“What’s your theory, then, Bradder? Someone from the camp?”
“I don’t know that I’ve got one,” Bradstreet mumbled. “Bit early in the day.”
“Apparently respectable young ladies have been known to find a uniform attractive. A sexy piece: I wouldn’t put it past her. What was she doing here, anyway?” His voice rasped irritably. “Snap out of it, Bradder! I know this is the village where nothing goes wrong, but we’ve been bumping into the exceptions that prove the rule.”
Bradstreet regarded him from level gray eyes.
“I’ve known Miss Caunter ever since she came here six years ago. She often used to take a walk by herself in the evening. We have never had any reason to believe that there was any illicit interest.”
“What an old Puritan you are. Why shouldn’t the girl have a boy friend?”
“No reason. Saving that I wouldn’t expect a lady of her bringing up to go in the bushes on Higworthy Common.”
“All right. I gather you don’t know of any boy friend?”
“Miss Caunter never showed any particular interest in any man in these parts. Not to my knowledge. Did you ever hear to the contrary, sergeant?”
“No, sir.” The sergeant was blushing profusely.
“You want to make it rape by a maniac. Welclass="underline" you may be right.”
He looked back at the body, grotesquely foreshortened from where they stood.
“Poor girl. There’s a good many like her going sour up and down the country. It’s a mad world we live in. Good. Our friend has finished. Come along.”
He walked briskly to the body, the others slowly following. Kneeling down again, he took from his pocket a small, flat tin, which looked as if it had once contained lozenges, and extracted from it a fine-pointed tweezers. Then, his own nose wrinkled with repugnance, he extracted the plug from each nostril, and laid the two little pieces of paper in the lid of the tin. He then fetched out the fat pocket knife, and selected a long, straight probe.
A thought struck him. He looked up at Bradstreet.
“What did Carter make of these?”
“He hasn’t seen her. He’s in the middle of a baby case. We couldn’t get him.”
“Just as well. I’d rather have the outsider.”
“We’ve always found Dr. Carter very good. Most conscientious and reliable,” Bradstreet said, a little stiffly.
“Not a word against him,” Ellis sang back. “Not a syllable. But t’other chap doesn’t know her from Adam—from Eve, rather—and it leaves him freer. Now then. Hold the tin, will you? Watch and see I don’t cheat.”
Bradstreet took the tin, and Ellis, using probe and tweezers, delicately unfolded the two little pieces of sodden paper. He had to go carefully; even so, he tore the first. It proved to be blank. As Ellis spread out the second, Bradstreet caught his breath. Blurred but readable, it held a fragment of a written message: the end of one word, and the start of another. There were three letters only: “t se.”
“—t se—” said Ellis thoughtfully. “Not secret. Discreet seamstress. Hot semolina.”
For the first time Bradstreet’s broad face showed emotion. A spasm of bewilderment convulsed it.
“Semolina!” he cried, loud with surprise. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Fat serpent. Wet seaweed. Get set. Best selected.” He opened innocent eyes at Bradstreet, “I’m only trying to fit words to the letters. There’s such a wide selection. Last seven. Must sell.”
“That’s better,” growled Bradstreet. “It don’t need to be nothing so out of the way as what you said first. Things are complicated enough without making up any more.”
“Lined paper,” Ellis said. “Of course, the piece may be torn out of the middle, but, as you see, there’s a bit of the line showing above the writing, and though it’s no wider really than the space between the two words, I’m inclined to bet that these letters are the first line of whatever it was. What do you say?”
“In that case, it wouldn’t be nothing about semolina,” said Bradstreet, with whom the suggestion seemed to rankle.
“Unless it was a shopping list. ‘1 pkt semolina. 2 oz. baking soda’ and so on. Don’t you like milk puddings, Bradder? Never mind: I don’t insist on it. What’s your guess?”
“I don’t see much point in guessing, until we know some more. But if it was the first line, it might be ‘I can’t see you to-night,’ or something of the sort. That is”—he paused, in some confusion.
“——if the poor girl was involved with someone. Bradder, that’s brilliant, simple and probable. Full marks. Go up top. But, as you meant, though you didn’t say it, it would be better still if we could find the rest of the message. Have a search made? I’m no good at that sort of thing.”
He suddenly became excited.
“I’m hopeful about this. If the murderer tore up that bit of paper inadvertently—the first bit that came to his hand—we stand a good chance of finding the rest of it. He’ll have chucked it away, or stuck it back in his pocket. I think the odds are it was inadvertent; otherwise, why use this particular bit of paper?”
“Unless it was a letter she wrote him, that angered him.”
“In that case, why use only one tiny bit of it? Besides, it’s such a damning thing: such an obvious clue. He couldn’t have left it on purpose.”
“Not without it was to mislead us.” Bradstreet was still back in dialect, a sure sign that he was moved.
“I don’t think so. I think the action—the putting of the paper there at all—is pathological. Something in the nature of a compulsion.”
Bradstreet wrinkled his brow.
“You mean, the murder’s a madman’s work?”
“Perhaps. Not necessarily. A sort of kink, coming to the surface in the excitement of the murder.”
“Criminals do queer things. Leave their trademarks, as you might say. But I never saw one like this.”
“Have a search made for the paper, anyway.”
“That I will.”
Bradstreet went across to the sergeant. Ellis shut away the pieces of paper in the tin, and put it in his pocket. He squatted down, and cleaned the tweezers and probe by thrusting them several times into the turf. Bradstreet, turning round, beheld him in astonishment. He looked for all the world like a small boy crouching over a frog in the grass.
Ellis stood up, beating his palms together.
“Doctor coming out here?”
“The ambulance will be here for her in a minute. What he’s got to do can be done better elsewhere.”
“Shall we wait?”
“Do you want to look around?”
“I’m no good at it, Bradder. When it comes to crawling about with a magnifying glass, I fade right out. I can do something with the stuff when it’s found: but someone else has got to find it for me.”
“I’ve given orders to bring in every piece of paper on the common,” Bradstreet said soberly. “You’ll have something to work on.”
“Good God. It’ll take years.”
“No. I can get half a dozen men on to it: and it’s all in just a few places.”
“You believe in doing the thing thoroughly.”
“Well, we don’t know where he’d throw the paper away. He may have dropped it nearby. He may have put it in his pocket, and thrown it away later, especially if he was the sort you say, not thinking what he was doing, like.”
Ellis looked at him with a fresh access of respect. Though upset and ruffled by Ellis’s flippancy, Bradstreet had taken in all the possibilities arising from his suggestion, and had acted methodically upon them.
“You don’t want to look around yourself, Bradder?”
“I had a look when I was out here before.”
“You don’t miss much, I expect.”
“I’m not very quick. Hallo. Here are the ambulance chaps. Yes. All clear. Go ahead.” He turned to Ellis. “We needn’t wait,” he said, almost pleadingly.