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to consider this proposition of a walking, running or jumping American. Sid Balls says, Perhaps he thought he could fly, but Brother Fred squashes him as usual. And so, another fact, another mystery – the American didn’t slip, apparent and contained in the simple geometry of cliff, beach and concrete. He removed his hat, took a running jump: no other construction is available. With the dark, dark night pressing around him he performed this inexplicable act. He must have done it on purpose, Sid Balls says, and this once Brother Fred forbears to squash him. How is it possible to resist this simple, immaculate, solution? Answering, in Stody’s case, every question raised by this lonely and untypical man, offering a consummate picture of him, according to information received? Ah, that’s it, Brother Fred says, either that or he was balmy. It stands to reason, Sid Balls says, swelling with vanity at his own acuteness. But if it was dark – Stody says, and they watch him, catching at his words. If it was dark, he was going to say, how had the American judged his fall so well? He doesn’t say it, looks instead for any marks at the cliff-edge, but the ground hard, sour and ling-covered, is proof against chance impressions. He has been, has seen – as much as a constable needs to see on these occasions. Enough for a coroner to moralize over, devise a verdict upon, sign, dismiss. Right, Stody says, meaning right by the rules, the customs, the formula, and with the Italian straw hat in his hand he draws off to his Morris 1000.
    Right thus far at all events, and much mystery understood: but another man has visited the American while Stody is taking the air of the cliff-top. He is a man with sharp tools and a sharp mind and a disciplined stomach and a good degree and more experience of police-work than he needs or in fact has time for: by name, John Halliday, f.r.c.p.(Ed.), general practitioner in that district. Halliday is waiting by the Police House when Stody returns from the cliffs. He is outside his car, leaning against it, smoking his pipe with slow puffs. A neat man, with a face that looks as though the skin is too tight for it, showing the structure of the bones; and quick, hypnotic, brown eyes. He comes round to Stody’s car. Hallo, Jim, he says. Good morning, sir, Stody says, climbing, helmetless, out of the Morris. Jim, Halliday says, I’ve seen the body, and in a way I wish I hadn’t. A nasty sight, sir, Stody says. I wish I hadn’t seen it either. Jim, Halliday says. Stody waits. Halliday smokes. Jim, Halliday says, he dropped off the cliff, did he – you’ll have been up there, taken a look? Just this moment, sir, Stody says, I was up there with Brother Fred. Have you any ideas, Jim? Halliday says. Well, sir, Stody says, it might have been either way. I’d say most likely it was intentional, but it could have been an accident. There’s not much to go on. What was on the body? Halliday asks. Stody lifts out the grip, shows Halliday what’s in it. Halliday picks up a tiny penknife, opens it, closes it, drops it back. He says, Have you found anything on the cliff? Only this hat, Stody says, exhibiting it. Nothing else? Some signs perhaps? Stody shakes his head, no, nothing. Halliday smokes for some while, then: Well, Jim, he says, well. The deceased died from head injuries and a broken neck, one or both. The deceased has bruises on the chest and also on the jaw and both wrists, and the deceased has a group of twenty-two shallow incisions, made shortly before death, in the abdomen. That’s the substance of the matter, Jim, leaving out a few minor abrasions. His brown eyes flick at Stody. Stody, without his helmet, stares. Incisions, sir? Cuts, Jim. Twenty-two. Through his shirt. You mean, like stabs, sir? No, not stabs, incisions, not more than half an inch deep. Stody wrestles with this idea. Halliday smokes a little faster. Still, the image of an inscrutable