Smallbone Deceased

“I see,” said Hazlerigg. “I think. What are the different colours?”

“Different parts of the body deteriorate, after death, at different speeds. The speed of deterioration of any part depends on a number of constant factors, such as the temperature and the humidity of the atmosphere and equally on a number of accidental circumstances. For instance, if the stomach happens to be full at death—”

“All right,” said Hazlerigg hastily, “you can skip that one. These lines, I take it, are the various items you have selected—”

“Test points, yes. The mauve, for instance, shows the degree of separation of the finger-nails from the hand. The yellow is the bladder-wall.”

“What’s the purple one?”

“Toe-nails.”

“I see. And the positioning of the curve enables you to see the likeliest time of death according to each individual symptom.”

“That’s about it,” said the doctor. “As I said at the beginning, there’s nothing very scientific about it all. I’ve just represented, graphically, the points which have influenced me in coming to a certain decision. Generally speaking, I have been helped a great deal by the fact that the body remained—or so I have assumed—in the same very confined place and at a fairly constant temperature.”

“And your decision?”

“From the moment of discovery, not less than six weeks, not more than eight.”

Hazlerigg took up his desk diary and ran a finger back through the pages.

“It’s April twenty-second today,” he said. “We found the body on the fourteenth. Just over a week ago. Six weeks back from there brings us to—yes. And eight weeks—hum!”

“Does the answer come out right?” said Dr. Bland.

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “Yes, I do believe it’s beginning to.”

II

Chaffham is on the coast of Norfolk. It is not a very large or a very prosperous place, and its principal feature, indeed the chief reason for its existence, is the deep-water inlet which affords anchorage here for a hundred or more craft great and small.

Inspector Hazlerigg, who had travelled down by police car, arrived at Chaffham at half-past three that afternoon. The sun would have done no discredit to a day of June. The water sparkled, as a light wind chased the clouds, and the grey, flat unlovely land did its best to simulate a smile.

Hazlerigg stood in the single main street which sloped to the jetty and the “hard”. He looked at the grey-walled, grey-roofed shops, and behind them at the whale-backed hill where only the thorn trees seemed tough enough to outface the savagery of the North Sea. And he felt, deep down inside him, the contentment which even the most unpromising county can bring to her own sons. For he was a Norfolk man; and thirty-two hard years in London had not served to overlay it.

A telephone message had gone ahead of him, and a sergeant of the Norfolk Constabulary was in the main street when the car stopped. Five minutes later Hazlerigg was seated in Chaffham police station, which was, in fact, the front room in Sergeant Rolles’s cottage, studying a large-scale map of the district.

“If he’s a visitor,” said Sergeant Rolles, “a summer visitor, or a yachtsman, he’ll not live in Chaffham. He’ll have one of the houses along Station Road or Sea Wall.”

The sergeant ran his thumb-nail along the two roads, roughly parallel, which joined the station to the village street, following the south bank of the inlet, and forming the crosspiece of a “T” to which the main street was the upright.

“You know all the people who live up and down this street, I expect,” said Hazlerigg.

“And their fathers and their grandfathers,” said Sergeant Rolles. “But the visitors—well, they come and go. I know the regulars. Let’s see that name again. Horniman. Young chap, would it be? Dark hair, wears glasses. Was in the navy—the R.N.V.R., I should say. That’s him, then. Keeps a little place almost at the end of Sea Wall. Comes down most weekends. It’s shut up now, I expect.”

“Has he got local help?”

“Mrs. Mullet does for him,” said the sergeant. “Cleans the place, and gets in his stores. He telephones her when he’s coming down and she opens the house. I call it a house. It’s a bungalow really. The Cabin, or some name like that.”

“What’s she like?”

“Mrs. Mullet? A most respectable woman. Her father used to keep the Three Lords Hunting. But he’s been dead fifteen years. Fell down his cellar flap on New Year’s Eve and cracked his skull. She’s all right, sir. Her husband’s as deaf as a post. He’s a wicked old man.”

“I think I’ll have a word with Mrs. Mullet, if you’re agreeable,” said Hazlerigg.

“Help yourself,” said the sergeant.

Mrs. Mullet received the inspector, with proper Norfolk caution, in a dim kitchen. Her husband sat in a high chair beside the range. His bright eyes moved from speaker to speaker, but he took no part in the opening formalities.

“It’s like this, Mrs. Mullet,” said Hazlerigg. “I’m very anxious to check exactly when Mr. Horniman arrived at his cottage each weekend. More particularly”—he took a quick glance at his notebook—“on the weekend of February 27th.”