from the head—’
A minute ago it had been chips of stone and scraps of fur not to mention the haddock, to be reduced down to a collage; now it was a single tooth to be built up to all the bits and pieces comprising a skeleton. ‘Yessir,’ said Sergeant Ellis reverently, just not quite physically twiddling his thumbs.
Mr Charlesworth, perhaps a mite hastily, abandoned pithecanthropoid man in favour of return to the picture. For the great thing was, he said, that one must remember that the very smallest piece of material, however insignificant, apparently colourless, apparently shapeless, however much just a scrap of the general hopeless muddle - was never too unimportant to be considered. Who knew that this or that tuft of feather, this or that fragment of coloured glass, might not be at the very basis of the pattern they were searching for...?
He might have instanced—had he been there to hear it—Sari’s discussion with Rufie about the present for Nan.
Down on the tarmac they were swarming all around the Halcyon, measuring, photographing, fingerprinting, easing out the terrible, stiffened figure from its cramped quarters, carrying it, grotesquely shaped beneath its mercifully covering sheet, to the waiting ambulance. In the big flat, seven storeys up, above the glowing vistas of the Heath, Chief Superintendent Charlesworth stood, somewhat dazed, and looked them over.
A rather pretty, plump early-middle-aged woman in garments so conventional as to seem positively outré in this improbable setting, hanging on to her control but in a terrible condition of nerves and upset. A younger woman, very pretty indeed with the prettiness of the enormously fat, wrapped in a sort of loose cover, brilliantly green, wobbling like a blancmange in an abandonment of hysterical tears. A tall thin man, dark, balding a little, dressed in the height of male fashion—unless, like Mr Charlesworth, you considered the height of male fashion to be a decently cut suit, fresh shirt and sufficiently agreeable tie. An Italian, very small and neat, at least more conventionally garbed; query Queer? And a short, slender man of about thirty—no query about him— with a curiously, white skin and a pale, pale flame of red hair, who sat in a sort of stupor, staring ahead of him, one trembling arm, a-jangle with gold and silver bracelets, round the exquisite shoulders of Miss Sari Morne.
And Miss Sari Morne.
If a middle-aged, heavily married Detective Chief Superintendent of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police Force may be permitted to have fallen in love at first sight, let alone with Suspect (so far) Number One, Detective Chief Superintendent Charlesworth had fallen in love. He concealed his passion with practised control—from nobody but himself. Those present were all too well aware of the immediate response, when confronted with Miss Sari Morne, of the infatuate male.
Nor was Sergeant Ellis deceived. Sergeant Ellis had packed into his comparatively short life a quite astonishing amount of reading, travel and experience and was no man’s fool. He was a rotund young man, oddly short in the leg from the knee down, full of rather endearing mannerisms of speech and habit, and with a cropped mop of hair of a colour which caused him to be known far and wide with no great originality as Ginger. He took one look at Mr Charlesworth’s sagging face and thought with unwonted straightforwardness (for he had a somewhat corky mind): Poor old bugger, he’s gone and got it again.
‘I’d better talk to you, Miss Morne, first, please. If your friends could wait somewhere else.’ It had all been gone over in a general gabble of information but now things must be sorted out. ‘Sergeant—?’
Ginger whipped out his notebook and pencil and stood with slightly bowed head, a greyhound in the slips. He habitually enlivened his daily round with small private jokes and it amused him intensely to put on such hardly discernible parades of self
A minute ago it had been chips of stone and scraps of fur not to mention the haddock, to be reduced down to a collage; now it was a single tooth to be built up to all the bits and pieces comprising a skeleton. ‘Yessir,’ said Sergeant Ellis reverently, just not quite physically twiddling his thumbs.
Mr Charlesworth, perhaps a mite hastily, abandoned pithecanthropoid man in favour of return to the picture. For the great thing was, he said, that one must remember that the very smallest piece of material, however insignificant, apparently colourless, apparently shapeless, however much just a scrap of the general hopeless muddle - was never too unimportant to be considered. Who knew that this or that tuft of feather, this or that fragment of coloured glass, might not be at the very basis of the pattern they were searching for...?
He might have instanced—had he been there to hear it—Sari’s discussion with Rufie about the present for Nan.
Down on the tarmac they were swarming all around the Halcyon, measuring, photographing, fingerprinting, easing out the terrible, stiffened figure from its cramped quarters, carrying it, grotesquely shaped beneath its mercifully covering sheet, to the waiting ambulance. In the big flat, seven storeys up, above the glowing vistas of the Heath, Chief Superintendent Charlesworth stood, somewhat dazed, and looked them over.
A rather pretty, plump early-middle-aged woman in garments so conventional as to seem positively outré in this improbable setting, hanging on to her control but in a terrible condition of nerves and upset. A younger woman, very pretty indeed with the prettiness of the enormously fat, wrapped in a sort of loose cover, brilliantly green, wobbling like a blancmange in an abandonment of hysterical tears. A tall thin man, dark, balding a little, dressed in the height of male fashion—unless, like Mr Charlesworth, you considered the height of male fashion to be a decently cut suit, fresh shirt and sufficiently agreeable tie. An Italian, very small and neat, at least more conventionally garbed; query Queer? And a short, slender man of about thirty—no query about him— with a curiously, white skin and a pale, pale flame of red hair, who sat in a sort of stupor, staring ahead of him, one trembling arm, a-jangle with gold and silver bracelets, round the exquisite shoulders of Miss Sari Morne.
And Miss Sari Morne.
If a middle-aged, heavily married Detective Chief Superintendent of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police Force may be permitted to have fallen in love at first sight, let alone with Suspect (so far) Number One, Detective Chief Superintendent Charlesworth had fallen in love. He concealed his passion with practised control—from nobody but himself. Those present were all too well aware of the immediate response, when confronted with Miss Sari Morne, of the infatuate male.
Nor was Sergeant Ellis deceived. Sergeant Ellis had packed into his comparatively short life a quite astonishing amount of reading, travel and experience and was no man’s fool. He was a rotund young man, oddly short in the leg from the knee down, full of rather endearing mannerisms of speech and habit, and with a cropped mop of hair of a colour which caused him to be known far and wide with no great originality as Ginger. He took one look at Mr Charlesworth’s sagging face and thought with unwonted straightforwardness (for he had a somewhat corky mind): Poor old bugger, he’s gone and got it again.
‘I’d better talk to you, Miss Morne, first, please. If your friends could wait somewhere else.’ It had all been gone over in a general gabble of information but now things must be sorted out. ‘Sergeant—?’
Ginger whipped out his notebook and pencil and stood with slightly bowed head, a greyhound in the slips. He habitually enlivened his daily round with small private jokes and it amused him intensely to put on such hardly discernible parades of self
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