner of the Rectory garden, and he and Joan went across the meadows to Applecross and talked on the end of the tennis lawn and in the arbour on the other side of it. They talked without raising their voices, and we heard every word they said as clearly as if we were within six feet of them, and again I wondered how much the Padre had heard in that whispering gallery earlier.

When they came out of the Applecross garden, I said to Kate: "I wonder how much he did hear?"

"Nothing of any importance," she said carelessly, and then she glanced at me; just a quick glance, but queer.

I left them and went to Applecross. Twenty minutes later Tyrwhitt arrived. I told him all that was necessary: how I had discovered that aeroplanes landed in the forty-acre field, and how Giuseppe had come to see Mrs. Garfield, who was now at Applecross, and how I had put the two facts together, and the coming of Fermoye had confirmed my suspicion; that I had approached Mrs. Garfield when she came to Applecross and learnt that she had known of her husband's smuggling, but believed him to be smuggling saccharine; that she had been shocked and indignant when she had learnt that it was cocaine, and had shown me the cache with twelve thousand pounds' worth of cocaine in it, and was ready to help me in every way she could to catch Giuseppe and Fermoye. Then I told him my plan to make Giuseppe take away the cocaine in his car, and get from Fermoye the admission that the packages of cocaine were of his exporting.

Tyrwhitt was a different kind of man from Goad—younger, more intelligent and, like myself, suffering from the Public School taint.

"This looks a useful piece of work," he said in a tone of warm approval. "In any case Giuseppe and Fermoye are going to get a devil of a fright, and you have certainly stopped this channel of the traffic for good and all. Also, if your plans work out all right, they're going to get a good deal more than a fright. They're going to get sentences that will cure them of cocaine for the rest of their lives."

I showed him the lie of the land, and he decided to come down in the car from the Yard and superintend the catching of Giuseppe with the goods on him, if he took the risk of taking them; if he did not, Tyrwhitt proposed to stop him midway between Ashford and Maidstone, search his car, remove his cat-burgling chauffeur, who was wanted for an escapade in Maida Vale, and leave Giuseppe six or seven miles from anywhere in a chauffeurless car, and let him get home as best he could. That should shatter the little brute's delicate nerves for quite a while.

"There's the possibility that Giuseppe will not come himself but send his right-hand man, Murgatroyd," said Tyrwhitt. "So you wire to him at eleven sharp, and I'll see that Murgatroyd is out of the way when the wire reaches London."

Then we discussed the matter of this gliding aeroplane, and he agreed with me that it might prove of great national importance to get the secret of it, and he would see to it that an expert went over with a couple of the best men the Yard used for foreign work, and that they went at once.

"You've probably done even a better piece of work than I thought at first," he said.

He went away hopeful, and I took an auger and bored a couple of holes in the floor of the bedroom above, so that, if Giuseppe came, Amy and I might hear his almost certainly incriminating talk with Kate. Then Kate and Amy came, and we spent the rest of the afternoon coaching Kate in that talk. She had tea with us—coldly with me—and at about six I walked back to the Rectory with her.

She was in good spirits at the prospect of really helping to stop this channel of the dope traffic, but she said: "It's going to be rather nervous work."

"It's a pity your nerves aren't in better trim. But you'll do it all right," I said with cheerful certainty.

"And there's another thing that's worrying me a bit—that signal lamp in your bedroom. I want it dismantled and taken down to Applecross. Is it easy to dismantle? If it is I should like to do it now, and get it out of the house. I don't want to take any chance of your being connected with the actual smuggling in any way besides going down to see the 'plane land."

"Yes; it's quite easy. I have a pair of pliers and a screwdriver in my bedroom ready to dismantle it with. He took precautions, for his own sake, against anything that might suggest signalling being found. Both lamps would have been taken down and put away the morning after the aeroplane came if he hadn't been shot."

CHAPTER XVII
Giuseppe Again

KATE took me into the house, and Joan came out of the dining-room. Kate said that I had come to take away the big lamp, and we all went up to her bedroom. I set about dismantling the lamp, and Joan made a half-joking complaint that people always made friends with Kate and took her away from her, and that my sister might just as well have made friends with her and taken her away from Kate.

"Married! I should like to see myself getting married!" said Kate sharply and bitterly.

"You mustn't be harsh with men," I said. "Some of them are quite well-meaning—those with hearts of gold," I said.

I dismantled the lamp and fitted the usual jet and mantle in its place; then I took the lamp away. Before I went I invited the Padre and the two girls to come to Applecross after dinner, for I wished to keep Kate's mind off the interview with Giuseppe next day: the more she thought about it the more nervous she would be. All the same I did not think she would be very nervous. We had a pleasant evening, and for the first time I heard Kate laugh. It was a charming laugh, and I liked it all the better because I felt that I had given the power to laugh back to her.

At eleven the next day I sent off the wire to Giuseppe. But I added to it: "She goes away again to-night."

Giuseppe would know that if he wanted his cocaine he would have to be quick about getting it.

Kate came down to Applecross at twelve, dressed in her widow's weeds. Black suited her, I thought; at any rate I could not remember ever having seen a more attractive widow. Also she was wearing the Persian lamb coat. We lunched and waited.

I expected Giuseppe to arrive about two o'clock. But half-past two and three came, and he had not come. Then, at twenty past three I saw his car go along the village street, and five minutes later Giuseppe himself came toddling up the street and down the lane to Applecross. I had done my part of the business; the rest was in the hands of Kate and Tyrwhitt. I had no doubt that Tyrwhitt was not far off.

