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Hamlet’s father ever since you came in. George Mariner’s driven into a lamppost? Old Mr. Beaumorris has fallen off his bicycle? Mrs. Havelock has run over a chicken?”
    “It’s not really funny—”
    “I’m sure it isn’t,” said Tony, suddenly quite serious. “What is it?”
    “It’s our Miss Katie. I found her myself when I went down to check over the boathouse. Someone’s smashed her head in.”

 
FOUR
    Dr. Farmiloe was on the point of going to bed when the telephone rang. Being a methodical man, he noted the time. It was ten minutes to twelve.
    He listened to what the telephone had to say, contributed one “Where?” and one “Right” and replaced the receiver. Without appearing to hurry, but without losing any time, he collected a small black bag, which lived in a cupboard in the hall, opened it and added one or two items to it from a shelf in the cupboard. Then he went out, leaving the front door carefully on the latch, extracted his car from the garage, which occupied the space between his house and the Beaumorris cottage, and drove off.
    The whole of this sequence of actions took him less than five minutes. Before he had retired into private practice at West Hannington, he had spent twenty-five years as a police surgeon in the Clerkenwell area of South London.
    He saw Cavey standing at the corner where Church Lane ran out onto the towpath. Cavey waved to him to stop and climbed in beside him. “It’s two-three hundred yards along,” he said. “Just before the boathouse.”
    “Who found her?”
    “I did.”
    “Then it was you who telephoned Dandridge?”
    “That’s right. Straightaway I rang him.”
    The car had bumped on a hundred yards farther before Dr. Farmiloe said, “I suppose there’s no doubt she’s dead.”
    “I’ve seen plenty of dead people in my time,” said Cavey. There was a note in his voice which might have been panic, or might have been bravado. “She’s dead. No question.”
    “It’s not always easy to be sure,” said the doctor. A torchlight waved ahead of them. The doctor brought the car to a halt and climbed out. He said, “Better stay in the car. The less feet trampling about the better.”
    Cavey seemed glad of the advice. He was clearly more shaken than he chose to appear.
    The man behind the torch was Chief Inspector Dandridge, who was, at that time, in charge of the Hannington Station. He was a slow, heavy Berkshire man. His real name was Herbert, but people had called him Dan ever since he had joined the Berkshire County Force twenty-five years before. He said, “She’s over there, Doctor. In the grass.”
    The girl was lying face downward, with one arm flung forward, the other arm doubled up under her body. Dr. Farmiloe knelt down beside her. He felt for the pulse in her neck and found nothing. Using his own torch, he examined the back of her head carefully and then shone its light into her wide-open eyes. He did all this quite slowly, because he wanted time to think.
    He was in no doubt that Katie was dead. He had been sure of that from the moment he had seen the way she was lying: the disjointed, abandoned sprawl, as though the body, deprived of life, was hugging the ground from which it had come. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was in the beginning. And the spirit—yes, what had happened to the spirit of Katie, beloved of millions of people who had seen her picture on the small screen and had built their own image from it? The spirit, said the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, shall return unto God who gave it.
    The problem remained.
    How was he going to tell Dandridge what to do without upsetting his dignity? Because it was clear that he was out of his depth.
    Thinking it out as he got to his feet, he said, “I shan’t be able to make a proper examination before it gets light. But there are some things I’ve got to do at once. It’s clearly going to be important to know exactly when she died. I can probably tell you that,