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had a solemn breakfast, Gaylor plying the other with questions, which in the main he did not answer.
    “You think that Miss Lynn is in this – in the murder, I mean?”
    Reeder shook his head.
    “No, no,” he said. “I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that.”
    Daylight had come greyly when, having installed a cold policeman in the house, they plodded down the lane. Reeder’s car had been retrieved in the night, and a more powerful machine, fitted with chain-wheels, was waiting to take them to Beaconsfield. They did not reach that place for two hours, for on their way they came upon a little knot of policemen and farm labourers looking sombrely at the body of Constable Verity. He lay under some bushes a few yards from the road, and he was dead.
    “Shot,” said a police officer. “The divisional surgeon has just seen him.”
    Stiff and cold, with his booted legs stretched wide, his overcoat turned up and his snow-covered cap drawn over his eyes, was the officer who had ridden out from the station courtyard so unsuspectingly the night before. His horse had already been found; the bloodstains that had puzzled and alarmed the police were now accounted for.
    Gaylor and Reeder drove on into Beaconsfield. Gaylor was a depressed and silent man; Mr Reeder was silent but not depressed.
    As they came out into the main road he turned to his companion, and asked: “I wonder why they didn’t bring their own aces?”
     
6
     
    The most accurate account of the double tragedy appeared in a late edition of the Evening Post-Courier.
    “At some hour between eight and ten James Verity, a member of the Mounted Branch of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary, and Walter Wentford, an eccentric, and, it is believed, a rich recluse, were done to death in or in the vicinity of a lonely cottage in the neighbourhood of Beaconsfield. At a quarter past nine Constable Verity was patrolling the road and came upon a body which was afterwards identified as that of the late Mr Wentford, who lived in a small cottage some hundred yards from the spot where the body was found. Mr Wentford had been brutally bludgeoned, and was dead when the discovery was made. Simultaneously with the discovery there appeared upon the scene Mr Walter Enward, a well known Beaconsfield solicitor, and his clerk, who, at Mr Wentford’s request, were on their way to visit him. It is believed Mr Wentford intended making a will, though no documents were found in the house to support this supposition.
    “Leaving Mr Enward to watch the body, Constable Verity rode toward Beaconsfield to summon assistance. He was never seen alive after that moment.
    “The dead man’s niece, who also acted as his secretary, Miss Margot Lynn, had been summoned from London, and she, arriving at the cottage a few minutes after the body had been taken away by the unknown murderers, discovered the place in disorder, though she did not at that time suspect a tragedy.
    “The mystery was still further complicated in the earlier hours of the dawn, when a cow-boy, on his way to work, discovered the dead body of Constable Verity on the Beaconsfield side of the lane where Mr Wentford’s body was found. He had been shot through the heart at close range. No sound of the shot had been heard, but it may be explained that there are very few houses in the neighbourhood, and snow was falling heavily. A carter in the employment of a neighbouring farmer thought he had heard a shot fired much earlier in the evening, but this may be accounted for by the fact that snow was falling so thickly on the railway line, which is situated a mile away, that fog signals were being used.
    “Chief Detective–Inspector Gaylor has been called in by the Buckinghamshire police, and he is being assisted by Mr J G Reeder, of the Public Prosecutor’s Department.
    “The timetable, so far as can be ascertained, is as follows:
     
    “7.00.  Constable Verity left police station on patrol.
    “9.14.  Constable Verity discovers the dead body