“No objections,” said Mr. Lambert unexpectedly.
Mr. Farr eyed him incredulously for a moment, as though he doubted the evidence of his ears. Then, rather thoughtfully, he produced another object from the inexhaustible maw of his desk and poised it carefully on the ledge under the sergeant’s nose. It was a box—a nice, shiny tin box, painted a cheerful but decorous maroon—the kind of a box that good little boys carry triumphantly to school, bursting with cookies and apples and peanut-butter sandwiches. It had a neat handle and a large, beautiful, early English initial painted on the top.
“Did you recognize this, sergeant?”
“Yes. It’s a lunch box that I picked up back of the shrubbery to the left of the Orchards cottage.”
“Had it anything in it?”
“It was about three-quarters empty. There was a ham sandwich and some salted nuts and dates in it, and a couple of doughnuts.”
“What should you say that the initial on the cover represented?”
“I shouldn’t say,” remarked the sergeant frankly. “It’s got too many curlicues and doodads. It might be a D, or it might be P, or then again, it mightn’t be either.”
“So far as you know, it hasn’t been identified as anyone’s property?”
“No, sir.”