Giuseppe toddled up to the house. Standing back from the window, I watched him through the field-glasses, and very like an excited and hopeful toad he looked. Kate went to the door when he knocked, and I heard him apologise greasily for troubling her, but he was an old friend, a business friend of her husband, and there was a little matter of business he wished to discuss with her. She asked him to come in, took him into the sitting-room, and introduced him to Amy. I had the corks out of the holes I had bored in the floor, and I heard every word clearly.

"Ah, ze seestare of ze obliging young man I see 'ere ze las' time," said Giuseppe. "But eet ees wiz Meeses Garfield I weesh to speek. Eet ees beeznes an' private. Eet ees not long, jus' a few meenute."

"Well, there's a fire in the dining-room, Miss Carthew—if you wouldn't mind," said Kate.

"Not at all, Mrs. Garfield," said Amy, and she went out of the room, ran up the stairs, kicked off her shoes on the landing, and came to my side.

There was a pause; I took it that Giuseppe was considering how to put it; then Kate said: "It's early for it, but I think we're going to have some snow."

"Ah, you do know your poor 'usban's beezness!" said Giuseppe in a tone of great relief.

"Oh, yes, I know all about it," said Kate. "My husband has talked to me about you. He had no secrets from me, you know. But he never told me your name."

"It came and it's still here. And if you want any it's a good thing you came when you did, for the big Hop is coming to-night, and I think he'll probably take the lot," said Kate, in exactly the right tone of indifference as to whether he took it all or not.

The "big Hop" seemed to me a happy invention—just the kind of name to sound all right to Giuseppe.

"You joke," said Giuseppe in a hurt tone. "But I want some; 'e cannot 'ave eet all. I am a goode customaire."

"Not very," said Kate. "The big Hop is the good customer. He takes three times as much as you do. But how much do you want?"

"Only one?" said Kate rather contemptuously. "I don't mind letting you have one—if you've brought the money with you."

"No, no! I pay in London—ven you bring ze package—as always," said Giuseppe.

"But I'm not going to bring the snow to London," said Kate quickly and firmly. "Why should I bother when the big Hop will clear out the whole lot?"

"Danger? What danger? There's no one in the meadows after dark," said Kate in a scoffing tone. "Why, the big Hop will be here in his car at ten to eight and get the snow and be gone by eight o'clock."

"Eight o'clock? An' eet ees now 'arf-pas' t'ree!" said Giuseppe in a flabbergasted tone, as he tumbled to it that if anything was to be done, he must do it himself.

This was the psychological moment; how badly did he want the cocaine? Would his greed or his timidity win?

There was a longish pause; then he said in a doubtful voice: "Ze snow ees in ze 'ouse?"

"No. I don't keep it in the house, but it isn't far off. It won't take you five minutes to get it, if you really want it," said Kate in exactly the right tone of indifference.

"I don't know. I'm going abroad and I may stay away for three months," said Kate.

He did want the dope very badly. No doubt his customers were raging, and he would lose them if he did not supply them.

Kate said nothing; I heard her strike a match and light a cigarette. She was doing it well.

"All right," said Kate with perfect indifference. "Give me the sixteen hundred pounds and I'll show you where it is."

"No, no! Corpo di Baccho! No! I do eet not like zat," he almost howled. "I pay you in London."

Giuseppe went up into the air; he declared that he never paid anywhere but in London, and he would pay when he had the snow safely there. Kate said that that did not matter to her; the big Hop would pay cash down. Then he said that he had not the money with him, and Kate said that that did not matter either: the big Hop would have it. Giuseppe raged and then he whined; he said that he was a poor man, with a wife and family to keep. Kate said nothing. Then he said that he had only twelve hundred pounds with him. Kate said that that did not matter—that the big Hop would have the full price.

There was a pause in the talk one could understand: Giuseppe was mumbling away in Italian. I do not know much Italian, but I gathered that he was cursing and swearing, chiefly cursing Kate, but not forgetting the big Hop.

When I heard the notes rustle I held out my hand and Amy shook it. We had Giuseppe in a cleft stick; he might be frightened, but he would never leave St. Joseph's without the dope.

Then Kate said: "That's right. I'll go and put on my hat and coat and take you to the hiding-place. There's whisky and soda on the table there."

She came out of the room, and at once we heard glasses jingle. They did jingle—a shaky hand, I thought.

As she passed the door of the bedroom we were in, she smiled at us. I made a show of clapping my hands, but I did not let the palms touch. She had done well.

Kate went downstairs, and they went out of the house. I opened the bedroom window at the back and waved a handkerchief. Tyrwhitt, or one of his men on the look-out, would see the signal that things were going as we had wished.

Then I went to the front, and Amy and I watched Kate and Giuseppe go to the lambing hut, from the window of Garfield's bedroom. Even from that distance I could see that he did not take kindly to the planks across the dykes. They did not stay long at the hut, and came back and parted at the stile into the lane, Kate came through the garden gate, and Amy went down to let her in. I watched Giuseppe go down the street to the "White Horse"; then I joined them in the sitting-room.

"You handled the little brute admirably," I said to Kate. "It couldn't have been done better. What's his programme exactly?"

"He's fetching the cocaine away at half-past seven. I showed him how to open the cache and gave him the key of the padlock. Of course I told him to be careful to shut down the floor and make sure that the spring clicked, and spread the straw back over the floor and leave the key in the padlock," she said.

