THE CASE OF THE AMATEUR ACTOR

This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

PART I. The Case of Gordon Posfort

ONE DEAD MAN

I SUPPOSE my life has been no more cluttered up with coincidence than that of any other man: in fact I have to think pretty hard to recall anything of the kind that would be even worth the telling. But that evening—the 10th of November, 1953—I did happen to be thinking of George Wharton and wishing that something might turn up in the murder line, with myself called in as a stooge to George—or, more politely, as what the Yard calls an unofficial expert.

I wish no harm, mind you, to my fellow men, and all I wanted was a kind of academic murder: no blood and all problem. Or perhaps the murder might be that of someone who really ought by universal consent to have been murdered long ago, so that even finding the murderer would be academic too. Or perhaps the whole thing was that I was too much at a loose end and wanted something interesting to occupy my days. Bernice —my wife—was away for at least a fortnight with a very aged but resilient aunt who was having yet another of her frequent relapses. Things were quiet at the Broad Street Detective Agency and Norris—the managing director—could easily cope with the present routine. In fact, before I had begun day—dreaming about a nice intricate murder, I had been almost tempted to think once more about that proposition that Gordon Posfort had made to me, even though I knew I should once more turn it down.

However, I went back to my crossword and pencilled in another clue or two. And it was then that the telephone went. I knew it couldn't be Bernice, for she had rung me just before that scratch meal which had taken the place of dinner.

“That you, Mr. Travers?”

“Yes,” I said.

“This is Scotland Yard, sir. Hang on a minute, will you?”

I didn't think about murder, though I knew it would be George Wharton. I had seen him a couple of days before and we had talked vaguely about a dinner together and then a show.

“Hallo. That you, Travers?”

“In person, George.”

“You're still not busy?”

“Far from it.”

“Right,” he said briskly. “Slip along, will you, to the Royalty Hotel, Room 323. A man's been shot there. Matthews thinks you might be able to identify him. I'll be along myself in a few minutes. Got it? Room 323.”

For a moment I didn't know what to say, and then it was too late. I hung up the dead receiver and made for my overcoat and hat. Not that I really wanted either. You remember, perhaps, that extraordinary early winter weather, with its mugginess by day and its quite warm nights with merely a flicker of mist. And the Royalty was only about four minutes from the flat. I actually got there with a few seconds to spare, and it was exactly half—past seven when I went through the swing doors of that vast, conveyer—belt sort of caravanserai.

The hot air met me and there was the same old smell, almost fetid, of too many people and too much heating, and with it an odour of meals and tobacco and furniture polish. People were milling everywhere—at the long reception desk and the kiosks, and there were queues at the lifts. I took the stairs two at a time, and with my long legs I didn't have to give the semblance of a jump. At the landing the indicator board told, me that Boom 323 was to the left, so I went along a corridor and then had to turn left again. This time the corridor was short and at the end angle a man was standing, neck craning cautiously round.

I wondered what he was peering at. My feet made no sound on the thick carpet, so I gave a cough as I neared him and he whipped round at once. Then he shot away and ahead of me to the left. I had to turn to the right, and it was all so quick that I didn't get too good a sight of him, even in profile. I did notice that he had very fair hair, a nose slightly hooked, and that he was about five feet nine and probably in the late twenties. As for that Peeping Tom business, I knew almost at once what and why it was, for only half a dozen doors along was Room 323. He must have come by it from the other way and seen something happening; a glimpse of Matthews and a plain—clothes man or two, perhaps, through the suddenly opened door. Maybe he had even got a glimpse of the corpse.

I tapped at the door and went straight in. Matthews gave me a grin. He and I had worked together—suffered under Wharton, shall we say? —long before he had even dreamed of becoming an inspector. Old Doc Anders gave his dry smile and nod. Matthews introduced me to the third man, Warren, the hotel manager.

“Wharton rang me about identifying a body,” I said, and my eyes went beyond the single bed to a sort of hump that lay on the floor, just short of the dressing—table and covered with a blanket. That would be the corpse, and it was only then, curiously enough, that I was really wondering why it should be I who was likely to identify it.

“Here we are,” the doc said cheerfully. “Have a good look at him.”

Corpses, to the professionals, are just something in the day's work. I'm more squeamish, especially where there's blood: but then, as I've said before, I was never cut out for a professional sleuth. Maybe Anders saw something of that in my wary approach.

“Not a messy job. Just a few bullets pumped through his navel.”

There was a grunt from Matthews and I turned away. There was no mess: just a dark stain one could see on the waistcoat. What was horrible was the contortion of the face and the tortured eyes. But even then I thought I knew him. Anders stooped and turned the head from profile to full front.

“Recognise him?”

“Yes,” I said, and my fingers were suddenly at my glasses. “He's a man named Gordon Posfort. A literary agent.”

There was a grunt from Matthews and I turned away. What Posfort should be doing in that hotel I couldn't imagine. The Royalty was the sort of place he'd have said, ironically enough, that he'd hate to be found dead in.

“A bit of a shock to you?” Matthews—said. “I mean, he was a friend of yours?”

“No,” I said. “Not a friend. He belonged to the same club as myself and we'd had some talk about business from time to time. As a matter of fact I saw him on business only last week. But why did you think of me to identify him?”

Doc Anders passed me his cigarette—case.

“The whole thing's queer,” Matthews said. “We were absolutely up a gum—tree about who he was till we found that little engagement book in a fob pocket. It had your name in it.”

It was a little red book, lying on the side table with oddments that had been taken from the pockets.

“My name,” I said. “Would it be an entry for last Thursday? For eleven o'clock? That was when I last saw him.”

He flicked the pages over with his gloved fingers.

“That's it, sir. What about these other names for the same day? Know any of them?”

I knew none personally and only one, a writer of historical novels, by repute.

