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his identification. The curious fact which struck the investigating officers was that the underclothes were silk, though the man himself was evidently a workman, for his hands were rough and his general physique and appearance suggested that he belonged to the labouring rather than to the leisured classes.
    Experts who examined the car tracks could throw no light upon the subject. It had been a big car, and presumably the hour at which the body had been deposited was between two and four o’clock in the morning. By the curve of the track the police decided that the car had come from the direction of London. That was all that was known about it. Cars on the Bath Road are frequent on a Saturday night, and no patrolling policeman had seen the vehicle turning into the field.
    One thing was clear to Mr Reeder the moment he had the facts in his possession, which was not until very late that afternoon, and it was that the car owner must have reconnoitred the spot and decided exactly where the body was to be deposited. He must have known of the existence of the chain which held the gate, and of the ditch beyond.
    The field was the property of a small company which was buying land in the neighbourhood – the Land Development Corporation, which had an office in the City. Its business was to buy suitable building sites and to resell them on easy payments.
    It was growing dark by the time Mr Reeder finished his personal investigations.
    “And now,” he said, “I think I would like to see this unfortunate man.”
    They took him to the shed where the murdered man lay, and the Inspector in charge gave him the gist of the doctor’s report.
    “He was beaten over the head, his skull fractured; there is no other sign of injury, but the doctor said these are quite sufficient to cause almost instantaneous death. An iron bar must have been used, or something equally heavy.”
    Mr Reeder said nothing. He went out of the shed, and waited while the door was padlocked.
    “If we can only get him identified–” began the Inspector.
    “I can identify him,” said Mr Reeder quietly. “His name is Buckingham – he is an ex-constable of the Metropolitan Police Force.”
    Within two hours Reeder was examining Buckingham’s record in the Inspector’s office at Scotland Yard. It was not a particularly good one. The man had served for twelve years in the Metropolitan Police Force and had been six times reprimanded for conduct prejudicial to discipline and on one occasion had narrowly escaped expulsion from the force. He had a history of drunkenness, had twice been before the Commissioner accused of receiving bribes, once from a bookmaker and once from a man whom he had arrested and had subsequently released. Eventually he had retired, without pension, to take up a position in the country. Particulars of that position were not available, and the only information on file was his last address.
    Reeder charged himself with this investigation, he went to a small house in Southwark, discovered Buckingham’s wife living there and broke to her the news of her husband’s death. She accepted the fact very calmly, indeed philosophically.
    “I haven’t seen him for three or four years,” she said. “The only money he ever sent me was ten pounds last Christmas, and I wouldn’t have got that only I met him in the street with a girl – and a sick-looking creature she was! – and had a row with him.”
    She was a little inconsistent in her indignation, for she told him quite calmly that she had married again, relying upon a law which is known only to the poor and certainly unknown to any lawyer, that if a husband deserts a wife and is not seen for two years she may marry again. And Mrs Buckingham had undoubtedly married again.
    Mr Reeder was not concerned with this blatant act of bigamy, but pressed her as to where the man had been employed. Here he came against a blank wall. Her husband had told her nothing, and apparently throughout their married life