He burnt the towel and the cotton waste in the kitchen fire; he cleaned his tools thoroughly and put them back in their places; and he washed down the marble slab. There wasn’t a spot on the floor except for one flagstone where the pink rinsing of the slab had splashed over. He scrubbed it for half an hour, still seeing the rusty edges of the splash long after he had scoured it out. He then washed and dressed himself with care. As it was war-time Steven could only work by day, for a light in the dairy roof would have attracted the attention of the police. He had murdered Mr. Greathead on a Tuesday; it was now three o’clock on Thursday afternoon. Exactly at ten minutes past four he had brought out the car, shut in close with its black hood and side curtains. He had packed Mr. Greathead’s suit-case and placed it in the car with his umbrella, railway rug, and travelling cap. Also, in a bundle, the clothes that his victim would have gone to London in. He stowed the body in the two sacks beside him on the front. By Hardraw Pass, half-way between Eastthwaite and Shawe, there are three round pits, known as the Churns, hollowed out of the grey rock and said to be bottomless. Steven had thrown stones, big as a man’s chest, down the largest pit, to see whether they would be caught on any ledge or boulder. They had dropped clean, without a sound. It poured with rain, the rain that Steven had reckoned on. The Pass was dark under the clouds and deserted. Steven turned his car so that the headlights glared on the pit’s mouth. Then he ripped open the sacks and threw down, one by one, the seventeen pieces of Mr. Greathead’s body, and the sacks after them, and the clothes. It was not enough to dispose of Mr. Greathead’s dead body; he had to behave as though Mr. Greathead were alive. Mr. Greathead had disappeared and he had to account for his disappearance. He drove on to Shawe station to the five o’clock train, taking care to arrive close on its starting. A troop-train was due to depart a minute earlier. Steven, who had reckoned on the darkness and the rain, reckoned also on the hurry and confusion on the platform. As he had foreseen, there were no porters in the station entry; nobody to notice whether Mr. Greathead was or was not in the car. He carried his things through on to the platform and gave the suit-case to an old man to label. He dashed into the booking-office and took Mr. Greathead’s ticket, and then rushed along the platform as if he were following his master. He heard himself shouting to the guard, “Have you seen Mr. Greathead?” And the guard’s answer, “Naw!” And his own inspired statement, “He must have taken his seat in the front, then.” He ran to the front of the train, shouldering his way among the troops. The drawn blinds of the carriages favoured him.