Five Red Herrings Read Online Free PDF Page A

quantity of crumbs, and he turned his attention to the two smaller compartments.
    In the first of these was, first, a small screw of greaseproof paper on which brushes had been wiped; next, a repellent little tin, very sticky about the screw-cap, containing copal medium; and, thirdly, a battered dipper, matching the one attached to the palette.
    The third and last compartment of the satchel offered a more varied bag. There was a Swan Vesta box, filled with charcoal, a cigarette-tin, also containing charcoal and a number of sticks of red chalk, a small sketch-book, heavily stained with oil, three or four canvas-separators, on which Wimsey promptly pricked his fingers, some wine-corks and a packet of cigarettes.
    Wimsey’s air of idleness had left him. His long and inquisitive nose seemed to twitch like a rabbit’s as he turned the satchel upside down and shook it, in the vain hope of extracting something more from its depths. He rose, and searched the easel and the ground about the stool very carefully.
    A wide cloak of a disagreeable check pattern lay beside the easel. He picked it up and went deliberately through the pockets. He found a pen-knife, with one blade broken, half a biscuit, another packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a handkerchief, two trout-casts in a transparent envelope, and a piece of string.
    He shook his head. None of these was what he wanted. He searched the ground again, casting like a hound on the trail, and then, still dissatisfied, began to lower himself gingerly down the smooth face of the rock. There were crannies here into which something might have fallen, clumps of bracken and heather, prickly roots of gorse. He hunted and felt about in every corner, stabbing his fingers again at every move and swearing savagely. Small fragments of gorse worked their way up his trouser-legs and into his shoes. The heat was stifling. Close to the bottom he slipped, and did the last yard or so on his hinderparts, which irritated him. At a shout from the top of the bank he looked up. The Sergeant was grinning down at him.
    ‘Reconstructing the accident, my lord?’
    ‘Not exactly,’ said Wimsey. ‘Here, wait just a moment, will you?’
    He scrambled up again. The corpse was now laid as decently as possible on a stretcher, awaiting removal.
    ‘Have you searched his pockets?’ panted Wimsey.
    ‘Not yet, my lord. Time enough for that at the station. It’s purely a formality, ye ken.’
    ‘No, it’s not,’ said Wimsey. He pushed his hat back and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘There’s something funny about this, Dalziel. That is, there may be. Do you mind if I go over his belongings now?’
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    ‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Dalziel, heartily. ‘There’s no sic a great hurry. We may as weel dew’t first as last.’
    Wimsey sat down on the ground beside the stretcher, and the Sergeant stood by with a notebook to chronicle the finds.
    The right-hand coat pocket contained another handkerchief, a Hardy catalogue, two crumpled bills and an object which caused the Sergeant to exclaim laughingly, ‘What’s this, lip-stick?’
    ‘Nothing so suggestive,’ said Wimsey, sadly, ‘it’s a holder for lead-pencil — made in Germany, to boot. Still, if that’s there, there might be something else.’
    The left-hand pocket, however, produced nothing more exciting than a corkscrew and some dirt; the breast-pocket, only an Ingersoll watch, a pocket comb and a half-used book of stamps; and Wimsey turned, without much hope, to the trouser-pockets, for the dead man wore no waistcoat.
    Here, on the right, they found a quantity of loose cash, the notes and coins jumbled carelessly together, and a bunch of keys on a ring. On the left, an empty match-box and a pair of folding nail-scissors. In the hip-pocket, a number of dilapidated letters, some newspaper cuttings and a small notebook with nothing in it.
    Wimsey sat up and stared at the Sergeant.
    ‘It’s not here,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like the look of it at all, Dalziel. Look