Chapter IV

“My dear Michael,” Wilson said, as they sat smoking in the bar-parlour after tea, “if this is to be a busman’s holiday, I wish you’d say so at once, and let me make off while there’s yet time. First you inveigle me into an inn with a corpse on its doorstep, then you repeat a lot of apparently malicious but wholly unintelligible gossip, and, to crown it all, you seem determined to quarrel with the local police-surgeon.”

“The man’s got the manners of a hog,” Michael said indignantly. “And it looks to me as though his professional qualities were quite on a par with his manners. He positively didn’t see the fellow’s neck was broken, until I pointed it out! And then you’d have thought from his tone I’d done him an injury instead of a service! These country sawbones are a disgrace to the profession!”

At this point, Wilson, whose smile had been growing broader and broader as Michael detailed his woes, chuckled outright. “This is magnificently righteous indignation,” he said. “Or is it natural irritation--and unsatisfied curiosity?”

“Well, nobody likes being talked to like that,” said Michael, “especially when he’s in the right, and the man talking to him an impudent ignoramus like Kershaw. And, of course, I wanted to have the thing properly looked into. It’s an odd thing for a body to turn up out of the river with a broken neck. Besides, what could he have broken his neck on? The bottom’s all soft mud, hereabouts. And, anyway, I’m not at all certain he broke his neck in a fall. There was no sign of a contusion that I could see, and there must have been if he’d hit something hard. But Kershaw was indignant at my even suggesting he’d broken his neck.”

“Or annoyed at your indiscretion, perhaps?” his companion suggested. “I suggest that he wanted to keep that tit-bit for the inquest. You know--‘Is it your view that death was caused by drowning, doctor?’ ‘No, sir, the man’s neck was broken!’ Sensation in Court. You mustn’t grudge your country brother his little bit of publicity. And seriously, I gather that Dr. Kershaw represents my profession as well as yours; and mine, as you know, doesn’t believe in giving the general public too much indiscriminate information. You were indiscreet, Michael.” He smiled; but Michael was still in a blaze of wrath.

“I wasn’t,” he said indignantly. “I didn’t call attention to anything that any fool couldn’t have seen with half an eye. And, anyway, no London police-surgeon would treat a colleague like that, I hope.”

“Alack! alack!” Wilson sighed. “How little you townsmen have to know of the vanity and self-sufficiency of the provincial! Would I could set up my plate in Baker Street, and never see a county police-station again! All right, Michael, I was only pulling your leg. I deeply sympathise. Let us agree that Dr. Kershaw is a cad and a fool, and ought to be struck off the register. And now, that being settled, will you tell me, really, why this body interests you?”

“You old hypocrite, you know perfectly well why it interests me and why you are asking me all these questions about it. This fellow, Meston, has got a broken neck. To the best of my belief, he didn’t get it by falling in the river, but somehow on land. Well, _how_? That’s what I want to know.”

“But, Michael, you can’t be sure. You may _think_ the bottom’s all mud, but there may be a dozen snags half buried that you can’t see. And you’re not a diver. You can’t possibly have examined the river bottom for several hundreds of yards. For, of course, you don’t know exactly where he fell in.”

“All the same,” Michael said obstinately, “he couldn’t have broken his neck without hitting his head pretty hard on something. And if he hit it there’d have been a cut or a bruise. And I couldn’t see one.”

“Even if you couldn’t, it doesn’t prove there wasn’t one. Unless you’re certain? _Are_ you?”

“We-ell. Of course it all depends what you mean by certain. If that Jack-in-office had let me make a proper examination I’d have been absolutely certain. As it is, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t; but I didn’t grasp what a puzzle it made until it was too late to get another look at him. Damn the man!” said Michael, with a fresh access of feeling.

“Well, well, never mind. It’s hard luck, I agree. But probably if you go to the inquest, you’ll find it’s all clear. I expect there will turn out to have been a contusion somewhere--probably hidden under the hair. Water plays strange tricks with dead bodies. Anyway, I suggest, now you’ve got it off your chest, that you put the whole thing out of your mind for a bit. If there’s really anything wrong, we shan’t get any forrarder without some more information. And this evening’s really too lovely to waste. Hullo! who drives a racing Talbot hereabouts?”

Looking out, Michael caught a glimpse of the lean scarlet car which had crossed the bridge earlier in the day, and a flash of its owner’s million-dollar profile.

“Wallace Burden,” he said. “He’ll be running over more pigs if he isn’t careful. Oh!” Part of the cryptic conversation in the bar had suddenly taken on a meaning to him.

“Who was that with him?” Wilson asked, without noticing the exclamation.

“I didn’t see. You must have eyes like a hawk. Male or female?”

“Female. And a very good choice, I should say, as far as looks are concerned.”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Meston, maybe--or the Scarlet Woman, which seems to be her pet name in these parts.” Michael retailed a little more gossip.

“I didn’t know you were such a scandal-monger, Michael,” Wilson said, with amusement. “Can’t the poor lady, if it is she, come to look at her husband’s remains without you goggling at her? Hullo! hullo! This looks more like business.”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

Wilson pointed at a florid gentleman, of military appearance and military step, who was striding towards them down the High Street.

“County Police, or I’m a Dutchman. And he appears to be coming here.”

“I hope he’s got more sense than his medical officer,” Michael grumbled, as the military gentleman disappeared. A moment later a maid-servant knocked at the door, with a card in an envelope, and a message that the owner desired a few minutes’ conversation with Dr. Prendergast. Michael held the card out to Wilson. It bore the name of Colonel Lockwood.

“Chief of the County Police,” Wilson said. “They’re on your trail, Michael. Will you see him here?”