“All you can assume is that they're clients of his,” I said. “You can test it in the morning. The office—Drench and Posfort, the name is —is at 229 Brent Street, Strand.” Then I remembered something else.

“What's this about everything being queer? You mean you found no papers on him that might have identified him?”

“There's far more than that,” he said. “Look at him. Overcoat on and his hat just beyond him. His head towards us. After what you've just told us, this is what must have happened. He came here to see what you've called a client. We think two men were waiting for him. One shoved a gun in his waistcoat and backed him towards that window, then he let him have the lot, clean through the belly. One of them went quickly through his pockets while the other peeped out of the door. They took his wallet and papers and were in such a hurry that they missed that book. Then they walked out, leaving that fibre case in the corner there. All it's got in it are half a dozen bricks wrapped in newspapers.”

There was nothing I could say. Queer wasn't the word for it.

“Mind you,” Matthews was going on, “we don't think all that without some outside evidence.”

He broke off to cock an ear. I heard a familiar cough in the corridor and in came George Wharton.

It didn't take me long to know that George must have had a pretty full report from Matthews. He gave a quick look round, nodded generally and let an enquiring look linger on Warren. Matthews introduced him. Over George's face came an expression that was a subtle mixture of the official and the condoling.

“A bad business, this, Mr. Warren. Still, we'll try to make as little trouble as possible. You co—operate with us and we'll do the same with you.”

Then he whipped round on me.

“You could identify him?”

Matthews told him all about it. Could you have seen the expressions on the face of George—Chief—Superintendent Wharton to you—you might have learned quite a lot about his deliberate eccentricities: the faint disapproval, for instance, that I should have known the man at all, and a certain gratification that one who had moved in the same social circles as myself should have met with an abrupt end. George professes to hate snobbery: he talks sneeringly about those whom he is apt to term my Oxford and Cambridge friends: he can allude as sneeringly to his own superiors as the Big Bugs, and yet I would call him the arch —snob of all my acquaintance.

But he did make a note or two in his book before he turned to Warren. Would the manager mind nipping downstairs and seeing if there was any more news about the registration of the room we were in.

“That's got rid of him,” he told us when the door had closed. “Tell me about those timings again, Matthews.”

“About seventeen minutes past seven were the shots,” Matthews said. “The chambermaid was in the linen room about two doors up and she heard what she called a series of quick knocks. She was getting an extra pillow for a man just recovering from influenza in 325, just across the corridor, and he'd turned off a wireless programme at seven fifteen and he heard the noises just after that and he and the chambermaid checked up when she brought the pillow in. She had a look in the rooms and came to this one. The man was just dying, apparently, and she claims to have heard his last words.”

“Clear enough,” Wharton said. He pursed his lips in thought and the huge moustache stood above them like an awning. “Photographs taken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Prints?”

“Only a quick check. None whatever so far except the chambermaid's.”

“Right. Let's have her in.”

“What about getting him away?” Anders said. “Looks as if I'm going to have a pretty messy job, and I'd like to get on with it.”

Wharton glared. “What do they pay you for?” He turned to Matthews. “What's this chambermaid like?”

Matthews made a face. “The usual. Pretty reliable, I'd say, sir. Warren spoke well of her. She's been here for five years. Name's Lumley. Ellen Lumley.”

“Right,” he said. “Get her here.”

He pulled out his pipe, thought better of it, and fumbled in the breast pocket of his old blue overcoat for his spectacle case. He hooked on the antiquated glasses, and he did it as solemnly as if he didn't know that we both knew the whole thing was a fake. But they did change his looks. As that chambermaid came in, with his shoulders slightly stooped and a best bedside—manner smile hovering on his lips, he could have soothed a charging tiger.

“Miss Lumley—or is it Mrs.?”

“Miss . . . sir.”

“I wouldn't have thought it,” he told her. “Still, there's plenty of time.”

She was a good witness, even if she did keep her eyes away from that blanket. I put her at about thirty—five: no beauty, admittedly, but with a frank if somewhat frightened face.

“Nothing to be worried about,” Wharton was telling her soothingly. “You must have had a pretty bad shock, but I can see you're not the kind of woman to give way, as they say. So just take your time and tell us what happened. Begin at when you were getting that pillow.”

Everything tallied with Matthews's version.

“And when you actually came in this room?” prompted Wharton.

“Well, sir, I'd knocked, as I said, and no—one answered, so I let myself in and there was the gentleman lying on the floor and I must have told myself he'd had a fit or something and that was the noises I heard. I mean, when he fell. He was sort of trying to support himself on one side and groaning and looking awful, so I asked him what was the matter.” She moistened her lips.

“I was all sort of ... well, I just sort of did it. I didn't know what was the matter with him and I thought he might tell me. I thought he was trying to say something, so I bent down and asked him if he was ill, and that was when I heard him say what I told this gentleman here, about how they'd got him.”

“Got him!”

“Yes, he said they'd got him.”

He gave a grunt. Out went the moustache again as he pursed his lips.

“Look here, Ellen. You mustn't mind me calling you that. I'm old enough to be your father. I'd like you to do something for us. There's the man, as you see, underneath that blanket, and he's dead. We shan't take the blanket off, but we want you to imagine you're just coming into this room as you were when he was taken ill. You'll do that for us?”

She said, nervously, that she'd try. It took a good ten minutes before everything was over.

“That's it, then,” Wharton told her. 'I knew you could do it. So you had your ear practically against his mouth. Even then you could only just catch what he was trying to say, and no more. The words were: 'They got me', and then another “They.”

“Yes. It was as if he was trying to say it again, and then he sort of fell over on his face and I thought I was going to faint.”

“Ah! But you didn't,” Wharton told her. “You're not the fainting kind. You rang down to the office. You kept your head. Mr. Warren was telling us how reliable you were, and now we know it. And that's about all we want, Ellen, thank you. We may have to get a statement from you later, but you needn't worry about that. It'll only be putting down in writing what you've just told us.”

