"Aye!" mumbled Mr. Cazalette. "Let the lassie look at it! Maybe a woman's brains is more use than a man's whiles."
"Often!" said the detective. "And if Miss Raven can make anything of that——"
I saw that Miss Raven was already wishful to speak, and I hastened to encourage her by throwing a word to Scarterfield.
"You'd be infinitely obliged to her, I'm sure," I put in. "It would be a help?"
"No slight one!" said he. "There's something in that diagram. But—what?"
Miss Raven, timid, and a little shy of concentrated attention, laid the photograph again on the table.
"Don't—don't you think there may be some explanation of this in what Salter Quick said to Mr. Middlebrook when they met on the cliffs?" she asked. "He told Mr. Middlebrook that he wanted to find a churchyard where there were graves of people named Netherfield, but he didn't know exactly where it was, though it was somewhere in this locality. Now supposing this is a rough outline of that churchyard? These outer lines may be the wall—then these little marks may show the situation of the Netherfield graves. And that cross in the corner—perhaps there is something buried, hidden, there, which Salter Quick wanted to find?"
The detective uttered a sharp exclamation and snatched up the photograph again.
"Good! Good!" he said. "Upon my word, I shouldn't wonder! To be sure, that may be it. What's against it?"
"This," remarked Mr. Cazalette solemnly. "That there isn't anybody of the name of Netherfield buried between Alnmouth and Budle Bay! That's a fact."