The rugby club was on the other side of the village just off the road to Bristol and we decided that, since it was only a mile or so, the walk would do us good. We made good time despite our weariness and the weight of Lady Hardcastle’s canvas art bag, and we soon spotted the tall goal posts of the rugby pitch.
The lane up to the clubhouse was rutted, but mercifully free of mud, and as we rounded the final bend we finally saw the clubhouse itself. It was a large, white-painted, wooden building, much like the one we had been at the previous week, and, indeed, very much like most of the sporting pavilions I had ever seen. Steps led up to a small verandah where players might sit, and above it a balcony for spectators. A small clock tower showed the time as almost one o’clock.
We mounted the wooden steps and entered the building. The main space formed a communal room with a bar along one wall. It was sparsely decorated but felt homely with its mismatched tables and chairs and a handful of well-worn armchairs over by the large heating stove. It was in some disarray, with overflowing ashtrays, half-empty beer glasses and assorted other detritus lying about on the tables and the floor, and the whole place could have done with sweeping and airing, but it still felt very welcoming. A sign indicated that dressing rooms were to the right, while another pointed to the committee room to the left and the “Grand Eternal Poobah’s Dining Room” upstairs.
‘What ho!’ called Lady Hardcastle. ‘Are you there, Constable Hancock?’
The constable hurried in from the door on the left.
‘Good afternoon, m’lady,’ he said, knuckling his forehead. ‘Sergeant Dobson found you in, then?’
‘And almost ready for visitors,’ she said. ‘And after he’d told his tale, we hurried over here as fast as our shapely legs would carry us.’
The constable blushed slightly.
‘Take no notice, Constable,’ I said. ‘She just likes to see how much she can discomfit people with her inappropriate remarks. Mind you,’ I whispered, conspiratorially, ‘she’s right – we do have very shapely legs.’
He flushed a brighter shade of crimson and Lady Hardcastle laughed. ‘Why don’t we forget about legs,’ she said, ‘and concentrate instead on feet. The sergeant says you have some footprints to show us.’
‘I do indeed, m’lady,’ said the tall young constable. ‘Follow me.’
He led us out through the door through which he had just entered the bar, past the bottom of the staircase and along a corridor with windows on the left-hand side looking out onto the verandah and the pitch, and higher windows on the right which presumably provided further illumination for the committee room. As we neared the door to the room, I noticed the footprints on the polished floorboards.
I stopped to look more closely. ‘It seems he came in through that door at the end of the corridor…’ I said, indicating the closed door several feet in front of us. ‘…and walked this way… he stood on tiptoes here, look, probably to look in through the window to check that the room was empty… then doubled back to the committee room door.’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Huge feet, too.’
‘Size twelve, I reckons,’ said the constable. He indicated his own boots. ‘I wears tens but they’s much bigger than mine.’
‘And how tall are you, constable?’ she asked.
‘Six foot exactly, m’lady.’
‘So our thief would almost certainly be taller than that. It does rather narrow the pool of suspects, eh, Flo?’
‘There can’t be many men in the area above six feet tall, my lady, no.’
‘And most of ’em plays for the rugby team,’ said Hancock.
‘Do they?’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Do they indeed? Well, well, well.’
‘What’s through there?’ I asked, indicating the door at the end of the corridor.
‘That’s the store room, miss,’ he said.
‘We’ll look at that in a moment,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I’d like to take a look at the trophy cabinet first if I may.’
Stepping carefully around the oily bootprints, we entered the committee room. In contrast to the Spartan functionality of the main bar, the committee’s accommodations were a great deal more comfortable. The room was rectangular, with the windows looking out onto the corridor along one long, oak-panelled wall, and boards along the other bearing the names of past presidents and honouring various club members past and present for their achievements on the field. The leather-topped table and luxuriously upholstered chairs were polished and apparently undisturbed by the intruder, but he had left oily bootprints on the floor. There was a fireplace on the short wall at the other end of the room which clearly shared a chimney with the stove in the bar and that seemed to have been his destination. There was a heavily-laden, deep-shelved bookcase set in one of the alcoves, with the trophy cabinet in the other.
‘So, he comes in here…’ I said, ‘…walks along this wall around the edge of the carpet… and stops… here.’ I was standing in front of the right-hand alcove and the empty trophy cabinet built into it.
The cabinet was extremely well fitted, clearly the work of a craftsman. It stood from floor to ceiling and filled the alcove precisely without the tiniest fraction of an inch to spare. It was made of a dark wood, polished to a high sheen, with gleaming glass-panelled doors.
I went to open it. ‘Is it all right to touch things, Constable?’ I said. ‘Do I have to be wary of fingerprints?’
‘There i’n’t none as I can see, miss,’ he said. ‘Very careful, he was.’
I opened the doors and looked inside. The shallow shelves were clean an polished, just like the exterior, though a shade darker giving a pleasing feeling of texture to the design. There was a length of beading along the front of each shelf to form a lip which seemed like a splendidly clever way to prevent things from rolling out. Other than that, the cupboard was bare. I closed the doors.
Lady Hardcastle, meanwhile, had been looking around the room and came over to rummage in the bag hanging over my shoulder for her sketch pad and pencils. While I followed Constable Hancock to the store room, she began to sketch the scene of the crime.
The store was dark and musty. There was a lantern hanging from a hook but the constable ignored it and walked across to the large double doors at the other end. He threw them open and the dingy room was illuminated by the bright afternoon sun.
Occupying pride of place near the doors was a massive Ransomes lawnmower. I’d seen such a machine before at the country estate of one of Lady Hardcastle’s friends, but never in the hands of a tiny country rugby club. It must have stood nearly as tall as me and weighed over a ton. There was a wide-based oilcan lying on its side beside it, and its spilled contents were clearly the source of the footprints we had been following.
‘So,’ I said. ‘The rest of the trail is of two sets of muddled prints, with the boots facing in opposite directions… but between the here and the outer door there’s just one set, heading out. It seems that our thief came in through the door, stepped in the oil, went to the corridor, took a peek through the window, entered the committee room, pinched the trophies and then retraced his steps back out through the store.’