‘Merciful heavens, Alfred, what’s the matter with you! Why do you look at me like that?’

‘Mr Cartell, sir,’ Alfred moistened his lips. ‘I, really, I scarcely know how to put it, sir. He’s, he’s –’

‘What are you trying to tell me? What’s happened?’

‘There’s been an accident, sir. The men have found him. He’s –’

Alfred turned towards the library window. Through the open gate in the quickset hedge, the workmen could be seen grouped together, stooping.

‘They found him,’ Alfred said, ‘not to put too fine a point on it, sir – in the ditch. I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir, but I’m afraid he’s dead.’

CHAPTER 4

Alleyn

‘There you are,’ said Superintendent Williams. ‘That’s the whole story and those are the local people involved. Or not involved, of course, as the case may be. Now, the way I looked at it was this. It was odds on we’d have to call you people in anyway, so why muck about ourselves and let the case go cold on you? I don’t say we wouldn’t have liked to go it alone, but we’re too damned busy and a damn’ sight too understaffed. So I rang the Yard as soon as it broke.’

‘The procedure,’ Alleyn said dryly, ‘is as welcome as it’s unusual. We couldn’t be more obliged, could we, Fox?’

‘Very helpful and clear-sighted, Super,’ Inspector Fox agreed with great heartiness.

They were driving from the Little Codling constabulary to Green Lane. The time was ten o’clock. The village looked decorous and rather pretty in the spring sunshine. Miss Cartell’s Austrian maid was shaking mats in the garden. The postman was going his rounds. Mr Period’s house, as far as it could be seen from the road, showed no signs of disturbance. At first sight, the only hint of there being anything unusual toward, might have been given by a group of three labourers who stood near a crane truck at the corner, staring at their boots and talking to the driver. There was something guarded and uneasy in their manner. One of them looked angry.

A close observer might have noticed that in several houses round the green, people who stood back from their windows, were watching the car as it approached the lane. The postman checked his bicycle and with one foot on the ground, also watched. George Copper stood on the path outside his corner garage and was joined by two women, a youth and three small boys. They, too, were watching. The women’s hands moved furtively across their mouths.

‘The village has got on to it,’ Superintendent Williams observed. ‘Here we are, Alleyn.’

They turned into the lane. It had been cordoned off with a rope slung between iron stakes and a ‘Detour’ sign in front. The ditch began at some distance from the corner and was defined on its inner border by neatly heaped-up soil and on its outer by a row of heavy drain-pipes laid end to end. There was a gap in this row, opposite Mr Period’s gate, and a single drain-pipe on the far side of the ditch.