Twenty-three
O n the way back, I proposed to Griselda that we should make a detour¹ and go round by the barrow. I was anxious tosee if the police were at work and if so, what they had found. Griselda, however, had things to do at home, so I wasleft to make the expedition on my own.
I found Constable² Hurst in charge of operations.
“No sign so far, sir,” he reported. “And yet it stands to reason that this is the only place for a cache.”
His use of the word cache puzzled me for a moment, as he pronounced it catch, but his real meaning occurred tome almost at once.
“Whatimeantersay is, sir, where else could the young woman be going starting into the wood by that path? It leadsto Old Hall, and it leads here, and that’s about all.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that Inspector³ Slack would disdain⁴ such a simple course as asking the young lady straightout.”
“Anxious not to put the wind up her,” said Hurst. “Anything she writes to Stone or he writes to her may throw lighton things—once she knows we’re on to her, she’d shut up like that.”
Like what exactly was left in doubt, but I personally doubted Miss Gladys Cram⁵ ever being shut up in the waydescribed. It was impossible to imagine her as other than overflowing⁶ with conversation.
“When a man’s an h’impostor, you want to know why he’s an h’impostor,” said Constable Hurst didactically.
“Naturally,” I said.
“And the answer is to be found in this here barrow—or else why was he forever messing about with it?”
“A raison d’être for prowling about,” I suggested, but this bit of French was too much for the constable. Herevenged himself for not understanding it by saying coldly:
“That’s the h’amateur’s point of view.”
“Anyway, you haven’t found the suitcase,” I said.
“We shall do, sir. Not a doubt of it.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Miss Marple said it was quite a short time before the girl reappearedempty-handed. In that case, she wouldn’t have had time to get up here and back.”

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