Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh Page B

and they was still burning, see, when we come on the job this morning.”
    Alleyn murmured: “Look at this, Fox.” He turned the lamp towards Fox, who peered into it.
    “Been turned right down,” he said under his breath. “Hard down.”
    “Take charge of it, will you?”
    Alleyn rejoined the men. “One more point,” he said. “How did you leave the drainpipe yesterday evening? Was it laid out in that gap, end to end with the others?”
    “That’s right,” they said.
    “Immediately above the place where the body was found?”
    “That’s correct, sir.”
    The foreman looked at his mates and then burst out again with some violence. “And if anyone tries to tell you it could be moved be accident you can tell him he ought to get his head read. Them pipes is main sewer pipes. It takes a crane to shift them, the way we’ve left them, and only a lever will roll them in. Now! Try it out on one of the others if you don’t believe me. Try it. That’s all.”
    “I believe you very readily,” Alleyn said. “And I think that’s all we need bother you about at the moment. We’ll get out a written record of everything you’ve told us and ask you to call at the Station and look it over. If it’s in order, we’ll want you to sign it. If it’s not, you’ll no doubt help us by putting it right. You’ve acted very properly throughout, as I’m sure Mr. Williams and Sergeant Noakes will be the first to agree.”
    “There you are,” Williams said. “No complaints.”
    Huffily reassured, the men retired. “The first thing I’d like to know, Bob,” Alleyn said, “is what the devil’s been going on round this dump? Look at it. You’d think the whole village had been holding Mayday revels over it. Women in evening shoes, women in brogues. Men in heavy shoes, men in light shoes, and the whole damn’ mess overtrodden, of course, by working boots. Most of it went on before the event,
all
of it except the boots, I fancy, but what the hell was it about?”
    “Some sort of daft party,” Williams said. “Cavorting through the village, they were. We’ve had complaints. It was up at the Big House: Baynesholme Manor.”
    “One of Lady Bantling’s little frolics,” Dr. Elkington observed dryly. “It seems to have ended in a dogfight. I was called out at two-thirty to bandage her husband’s hand. They’d broken up by then.”
    “Can you be talking about Désirée, Lady Bantling?”
    “That’s the lady. The main object of the party was a treasure hunt, I understand,”
    “A hideous curse on it,” Alleyn said heartily. “We’ve about as much hope of disentangling anything useful in the way of footprints as you’d get in a wine press. How long did it go on?”
    “The noise abated before I went to bed,” Dr. Elkington said, “which was at twelve. As I’ve mentioned, I was dragged out again.”
    “Well, at least we’ll be able to find out if the planks and lantern were untouched until then. In the meantime we’d better go through the hilarious farce of keeping our own boots off the area under investigation.…What’s this?…Wait a jiffy.”
    He was standing near the end of one of the drainpipes. It lay across a slight depression that looked as if it had been scooped out. From this he drew a piece of blue letter paper. Williams looked over his shoulder. “Poytry,” Williams said disgustedly. The two lines had been amateurishly typed. Alleyn read them aloud.
     
    If you don’t know what to do
    Think it over in the loo
.
     
    “Elegant, I must say!” Dr. Elkington ejaculated.
    “That’ll be a clue, no doubt,” Fox said and Alleyn gave it to him.
    “I wish the rest of the job were as explicit,” he remarked.
    “What,” Williams asked, “do you make of it, Alleyn? Any chance of accident?”
    “What do you think yourself?”
    “I’d say, none.”
    “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