He went ahead to open the door for her, then halted. “You like it here, Ellen?”

She gave a little smile. “Well, yes, I suppose I do. Or I shouldn't have been here as long as I have.”

There was a gratified nod. “Give you plenty of time off, do they?”

“Well, I get what I'm entitled to.”

“Yes,” he said, and gave a wry smile. “That's about all any of us get nowadays. Fond of the cinema, are you?”

“Oh yes.”

“Go often?”

“Not here. It's far too dear. I go with my sister, though. She lives at Hendon. You can get cheaper seats there. Ever so much cheaper.”

“And who's your favourite film star? Gary Cooper?”

“Oh no.” There was no nervousness now in the smile, and Wharton might have been a favourite uncle. “I think he used to be once. Now it's Alan Ladd. Him or John Wayne.”

“Ah well, it's nice to be young.” He moved on to the door. “Good luck to you, Ellen, and thank you again.”

He watched for a moment from the open door, and when he turned back he was hooking off those glasses. He looked round at us and his lip curled.

“They got me!”

The words had an infinite scorn.

“What did she think we were? A pack of fools?”

I like George Wharton. I generally admire and respect him, but there are times when he annoys me almost beyond bearing. There are even moments, as when he assumes that cheap and leering superiority, when I can suddenly hate him.

“She was only a fool in one thing,” I said.

“Oh?” He glared. “And what was that?”

“Because she didn't see what you were driving at over that cinema palaver.”

The smile was still more of a leer.

“She wasn't meant to see it. Call yourself a detective?”

“I'm not,” I said. “I'm plain Ludovic Travers: a private citizen who was asked to come here and identify a body. I've done it, so I'll say good night, George, and get along home.”

“Now, now, now,” he told me placatingly. “Why take me seriously? You know me better than that.”

You'd have thought I'd done him some mortal hurt. I knew the whole thing was ersatz, but somehow I didn't go any nearer to the door.

“Look at the whole thing without any prejudice,” he was telling me. “Mind you, I don't say she didn't hear something, but look at her state of mind, suddenly coming in here and seeing him here on the floor and so on. Everything, though she mightn't have known it, was pure cinema. Gangsters, rustlers, six—shooters. They got me, pal, and all that sort of thing.”

I could have pointed out something if he'd have given me the time —that she had had no idea that he'd been shot. But he was going right on.

“This man Posfort. A literary gent, you said?”

“So to speak—yes.”

“You think a man like that would have used that cinema language? They got me?” He shook his head. “Think what you like, but I can't swallow that.”

“All the same, someone did shoot him.”

“When you gents have finished,” Anders broke in, “what about getting him away?”

Then Warren came in. He and Matthews went down with the stretcher men to a side door and the ambulance. That fibre case went with them for the Back—Room Boys to look over. Wharton, who had watched from the door till they were out of sight, came in again and began stoking his pipe.

“What exactly was that chap Posfort doing here?” he asked me almost casually.

I didn't answer for a moment. My brain's far more agile than his, though, in the long run, maybe, less reliable, so I'm generally pretty quick with a theory. The trouble is that if that theory proves to be wrong, then it stays as mine. If it happens still to look likely, then it's ours; if by any chance it happens to be a winner, then it's George's own.

“I thought I told you,” I said. “He'd never have come to an ant —hill like this if it hadn't been to meet a client.”

Then my fingers moved suddenly towards my glasses.

“Wait a minute, though. He wouldn't have come here to meet the sort of client who'd be staying in an hotel like this. He'd have fixed an appointment for his office.”

“Might have been something else?”

“I'm beginning to think so. He must have been lured here for some reason that satisfied him.” I shook my head. “Still, it might have been a client who claimed to be temporarily bed—ridden, like that chap across the corridor who's getting over flu. But I don't like it.”

“What about a woman?”

“Could be,” I said. “A woman might have fired those shots. And I happen to think he was just that kind of man.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think this is going to be a remarkably tricky business. Anything else strike you?”

“Only in the same context,” I said. “Someone must have hated him mighty badly to have given him that kind of death.”

The door opened for Matthews. Warren was with him, and he had got all he was likely to get about the registration of the room. It had been booked the previous day by telephone and it had been taken up the next morning just before noon. The receptionist had no idea what the man—his name had been given as Corland—had looked like. Noon was a busy time and, there would be a long queue at the desk. Only when a client had a peculiar name or a peculiar look or had got into some muddle over his registration would a receptionist be likely to recall him. In any case, the fact remained that no—one did recall him.

“If it's any use to you, here's the actual registration form,” Warren said.

We all had a good look at it under Wharton's glass. The name, as the regulations demanded, was printed in neat capitals, and was Humbert Corland. The place of origin was given as Belfast and the nationality as British.

“Mind if I keep this?” Wharton said.

A minute or two and Warren was leaving. I said I'd be going too.

“Why the hurry?” Wharton asked me. “It's only just nine o'clock. What about telling us all you happen to know about this chap Posfort?”

“Why not?” I said.

The room was stuffy with its central heating and I took off my overcoat and got out my pipe. George offered me the room's only chair, but I preferred the bed. What I told him and Matthews took perhaps no more than ten minutes. What I tell you would have taken far longer. Then I was talking and had little time for thought. Now I have that time and can emphasise and keep things logical, and there are some I can afford to omit. What I do assure you is that both versions have and had everything that was likely to prove relevant to the case of Gordon Posfort, the man whom I had seen for the last time, with six bullets in his belly and lying on a stretcher as they took him from Room 323.

2 BACK IN HARNESS

IT was in 1946, just after the war, that I first saw Gordon Posfort. I rarely trouble to look at the notice—board in the club to see what people are up for membership and it's only when I see someone new that I have any desire to know if the man is merely a guest or a new member.

