The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude

was essential to his scheme. How the devil, then, had he managed it? Borrowed? Stolen? Hired?
    â€œGood heavens!” exclaimed the Superintendent suddenly. “Why not Rother’s Hillman?”
    In a flash he saw the whole thing. John Rother set upon and killed. The dissected body hidden inside a rubber sheet among the gorse bushes. The Hillman driven out to pick up Janet, then back again to Cissbury. The remains, still wrapped in the rubber sheet, dumped on the floor of the Hillman’s front seat, where an extra stain or so of blood would cause no comment. Then, with Janet acting as guide, these gruesome remains driven out to Chalklands in William’s absence and hidden in some prearranged spot—perhaps a metal-lined cabin-trunk. Whilst Janet kept an eye on Kate Abingworth, the Cloaked Man could have secretly carried Rother’s remains to the prearranged hiding-place and stowed them away in the trunk. The Cloaked Man then drives back to Cissbury, leaves the car where it was discovered the next morning, and makes off over the downs towards Steyning. Moreover, thought Meredith, wouldn’t this account for the extra petrol used in the Hillman? Rother had gone to Cissbury direct, and it was due to the three extra runs after Rother’s death that over a gallon of spirit had been burnt. The mileage, Meredith reckoned, would not quite account for the full gallon and a quarter, but the engine might have been left running when stationary—perhaps when the Cloaked Man was waiting for Janet on the Washington-Findon road.
    Janet Rother said she had come down off Chanctonbury at a quarter to ten—a time which she realized the housekeeper could verify. The Cloaked Man must have left Chalklands, therefore, shortly after that time. The shepherd, Mike Riddle, had seen the strange figure on the path to Hound’s Oak at (about) ten o’clock. Was it possible for the man to have covered the distance in fifteen minutes?
    â€œConfound it,” thought Meredith, disheartened, “he couldn’t. He couldn’t have done it under twenty-five minutes at least.”
    Had Janet Rother lied about the time of her re-entry into the farmhouse, with the deliberate idea of providing the Cloaked Man with an alibi? Perhaps she had gambled on the fact that Kate Abingworth would not have looked at the clock. It only needed Janet to arrive fifteen minutes earlier for Meredith’s theory to hold water. He would have to question the housekeeper now before seeing the Findon sergeant.
    For all that Meredith determined to reach the Ring before descending again to Chalklands. He had heard that the view from the huge clump of beeches was unique and never-to-be-forgotten. Passing a dew-pond, at which one or two sheep were drinking, he covered the half-mile of the final hump with a swinging stride. A little later half Sussex seemed to be under his feet, with the chequered weald on one side and a quicksilver glimpse of the sea far away on the other. Sitting at the bole of a great, silver-barked beech, he spread out his map on his knees and began to register the various places of interest—the Devil’s Dyke out toward Brighton, the faint blue ridge to the north which was Box Hill in Surrey, Steyning in a near-by valley, Wiston Park under his feet, Washington, and beyond that the distant roofs of Storrington.
    At that precise moment, only a couple of miles away, a small girl in a yellow frock was clambering about on Steyning Round Hill in search of wild flowers. She was a solemn child and had high hopes of carrying off the first prize in the “Wild Nosegay” section at the annual flower show which was to be held in a few days’ time. She returned home somewhat earlier than her parents had anticipated, so weirdly garbed that the child’s grandfather, who had a kitchen-chair out in the sun, let out a high-pitched bark of astonishment and dropped his clay pipe on the brickwork. On her head the child