"There was no doubt that he committed suicide?"
"No, sir, that there wasn't. He'd been dead two days when I cut him down. Well, no need to talk of it now, but even the doctor was rattled, though the weather was very hot that June."
Armathwaite felt as if he had been conjured by some spiteful necromancer out of a smiling and sunlit English countryside into a realm of ghouls and poison-growths. A minute ago a charming and sweet-spoken girl had been chatting glibly about her father's wanderings in the by-ways of folk-lore, and now this stolid policeman was hinting at the gruesomeness of his task when called on to release the lifeless body of that same man from its dolorous perch beside the clock.
For an instant he lost himself, and fixed such a penetrating glance on the constable that the latter grew uneasy, lest he had said something he ought not to have said. Armathwaite realized the mistake at once, and dropped those searching eyes from the other's anxious face to some scraps of ribbon sewn on the left breast of the dark blue tunic.
"You have the Tirah medal, I see," he said. "Were you at Dargai?"
The question achieved the immediate effect counted on.
"I was, an' all, sir," and the ex-soldier squared his shoulders. "Though no Scottie, I was in the Gordon Highlanders. Were you there, sir?"
"I--er--yes, but as a non-combatant. I was in the Politicals--quite a youngster in those days, and I was fool enough to envy you that rush across the plateau."
"There have been few things to equal it in warfare. What time do you pass through the village on Monday?"
"If you see a light, come in. If not, look me up next Thursday. If I'm fishing, I'll leave word with Mrs. Jackson that you're to have a refresher should you be that way inclined."
"Thank you, sir. My name's Leadbitter, if ever you should want me."
"And a jolly good name, too, for a man who fought against the Afridis. By the way, can you tell me what time the post leaves here?"
"A rural postman calls at Thompson's shop for letters about half-past four, sir."
A cigar changed hands, and P. C. Leadbitter strode off, holding his head high. It was a red-letter day. He had met one who knew what the storming of the Dargai Pass meant. Even the memories of Stephen Garth pendant from a hook beneath the china shelf faded into the mists of a country policeman's humdrum routine. He was halfway to Bellerby when he remembered that he had not done the one thing he meant doing--he had not asked Mr. Armathwaite's intentions with regard to the garden. Begonia Smith had retired to a village lying between Bellerby and Nuttonby. Though too old to take a new situation, he would jump at the chance of setting his beloved Grange garden in order again, and, of course, he was just the man for the job. Leadbitter believed in doing a good turn when opportunity offered. After tea, he went in search of Smith of the order Begoniaceae. To save half a mile of a three miles' tramp by road, he passed through the estate of Sir Berkeley Hutton, and met that redoubtable baronet himself strolling forth to see how the partridges were coming on.