I saw Posfort sitting alone in the reading—room after lunch one day and I asked the man who was with me who he was. He knew Posfort sufficiently well to introduce me, not that I wanted to go that far. However, we had a few words together and I learned that he was a literary agent and that the man who had put him up was Sellick—Browne, the historian. Later I looked him up in a reference book. He had been to one of the smaller public schools, and from there had gone straight to Hillock and Holt, the publishing firm. Matthew Holt was his uncle, and the idea had probably been that the young Posfort should work his way up through the departments and be groomed for something really important in the firm. At twenty—six he had married, his wife being a niece of Alfred Hillock. Three years later he had left the firm to join Drench and Dark, as it then was, the firm of literary agents.

It is women who are said to talk the scandal. Maybe they do, but men aren't altogether averse. Pick the right men at the right time and you can hear any club scandal in all its details. Not that it hadn't puzzled me why Posfort should have left his uncle's firm with its undoubted prospects, for, as you may possibly gather, I'm the most curious man alive. If there's something that puzzles me I just have to have an answer, and in Posfort's case I soon had the right one. It was that his wife had divorced him, and therefore it had most likely been Alfred Hillock who had got rid of him.

In that literary agency he found his milieu. He had had that experience of publishing and he was a go—getter. And he had the right manner, or manners: a sympathy and understanding that one only later might think a bit too suave, and a grasp of things and a flow of words that could convince and practically mesmerise. And he was remarkably good—looking: tall, easy—moving, sleek—haired and fine—featured, and with a voice both cultured and charming. He had too a quality of agelessness, for when I saw him on that 3rd of November he had looked almost the same as when I had first seen him eight years before in the club. The sleek black hair had never a hint of grey and the voice was merely the least bit more resonant.

Bernice didn't like him. He once did me a favour and I asked him to lunch, and it was after it that she told me he wasn't a nice sort of person. I was entirely in disagreement, even if I didn't actually say so, and even when her dislike of him turned out to have a not unusual reason—that he had looked at her as if she were naked. Bernice, I should say, even in her late thirties, is a remarkably good—looking woman. Then later I changed my mind about Posfort.

It was when he approached me after lunch one day at the club and asked me to have a port with him. Then we sat chatting and at last he mentioned a couple of books I'd written on crime matters a few years before and asked what they were doing. I said they were still selling in tiny driblets. Then he suggested handling them himself and outlined various things he could do with them. I said my original agents were still handling them.

“Oh, them!” he said. “Hopelessly out of date, my dear fellow. Notorious. Everyone knows they can't sell a thing.”

That was why I didn't like him and that kind of go—getting, and once you've seen any sort of crack in a man's veneer, you soon begin to espy others. Mind you, I admit that once or twice I had to make a polite use of him when a particular case happened to need information about something connected with his profession. I also got to know later another member of the firm—Lilian Rome—a competent and delightful woman of about forty—five who handled certain of the firm's clients. I also was on smiling terms with a very charming secretary—receptionist whose name I didn't know.

But about that last visit of mine to Brent Street on the 3rd of November. I had a letter from Posfort asking me to see him about a proposition he would like to put up to me: something, he said, that would be both interesting and remunerative, and he suggested the date and time. I rang him in order to find out what the scheme was, but he refused to talk about it over the telephone, so I agreed to meet him.

I hadn't been to Brent Street for about a year, and when I went into the enquiry hall I saw a new secretary—receptionist: a sleek, good —looking blonde in the twenties. Seductive was hardly the word for the smile she gave me and she actually had one of those husky voices you read about but never somehow hear. She said she'd see if Mr. Posfort was free. The voice over the buzzer said apparently that I was a bit early and would I mind waiting just a minute or two. So I took a seat and the lady went on with her typing.

“There used to be a dark, quite good—looking girl here,” I said. “Is she ill or has she gone?”

“You mean a Miss Halsing,” she told me evenly. “She's been gone quite a time now. Almost three months.”

“To get married?”

There was a slight droop of her lip.

“I'm afraid I don't know. But I don't think so. I think she turned out rather unsuitable.”

I could have said that it had taken quite a long time to discover that, but then Lilian Rome happened to pop in.

“Hallo!” she said. “You waiting to see Gordon?”

“Yes,” I said. “He should be ready for me in a minute or so.”

“Come and wait in my room. I want someone to talk to. Tell him Mr. Travers is with me, will you, Miss Barnes?”

There had been a subtle change in her tone as she said those last words: a definite frigidity, and not, I thought, because she was giving instructions to a subordinate. However, I went through to her room and we began chatting about this and that. Then in one of those sudden gaps in conversation I mentioned that receptionist—secretary. Miss Halsing.

She frowned.

“Most tragic,” she said. “Poor Caroline! Did you know about it?”

“Know about what?”

“Well, she suddenly left us and I could never gather why. She always seemed most happy here. A most charming girl and everyone liked her. She actually cried when I said goodbye to her and I couldn't get her to tell me why.”

She gave a slow shake of the head. “Then we heard the news, about a month or two ago. She'd committed suicide.”

“Good God, no!” I'd just been seeing her in my mind's eye and it had been somehow more than a shock. “What was the reason?”

“We don't know,” she said. “It was all rather hushed up. It might have been ill—health —”

The buzzer went then and almost at once she was showing me through to Posfort's room. Just short of it she said something rather strange.

“Don't mention anything of what we were talking about to Gordon. I think it upsets him.”

What he and I talked about, or perhaps what I listened to, was that proposition of his. Briefly it was this. I had been engaged on very many famous murder cases, he said, and thanks to having given evidence on numerous occasions I was something of a public figure. That took care of what might be called the publicity side. As for the actual proposition, it was this. Some of the cases on which I had been engaged must have been unsolved. I was to give an account of such cases and suggest solutions in the light of afterthoughts or subsequent knowledge. It was as simple as that. Also he knew of a publisher who'd be delighted to take such a book or books, and an American one, and a French one who was practically a certainty.

