“I only just caught sight of ’imas I was walking along ’ere on my way to a job. Look!”

He pointed into the gutter. Bisker stood quite still and stared downward into the gutter with eyes unusually large. First he saw, beneath lines of vivid green, a patch of scarlet. Then he saw, also beneath lines of vivid green, part of a man’s face. He bent his body forward, resting his hands upon his bent knees, and stared still harder.

“That’s one of our guests,” he said slowly. “A bloke named Grumman. Looks like ’e’sdead.”

“Too right!” supplemented Fred. “You take a closer bird’s-eye view of ’im.”

Bisker straightened himself and regarded Fred as though it had been suggested that he step off a cliff a hundred feet high. Then he knelt at the edge of the gutter and lowered himself down into it. With his arms, he parted the tangle of brambles and weeds above the figure of the man dressed in a grey dressing gown and with red leather slippers on his feet. Bisker could tell if a man was dead, having seen dead men. He rearranged the covering of vegetation over the body, and then regained the edge of the road.

Fred regarded Bisker with an expression of sternness in his watery eyes. Bisker looked up and was about to speak when, from above them, a voice said:

“What is going on down there?”

Both men stared guiltily and looked upwards to see a slight and well-dressed man standing on the lip of the road bank. Bisker said:

“Morning Mr. Bonaparte. Better come down an’ take a bird’s-eye view of a corpse we’ve found.”

“Did you say a corpse?” asked Mr. Bonaparte.

“That’s right,” affirmed Fred.

“Then I will join you.”

In less than ten seconds this guest at Wideview Chalet stood with Bisker and Fred on the edge of the road just above the body.

“Haveeither of you men been down there in the gutter?” asked Mr. Bonaparte.

“We both ’ave,” replied Bisker. “Fred ’ere ’e found ’imand brought me down from mework.”