"I don't think there's any need to look round much further, Mr. Bent," he said. "Of course, I shall take this away with me, and compare it with the shorter piece. But we'll just peep into this shed, so as to make his daughter believe that was what we wanted: I don't want to frighten her more than we have done. Naught there, you see," he went on, opening the shed door and revealing a whitewashed interior furnished with fittings and articles of its owner's trade. "Well, we'll away—with what we've got."
He went back to the door of the cottage and putting his head inside called gently to its occupant.
"Well?" demanded Avice.
"All right, miss—we're going," said the sergeant. "But if your father comes in, just ask him to step down to the police-station, d'you see?—I should like to have a word or two with him."
The girl made no answer to this gentle request, and when the sergeant had joined the others, she shut the door of the cottage, and Brereton heard it locked and bolted.
"That's about the strangest thing of all!" he said as he and Bent left the policemen and turned down a by-lane which led towards the town. "I haven't a doubt that the piece of cord with which Kitely was strangled was cut off that coil! Now what does it mean? Of course, to me it's the very surest proof that this man Harborough had nothing to do with the murder."
"Why?" asked Bent.
"Why? My dear fellow!" exclaimed Brereton. "Do you really think that any man who was in possession of his senses would do such a thing? Take a piece of cord from a coil—leave the coil where anybody could find it—strangle a man with the severed piece and leave it round the victim's neck? Absurd! No—a thousand times no!"
"Well—and what then?" asked Bent.
"Ah! Somebody cut that piece off—for the use it was put to," answered Brereton. "But—who?"
Bent made no reply for a while. Then, as they reached the outskirts of the town, he clapped a hand on his companion's arm.
"You're forgetting something—in spite of your legal mind," he said. "The murderer may have been interrupted before he could remove it. And in that case–"
He stopped suddenly as a gate opened in the wall of a garden which they were just passing, and a tall man emerged. In the light of the adjacent lamp Bent recognized Mallalieu. Mallalieu, too, recognized him, and stopped.
"Oh, that you, Mr. Mayor!" exclaimed Bent. "I was just wondering whether to drop in on you as I passed. Have you heard what's happened tonight?"
"Heard naught," replied Mallalieu. "I've just been having a hand at whist with Councillor Northrop and his wife and daughter. What has happened, then?"
They were all three walking towards the town by that time, and Bent slipped between Brereton and Mallalieu and took the Mayor's arm.
"Murder's happened," he said. "That's the plain truth of it. You know old Kitely—your partner's tenant? Well, somebody's killed him."
The effect of this announcement on Mallalieu was extraordinary. Bent felt the arm into which he had just slipped his own literally quiver with a spasmodic response to the astonished brain; the pipe which Mallalieu was smoking fell from his lips; out of his lips came something very like a cry of dismay.
"God bless me!" he exclaimed. "You don't say so?"
"It's a fact," said Bent. He stopped and picked up the fallen pipe. "Sorry I let it out so clumsily—I didn't think it would affect you like that. But there it is—Kitely's been murdered. Strangled!"
"Strangled!" echoed Mallalieu. "Dear—dear—dear! When was this, now?"
"Within the hour," replied Bent. "Mr. Brereton here—a friend of mine from London—and I were spending the evening at your partner's, when that neighbour of his, Garthwaite, came running in to tell Mr. Cotherstone that Kitely was lying dead on the Shawl. Of course we all went up."
"Then—you've seen him?" demanded Mallalieu. "There's no doubt about it?"
"Doubt!" exclaimed Bent. "I should think there is no doubt! As determined a murder as ever I heard of. No—there's no doubt."
Mallalieu paused—at the gate of his own house.
"Come in, gentlemen," he said. "Come in just a minute, anyway. I—egad it's struck me all of a heap, has that news! Murder?—there hasn't been such a thing in these parts ever since I came here, near thirty years ago. Come in and tell me a bit more about it."
He led the way up a gravelled drive, admitted himself and his visitors to the house with a latchkey, and turned into a parlour where a fire burned and a small supper-tray was set out on a table beneath a lamp.
"All my folks'll have gone to bed," he said. "They go and leave me a bite of something, you see—I'm often out late. Will you gentlemen have a sandwich—or a dry biscuit? Well, you'll have a drink, then. And so," he went on, as he produced glasses from the sideboard, "and so you were spending the evening with Cotherstone, what?"
"Well, I can't say that we exactly spent all the evening with him," answered Bent, "because he had to go out for a good part of it, on business. But we were with him—we were at his house—when the news came."
"Aye, he had to go out, had he?" asked Mallalieu, as if from mere curiosity. "What time would that be, like? I knew he'd business tonight—business of ours."
"Nine to ten, roughly speaking," replied Bent. "He'd just got in when Garthwaite came with the news."
"It 'ud shock him, of course," suggested Mallalieu. "His own tenant!"
"Yes—it was a shock," agreed Bent. He took the glass which his host handed to him and sat down. "We'd better tell you all about it," he said. "It's a queer affair—Mr. Brereton here, who's a barrister, thinks it's a very queer affair."
Mallalieu nodded and sat down, too, glass in hand. He listened attentively—and Brereton watched him while he listened. A sleek, sly, observant, watchful man, this, said Brereton to himself—the sort that would take all in and give little out. And he waited expectantly to hear what Mallalieu would say when he had heard everything.
Mallalieu turned to him when Bent had finished.
"I agree with you, sir," he said. "Nobody but a fool would have cut that piece of cord off, left it round the man's neck, and left the coil hanging where anybody could find it. And that man Harborough's no fool! This isn't his job, Bent. No!"
"Whose, then?" asked Bent.
Mallalieu suddenly drank off the contents of his glass and rose.
"As I'm chief magistrate, I'd better go down to see the police," he said. "There's been a queer character or two hanging about the town of late. I'd better stir 'em up. You won't come down, I suppose?" he continued when they left the house together.
"No—we can do no good," answered Bent.
His own house was just across the road from Mallalieu's, and he and Brereton said goodnight and turned towards it as the Mayor strode quickly off in the direction of the police-station.
CHAPTER VII
NIGHT WORK
From the little colony of new houses at the foot of the Shawl to the police station at the end of the High Street was only a few minutes' walk. Mallalieu was a quick walker, and he covered this distance at his top speed. But during those few minutes he came to a conclusion, for he was as quick of thought as in the use of his feet.
Of course, Cotherstone had killed Kitely. That was certain. He had begun to suspect that as soon as he heard of the murder; he became convinced of it as soon as young Bent mentioned that Cotherstone had left his guests for an hour after supper. Without a doubt Cotherstone had lost his head and done this foolish thing! And now Cotherstone must be protected, safe-guarded; heaven and earth must be moved lest suspicion should fall on him. For