Free Jack on the Gallows Tree by Leo Bruce

police said to me themselves, ‘If you hadn’t noticed what you did, Mr Thickett, I don’t know where we should be’. Miss Carew might have been lying out there to this day. I might not have had to spend a day at the inquest.”
    â€œDo you remember how many there were?”
    â€œThree,” said Mr Thickett. “If it’s of any interest to you. There was three. No more and no less. I can answer for it. But where does that come in?”
    As though rather baffled by that question Carolus hurriedly asked another.
    â€œHow did she look? The dead woman, I mean?”
    â€œHorrible,” said Mr Thickett.
    â€œDo you mean the expression on her face?”
    â€œThat’s just what I do mean. It was horrible. In my simple way of life I have become accustomed to seeing things that would upset most people. I was first on the scene when there was that car smash last year and three died outright and the other later in hospital. Scarcely recognizable they were. But it didn’t turn me up like this did.”
    â€œWhat kind of expression?”
    â€œWhat
kind
of expression? What kind of expression would you expect anyone to have when they’d just been strangled? It was horrible. I can’t say more than that. Horrible. As if the eyes were popping out of her head and her mouth wide open.”
    â€œYou were very upset?”
    â€œI’m not easily put out, but yes I
was
upset that morning.”
    â€œYet you did not go to the cottage a few yards away?”
    â€œGoggses? No.”
    â€œWhy not?” asked Carolus mischievously.
    â€œIn my calling,” said Thickett, “I have to get used to abuse and slander. There’s always someone ready to say you’re not doing your job properly. But when it comes totaking anyone’s character away, well. That’s all I can say.”
    â€œSo you went to the call-box?”
    â€œI did. And in a few minutes the police were on the spot. I will say that. They did not waste any time. Almost the first words they said to me were—’It’s a good thing you found it, Thickett.’ And it was a good thing, when you come to look at it. Otherwise them that did it would never be found.”
    â€œWhy do you say ‘them’? Do you think there was more than one?”
    â€œI shouldn’t be surprised. If you’d seen the expression on her face.”
    â€œBut if there had been more than one wouldn’t they have carried the body instead of dragging it?”
    â€œUnless one of them was to have stayed in the car.”
    â€œIn that case the dog would have been quietened, surely?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know anything about that,” said Thickett severely. “I believe there was some story told about a dog barking, but was it a reliable Source where that came from? That’s the question.”
    Carolus invited Thickett to drink and the roadmender agreed to a pint as though he were making a concession. The landlord, who had never moved from behind his bar, took no part in the conversation to which he listened avidly.
    â€œThen,” said Mr. Thickett, “there’s the question of Compensation.” Carolus showed that he did not understand. “For me. For finding it.”
    â€œI don’t quite see …”
    â€œNerves,” explained Mr Thickett with an altogether new enthusiasm. “Nerves. All shattered to pieces. In-som … can’t sleep at night. Nightmares.”
    â€œI understood you to say that in your calling …”
    â€œNot corpses, we don’t reckon on. Not with expressions like that to haunt you for the rest of your life.”
    â€œWhat about the National Health? Doesn’t that provide for the after-effects of corpse-finding?”
    â€œI shall have to see about it, I suppose. Unless the relatives act as they should. It’s upset my wife, too. She says she can’t hardly bear me coming home in the evening for