Free The Polo Ground Mystery by Robin Forsythe

obliged to laugh.
    â€œI think we can say right away that those holes were made before the murder was committed, Heather. Otherwise the cartridge case wouldn’t have found such a neat little hiding-place.”
    â€œI’m not so sure about that,” remarked the inspector, “but it’s a nice point. I’ll make a sleuth of you yet, Mr. Vereker. Now I think I’ll get back to Nuthill.”
    â€œI feel I ought to nose round for a bit, Heather,” said Vereker, as the inspector and sergeant turned to go. “I’ve a notion that there ought to be another shell somewhere. I’m working on your statement that you think there were three shots fired. Don’t stop too long at the ‘Silver Pear Tree.’ You’ve got a big day’s work in front of you to-morrow.”

Chapter Five
    On Inspector Heather’s departure, Vereker glanced at his watch, and finding he had still two hours of daylight before him decided to explore what he called the “physical geography” of the case. Leaving the north end of the polo ground, he skirted the western wall of the manor grounds and came into the meadows forming the valley between the house and the gently swelling wooded hills to the north. In front of him, across those meadows, Hanging Covert loomed hazily through the golden sun-dust, and to the right frowned Beech Wood, in which he could now clearly discern the western gable of Collyer’s cottage. At the eastern end of this valley and closing it lay the dark mass of Wild Duck Wood. After a careful survey of this scenery, he wandered towards Wild Duck Wood, with the intention of making a circuit of the meadows which lay like an emerald arena in this natural amphitheatre. As he walked leisurely through the lush grass, his hands thrust into his jacket pockets, his mind was turning over in a series of permutations the matter of those two reports heard by Collyer, the keeper, and Basil Ralli. If Armadale’s assailant had fired two shots and the murdered man had fired one, the conflicting evidence of the reports heard was mysterious. The only satisfactory deduction that he could make at the moment was that only two shots had been fired, and that both had been fired from Armadale’s own pistol. The second empty cartridge case which he had found and which Heather had taken for examination would clear up this puzzle. Sir William Macpherson’s report upon the bullet which he had extracted ran contrary to this supposition, but even Sir William had been guarded in his statement, and it was notoriously difficult to be certain on such a point. The number of live cartridges left in Armadale’s pistol also conflicted with his theory, unless there had been one in the barrel in addition to the usual seven in the magazine. He also had a recollection that some of these magazine clips in automatic pistols were fairly elastic. If his theory were correct, the question at once rose—how did the burglar obtain possession of Mr. Armadale’s pistol? It was obvious that he might have wrested it from him in a struggle, but Vereker was instinctively chary of accepting the obvious in criminal investigation. If the shell which Heather had taken with him for examination proved to have been fired from a weapon other than that found loosely gripped in the dead man’s hand—and such a question might be finally answered by micro-photography—his assumption at once fell to pieces. The supposition that the burglar had obtained possession of Sutton Armadale’s pistol prior to his robbery opened up an engaging problem for solution. It simply bristled with possibilities and blew a cloud of suspicion over the staff of servants and the guests in the house. It was going to be a thoroughly intriguing and intricate piece of work, and at the very thought Vereker’s eyes shone with excitement.
    In his preoccupation, he had sauntered at an easy pace along the north wall enclosing the