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daylight. If I can find it, I’ll post it to you.” He laughed. “Name and address, please?”
    â€œI couldn’t bother you to that extent. I’ll buy another ring and have it engraved … Goodbye, Peter!”
    â€œPeter is as dead as Caroline. There’s nothing to say goodbye to.”
    â€œI think I can see the car lights.”
    He picked up the dressing case. She had to keep close to him crossing the bridge. At the foot of the ramp she stopped.
    â€œDon’t see me into the car, please. Let me just vanish into the dark.”
    â€œAs you please!” He handed her the dressing case.
    â€œYou’ll never forgive me for running away from—us?”
    â€œWhat does it matter to you? You needn’t be afraid I’ll hit back. Nobody will ever know—from me—that you have been here.”
    â€œI know,” she said, sealing his pledge. He was the man she had believed him to be in their ecstatic moments. He might come to hate her, but he would never injure her. As she walked up the ramp he kept the beam of his torch at her feet.
    By the time she reached the road the car had already turned. The driver was an excessively cautious man.
    â€œAre you the lady that rang Weston’s Garage?” Assured that she was, he explained. “We’re The Hollow Tree.” He pointed to a transparency on the window as if his word might be doubted. “They passed your call to us. Their cars were all out. So were ours, bar this one. Police and newspaper men. On account there’s been a murder in the town.”
    â€œHow dreadful!” said Veronica as she got in. “It’s lucky for me you could come. I simply must catch the three-fifteen at Wheatley Junction.”
    â€œEasy enough, Miss, provided they don’t put a cordon round Renchester, which we’ve got to go through for Wheatley.”
    â€œBut why should the police want to stop us going through?”
    â€œOnly for questions, like. Who you are and what you’re doing out at this time o’ night. Nothing to upset a lady, except the loss o’ time. We had a murder here two years ago next month—got away too, he did, and hasn’t been caught yet. They said at the time that the police ought to’ve drawn a cordon.”
    Veronica was too appalled to continue the conversation, so the driver was able to relate the circumstances of the earlier murder.
    â€œTake what’s happened tonight, fr’instance. The police are trying to pick up an old Ford car with a dented wing and a broken rear window. We’ve all been warned to keep an eye open for it and if we see it ring the police.”

Chapter Two
    There was no cordon. The first rush and bustle—the hiring of a number of supplementary cars—had been partly for the record and partly to obtain negative evidence that the murder was not “a local job”.
    The hunt was started close upon midnight by a pair of yokel lovers. They had been sitting, they said, on a stile near the foot of Penbrook Hill, which is seven miles east of Renchester, when they became intrigued with the behaviour of a large car which approached slowly and stopped by the sandbin—for use in frosty weather. They crept along the meadow and, looking through the hedge, observed two men, one holding a torch while the other picked the padlock of the sandbin. The men then lifted from the big car what appeared to be a dead body which they put inside the sandbin, no doubt believing that it would lie there undiscovered until next winter. They could not identify the men but judged them to be young by the swiftness of their movements. The men adjusted the padlock, reversed the car and drove back in the direction of Renchester. The lovers had seen that the car was a Daimler but had been unable to note its number.
    The first covey of cars had found a Daimler parked in a side-street close to the nearly completed factory of WillyBee Products