"Yes. He'll bag the whole lot, if he can pluck up courage to make the double journey to the lambing hut, and if he can't pluck up courage, he'll take two packages," said I. "And all the better; the more he has the longer the sentence he'll get."

"Of course I never thought of that, though I ought to have known when I saw his face when I opened the cache," she said. "He's going to buy an electric torch at the shop—chiefly for the planks. He doesn't like the planks."

"Well, thanks to you, things are going well. Bar accidents, we shall get him. But I'm afraid it won't take much to scare him away, in spite of his having parted with sixteen hundred pounds. That cat-burglar of his may get it out of one of the villagers that the obliging fellow living at Applecross came from Scotland Yard. But Carr will do his best to keep the talk off me."

"Let's hope for the best," said Amy. "Kate certainly did everything she could to bring it off. I do wish it had been me."

"I'm glad you're pleased," she said, smiling at me without any coldness at all. "I found it tremendously exciting."

The minutes did drag for the next three hours, though we talked most of the time. It was dark at half-past five, very dark—just the night to encourage Giuseppe—and five minutes later there came a knocking at the back door. Amy opened it, and a voice I knew asked for me. It was Detective-Inspector Jenkins, though he did not look it; he looked like a looker of the Marsh. Tyrwhitt had sent him to learn what Giuseppe's plan was. I told him, and asked what Giuseppe was doing.

"He's been sitting in the dining-room of the 'White Horse' with Wally True, yarning and drinking mixed vermouth, and now they're eating bacon and eggs with tea," said Jenkins, and he vanished in the darkness.

They couldn't be in a better place, and I went into the sitting-room and told Kate and Amy that things were going well.

Then I said to Kate: "I tell you what: we'll have Giuseppe, even if he doesn't come for the cocaine. You shall deliver it to him in London as he asked you."

"There's the evidence of the three of us, and then there are the notes he gave you. There ought to be no difficulty in tracing them to him."

Amy went into the kitchen, to set about getting dinner ready. She refused Kate's offer to help her, and left us alone together for an hour. Women have an instinct. The minutes did not drag so. We talked about Giuseppe for a while, and then we talked about ourselves. I learnt a lot about Kate's earlier life; there had never been much money, and it had been quiet. Her father had been killed just before the Armistice. She told me, too, about her mother's marriage to the Padre, and how she and Joan had hated him because they had adored their mother. I spoke up for the Padre hard; I told her what a good man he had been in France, and how we had liked and respected him, and I added that she and Joan treated him rottenly.

"Yes," she said quite meekly, to my surprise. "I'm afraid we have. I didn't—I didn't appreciate him." And again she gave me that queer look.

I had no time to wonder about it, for she began to ask me questions about myself: where I had been at school, how I got my D.S.O., why I became a detective, and she learnt a good deal about me. Then the hands of the clock stood at a quarter past seven.

Leaving the light burning in the sitting-room, we went upstairs to watch the coup from the open window of a dark bedroom. It was a still evening, and the village might have been already asleep for all the noise that came from it. Then at the "White Horse" the lights of Giuseppe's car shone out; it turned down the lane, and came right to the hedge of the garden of Applecross, and turned and ran to the stile, and its lights were switched off. We could see nothing till Giuseppe switched on the torch; then we saw two figures cross the stile.

I went into the back bedroom and lit the gas—the signal to Tyrwhitt that they had gone to fetch the cocaine—and came back to the front room. The ray of the torch zigzagged across the meadows, stopped at the dykes, went on to the lambing hut and stopped. I thought that I heard the sound of a car, moving very slowly and quietly near the church. I could see the glimmer of the torch on the other side of the lambing hut; then it shone out clearly, and came towards us very slowly. I could hear Kate breathing quickly.

"They're bringing more than one package," I whispered. "Giuseppe must be carrying one himself. Forty pounds would be a lot for Giuseppe to carry."

The ray paused at the dykes for quite a while, and it was fixed on the planks. We saw two figures, very dim, cross them; one of them crossed them and came back twice.

"They're bringing three packages. The chauffeur is bringing two and Giuseppe one," I said. "I don't think they'll go back for the fourth."

The ray resumed its slow, zigzag course across the field, and at the stile we saw plainly enough two figures and three packages.

They went to the car, and as Wally True lowered the two packages to the ground we heard him say: "Gorblimy, Jewseppy! That's well worth the extra tenner!"

Giuseppe laughed a low, oily laugh. He had truly made a haul: nine thousand pounds' worth of cocaine for sixteen hundred pounds!

True bundled the packages into the car; Giuseppe stepped into it; True stepped into the driver's seat and started the car. It moved slowly up the lane. I bolted down the stairs and out of the house and after the car. I had nearly caught it when I saw two of our men trotting behind it. It had gone half-way up the lane when, fifty yards in front of it, the lights of the police car blazed out.

True did not grasp what was happening, for he shouted: "Back out of the lane, sonny! There's no room to pass."

Then Tyrwhitt and two more of our men came running up, and he tumbled to it. Out of the car he bundled into the arms of the two men who had followed the car. I took the right-hand door; Giuseppe fairly fell out of it.

"Why, it's Mr. Johnson! Good evening," I said pleasantly, and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists.

CHAPTER XVIII
Fermoye

Giuseppe found his voice, and began to talk in Italian. I was glad that I knew very little Italian.

Tyrwhitt looked into the car and saw the three packages, turned to me and said: "This is a rattling good piece of work, Carthew."