I turned the whole thing down and he looked positively aghast.

“But there's money in it, my dear fellow! A whole lot of money. If it's a question of time, you could sketch things out and I could get it written up for you.”

I mightn't have looked too annoyed, but I did tell him that if I ever published anything under my name, then it would be I who wrote it, even to the last full—stop.

“Sorry,” I said, “but it's something I just don't care to do. Outside the question of getting the permission of the Yard, there's the fact that a good many people connected with such cases are still alive. Sorry again, but there it is.”

That was how we left it, or so I thought. But he couldn't leave it like that and two days later I had another letter from him, taking my objections one by one and trying to skirt round them or demolish them. I rang him and told him somewhat forcibly that I still wasn't changing my mind.

But I was to see him again under very different circumstances. On the Monday afternoon Bernice had that letter from her aunt's companion and decided to go to Dorset. She sent a telegram giving the time of arrival and then set about packing. That was a longish business, since she didn't know for how long the visit might last. To ease things, or as a kind of palliative to parting, I suggested we might dine out and I booked a table at the Cap d'Argent in Shepherd's Street—one of the lesser—known restaurants where I'd always found the food remarkably good.

We had a table on the ground floor and it was when we were well into our meal that I saw Posfort having a confidential word with the head —waiter, who was motioning him upstairs. I had dined up there once with George Wharton, and it was a far more intimate place, with little booths arranged round one of the inner rooms. Not that all that was particularly important. What was important was that Posfort didn't see me though I saw him, and the woman who was with him. It was that blonde secretary, and when he moved to take the stairs in the outer hall, she took his arm and smiled up at him with a kind of adoring possession.

“And that's everything, George,” I said. “That's about all I can tell you about Gordon Posfort. It's up to you to make use of it—if there's anything in it you can make use of.”

George blew out that moustache of his, then lighted the cold pipe. Matthews cut in. “I can't help thinking there must have been something fishy about that other girl's suicide. If it doesn't do anything else, it might give us a lead.”

“Yes,” Wharton said slowly. “There might be something in that. What sort of a girl was she?”

“I've told you,” I said. “A brunette of about twenty—five: not actually a beauty but very attractive looking. Very nicely and intelligently spoken. Very well educated, I'd say, and charmingly mannered and poised. The sort of girl you'd like to be seen out with, and in any company.”

“Then what was she doing in an office?” he fired at me.

I stared. “Depends what you mean by office. She wasn't just a typist. In fact I think that you'd have been very happy, George, if your own daughter had had such a job. Interesting work and meeting interesting people and probably quite well paid.”

“All right,” he said. “You needn't bite my head off. The thing is, what do you think about it yourself? Was this Posfort carrying on with her? Was that why she left—because he'd got her into trouble or something? Was that why she committed suicide?”

“There may be something in it,” I told him, “but aren't we rather rushing ahead? A whole lot of things have to be explored, as I see it, before we come to that.”

“Such as?”

“Look, George,” I said, “I came here, as I told you, as a perfectly ordinary citizen to identify a body and then to say what I knew about him. Where do I stand now? Am I having my few brains picked just for the fun of it? Am I working for the Yard or the Agency or just for me?”

“Who's rushing ahead now?”

“No—one,” I said. “I just want to know where I stand.”

“All right,” he said. “Let's assume things turn out so that you're in on this case. Now what do you suggest?”

“Probably what you know yourself,” I told him. “Everyone on this floor and the one above it will have to be questioned about seeing a man or men enter this room. That's a pretty big job. Side by side with it there'll have to be a microscopic probing into the life of Posfort. You can't even rule out the possibility that this job may have been done by someone whom he double—crossed in business, or even some disgruntled client.”

He grunted. “Well, you knew him and his office. You could take over that side of it. Have who you like with you. When will you begin?”

“As I see it,” I said, “I ought to begin at once. There might be all sorts of covering of tracks. You give the word and I'll get to work straight away. It isn't too late.”

“What about keeping in touch with you?”

“If you're going back to the Yard, then I'll see you there,” I said. “It might take another hour or so, but I'll be there.”

I went straight down to Warren's office, found Lilian Rome's address in the telephone directory and rang her. She was in.

“This is Travers, Ludovic Travers. I've got some rather urgent news for you which I'd sooner not mention over the telephone. I know it's rather late, but might I come along at once and have a quick word with you?”

“You sure it can't wait?”

“Nothing to do with business,” I said. “But listen. Miss Rome. I'm not being flippant about this, but if you don't agree that the visit was justified I'll buy you the best hat in town.”

I heard her give a little nervous laugh.

“If that's so I can't refuse. At once, you say?”

“In about a quarter of an hour.”

The taxi made it dead on time. At the flats I didn't use the lift, but took the stairs to the second floor and Flat 27. As soon as I rapped on the door she opened it.

Out of her office she was quite an attractive woman. The rather severe garb had been changed to a blue frock that matched her eyes and she had given herself a different hair—do. I had guessed her age as forty—five, but it turned out to be over fifty. That night she looked well under forty.

“Come in,” she said. “And what's all this important news?” She laughed. “You see how rude I am? Even before asking you to have a drink. What will you drink?”

“At the moment—nothing.”

“Then let me take your hat and coat. You're looking very serious.”

“Am I?” I smiled and dodged the question. The room was cosy and very warm and very feminine. The easy chair that I took was like one immense cushion.

“Now,” she said, and took the chair opposite me and leaned towards me across its arm. “What is this terribly important news?”

“Gordon Posfort's dead.”

She stared. For a moment she was utterly still, then her tongue slowly moistened her lips.

“An accident?”

“No,” I said bluntly. “He was murdered. In a room at the Royalty Hotel.”

