"Yes, sir?"
"I should say that-er-steps have been taken to remove the owner"s name from this one."
"Would you, sir?" Sloan became extremely alert.
"The back is almost smooth-but not quite."
"I understand, sir. You"ve been most helpful. There"ll be an explanation, of course, but in the meantime perhaps you would be kind enough to keep them under lock and key until I get to you. I daresay," he added heavily, "there will be rhyme to it as well as reason. If you know what I mean, sir."
"Indeed, yes," affirmed Mr. Meyton. "There are, of course, matters which are properly mysterious to us in the religious sense but-er-finite matters are always..."
"No, Inspector," Henrietta shook her head. "I can"t tell you anything more than that because I don"t know anything more."
"I see, miss. Thank you." Sloan and Crosby were back in the parlour of Boundary Cottage, sitting where they had been sitting the day before. Then, Henrietta had looked as if she hadn"t slept much the previous night.
Now she looked as if she hadn"t slept at all.
"The Rector," she went on wearily, "just said that they weren"t the right medals for the photograph."
"Yes, miss. He rang me."
"He took them away."
"Yes."
"Inspector..."
"Yes, miss?"
"Why weren"t they taken on Tuesday?"
"On Tuesday, miss?"
"By whoever broke into the bureau."
"I couldn"t say, miss."
"They must have seen them. They weren"t locked up in their cases or anything."
"No." He cleared his throat and said cautiously, "If they"d gone then, of course, you would have missed them."
"Naturally."
"Well, that-their absence-might have served to call your-call our attention to-er-any irregularities in the situation between you and your-er-parents." Sloan felt himself going a bit hot under the collar. It wasn"t a sensation he was accustomed to. "I don"t think it is generally appreciated that the-er-fact of childlessness is-er-established at a routine post-mortem."
He hadn"t appreciated it himself, actually.
Until yesterday.
To his relief Henrietta smiled wanly and said, "I see."
"I mean," expanded Sloan, "the chances of your discovering that they were the wrong medals..."
"Wrong?" she said swiftly.
"Wrong for the photograph."
"Go on, Inspector." Warily.
"The chances of them being handled by anyone knowing quite as much about the subject as Mr. Meyton were really very slight."
Since putting down the telephone Sloan had sent Crosby to check up on the Rector"s standing as an historian and found it high. Particularly in the field of military history.
"Inspector, are you trying to tell me that someone has been unlucky?"
"That"s one way of looking at it, miss. But for the accident of the Rector seeing them you might never have known."
"Known what?" she said with a sigh. "What exactly does it mean we know now that we didn"t know before?"
"That the medals are significant," said Sloan promptly.
She looked up. "Do you think so, Inspector?"
"I do, miss, though I don"t know what of just yet. Give us a little time." He hesitated and then said, "I think we may be going to find the answer to a lot of questions in the past."
She nodded. "Twenty-one years ago."
"Why then?"
"I"ll be twenty-one next month. At least I think I will be if my mother..." she corrected herself painfully, "if what I"ve been told is correct."
"Twenty-one?" Sloan frowned. "That could be important."
"To me, Inspector." Her voice had an ironic ring. "The key of the door perhaps. But not to anyone else."
"I shouldn"t be too sure about that, miss. Not just yet."
"And it rather looks," she went on as if she hadn"t heard him, "as if I"m not the only one to have a key to the front door of Boundary Cottage, doesn"t it?"
"True." He paused. "Yesterday you told me as much as you could remember being told about your father."
"Yes?"
"What all do you know about your... about Grace Jenkins?"
It was pitifully little in terms of verifiable fact-if she was telling him the truth. Her mother had been a children"s nurse for a family called Hocklington-Garwell, somewhere over the other side of the county. Henrietta didn"t know the exact address but she had been brought up on stories of the Hocklington-Garwell children. There had been two of them-both boys. Master Hugo and Master Michael. Then Grace Wright had met Cyril Jenkins, and married him.
"After that," concluded Henrietta tightly, "I understood they had had me."
"I see," said Sloan.
"And that very soon afterwards my father had been killed."
"I see," said Sloan again.
"But they didn"t have me," observed Henrietta astringently.
"She didn"t," agreed Sloan. "The chances of your being your father"s child-so to speak-are high."
"Thank you," she said gravely. "I"ll remember that."
"And the chances of her having come from East Calleshire are higher still." He told her about Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind in Calleford. "So, miss, I think we can take it that the mystery originates that way somewhere."
He did not mention murder.
"What I want to know," said the Superintendent testily, "is not who got which going but what you"re doing about it, Sloan." The Inspector was speaking from the call box in Larking village.
"Yes, sir. In the first instance we are looking for a car which hit a woman..."
"An unknown woman," pointed out Leeyes.
"A woman who may or may not be unknown,"agreed Sloan more moderately, "which hit her on a bad bend outside Larking village on Tuesday evening sometime between say six and nine o"clock."
"And have you got anywhere?"
"No, sir."
"There"s an inquest coming along on Sat.u.r.day morning," said Leeyes very gently. "It"s the law, Sloan, and the first thing the Coroner does is to take evidence of identification."
"Yes, sir." He hesitated. "We"ve no reason to suppose she isn"t Grace Jenkins..."
Superintendent Leeyes gave an intimidating grunt.
"But,"went on Sloan hastily, "I"m going to make some enquiries about her pension now, and see the two people who came back on the bus with her on Tuesday night. And I"ve got a man checking up now on the marriage register in Somerset House..."
"What"s that going to prove?"
"Whether or not this Grace Edith Wright did, in fact, marry one Cyril Edgar Jenkins. That should give us a lead."
"One way or the other," said Leeyes pointedly.
"Exactly, sir. We"ve got the experts working on those tyre casts too, and we"re putting out a general call for witnesses. We"re also trying to establish how she spent Tuesday-that may have some bearing on the case ..."
Leeyes grunted again.
"It"s a bit difficult," said Sloan, "because the girl has no idea..."
"It strikes me that the girl has no idea about too many things ..."
"She was away at College at the time."
"Check up on that, too, Sloan."
"Yes, sir. This man Hibbs..."
"Ah, yes," ruminatively. "Hibbs. That solicitor fellow you were talking to yesterday..."
"Arbican."
"He mentioned a settlement, didn"t he?"
"Yes, sir."
"It could have been with Hibbs."
"Yes, sir. That had already occurred to me."
"Could he have killed Grace Jenkins?"
"It strikes me," said Sloan pessimistically, "that anyone could have killed her. Anyone at all."
"He"s a local," said Leeyes.
"Yes, sir."
"He would know about the bend..."
"And the last bus."
"So you see..."
"And that it"s a deserted road at the best of times, but esat night."
"I don"t like the country," declared Leeyes. "There are never any witnesses."
"No, sir."
"Find out what Hibbs was doing on Tuesday night."
"Yes, sir."
"What sort of a car has he got?"
"The right sort," said Sloan cautiously.
"What?"
"That size tyre fits half a dozen cars. He happens to have one of them. A Riley."