g marshes. The little canal quay--a
wooden one--was a tangle of rotting boards and loose piles, and the
stagnant green water of the shallow canal was abandoned to a few grey
geese, which honked angrily at the passing car. There was no sign of
life in the village street, and no sound except the autumn wind moaning
across the marshes and the boom of the distant sea against the
breakwater.

"There's the inn--straight in front," said Police-Constable Queensmead,
pointing to it.

The _Golden Anchor_ inn must have been built in the days of Sir
Cloudesley Shovel, for nothing remained of the maritime prosperity
which had originally bestowed the name upon the building. It was of
rough stone, coloured a dirty white, with two queer circular windows
high up in the wall on one side, the other side resting on a little,
round-shouldered hill. It was built facing away from the sea like the
beach-stone cottages, from which it was separated by a patch of common.
From the rear of the inn the marshes stretched in unbroken monotony to
the line of leaping white sea dashing sullenly against the breakwater
wall, and ran for miles north and south in a desolate uniformity, still
and grey as the sky above, devoid of life except for a few migrant birds
feeding in the salt creeks or winging their way seaward in strong,
silent flight. The rays of the afternoon sun, momentarily piercing the
thick clouds, fell on the white wall and round glazed windows of the
inn, giving it a sinister resemblance to a dead face.

Colwyn brought his car to a standstill on the edge of the saturated
strip of common.

"We shall have to walk across," he said.

"Nobody will run off with the car," said Galloway, scrambling down from
his seat.

"The murderer brought the body from the back of the house across this
green, and carried it up that rise in front of the inn," said
Queensmead. "You cannot see the pit from here, but it is close to that
little wood on the summit. The footprints do not show in the grass, but
they are very plain in the clay a little farther on, and lead straight
to the pit."

"How deep is the pit?" asked Colwyn.

"About thirty feet. It was not an easy matter to bring up the body."

"We will examine the pit and the footprints later," said Mr. Cromering.
"Let us go inside first."

Picking their way across the common to the front of the inn, they
encountered a little group of men conversing underneath the rusty old
anchor signboard which dangl