He wasted no time on compliments. The police car, with Giuseppe and True in it, backed up the lane; the Voisin saloon followed with Tyrwhitt and the cocaine.

"You needn't bring four men, sir," I said. "There won't be any Wally True about."

The cars started, and except the two girls and myself, no one in St. Joseph's knew that the greatest cocaine haul of the year had been made in their parish. Not a newspaper would give Fermoye warning. I walked back to the house, feeling considerably bucked, and told Kate and Amy of the capture.

"It was exactly like you, Roger, to be there to handcuff Giuseppe yourself," said Amy.

"There was nothing in it," I said. "Giuseppe is much slower than True; he was bound to see him collared and try to bolt from the right-hand door."

Giuseppe collared, we discussed Fermoye. I did not think that he would need as much handling as the Italian; he was quite as greedy and less timid, and he had not nearly as great a risk to take. So at least it must seem to him. Also it was greatly to our advantage that Kate had only a schoolgirl's French and Fermoye next to no English. But we went into the matter thoroughly, trying to anticipate, as we had done in the case of Giuseppe, every sentence the Frenchman would utter and to find the most reassuring answer.

We discussed the coup till dinner was nearly ready; then Kate gave me the duplicate key of the padlock, and I took a torch and went down to the hut to make sure that everything was in order. I found it very much as I had expected; that spiteful little mongrel, Giuseppe, had locked the padlock and taken the key, or thrown it away, but he had left the floor of the hut raised as high as it could be so that when the light of the torch fell into the cache, it would at once reveal the fact that only one package was left in it.

I guessed that Giuseppe laughed when he locked the padlock; but he laughs best who laughs last, and he would not find much to laugh at for a long while. I shut down the floor and kicked the straw over it, locked the padlock, and went back to dinner. It was a pleasant meal, and we did not talk of smuggling or murders or police work of any kind; but as I took Kate back to the Rectory I congratulated her again warmly on the way she had handled Giuseppe.

"I'm glad I was really helpful," she said. "Will this case mean promotion for you?"

"It would count as meritorious service and help a good deal when the time came to promote me. But I shan't be promoted: I'm leaving the Yard," I said.

"Yes; I've been left five thousand pounds, and I'm going to start a private enquiry office," I said. "I've had some years at the Yard, and I know the job."

The next morning I rang up Collins and told him if he saw me in Folkestone on no account to recognise me. Then I drove to Folkestone in Garfield's car, and arrived at the Police Court just before the cases began. As I expected, I found Fermoye with a solicitor.

I greeted him and said: "I thought I should find you here. Behold me disinherited! Mrs. Garfield has arrived."

"Truly?" he said, and his greedy little eyes shone. "Accept my condolences. Where is Madame Garfield?"

He did not add anything, did not say that he would go to her; but I knew that as soon as Chardon's case was over and the airman was remanded for inquiries, he would make a beeline for St. Joseph's. The very remand for inquiries would make him hurry back to make things safe on the other side, and he would not go without having a devilish good try to get his money.

"As I was in Folkestone, I thought I would take the occasion of informing you of what had happened. Adieu, Monsieur," I said.

I bought some Burgundy and went straight back to St. Joseph's, and reached Applecross just before twelve to find Kate and Amy talking in the sitting-room. I told them that we might expect Fermoye at any moment during the next two hours. A quarter of an hour later Tyrwhitt's car dropped him at the top of the lane, and he walked down to the house.

I introduced him to Kate, and he almost stared at her in his surprise; she was not at all the kind of woman he had expected the wife of a cocaine smuggler to be, and I think he thanked her all the more warmly for the very useful help she was giving us. Of course he did not know that she had actually taken part herself in the smuggling, for I had seen no need to tell him. I do not think that it would have made much difference if he had. Then I told him my plan, and he accepted it without suggesting a single change in it. Kate produced a thousand pounds in notes from those we had found under the floor, and we marked them.

Chardon's solicitor must have put up a better fight than I expected, for it was nearly half-past one before we saw Fermoye's taxi go along the village street to the "White Horse." Ten minutes later we saw Fermoye hurrying back along the street, and Tyrwhitt and I went to the bedroom above the sitting-room, and I took out my notebook ready to take down the conversation; the two girls remained in the sitting-room.

Mrs. Holdsworth, who had stayed on to help with the cooking of the lunch, let Fermoye into the house and showed him into the sitting-room. He introduced himself to the two girls, and explained that Garfield had been the agent of his firm.

Fermoye, immensely excited, burst into a torrent of words that tumbled out on the top of one another.

Kate pulled him up; she said: "It is necessary for you to speak very slowly and very clearly. I do not know French well."

"I beg you to allow me to speak to you about business alone," said Fermoye slowly and very distinctly.

Then Fermoye plunged into it: did Madame know anything about her unfortunate husband's business? Madame knew all about it. Did Madame know that just before he was murdered he had received a packet, a big packet, like that? He must have held out his hands, eighteen inches apart, to show the size of it.

"Yes. I have a packet as large as that. But it is not in the house. Those packets did not come into the house," said Kate. "My poor husband kept those packets carefully."

"Yes, yes," said Fermoye quickly. "That packet contains a very valuable powder, used by the manufacturers of leather to soften it—a very valuable powder. But I have not been paid for it, and I have come for the money."

Kate hesitated, or rather she pretended to hesitate; then she said: "But how do I know that the packet which I have is the packet you have sent, Monsieur Fermoye?"

"But it must be mine! It cannot have been sent by anyone else!" said Fermoye loudly.

