Horace Wimbley

Horace Wimbley is 48 and a solicitor in Sussex, but presents himself first as a collector. Stout, with a round, ruddy face, a full brown mustache with turned-up tips and a bald crown, he speaks of science with a boy's enthusiasm and of himself with a false modesty nobody believes. It was he who found the Brackenmoor skull, and he tells it like someone telling of a Sunday outing.

For twenty years he has collected Roman coins and old horseshoes, which he displays in the drawing room of a country house: a glass cabinet with shallow velvet-lined drawers, the horseshoes hung in order of size on a wooden wall, a deep armchair and a fireplace he feeds with applewood. He spends his Sundays cleaning coins with a soft brush and talking to himself aloud.

He wears a brown tweed suit with a waistcoat, a golden pocket watch chain across his belly, and always carries his bowler hatbowler hat Stiff felt hat with a rounded crown and narrow brim, typical of British men in the 19th and early 20th centuries. in his hands, turning it by the brim when he talks. He greets with both hands, calls everyone my dear fellow and never lets a question finish before he starts answering.

About the find, his account is that of a stroke of luck: the pit workmen broke something they took for an old pot, and he recognized bone from afar. From tomorrow night at the Geological Society he expects English science to look toward Sussex. For twenty years he has sent finds to those people, he says, and they never let him past the door. Tomorrow his name enters the room.

When the question suggests he forged the skull, Horace repeats the word with wide eyes, recalls that he has been a solicitor for twenty-five years and warns that he will say nothing more without his partner. He turns the hat by the brim, a full turn, and the detective weighs the gesture: the offense of a man of reputation or the turns of someone buying time?