“I think that by a serious crime our noble friend means a particular crime—don’t you, Ludlow? Isn’t it the customary euphemism?” asked Belvoir.
“I mean murder, sir.”
“Should have said so in the first place,” growled Pendleton, and added, “No need to say it at all.”
“It’s jolly irregular, though,” declared Oxford. “All that blood in one spot, and this gory thing over here.”
“This was not done according to rule,” rejoined his Lordship.
“It was not carried out as planned,” declared Cosgrove, who had come out from the mansion again.
“And one, er, detail only needs to be filled in.” That was Belvoir from somewhere in the darkness behind us. “The, er, corpus delicti.”
“Gad, yes—scatter, now—search—all the way to Aidenn Water.”
The cluster of lanterns spread into kaleidoscopic figures again, although the men seemed none too happy to leave the protection of one another. But they did not discover any further traces of the marauder or a vestige of a victim who might have furnished all that blood. My own light picked up the last find of the night, a round, battered object on the grass even further north than the blood-stained axe.
“A hat!”