"But yes," said Kate. "My poor husband used to buy this powder from others. Your packet may have been sent to London."

"But it is impossible, Madame! My packet was the last your husband received. No one knows it better than you," said Fermoye.

Again Kate appeared to hesitate; then she said: "You had better see the packet, and if you are sure that it is yours, I will pay you your money."

"But certainly, Madame. Certainly," said Fermoye readily, and I heard him push back his chair and rise.

They went out of the house and down to the hut, and Fermoye was walking jauntily. They were not three minutes at the hut, and came back.

"But who speaks French in St. Joseph's?" said Kate scornfully. "I tell you that I cannot pay more than eight hundred pounds for each packet of cocaine. There is not enough profit for the danger I run."

Fermoye went up into the air; it was a very dear drug to manufacture—very dear; it was dangerous for him too. Also he had to pay for the aeroplane, and that was very dear too. Kate said that it was much more dangerous for her, and they haggled for a while, and then there came a pause.

Then Fermoye said: "Very well. I will sell it you for nine hundred pounds the packet. I can do no more."

Kate hesitated; then she said: "Very well. I will buy nine packets of cocaine a year from you at nine hundred pounds the packet."

"Good. If it must be, it must!" said Fermoye glumly. "I will let you have three packets in November."

"You worked it splendidly, Mrs. Garfield," said Tyrwhitt with warm approval, as he passed her in the hall.

When we came out of the house Fermoye was fifty yards up the lane. We walked on the turf, and we were half-way up the lane when he heard us. He turned, took one look at us, and ran. He did not run far, and when I snapped the handcuffs on him he spoke at length. I was sorry that I knew French. I took his pocket-book with the marked notes in it from his breast pocket. Tyrwhitt took a whistle from his pocket and blew two calls on it. Three minutes later his car ran up, and he put Fermoye into it. He congratulated me on the way I had done the job, shook hands with me, and stepped into the car. Once more a crook was carried away from St. Joseph's without its inhabitants being any the wiser.

CHAPTER XIX
The Man Who Shot Garfield

I TURNED to go back to Applecross when I remembered Fermoye's taxi and walked down to the "White Horse," where I found the driver, gossiping with Carr over a pint. I told him that he would never see his fare again.

"Thank you for telling me, sir. But it don't make no odds to me," he said. "I didn't like the looks of that foreigner, an' I saw to it as 'e paid me double fare before we started."

Carr looked surprised, but I did not tell him what had happened; he would learn about it from the newspapers during the next sessions at the Old Bailey.

I went back to Applecross, and as I went into the sitting-room I said: "And that's that."

"Don't you worry about that," I said. "You did not take an active part in the smuggling; you only went down to the forty-acre field to see the aeroplanes arrive and depart."

"I shall be surprised if the judge doesn't compliment you on your intelligence and public spirit," I said.

We agreed that she should let her family and the village know that she was Mrs. Garfield, but she rather stuck at the idea of wearing mourning for Garfield. I hoped that my assurance that black suited her better than any colour helped to reconcile her to the idea.

I walked with her to the Rectory after lunch, and on the way she said thoughtfully: "I liked Mr. Tyrwhitt; but he looked very surprised when he saw me. I suppose it was because he found me so young."

I yelled and rubbed my arm vigorously, and said: "Such behaviour in a quiet country place!"

I went back to Applecross and wrote my resignation from the Yard, to date from the conclusion of the trials of Giuseppe and Fermoye. Till that took place I was going to do everything I knew to find evidence that Pringle had murdered Garfield, and I had small hope of finding it. When I posted the letter to the Yard I rang up Collins and told him to report at nine the next morning.

That evening the Padre and Kate and Joan came to dinner. The Padre was looking cheerful, or rather as near cheerful as he could look, and almost beamed on me.

We talked freely about the cocaine smuggling. Joan, a fellow-sufferer from the Marsh and hardupness, and of a similar spirit, evidently thought that Kate had acted in the most natural manner in taking an exciting and profitable part in smuggling what she believed to be that harmless stuff, saccharine. Whatever the Padre thought he kept to himself. Amy approved frankly of Kate's action; but then it was going to bring me great kudos; so she was not unbiased.

Kate said very little, I did not think that she approved very highly of it herself, but knew that, were it all to come over again, she would act exactly as she had acted, except that she would not have married Garfield. That was what I gathered from the little she did say.

Then she said: "I've been thinking over the money part of it, and I've quite made up my mind that I won't keep the money that was made out of cocaine. I'm going to take it because Mr. Carthew says that if I don't it will go to the Crown and some silly Chancellor of the Exchequer will muddle it away. But when I've got it I'm going to give it to the London Hospital."

She looked at me, a little anxiously I thought, and I said: "You couldn't give it to anything better."

She looked a little relieved, and I was relieved too. Sixty thousand pounds is a lot of money, and I did not wish to run any chance of being misunderstood.

Then she went on: "But some of his money was made quite honestly in ordinary business, and I'm going to keep that."

"About eight thousand pounds," I said. "It will bring you in about four hundred a year."

"And you'll be able to sell this house if you want to, and have a little more," I said.

"No," said I. "What you really want is the right kind of work—not money. You have an active spirit that needs occupation."

I was surprised that she did not scowl at him, but she took it quite meekly; she even said: "I suppose I do. But then I don't know anything I could do."

When the three girls went into the sitting-room, leaving us over our Burgundy, the Padre thanked me heartily for getting Kate out of a very awkward situation.