“Oh, my God!”

I wondered why her face had not paled but had flushed so violently red. I looked away from her and at the electric fire.

“I was called in to identify him,” I said. “Now I'm taking part in the official enquiry. You'll have to take my word for that.”

She was getting to her feet. At the side table she poured herself a drink and squirted a little soda. I heard the gulp as she drank, and the glass, as she came back to the chair, was still half full.

“It's been a shock,” she said. She looked away, then her look returned to me. She hesitated for quite a time before she spoke.

“May I ask you something? Just between ourselves?”

“Do, please.”

“Was there a woman mixed up in it?”

“Not as far as we can tell. No harm in telling you what happened, at least as far as we know. You'll probably be able to read all about it tomorrow.”

I gave her the outlines and all at once her mouth was agape again. It was after I'd mentioned that the room had been booked by someone calling himself Corland.

“Humbert Corland? That's who he went to see!”

“Humbert Corland?” I'd read that registration form too quickly and had taken the Christian name for Hubert. Now something was suddenly familiar. “Isn't he an author? I seem to remember my wife telling me to read a book of his.”

“That would probably be The Flying Beacon,” she said. “But let me tell you about it. It was this morning and Gordon carne bursting into my room. He said Humbert Corland had just rung him to say he was very dissatisfied with the English handling of his books and he'd like a switch. He was at Liverpool, on his way to London, and he'd ring again later.”

“Did he?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I didn't go back to the office after lunch. I had to see a client, for one thing, and then I was having tea with an American publisher.”

“A good bit of business, would it have been, if you'd managed to get this Corland?”

“A magnificent piece of business. He's one of the really coming men. Writes the George Birmingham sort of stuff, only better. He's selling big already and he's going to sell really big.”

“Who handles him at the moment?”

“Laurie Demaine. He's Irish too, like Corland.”

“It fits in,” I said. “The Corland who took the room registered as coming from Belfast. You don't happen to have a reference book here so that I could look up his address?”

“Not here. There's one, of course, at the office.”

I didn't like asking her, but it seemed that I would have to. Would she mind going to the office? A lot might depend on it, and the sooner we knew a whole lot about Corland the better.

“Not a bit,” she said, “if it's going to help.”

It took some time to find a taxi and it was about ten o'clock when we got to Brent Street. I told the taxi to wait. A couple of minutes later we had the address.

“Mind if we have a look in Posfort's office?”

I didn't think she quite liked the idea, but we went there all the same. On his desk was the same book of reference, but with a paper marking the page on which was Corland's name. On that paper were a whole lot of figures, and a Belfast telephone number.

“Looks as if he'd been making some enquiries of his own,” I said. “This is almost certainly Corland's number. What do you think the figures are?”

She frowned for a moment as she looked at them.

“Probably Corland's sales.”

I put the paper in my wallet and we went back to the street.

“Just one thing,” I said, as we came to the door. “In the morning this place will probably be turned upside down by the police. Probably nothing will be in the early morning papers, so don't mention a thing yourself.”

She didn't say a word and I couldn't see her face in the comparative dark.

“May I say something else?” I went on. “I might be able to handle this end of things myself, but whether I do or not, tell the whole truth about everything you know. It always pays in the long run.”

I'd expected her to protest, but she still didn't say a word, and it was not till I was showing her into the taxi that I knew why, for she had her handkerchief at her eyes, and I merely mumbled good night and a thank—you as I closed the door. I paid the driver and in a minute or two was hopping a bus that would get me near the Embankment.

Wharton was in his room and he hardly gave me time to get through the door.

“Got anything?”

“The telephone number of the man who booked that room,” I told him. “Corland's the name. Try to get hold of someone there straight away. It's fairly late, but someone might be up.”

He rang down. While we waited I told him what I had learned about Corland and his connection with Posfort.

“It fits in,” I said. “Corland was sufficiently important for Posfort to have gone to see him and not the other way round. Also Corland mightn't have known just what kind of hotel the Royalty was, or else he thought it quite a fine place compared with the general run of Irish hotels.”

The buzzer went. George picked up the receiver. It was not till a good five minutes later that he managed to put it down and nine—tenths of the time had been taken up with a spate of words that I could almost make out from where I sat.

George let out a breath, then gave me a glare.

“You got the hang of that?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was Corland himself.”

“Never heard of Posfort in his life! Hasn't been away from Belfast all day and can produce fifty people to prove it! Never had the faintest idea of changing his agent!” He paused for a breath. “Well, what do you make of that?”

“Just what you make of it yourself,” I said. “Posfort was lured to that room by someone using Corland's name.”

“Where's that get us?”

What could I do but shrug my shoulders? George gave a grunt or two and began filling his pipe. It looked to me as if he had something on his mind and wasn't too happy about getting it out.

“Plenty of time yet,” I said. “It's only four hours since Posfort was shot.”

“Yes,” he said. “That shooting. It gave me an idea. I don't think a lot of it, but we might have to consider it.”

“Any idea's a good one till it's proved otherwise, George.”

“Yes,” he said. “What I was wondering was if Posfort had got himself mixed up in some way with those Irish madmen who've been giving trouble stealing ammunition and arms. Members of the Irish Republican Army, or whatever they call themselves.”

“It could be,” I said. “I'll know more tomorrow when I've run that Brent Street office through a small—toothed comb. That is, if you want me to take on that job.”

“Of course you'll do it,” he told me. “You know people there, don't you? You speak the lingo. Got any other ideas tonight, by the way?”

“Only one,” I said, “and that might be important. I rather think Posfort once had an affair with that Lilian Rome I was telling you about. She must have been a highly presentable woman when he first went there. It's more than likely he climbed up on her shoulders.”

“Pretty much of a Don Juan, wasn't he?” The look he gave was like a dirty story.

