'Naturally. You see, under everything, Grandmother is just a sentimentalist"
Martin found his reason rocking. "Your grandmother," he said, defining the words with care, "you call a sentimentalist?"
"Oh, she isn't easy to live with. I hate her sometimes. But she is kind-hearted, and you'd see it if it weren't for the arrogance. Grandmother is shielding somebody." Jenny hesitated. "She says the skeleton is legally her property. She also says nobody, not even the police, can take it from her unless they can show why it's a vital piece of evidence. Is that right?"
"You'd better ask Stannard. But it sounds reasonable to me."
"Then that means," cried Jenny, her eyes shining under lowered lids, "the police don't know themselves. It means.."
Here Jenny, whose gaze had wandered along the line of the fence, uttered a cry and ran to Martin. Some little distance down beside the fence, a man was standing motionless.
A drifting mist-veil hid everything except his legs, as he stood sideways to the fence. Then the moving veil slowly swirled past and up. Martin saw clearly a large and somewhat burly figure, with its blue serge suit and its ruddy face dominated by a boiled blue eye, under a bowler hat
"Chief Inspector Masters!" Martin said.
Masters lifted one foot experimentally, and set it down with a faint squelch. If he did not happen to be in a good temper, the Chief Inspector never showed this in his professional countenance.
"Morning, miss. Morning, sir," he greeted them, as offhandedly as though he were in a London office instead of a mist-wrapped Berkshire field at half-past four on Sunday morning. Bland as ever, poker-faced as ever in public, he walked towards them and looked hard at Martin.