"As a matter of fact, it wasn't I who got Miss Bolsover out of the really awkward situation; it was John Pringle," I said.

"I see what you mean," said the Padre seriously. "But do you really believe that Pringle shot him?"

"Certain sure," I said. "But there's no evidence, and he'll never hang for it—he'll probably hang for his next murder, though."

"Well, it's like this," said I. "When a man of a well-balanced temperament commits a murder, he does it for what seems to him a very good reason, and if he gets away with it he very seldom commits another. But when a man of Pringle's unbalanced temperament commits a murder and gets away with it, he goes on. The next time he acquires a furious dislike of somebody, murder will seem a natural and easy way of working it off. But the police don't forget, and the next time there's a murder in St. Joseph's they'll go straight to Pringle, while the evidence is fresh, and get him."

The Padre was staring at me. "But why should he murder Garfield?" he said in a very perplexed voice.

"Because he was, and is, desperately in love with Miss Bols—with Mrs. Garfield, and I expect it was partly sheer hatred and partly the silly notion that if Garfield was out of the way he would have a chance," said I. "He was jealous and he watched. He'd nothing else to do with his evenings, you know. And he must have been watching for a long time, months perhaps, for he knew exactly what happened, and waited for the airman to switch on his light, to get away clear of the hut, before he tried to shoot Garfield."

"It's an ingenious theory, but it doesn't seem to me any more probable than that that abominable poisoner, Garfield, was shot by one of the other ruffians engaged in that vile traffic," said the Padre. "And I wish that those other two blackguards you caught were going to be hanged."

He spoke almost savagely, and I gathered that he felt very strongly about the dope traffic.

"If you could get over the fact that Garfield was shot with a rifle and not a pistol, he might have been shot by a confederate or a hijacker," said I. "But I believe that Garfield was shot with his own rifle; that, thanks to one of those imbecile kinks in a murderer's mind, Pringle thought it safer to steal Garfield's rifle from your cupboard and shoot him with it rather than use his own."

"And that's ingenious too," said the Padre in a tone that told me that he did not believe it. "You say that once a man has committed a murder he goes on committing murders?"

"A certain type does," said I. "But very likely Pringle will stop at one. Collins and I have been giving him a very bad time indeed. We've made it clear that we suspect him, and that we're looking for evidence that he was out in the meadows at the time Garfield was murdered, and he's frightened out of his life."

"You have, have you?" said the Padre in an astonished voice. He paused for quite a while; then he added: "Well, well, a little chastening won't do that young man any harm—none at all. But it must not be protracted too long."

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "A really frightened man often does very foolish things. He may give himself away yet."

We went into the drawing-room and spent a delightful evening. At any rate I did. Kate was evidently recovering fast from the horrible time she had had, and every now and then she was the bright and sparkling creature I knew she ought to be.

The next morning Collins arrived bright and eager and ready for work, so bright and eager that I really felt that I must do him a little good.

"Get on—get on with it? But I thought you were getting on with it, sir!" he said, looking astonished.

"I had to drop it for a day or two while I collared those two cocaine smugglers," I said.

"Yes," said I. "I discovered that that forty-acre field had been used as a landing-place for cocaine. In fact, I found twelve thousand pounds worth of cocaine under the lambing hut."

"The lambing hut! Twelve thousand pounds worth of cocaine!" he said, still speaking loudly. "But I searched that lambing hut and so did the Superintendent. We turned over every bit of straw in it."

"I don't know," said I. "But I collared the French manufacturer and the London distributor, and a draft of the Flying Squad took them to Town."

"But you might have given us a chance, sir," he said in a tone of bitter reproach. "That's why we don't like you gentlemen from the Yard. You get all the credit. And we could have just as well have taken them to Ryeford."

"But hang it all, man! you had your chance; you had it for days before I came down," said I. "You saw that motor headlight by Garfield's bed. What did you think it was for?"

"To read small print with, when he was in bed. I told you so, sir," he said quickly.

"That was because he stood it beside his bed and not in the window. If he'd stood it in the window, you might have guessed it was a signal lamp," I said. "What you want to do is to look at things harder, and think. Why, the front of the lamp actually faced the window and not the bed. It was standing just as it had stood when it was turned out."

"Well, don't you tell anyone about this cocaine business, not even the Superintendent—till I give you permission. What happened to Chardon?" I said sharply.

That was all right, and I was sure that inquiries had been started before ever he was remanded for them. The men from the Yard would be given every facility by the French police, and there was every chance that a drawing of his machine would be in the hands of the technicians of the Air Force before the French Air Force knew of its existence—if they ever did know.

"Then you may depend on it, sir, that he was shot after all by one of the smugglers," said Collins, once more absolutely cocksure.

"And you may depend on it he was not," said I. "But we'll go along and interview John Pringle. And when I scratch my head, you clear out. I shall have got him to the stage at which one man will get more out of him than two."

That was as it should be: as long as he cleared out before I started asking about Garfield's rifle, I did not care what he understood.

"Yes," I said. "And you'd better get on with looking for the man or woman who saw him outside the Gate Farm between half-past eleven and half-past twelve. Don't just specialise in lookers; try everyone who used that path across the meadows; go through the village cottage by cottage. My theory is that if there's a crime there must be evidence, and it only wants finding."

We went down to the Gate Farm, but we did not go straight round to the front door. I had a fancy that there might be a useful piece of evidence to be had for the asking, and I looked in at the kitchen window. In the kitchen I saw a plump girl with an honest, but not unintelligent face—the general servant of the Pringles.

