Heavy rain the night before had conspired to bespatter his sturdy uniformed legs with mud from the narrow lane that led to Stockbery Towers and that, combined with a consciousness that his method of arrival did not befit a sergeant of the detective force of Kent County Police, did not put him in the best of humours. His request for use of the force’s equipage had been met by a curt refusal from Naseby. On a good day Bladon would have conceded that the short distance from his Hollingham home to the Towers was easily bridgeable by bicycle or even by foot, but this was not a good day. It was a day clouded by Inspector Naseby. A weaselly-featured man of fifty who had come to the top of the detective branch by his fortunate fluke in trapping the infamous Rum Bubber Bill of the Ramsgate smuggling trade, Naseby would play his cards carefully. He’d be out for the glory of solving the Stockbery case, as it was already known, but it boded fair to be a difficult one and it would be on Bladon’s shoulders that the blame would be laid if the ducal temper were to be lost.
