The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online

body did not fall as it was found. I suspected that at first, although it seemed natural enough that the fellow should fall flat on his back away from an explosion like that – but from various little evidences which I have since discovered I have now confirmed my first suspicion.’
    W.T. stared at him.
    â€˜What do you mean?’ he said sharply. ‘The man rolled over after he touched the ground, or – someone moved him after he was dead?’
    Doctor Cave thrust his hands deep in his pockets and raised himself on his toes, his head jerked back a little to survey his colleague’s face.
    â€˜Someone moved him,’ he said. ‘Someone rolled him right over on his back. Come and have a look.’
    Jerry followed his father and the doctor into the room where the blood-covered corpse still lay.
    The sight of it turned the boy sick again, as it had done before, but the doctor and old W.T. bent over it curiously.
    â€˜You see,’ Cave was saying, his calm ruffled a little in his enthusiasm – ‘you see, Will, when he fell his right shoulder struck this dresser-leg, and that pitched him forward on to hisface, which accounts for this great pool of blood here – he must have remained like that for several seconds bleeding like a pig the whole time. See, the stain spreads all round him – had he fallen on his back the blood must have remained for the most part in the body.’
    Jerry turned away, his gorge rising, but the detective leant forward, his eyes narrowing and the lines on his broad forehead deepening.
    â€˜I see,’ he said slowly. ‘Then you think someone turned him over after he fell – someone who – who wanted to see his face, for instance? …’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Cave simply, ‘or someone who wanted to get at his breast pocket.’
    For a moment there was silence after the doctor had spoken. At last the detective straightened himself and paced slowly down the room.
    â€˜Nothing was missing though,’ he said. ‘The notecase was found intact save for the shot-holes – the body was not robbed of money …’
    â€˜Yet I believe it was robbed,’ the doctor persisted. ‘Look at the way this shirt is torn – it is so saturated with blood that I didn’t notice it at first – but no shot-gun made a rip like that – that was
torn
open.’
    W.T. nodded. ‘You’re right, Cave,’ he said quietly. ‘This makes all the difference … It was no ordinary robbery. The murderer wanted something Crowther kept very carefully – something that he was so afraid of losing that he kept it buttoned under his shirt – now at last I think we’re coming to something, thank God.’
    Once again he relapsed into silence.
    â€˜Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course – naturally.’
    â€˜What?’ said Jerry, who was bewildered by this new development and the possibilities it suggested.
    â€˜Why,’ said W.T., ‘whoever moved that body after the shot was fired must have had his – or her – hands covered with blood. There is no other alternative – the cleverest creature alive could not have wrenched open that shirt and extracted a package fromthe man’s breast without being contaminated – you can see for yourself it’s impossible. That brings us nearer to facts at once. Within three minutes of the shot the entire crowd of suspects were gathered together in the hall. Bloodstains are not easy to hide, and the chances are a hundred to one against anyone getting away with them unnoticed at a time when everyone is instinctively looking at his neighbour and asking, “Is it you?”’
    â€˜Not everyone,’ said Jerry suddenly. ‘Not everyone was in the hall, Dad.’
    W.T. nodded.
    â€˜That’s it,’ he said. ‘Cellini … No one saw him in the house, though, mind you. You fancied he turned in at the gate