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    ‘Good-evening, gentlemen,’ the doctor said, restraining himself with difficulty – the fancy occurred to Michael-from pirouetting up to the corpse on his shining toes. ‘Very sad. Poor young laddie. Well, well!’ He knelt down beside the body, putting his black hag in front of him, and got to work. The others looked away. A feeble and grotesque pun, turning on the word ‘examinations,’ arose unbidden in Michael’s mind. Griffin was screwing his heel round in the earth, rather in the manner of one preparing for a placekick. Wrench threw one or two hasty glances over his shoulder, and turned back with a visible shudder. ‘O, they looked at one another. And they looked away,’ Michael found himself muttering.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Wrench.
    ‘Nothing.’
    Dr. Maddox straightened himself up, with a rueful glance at his soaking knees.
    ‘Dear me, dear me!’ he exclaimed. ‘Most extraordinary – and, er, tragic. No question about it, I’m afraid. Murder or manslaughter. He seems to have been throttled first by his assailant’s hands. These bruises, you see. Then a thin cord tied round his neck. You will observe the red line: it has sunk in rather deeply.’
    No one cared to verify the statement. Michael wondered how long he would be able to refrain from asking the question that was on the tip of at least three tongues. After an awkward silence, it was finally Sims who took the plunge.
    ‘How long would you say he had been dead, doctor?’
    They were kept on tenterhooks for half a minute, while the doctor disported himself in a stream of technicalities.
    ‘To put it more simply,’ he concluded, ‘rigor mortis is fully established. That means he has been dead for more than four hours; probably for six. Of course, if the body has been lying under hay all the time, that would tend to defer the process and thus extend the period. You understand we can only fix the time very roughly: I should put it between four and seven hours ago as the outside limits.’
    Wrench moved his right hand abruptly towards his left wrist, paused in the act, then thought better of it and uncovered the face of his wrist watch.
    ‘Five to eight.’
    At least three heads did lightning calculations, but before the results could be compared, a murmur of talk was heard and a procession appeared out of the side door, led by the headmaster and a gigantic pale-faced man, the superintendent from Staverton. Behind these two straggled a sergeant, the Sudeley constable, and two other men, one bearing a camera.
    ‘This is Superintendent Armstrong,’ announced the headmaster. ‘Superintendent, I dare say you know Dr. Maddox. These gentlemen are members of my staff – Mr. Sims, Mr. Evans, Mr. Griffin, Mr. Wrench.’
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the officer nodded perfunctorily . Polite murmurs from the members of the Rev. Vale’s staff.
    The headmaster continued: ‘Should you wish for any assistance I am sure these gentlemen –’
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ interrupted Armstrong, with an indecent disregard for the rules of academic conversation, ‘I will certainly ask for what assistance I may need. If you gentlemen will all go indoors for the present. I shall ask for statements from you in the course of the evening. Who was it who found the body?’
    The foreman stepped forward.
    ‘You can wait. And I should like a word with you now, Dr. Maddox. Good evening, gentlemen.’
    At this pointed dismissal, the gentlemen trailed back into the school; Griffin and Evans were several paces behind the rest. Griffin whispered:
    ‘Percy will get an apoplexy if he has much more of this rough stuff applied to him. What do you think of our Mr. Armstrong?’
    ‘I do
not
like him.’
    ‘Personally, I think he’s a –’
    ‘You may well be right.’
    Supper was a silent affair. The boys were subdued and had their ears open for any crumbs of information that might fall down from the high table. But none did, for the masters had instructions to