He made no further remark until they reached the police station. Then, as they got out of the car, he turned to the Inspector.
“Care to see me do a little map-drawing, Inspector? It might amuse you.”
SIR CLINTON’S map-drawing, however, was destined to be postponed. Hardly had they entered his office when the telephone bell rang. After a few moments’ conversation he put down the receiver and turned to Armadale.
“That’s Mold, the keeper. He’s found Maurice Chacewater’s body. He’s telephoning from his own cottage, so I told him to wait there and we’ll go up in the car. The body’s in the woods and we’ll save time by getting Mold to guide us to it instead of hunting round for the place.”
It did not take long to reach the head keeper’s cottage, where they found Mold in a state of perturbation.
“Where is this body?” Sir Clinton demanded, cutting short Mold’s rather confused attempts to explain matters. “Take us to it first of all and then I’ll ask what I want to know.”
Under the keeper’s guidance they made their way through the woods, and at last emerged into a small clearing in the centre of which rose a few ruined walls.
“This is what they call the Knight’s Tower,” Armadale explained.
Sir Clinton nodded.
“I expected something of the sort. Now, Mold, where’s Mr Chacewater’s body?”
The keeper led them round the Tower, and as they turned the corner of a wall they came upon the body stretched at full length on the grass.
“The turf’s short,” said Armadale, with some disappointment. “There’s no track on it round about here.”
“That’s true,” said Sir Clinton. “We’ll have to do without that help.”
He walked over to where Maurice Chacewater was lying. The body was on its back; and a glance at the head was enough to show that life must be extinct.
“It’s not pretty,” Sir Clinton said as he pulled out his handkerchief and covered the dead face. “Shot at close range, evidently. I don’t wonder you were a bit upset, Mold.”
He glanced round the little glade, then turned again to the keeper.
“When did you find him?” he demanded.
“Just before I rang you up, sir. As soon as I came across him, I ran off to my cottage and telephoned to you.”
“When were you over this ground last?—before you found him, I mean.”
“Just before dusk, last night, sir. He wasn’t there, then.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certain, sir. I couldn’t have missed seeing him.”
“You haven’t touched the body?”
Mold shuddered slightly.
“No, sir. I went off at once and rang you up.”
“You met no one hereabouts this morning?”
“No, sir.”
“And you saw no one last night, either?”
“No, sir.”
“It was somewhere round about here, wasn’t it, that you heard that mysterious shot you told us about?”
“Yes, sir. I was just here at the time.”
Mold walked about twenty yards past the tower, to show the exact position. Sir Clinton studied the lie of the land for a moment.
“H’m! Have you any questions you want to ask, Inspector?”
Armadale considered for a moment or two.
“You’re sure you haven’t moved this body in any way?” he demanded.
“I never put a finger on it,” Mold asserted.
“And it’s lying just as it was when you saw it first?” Armadale pursued.
“As near as I can remember,” Mold replied, cautiously. “I didn’t wait long after I saw it. I went off almost at once to ring up the police.”
Armadale seemed to have got all the information he expected. Sir Clinton, seeing that no more questions were to come, turned to the keeper.
“Go off to the house and tell Mr Cecil Chacewater that his brother’s found and that he’s to come here at once. You needn’t say anything about the matter to anyone else. They’ll hear soon enough. And when you’ve done that, ring up the police station and tell them to send up a sergeant and a couple of constables to me here. Hurry, now.”
Mold went without a word. Sir Clinton waited till he was out of earshot and then glanced at Armadale.
“One thing stares you in the face,” the Inspector said in answer to the look. “He wasn’t shot here. That wound would mean any amount of blood; and there’s hardly any blood on the grass.”
Sir Clinton’s face showed his agreement. He looked down at the body.
“He’s lying on his back now; but after he was shot he lay on his left side till rigor mortis set in,” he pointed out.
The Inspector examined the body carefully.
“I think I see how you get that,” he said. “This left arm’s off the ground a trifle. If he’d been shot here and fell in this position, the arm would have relaxed and followed the lie of the ground. Is that it?”
“Yes, that and the hypostases. You see the marks on the left side of the face.”
“A dead man doesn’t shift himself,” the Inspector observed with an oracular air. “Someone else must have had a motive for dragging him about.”
“Here’s a revolver,” Sir Clinton pointed out, picking it up gingerly to avoid marking it with finger-prints. “You can see, later on, if anything’s to be made out from it.”
He put the revolver carefully down on a part of the ruined wall near at hand and then returned to the body.
