The Theft of Magna Carta by John Creasey Page A

them.
    â€œI know it’s a nuisance, but if you could open the shop just for ten minutes while it’s still daylight . . . You’re very good, very good. In about ten minutes, then.” Batten replaced the receiver and looked up in triumph. “We can see that suit I talked about, sir. That’s if you’d care to come.”
    â€œTry to keep me away,” Roger said.
    The shop was on one side of the market square, with windows at three levels. In the street level window were dresses which looked not unlike Linda Prell’s suit, but of different colours. Footsteps sounded inside the shop, and a shrimp of a man with a bald head opened the door.
    â€œHallo, Mr. Murrow. Very good of you. This is Superintendent West . . . If we could see the pale blue, green, and yellow suit like the one Linda bought the other day . . . oh, Saturday! Then this was probably the first time she wore it . . . Ah!” He almost kowtowed before the suit, which the man soon brought to them on a hanger. “If we could just see it in the light . . . You’re very good, Mr. Murrow . . . Will you give me an expert opinion, now: were these strands taken from a dress like this?”
    There was a brief pause as Murrow examined the strands. Slowly, he nodded and said: “Yes.”
    â€œYou think they were?” Batten’s voice rose in excitement. “Can you let us have the maker’s description and the colours and design?”
    â€œNo trouble at all,” Murrow assured him, beginning to look both eager and excited. “There’s a picture of it in the catalogue, very good as regards to the colours, especially.”
    He went to a tidy roll-top desk filled with order books and invoices, catalogues and patterns, selected a catalogue and thumbed through it until he came to an illustration of an attractive flowered suit with a high-waisted jacket. Roger studied this, and then turned to Batten.
    â€œDo you have a photograph of Woman Constable Prell?”
    â€œI’ve several,” Batten answered, but for some reason he hesitated. Eventually he drew out his wallet and selected two snapshots and an enlargement of the girl. Obviously these were not official photographs, but Roger made no comment, simply took the enlargement and placed it near the head of the model.
    â€œIf we cut that photograph out and paste it over the model, we’ve a perfect photograph for colour television,” he said.
    â€œSo we have,” breathed Batten. “So we have!” He appeared to be recovered from his brief embarrassment. “Do you think we could take three strands from the hem . . . ? Thank you . . .”
    Â 
    â€œIdentical,” declared a young man who worked in the carpet factory at Wilton, a nearby borough as ancient as Salisbury. He put the strands beneath a microscope in the small laboratory at the police station. “Those strands came from identical bales of cloth – even the dye is identical. You can be absolutely sure, sir.”
    Roger said warmly: “That’s exactly what we needed to know.”
    â€œI only hope it helps to find Linda,” the young man went on. “No news yet, I suppose?”
    â€œAfraid not,” Roger said; and he was surprised how much that truth hurt him.
    He arranged for copies of the photograph to be rushed to London, where it should catch the late-news bulletins, then returned to his hotel. He had a hurried meal, went on to the borrowed office and telephoned Isherwood as well as Scotland Yard, prepared a brief statement for the press saying that Linda Prell had been in Gorley Woods, added the description of the suit, sent it up to the Photography Department, where they would make prints for circulation to the newspapers and to police forces, then drove himself to Gorley Woods. He saw the lights in the sky from several miles off, and reached some crossroads where a policeman and two traffic wardens were on duty under a floodlight