Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh

face, shrouded in a dark and glistening mask, was unrecognizable, the thin hair clotted and dirty. It was clothed in a dressing gown, shirt and trousers, all of them stained and disordered. On the feet were black socks and red leather slippers. One hand was clenched about a clod of earth. Thin trickles of muddy water had oozed between the fingers.
    Alleyn knelt beside it without touching it. He looked incongruous. Not his hands, his head, nor, for that matter, his clothes, suggested his occupation. If Mr. Cartell had been a rare edition of any subject other than death, his body would have seemed a more appropriate object for Alleyn’s fastidious consideration.
    After a pause he replaced the tarpaulin, rose, and, keeping on the hard surface of the lane, stared down into the drain.
    “Well,” he said. “And he was found below, there?” His very deep, clear voice struck loudly across the silence.
    “Straight down from where they’ve put him. On his face. With the drainpipe on top of him.”
    “Yes. I see.”
    “They thought he might be alive. So they got him out of it. They had a job,” said Superintendent Williams. “Had to use the gear on the truck.”
    “He was like this when you saw him, Dr. Elkington?”
    “Yes. There are multiple injuries to the skull. I haven’t made an extensive examination. My guess would be it’s just about held together by the scalp.”
    “Can we have a word with the men?”
    Noakes motioned them to come forward and they did so with every sign of reluctance. One, the tallest, carried a piece of rag and he wiped his hands on it continually, as if he had been doing so, unconsciously, for some time.
    “Good morning,” Alleyn said. “You’ve had an unpleasant job on your hands.”
    The tall man nodded. One of his mates said: “Terrible.”
    “I want you, if you will, to tell me exactly what happened. When did you find him?”
    Fox unobtrusively took out his notebook.
    “When we come on the job. Eight o’clock or near after.”
    “You saw him at once?”
    “Not to say there and then, sir,” the tall man said. He was evidently the foreman. “We had a word or two. Nutting out the day’s work, like. Took off our coats. Further along, back there, we was. You can see where the truck’s parked. There.”
    “Ah, yes. And then?”
    “Then we moved up. And I see the planks are missing that we laid across the drain for a bridge. And one of the pipes gone. So I says: ‘What the hell’s all this? Who’s been mucking round with them planks and the pipe?’ That’s correct, isn’t it?” He appealed to the others.
    “That’s right,” they said.
    “It’s like I told you, Mr. Noakes. We all told you.”
    “All right, Bill,” Williams said easily. “The Superintendent just wants to hear for himself.”
    “If you don’t mind,” said Alleyn. “To get a clear idea, you know…It’s better at first hand.”
    The foreman said: “It’s not all that pleasant, though, is it? And us chaps have got our responsibility to think of. We left the job like we ought to: everything in order. Planks set. Lamps lit. Everything safe. Now look!”
    “Lamps? I saw some at the ends of the working. Was there one here?”
    “A-course there was. To show the planks. That’s the next thing we notice. It’s gone. Matter of fact they’re all laying in the drain now.”
    “So they are,” Alleyn said. “It’s a thumping great drain you’re digging here, by the way. What is it, a relief outfall sewer or something?”
    This evidently made an impression. The foreman said that was exactly what it was and went into a professional exposition.
    “She’s deep,” he said. “She’s as deep as you’ll come across anywhere. Fourteen-be-three she lays, and very nasty spoil to work, being wet and heavy. One in a thou’-fall. All right. Leaving an open job you take precautions. Lamp. Planks. Notice given. The lot. Which is what we done, and done careful and according.…And this is what we find. All