‘And so would I. Take a look at it. The planks had been dragged forward until the ends were only just supported by the lip of the bank. There’s one print, the deceased’s by the look of it, on the original traces of the planks before they were moved. It suggests that he came through the gate, where the path is hard and hasn’t taken an impression. I think he had his torch in his left hand. He stepped on the trace and then on the planks which gave under him. I should say he pitched forward as he fell, dropping his torch, and one of the planks pitched back, striking him in the face. That’s guesswork, but I think Elekton, that when he’s cleaned up, you’ll find the nose is broken. As he was face down in the mud, the plank seems a possible explanation. All right. The lantern was suspended from an iron stanchion. The stanchion had been driven into the earth at an angle and overhung the edge between the displaced drain-pipe and its neighbour. And, by the way, it seems to have been jammed in twice: there’s a second hole nearby. The lantern would be out of reach for him and he couldn’t have grabbed it. How big is the dog?’
‘What’s that?’ Williams asked, startled.
‘Prints that have escaped the boots of the drain-layers, suggest a large dog.’
‘Pixie,’ said Sergeant Raikes who had been silent for a considerable time.
‘Oh!’ said Superintendent Williams disgustedly. ‘Her.’
‘It’s a dirty great mongrel of a thing, Mr Alleyn,’ Raikes offered. ‘The deceased gentleman called it a boxer. He was in the habit of bringing it out here before he went to bed, which was at one o’clock, regular as clockwork. It’s a noisy brute. There have been,’ Raikes added, sounding a leitmotiv, ‘complaints about Pixie.’
‘Pixie,’ Alleyn said, ‘must be an athletic girl. She jumped the ditch. There are prints if you can sort them out. But have a look at Cartell’s right hand, Elekton, would you?’
Dr Elekton did so. ‘There’s a certain amount of contusion,’ he said, ‘with ridges. And at the edges of the palm, well-defined grooves.’
‘How about a leather leash, jerked tight?’
‘It might well be.’
‘Now the stanchion, Fox.’
Fox leaned over from his position on the hard surface of the lane. He carefully lifted and removed the stanchion. Handling it as if it was some fragile objet d’art, he said: ‘There are traces, Mr Alleyn. Lateral rubbings. Something dragged tight and then pulled away might be the answer.’
‘So it’s at least possible that as Cartell dropped, Pixie jumped the drain. The lead jerked. Pixie got entangled with the stanchion, pulled it loose, freed herself from it and from the hand that had led her, and made off. The lantern fell in the drain. Might be. Where is Pixie, does anyone know?’
‘Shall I inquire at the house?’ Raikes asked.
‘It can wait. All this is the most shameless conjecture, really.’
‘To me,’ Williams said, considering it, ‘it seems likely enough.’
‘It’ll do to go on with. But it doesn’t explain,’ Alleyn said, ‘why the wick in the lantern’s been turned hard off, does it?’
‘Is that a fact!’ Raikes remarked, primly.
‘This stanchion,’ said Williams, who had been looking at it. ‘Have you noticed the lower point? You’d expect it to come out of the soil clean or else dirty all round. But it’s dirty on one side and sort of scraped clean on the other.’
‘You’ll go far in the glorious profession of your choice.’
‘Come off it!’ said Williams, who had done part of his training with Alleyn.
‘Look at the ground where that great walloping pipe was laid out. That, at least, is not entirely obliterated by boots. See the scars in the earth on this side? Slanting hole with a scooped depression on the near side.’
‘What of them?’
‘Try it, Fox.’
Fox, who was holding the stanchion by its top, laid the pointed end delicately in one of the scars. ‘Fits,’ he said. ‘There’s your lever, I reckon.’
‘If so the mud on one side was scraped off on the pipe. Wrap it up and lay it by. The flash and dabs boys will be here any moment now. We’ll have to take casts, Br’er Fox.’
Dr Elekton said: ‘What’s all this about the stanchion?’
‘We’re wondering if it was used as a lever for the drain-pipe. We’re not very likely to find anything on the pipe itself after the rough handling it’s been given, but it’s worth trying.’
He walked to the end of the drain, returned on the far side to the solitary pipe and squatted beside it. Presently he said: ‘There are marks – scrapings – same distance apart, at a guess. I think we’ll find they fill the bill.’
When he rejoined the others, he stood for a moment and surveyed the scene. A capful of wind blew down Green Lane, snatched at a corner of the tarpaulin and caused it to ripple very slightly as if Mr Cartell had stirred. Fox attended to it, tucking it under, with a macabre suggestion of cosiness.
Alleyn said: ‘If ever it behoved us to keep open minds about a case it behoves us to do so over this one. My reading so far, may be worth damn all, but such as it is I’ll make you a present of it. On the surface appearance, it looks to me as though this was a premeditated job and was carried out with the minimum of fancy work. Some time before Cartell tried to cross it, the plank bridge was pulled towards the road side of the drain until the farther ends rested on the extreme edge. The person who did this, then put out the light in the lantern and hid: very likely by lying down on the hard surface alongside one of the pipes. The victim came out with his dog on a leash. He stepped on the bridge which collapsed. He was struck in the face by a plank and stunned. The leash bit into his right hand before it was jerked free. The dog jumped the drain, possibly got itself mixed up with the iron stanchion and, if so, probably dislodged the lantern which fell into the drain. The concealed person came back, used the stanchion as a lever and rolled the drain-pipe into the drain. It fell fourteen feet on his victim and killed him. Ha – hallo! What’s that!’
He leaned forward, peering into the ditch: ‘This looks like something,’ he sighed. ‘Down, I fear, into the depths I go.’
‘I will, sir,’ Fox offered.
‘You keep your great boots out of this,’ Alleyn rejoined cheerfully.
He placed the foot of the steel ladder near the place where the body was found and climbed down it. The drain sweated dank water and smelt sour and disgusting. From where he stood, on the bottom rung, he pulled out his flashlight.
From above they saw him stoop and reach under the plank that rested against the wall.
When he came up he carried something wrapped in his handkerchief. He knelt and laid his improvised parcel on the ground.
‘Look at this,’ he said, and they gathered about him.
He unfolded his handkerchief.
On it lay a gold case, very beautifully worked. It had a jewelled clasp and was smeared with slime.
‘His?’ Williams said.
‘– or somebody else’s? I wonder.’
They stared at it in silence. Alleyn was about to wrap it again when they were startled by a loud, shocking and long-drawn-out howl.
About fifty yards away, sitting in the middle of the lane in an extremely dishevelled condition, with a leash dangling from her collar, was a half-bred boxer bitch, howling lamentably.
‘Pixie,’ said Raikes.
II