"I wonder whether you've missed a point here?" I said to Collins, and I knocked at the back door.

"There's nothing to be frightened about," I said quietly. "We're trying to find out whether anyone heard the shots fired that killed that unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Garfield; and as this house isn't very far away and the wind was blowing this way, we thought you might have heard them. What time did you go to bed on the night of the murder?"

"Of course. You go to bed before Mr. Pringle and his mother and sisters," I said.

"Oh, no, sir, I don't. I'm always half an hour, or sometimes an hour, after them. I've got to finish up," she said quickly.

"And on the night of the murder they went to bed at ten, and you went to bed at half-past?" I said.

"No, sir. I didn't hear anything—not a sound till Miss Mabel woke me next morning."

We walked round the house, and I did not look at Collins. I said: "That alibi doesn't look as good as it did. But I wonder they never thought to coach the girl."

"They're not the only fools about here," said Collins bitterly. "I thought they did the 'ousework themselves."

She said that he was, in a shaky voice, and took us to him in his den. He was looking chastened, much less like a carnivorous bull, more suited to a happy home.

"Good morning, Mr. Pringle," I said civilly. "Inspector Collins was told by your mother and sisters that you and they went to bed at about twelve on the night of Garfield's murder, and you were heard snoring till half-past one."

"Yes. That's right—quite right—twelve o'clock it was. But of course I can't say about the snoring," he said.

That staggered him, for he believed me. But he pulled himself together and said hoarsely: "Well, what about it? What if I did go to bed at ten? What harm is there in that?"

"You didn't get up after your mother and sisters had gone to sleep, and go quietly out of the house?" I asked.

"No, I didn't! I've told you I stayed in bed. And I've told him half a dozen times I was in bed when Garfield was shot." He nodded towards Collins. "And if I had got up and gone out, somebody would have heard me for certain—there's hardly a stair that doesn't creak."

"Then you weren't anywhere near the forty-acre field between half-past eleven and half-past one that night?" I said.

"Next morning at breakfast. My mother and sisters were all in a fluster about it," he growled.

"H'm," said I. "You heard that a neighbour and an acquaintance had been murdered, and you said it was damned good riddance. Now why did you say that?" I asked.

"Because I thought it," he said, "I've told you he wasn't the kind of man I've any use for."

I scratched my head, and Collins rose and said: "Well, I'll be getting along to see that party, sir. I'm pretty sure he'll be able to give us the information we want."

He went out, and Pringle scowled at his back with a very uneasy look on his face.

"Garfield's rifle?" he said, and the question really astonished him. "Why, how the devil should I know?"

"Come, come," I said. "You knew that Garfield's rifle was in the cupboard under the Rectory stairs, and you took it away."

Then the change did come, and it was a change with a vengeance; his face turned almost black, and he could scarcely get the words out as he roared, stuttering: "So that's the g-g-game, is it? B-b-blest if I didn't g-g-guess it! So I'm to b-b-be made the scape-g-goat, am I? Not much! Not me! She's gone too far!" He leant forward and tapped my knee, and his face was hideous. "Look here, Mr. Policeman, you ask Kate Garfield what she's done with Garfield's rifle! Kate Garfield, mind—not Kate Bolsover! You ask her about the smuggling!"

"I think you must be what the newspapers call a very gallant gentleman, you measly cur," I said unpleasantly. "As it happens, Mrs. Garfield has told me all about the smuggling, and helped me to send the smugglers to jail. Also she told me that you were the last man in the world to murder Garfield—that you'd be far too frightened for your own skin."

He stared at me and believed me, and looked simply dazed and stupid. There would be a reaction after a burst of rage like that.

"Devil nothing," I said. "It's my business to find out things. But you have insinuated that Mrs. Garfield murdered her husband. There's no commoner trick than for a criminal to try to fix his crime on someone else. I was pretty sure before, but now I'm certain—you've got a .22 rifle yourself."

"There you go! Trying to fix Garfield's murder on me!" he burst out. "And before I know where I am, I'll hang for a crime I never committed. It's a shame! A damned shame! The life you're leading me!"

"But I haven't got anything to confess! I had nothing to do with it! And I don't know who did!" he said. And I'll be hanged if I did not think he would burst out crying.

I walked out of the room and out of the house, and I certainly knew more about it. I knew that John Pringle was not the murderer; knew that he had been speaking the truth. The knowledge gave me no pleasure whatever. John Pringle was the one person in St. Joseph's whom I should have preferred to have committed the murder. Innocent though he was, I was not at all sorry that I had given him a devil of a time; I felt that I was doing him good, and he wanted doing good to badly.

"Getting him to admit a motive for the crime before witnesses. As soon as I came out of the Farm I made a note about his saying that Garfield's murder was a good riddance. Did you get anything else out of him?"

I let it go at that. Why should not Collins and the Ryeford police go on doing John Pringle good when I was far away?

That afternoon, with the help of Garfield's field-glasses, I was able to meet Kate as she came out of the church after arranging the flowers. I suggested that we should go for a walk and discuss the matter of her evidence at the trial. She agreed and went into the Rectory and put on a hat.

We went down the village, past the "White Horse," out into the country which I had not yet seen, discussing the question of how much she was to have known about the smuggling, for Fermoye's counsel was pretty sure to try to make out not only that she had known that it was cocaine that was being smuggled, but that she had taken an active part in the smuggling—not that it mattered much, for she would be held to have acted under the compulsion of her husband. We discussed the probable questions he would ask her, and the judicious answers, and came to the end of it.