“He got around,” I said. “Still, we'll know more by this time tomorrow. Any chance of Matthews being with me? Just in case the screws have to be put on?”

He thought that could be arranged. I suggested Brent Street at ten o'clock. He stared at that. Half the damn day would be gone.

“That's when the place opens,” I said. “Unless you'd like us to get there earlier and admire the views.”

INTO THE TUNNEL

I RANG Lilian Rome at about nine o'clock the next morning and told her what was going to happen. I painted Matthews as something of an ogre and said she mustn't be deceived by his seeming inconsequence. That was merely a trick to entrap the unwary. I added that we'd not be with her till a quarter—past ten to the dot, and she might arrange to have us shown straight in.

What Matthews and I did was to have coffee and a bun and a brief conference to pass the quarter of an hour. In our job you never know when the next meal is likely to come. He was mightily amused when I told him what I'd said of him. Matthews is a good man, but he couldn't have worked for years with Gorge Wharton if he hadn't retained a sense of humour and a capacity for patience. He's good—looking, too, is Matthews: just under six feet, dark—haired and with a faint smile that seems on the edge of a grin. Maybe that last is because he's still a bachelor. Wharton boasts of his own way with women witnesses: I'd as soon put my money on Matthews—if Wharton ever gave him a free hand.

I'd briefed him while we were having that coffee and it was he who began the questioning in Lilian Rome's office. What he wanted was a complete history of Gordon Posfort.

Old Mr. Holt was his only relative, she said, and he had died a year or two ago. Posfort had come to the firm through old Mr. Drench, who was also now dead. His widow was a kind of sleeping director. Dark, an original partner, had been killed in the blitz and his interests had been bought out.

“Just how did Posfort come to get on so well?” Matthews asked her.

“Well, he was very competent and he soon fitted in. He had quite a lot of connections and he brought in quite a lot of new business. Mr. Drench thought a great deal of him.”

“And you. Miss Rome: how long have you been here?”

“All my life,” she said. “I came here as Mr. Drench's secretary. I became a director after Mr. Dark died.”

He gave her a grin.

“Well, I won't ask you your age. I'll try and work things out later.”

“I make no secret of it,” she told him. “I'm actually fifty—one.”

“I won't believe that till I've proved it. But to get back to Posfort. Would I be right in saying that no—one here knows as much about him as yourself?”

Her face flushed slightly at that.

“Yes,” she said. “The third director is our accountant and he joined us only two years ago.”

“I see. And tell us frankly, just what did you think of Posfort? As a man, not a colleague.”

She didn't hesitate.

“I'm afraid I knew very little of him except as a colleague. He was a much younger man—only forty—two—and after office hours we had our own interests.”

“Let's be blunt,” he said. “Our information is that he was very much of a ladies' man.”

That seemed to shake her a bit. “Just what do you mean?”

“He means what he said,” I put in. “He liked women in his life. He was the sort who had to have a woman around. He never married again, did he, after his wife divorced him?”

“No. He didn't.”

“Ever have any trouble about women in this office?”

Her face flushed again and she tried to turn it into indignation. “How dare you make such suggestions! He's dead, and surely common decency —”

“Now, now, now,” broke in Matthews, and it might have been Wharton himself speaking. “You were told that everything was confidential. There'll have to be an inquest, you know, so which would you rather do? Talk to us quietly here or have to give evidence in public?”

“I can only tell what I know.”

“Very well,” I said. “Suppose you tell us what you know about him and Caroline Halsing.”

“I knew nothing.”

“Well, that's less definite than saying there was nothing. Tell us what you suspected.”

She fidgeted with the papers on her desk. She let out a breath. “Very well. I thought he was turning her head.”

“And that's all?”

“That's all.”

“Thin let me put it another way. You weren't afraid that he might marry her. What you were afraid of was that you knew he wasn't the marrying kind and that she wasn't that sort of girl.”

“Well . . . perhaps, yes.”

“That's that, then,” I said. “What we want now is every possible detail about her. You've probably got some records here.”

She knew everything herself, she said, and there was no need to consult records. Matthews began taking everything down. Caroline Halsing had been educated at a high—class private school in Kent, had taken a course in what might be called secretaryship and at just over eighteen had applied for a job with a doctor. She was with him for about five years, then had come to Drench and Posfort. Her home address was The Rectory, Ralehurst, Kent, but she had rooms of her own at 54 Playton Street, Camden Town. She was believed to go home for most week —ends.

“Her sister, by the way, is Bridget Halsing, the actress.”

“Really?” I said. “I knew the name was familiar.”

“Bridget's husband is an actor—Courtney Haze.”

“Good lord!” I said. “They're both very important people. There was some talk about Haze being given a knighthood. Probably that'll be coming later. Know where they live?”

“Very well indeed,” she said. “I lunched there about a year ago with Caroline. Twenty—three Quinton Place, Westminster.”

“That's fine,” I said. “But that dreadful suicide business. It was a great shock to you.”

“A very great shock.”

“Did you by any chance impute the cause of it to Posfort?”

“Why should I? In any case I had nothing but suspicions to go on.”

“I understand that she left of her own accord. What did Posfort say about it to you?”

“Well, it was curious. He wouldn't talk about it. He got quite angry. If she wants to leave, let her leave—that sort of thing.”

That seemed to exhaust the subject of Caroline Halsing. Matthews took over.

“As to who might have wanted to kill Posfort, Miss Rome, would it be too fantastic to think of some client he'd offended?”

She smiled, and it might have been from relief.

“More than fantastic.”

Nobody could have been more staggered when he told her the truth about Corland. As for any suggestion of Posfort's having made enemies of the Southern Irish, that, she said, was too preposterous for words.

“Where did Posfort live?” he asked her.

She must have known that we could find that information in the telephone directory. Wharton had, in fact, gone to his flat the previous night. What Matthews wanted, apparently, was to see how quickly she answered, though again there was no point in it. After years of association together, his address must have been as familiar as her own—and his telephone number.

