‘Yes, and we can’t really put the murder earlier than two o’clock because off the blood. Putting the horse’s speed and the condition of the blood and the scream all together, we get two o’clock as the earliest possible and on the whole the most probable time for the murder. Right. You come on the scene, at latest, at 2.05. Allow (which is very unlikely) that the murderer dashed up at full gallop, cut Alexis throat and dashed off again at full speed without wasting a second, and allow him (which is again most unlikely) to do as much as ten miles an hour through water. At 2.05 he will have done just under a mile on his way back. But we proved this afternoon that you have — a clear view of over a mile and a half from the Flat-Iron in the direction of Darley. If he had been there, you couldn’t have failed to see him. Or could you? You didn’t start really looking till 2.10, when you found the body.’
‘No, I didn’t. But I’ve got all my faculties. If the murder was done at two o’clock, when the scream woke me, I couldn’t possibly not have heard a horse galloping hell-forleather along the shore. It would make a pretty good row, wouldn’t it?’
‘It certainly would. Tramp, tramp along the land they rode, Splash, splash along the sea.. It won’t do, my girl, it won’t do. And yet, that mare went along that bit of beach not so very long ago, or I’ll eat my hat. Eh? Oh, thanks, Bunter.’
He took the hat which Bunter gravely proffered him.
‘And there’s the ring-bolt in the rock. That didn’t come there by chance. The horse was taken there, but when and why is a puzzle. Never mind. Let’s check up on, our facts, just as though the thing were coming out all right.’
They left the field and walked up, Hinks’s Lane.
‘We won’t take the car,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’ll just wander along chewing straws and looking idle. Yonder is the village green, I fancy, where, as you once informed us, under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands. Let us hope the smith is at work. Smiths, like electric drills, are made to be stared at.’
The smith was at work. The cheerful clink of his hammer fell, cheerily on their ears as they crossed the green, and the huge dappled quarters of a cart-horse gleamed in the shaft of sunlight that fell across the open door.
Harriet and Wimsey lounged up, Wimsey dangling the horse-shoe in his hand.
‘Afternoon, zur,’ said the yokel in charge of the cart-horse, civilly.
“Noon,’ replied Wimsey.
Tine day, zur.’
‘Ah!’ said Wimsey.
The yokel looked Wimsey over thoroughly, and decided that he was a knowledgeable person and no foolish chatterer. He hitched his shoulder a little more comfortably against the door-post and fell into a reverie.
After about five minutes, Wimsey judged that the time had come when a further — observation might be well received. He, said, jerking his head in the direction of the anviclass="underline"
‘Not so much of that as there used to be.’
‘Aht’ said the man.
‘The smith, who had removed the dull shoe from the anvil and replaced it in the forge for re-heating, must have caught the remark, for he glanced towards the door. He said nothing, however, but put all his energy into working his bellows.
Presently, the shoe being once more on the anvil, the man with the horse shifted his shoulders again,’ pushed his cap back, scratched his head, replaced the cap, spat (but with perfect politeness), thrust his hand deep into the right-hand pocket of his breeches and addressed a brief word of encouragement to the horse.
Silence, punctuated only by the clink of the hammer, followed, till Wimsey remarked:
You’ll get the hay in all right, if this lasts.’
‘Ah!’ said the man, with satisfaction.
The smith, raising the shoe in the tongs and again returning it to the fire, wiped his brow with his leather apron and broke into the conversation. He followed Humpty-Dumpty’s method of going back to the last remark but one.
‘I recollect,’ he said, ‘when thur wasn’t none of these motor-cars, only the one Squire Goodrich had — what year would that be now, Jem?’
‘Mafeking year, that wur.’
‘Ah! zo it wur
Silence, while all meditated. Then Wimsey said:
‘I can remember when my father kept twenty-three horses, not counting the farm stock, of course.’
‘Ah!’ said the blacksmith. ‘That ‘ud be a big place, zur?’ ‘Yes; it was a big place. It was a treat for us kids to go down to the smithy and see them shod.’.
‘Ah!’
‘I still know a good bit of work when I see one. This young lady and I picked up a, cast shoe just now on the beach — you don’t get as much of that sort of luck these days as, you used to.’
He dangled the shoe on his fingers.
‘Off-fore,’ he added, casually, ‘nice little well-bred cob about fourteen hands; kicks her shoes off, and pecks a bit on this foot — is that right?’
The smith extended a large hand, courteously wiping it first upon his apron.
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘That’s right enough. Bay cob — belongs to Mr Newcombe — I zhuld know it.’
‘Your work?’
‘Zartain zhure.’ ‘Ah!’
‘Not been lying about very long, either.’
‘No.’ The smith licked his finger and rubbed the iron, lovingly. ‘What day wur that Mr Newcombe found the mare loose, Jem?’
Jem appeared to do a complicated arithmetical calcu lation, and replied:
‘Vriday, ay, it did be Vriday morning. That’s when it wur. Vriday.’
‘Ah! to be zhure. So t’wur.’
The smith leaned on his hammer-and considered the matter. By slow degrees he brought out the rest of the story.
It was not much, but it confirmed Wimsey’s deductions. Farmer Newcombe always kept horses in that field during the summer months. No, he never mowed that meadow on account of the (agricultural and botanical detail of which Harriet did not grasp the significance). No, Mr Newcombe
wouldn’t be about in that meadow much, no, nor yet the men, on account of it’s lying a long way from the rest of his land (interminable historical detail dealing with the distribution of tenancies and glebe round about that district, in which Harriet became completely lost), nor they wouldn’t need to, not to water the horses, on account of the stream (lengthy and rather disputatious account, to which Jem contributed, of the original course of the stream in Jem’s grandfather’s time, before Mr Grenfell made the pond over to Drake’s Spinney), and it wasn’t Mr Newcombe neither that see the mare running wild Friday morning, but Bessie Turvey’s youngest, and he came and told Jem’s uncle George and him and another of them got her in and tarrible lame she were, but Mr Newcombe, he did ought to have mended that gap before (prolonged recital of humorous anecdote, ending ‘and lord! how Old Parson did laugh, to be zhure!).’
After which, the explorers drove back in state to Wilvercombe, to hear that the body had not turned up yet, but that Inspector Umpelty had a pretty good idea where it might be. And dinner. And dancing. And so to bed.