"I don't know whether it would be quite the kind of work you fancy; but I can offer you a job," I said.

"Yes. In that Private Enquiry Agency I'm starting. I believe that Amy, you and I would make a very good team to start with," I said.

"No. But you'll soon learn and I think that you'd often and often get information where a man would fail. At any rate you'd find a good deal of the work exciting, and a few months of it would make up for those dull years which have bored you so," said I.

"A good deal of it, but like nearly every other honest job, there is also a good deal of drudgery to it. But it's certainly work that you can do, and it would call for all your quickness and resource," said I. "You think about it."

"It will, of course, bring you into contact with all kinds of people, and you'll be in London," said I, for I was very keen on her taking the job.

The days that followed were peaceful enough, for I was not bothering much about the murder of Garfield, and I was content that it should quietly slip into its place among the unsolved mysteries of crime. If Garfield had been a different kind of man, my feeling would have been different; but he had certainly asked to be removed from Society one way or another. At the same time I said nothing to weaken Collins's ardour, and if the whole village, as was now the case, believed John Pringle to have murdered Garfield, well, John Pringle could do with a lot of chastening.

I received a letter from Tyrwhitt begging me to withdraw my resignation. He seemed so vexed about it that I was flattered; he could not understand why I should choose the moment when I had done a really good piece of work to resign. But it seemed to me the very time to resign—at the top of my hour. Apart from that, the Yard left me alone, and I stayed on at Applecross, sending in reports to Goad of the inquiries Collins continued to make in the hope of finding that someone had seen John Pringle in the meadows about the time of Garfield's murder.

I stayed on at Applecross, for, when I talked of moving to the "White Horse," Kate begged me to stay on there, and Amy with me. Naturally I saw a great deal of Kate—Amy fell back on Joan—and we went for a walk every fine afternoon. We worked out the evidence she should give at the trial thoroughly. I wrote her proof and my own and sent them to the Crown lawyers; twice she drove me up to London, and we discussed our evidence with them. She was growing used to me as I wished her to, and I knew that she trusted me. I gathered from scraps of knowledge of my past she let fall that she and Amy had talked about me a good deal, and that would not harm me with her. She was indeed a changed creature, as lovely as I had known she should be.

Then we went up to London for the trial. The Padre went with Kate, and Amy stayed with Joan. Kate gave her evidence excellently, and it was unshaken by the cross-examination. Indeed, I thought the cross-examination halfhearted; but it was a hopeless case. Everyone believed that Kate had been humbugged by Garfield. Giuseppe and Fermoye would have done better to have pleaded guilty, I thought. Giuseppe got seven years and Fermoye five. The judge did compliment Kate, and of course the papers were full of her, and they said several kind words about me. It was a good advertisement to start a Private Enquiry Agency on.

That afternoon Kate and I went for a walk to get the London fog out of our lungs. For some time on the way from London the Padre had been pressing me to stop chastening John Pringle. He seemed to have the business on his mind. I had refused to tell Collins to stop, for I thought that Pringle needed a good deal more chastening before he would fit into a happy home. It set Kate and me talking about Garfield's murder, and I said that I did not believe that the truth about it would ever be known.

"I'm sure it won't; he must have been murdered by what you call a hijacker," she said.

She said it in an odd tone, and I knew that she did not believe it. I also knew that she would not tell me what she did believe—not then; later, perhaps—a good deal later. Then we talked about one another and ourselves.

It was dark when we reached the Rectory, and just before we came to the garden gate I put my arm round her.

"Only a comradely gesture," said I. "And I wanted to see if your ribs could still be counted."

"I don't believe it. As I've told you before, you're the rudest man I ever met."

I followed her in, but she had run up the stairs. I knocked at the door of the Padre's study and went in.

He was sitting by the fire with his pipe in his mouth, frowning at something he was thinking about. As I came to the fire I saw in a row on the mantelpiece three small cartridge cases.

I looked at them, and I looked at them hard. My mind worked quickly. Well, if you believe you have the rights of high and low justice, and have an unhappy stepdaughter led into mischief by a blackguard, and you loathe the dope traffic, and you are a man of spirit who has been through a great war, you are likely to exercise your rights. Yet one does not expect people to be so conscientious.

But I could not see that it had anything to do with me. It seemed a matter for the police, and I no longer belonged to the police. Besides, there was not a scrap more evidence than in the case of John Pringle—less, in fact. Goad would laugh at me.

"I must tell Collins to let up on Pringle since you will worry about him," I said quietly.

THE END

EDGAR JEPSON

THE MURDER IN ROMNEY MARSH

ABOUT THIS BOOK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I The Crime and the Victim

CHAPTER II The Persian Lamb Coat

CHAPTER III Miss Carr Talks

CHAPTER IV The Lace Handkerchief

CHAPTER V One .22 Rifle

CHAPTER VI The Other Rifle

CHAPTER VII The Two Lamps

CHAPTER VIII I Search the Church

CHAPTER IX Giuseppe

CHAPTER X Another Talk With Pringle

CHAPTER XI Joan Talks

CHAPTER XII M. Maurice Fermoye Calls For His Money

CHAPTER XIII I Get Rid of Chardon

CHAPTER XIV Kate Talks

CHAPTER XV A Compact

CHAPTER XVI Tyrwhitt Comes to St. Joseph's

CHAPTER XVII Giuseppe Again

CHAPTER XVIII Fermoye

CHAPTER XIX The Man Who Shot Garfield