"H'm! Who made him drunk?"
"Himself, I suppose," rejoined Mr. Phelps, a trifle tartly. "Crank requires no one to tempt him."
"Few men do, sir," said Blair, and again examined the coffin. He passed his long, delicate hand over every inch of it, particularly fingering the lid; then he looked round the niche where it rested, peered into the others, and considered well all that he saw, while Mr. Phelps chattered. "Quite so," said the detective at length; "let us go outside."
He examined the graveyard as carefully as he had done the vault. In the angle formed by the Lady Chapel he found the long grass crushed down, and part of it torn up to make a pillow.
"Humph! a squatting-place," said Blair, who had read a good deal about prehistoric man. "A tramp has been sleeping here."
"A tramp!" repeated the Rector. "Of course that was Cicero Gramp, who wrote the letter."
"No doubt. I dare say he saw the whole business." Blair continued his researches, and came to a halt at the wall which divided church-yard from pine-wood. He pointed to a loose stone which had been knocked off. "Did you observe this before, sir?"
"No," replied Mr. Phelps, raising his pince-nez. "But that's nothing. You see, the wall has been put together without mortar--simply stones piled one on top of the other. A high wind, now----"
"I don't think a high wind knocked this stone off. You will notice, sir, that it has fallen on the other side. Excuse me," and Blair, active as a deer, leaped over the wall and disappeared into the pine-belt. Phelps rubbed his nose, not understanding these Red Indian methods. In ten minutes the inspector returned. "I can't find the trail," said he, "but from the evidence of that wall, I suspect the body was carried over it."
"Where to, Mr. Inspector?"