The two cars met and stopped alongside each other, and Sir Cresswell,
with one sharp glance at the rough bandage which Vickers had fastened
round Jim Spurge's head, rapped out a question.
"Gone!" replied Gilling, with equal brusqueness. "Came in a motor, during
the night, soon after Zachary Spurge left Jim. They hit him pretty hard
over his head and left him unconscious. Of course they've carried off the
boxes. Car appears to have gone to Norcaster. Hadn't you better turn?"
Sir Cresswell pointed to the Scarhaven police inspector.
"Here's news from Scarhaven," he said, bending forward to the other car,
"The inspector's just brought it. The Squire--whoever he was--is dead.
They found his body this morning, lying at the foot of a cliff near the
Keep. Foul play?--that's what you don't know, eh, inspector?"
"Can't say at all, sir," answered the inspector. "He might have been
thrown down, he might have fallen down--it's a bad place. Anyway, what
the doctor said, just before I hurried in here to tell Mrs. Greyle, as
the next relative that we know of, is that he'd been dead some days--the
body, you see, was lying in a thicket at the foot of the cliff."
"Some days!" exclaimed Copplestone, with a look at Gilling. "Days?"
"Four or five days at least, sir," replied the inspector. "So the doctor
thinks. The place is a cliff between the high road from Northborough and
the house itself.
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