“Can you read the inscription on that flag, auntie?” I asked. “It’s an old photograph I picked up in the attic at The Grange, and I’d like to know, if I could, at what place it was taken.”
Aunt Emma gazed at it long and earnestly. Her colour never changed. Then she shook her head quietly.
“I don’t know the place,” she said; “and I don’t know the name. I can’t quite make it out. That’s E, and R, and O. You see, the letters in between might be almost anything.”
I wasn’t going to be put off, however, with the port thus in sight. One fact was almost certain. Wherever that pavilion might be, the murderer was there on the day unknown when those photo-graphs were taken. And whatever that day might be, my father and the murderer were there together. That brought the two into connection, and brought me one step nearer a solution than ever the police had been; for hitherto no one had even pretended to have the slightest clue to the personality of the man who jumped out of the window.
I went into the library and took down the big atlas. Opening the map of England and Wales, I began a hopeless search, county by county, from Northumberland downward, for any town or village that would fit these mysterious letters. It was a wild and foolish idea. In the first place not a quarter of the villages were marked in the map; and in the second place, my brain soon got muddled and dazed with trying to fit in the names with the letters on the flag. Two hours had passed away, and I’d only got as far down as Lancashire and Durham. And, most probably even so, I would never come upon it.
Then suddenly, a bright idea broke on my brain at once. The Index! The Index! Presumably, as no fold seemed to obscure the first words, the name began with what looked like a B. That was always something.
A man would have thought of that at once, of course: but then, I have the misfortune to be only a woman.
I turned to the Index in haste, and looked down it with hurried eyes. Almost sooner than I could have hoped, the riddle unread itself. “Ber-, Berb-, Berc-, Berd-,” I read out: “Berkshire: Berham: Berhampore: that won’t do: Berlin: Berling: Bernina: Berry—what’s that? Oh, great heavens!”—my brain reeled—“Berry Pomeroy!”
It was as clear as day. How could I have missed it before? There it seemed to stand out almost legible on the flagstaff. I read it now with ease: “Berry Pomeroy Athletic Club.”
I looked up the map once more, following the lines with my fingers, till I found the very place where the name was printed. A village in Devonshire, not far from Torquay. Yes! That’s it; Berry Pomeroy. The murderer was there on the day of that athletic meeting!