“Flat 22, Lancing House, Newton Hill,” she said. “That's near Eating, if you didn't know.”

“And his solicitors?”

“The same as our own, unless he changed them recently. Harries, Son and Harries, 15 Giles Court. That's just off Chancery Lane.”

He closed his notebook.

“That's almost all, except that we shall probably have to ask you for a formal statement later. But I'd like to ask you a question. Something you can really help us about. This killing depended on enticing Posfort to a certain room in that hotel by a pretence of being a certain Humbert Corland. Doesn't that make it a certainty that the one who killed him must have had considerable knowledge about a literary agency?”

She stared. “You mean someone here?”

“It's a possibility. Something we can't afford to overlook. Just what is your staff here?”

“Well, there was Gordon Posfort and myself, and we each had our own secretaries. Miss Barnes, his secretary, also acts as receptionist. Mr. Forrest, the accountant, has his own clerk, then there's a pool of two typists on whom any of us can draw.” She smiled. “Surely you see that nobody here could have been concerned in anything so dreadful as a murder?”

“You all got on well together? You were a happy family?”

“I think so. My own secretary's been with me for over eight years. Typists come and go, but I think everyone's as happy as in any office.”

“What about Miss Barnes? I mean, what's your opinion of her?”

“Well, she seems to have settled down pretty well.”

“You don't like her, do you?” I asked bluntly.

She gave me a wary look. “I have very little to do with her.”

“Mind if we have her in here, just to ask her a question or two? You tell her who we are and that we're on business to do with Mr. Posfort.”

She buzzed through. A couple of minutes and Hilda Barnes was coming in. There was no smile on her face till she caught sight of us. Me she recognised. Maybe she thought I was a client.

“Yes, Miss Rome?”

Lilian Rome explained. The smile went again. I began the questioning.

“Would I be right in saying, Miss Barnes, that you were very much in Mr. Posfort's confidence?”

“You mean about . . . business?”

“Yes, and possibly his private affairs too.”

“Oh, but no.” The smile was most winsome. “Why should I know about his private affairs?”

“Of course not. How foolish of me. He never took you out anywhere? Say, to a dinner and a show?”

The look was long and level. With it there was a little fear. “Just what do you mean?”

“Just a simple question.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Did he or did he not ever take you out to dinner?”

“Of course not! Why should he?”

“I can think of various reasons,” I told her. “But why did you tell me a lie? You did dine with him. You were at the Cap d'Argent dining with him in an upstairs room last Monday night.”

“Who told you that?”

“It's our business to know things. What we don't know we find out. So don't you think you'd better tell us the truth? Answer this question, for instance; what did Posfort tell you about Caroline Halsing, your predecessor?”

“He didn't tell me anything.”

I got to my feet.

“Better get your hat and coat.” I turned to Matthews. “We'll have her questioned at the Yard.”

“No,” she said. “No. He didn't tell me anything, really he didn't. Only why she left.”

“And why did she leave?”

“He said she'd got too big for her job.”

“I see. And he interviewed you for your job?”

“Yes. There were several of us, really.”

I let my eyes run slowly over her.

“And he chose you. And before you'd been here very long you were dining out together. Ever go to his flat?”

“If I did there was no harm in it.”

“Glad to hear it. Very well, Miss Barnes. We've finished with you —for the moment. If Miss Rome doesn't want you, you may go. But just one other thing: where were you at seven o'clock last night?”

“At home,” she said. “Well, not at home. We went next door to their television.”

She went. I asked Lilian Rome to give me her address.

“You hate the sight of her, don't you? May I tell you why? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you saw her going the way that Caroline Halsing went. But you liked Caroline. That's why you were so shocked at her death. This one you didn't care about. You just despised her.”

She didn't speak. Matthews got to his feet.

“May I use your telephone, Miss Rome? I take it I shan't be overheard. No need for you to leave. In fact I'd rather you stayed.”

He dialled the Yard and asked to be put through to Wharton. Wharton spoke almost at once.

“Matthews here, sir. That secretary who committed suicide had rooms at 54 Playton Street, Camden Town. Might someone go there at once to check up on her weekends? We know her home address and we can countercheck there. And a secretary here called Hilda Barnes of 3 Wallace Avenue, Highbury . . . claims to have been next door watching television, if you'd like to check up.”

He replaced the receiver and got to his feet again.

“You knew Miss Halsing's rooms, Miss Rome?”

“Yes,” she said. “I went there more than once. They were very nice rooms. The landlady was actually a former housemaid who'd been with her family.”

“You never thought of warning her against Posfort?”

She moistened her lips. “I did once tell her not to take him too seriously. But you couldn't possibly imagine her doing anything that was—well, just not right.”

That was all, or nearly so. We were at the door when it opened suddenly and a man came in. He was holding a newspaper and looking perturbed.

“Oh!” he said, and backed away again at the sight of us.

“That your Mr. Forrest?” I asked. “If so, he seems to have heard about Posfort's death.”

We said goodbye at the outer door.

Just a final question,” Matthews said. “You don't open on Saturdays?”

“Oh no.”

“Not even for any of the staff when you happen to be rushed?”

She said they never were so rushed as that.

We took a bus at Ludgate Hill and went upstairs. I asked Matthews what he thought of things. He used rather a vulgar word about Hilda Barnes.

“That Miss Rome gets me, though,” he said. “I still think whoever did the job must have been right in the know. No—one else could have worked that Corland stunt.”

“You think she did it?”

“Well, there's a motive,” he said. “You claim she'd once had an affair with him and then he'd given her the chuck for someone else. Perhaps there were one or two someone elses till he got hold of the Halsing girl. She was different. She was a personal friend of Rome's. I'll bet you anything you like that she knows why the Halsing girl committed suicide, and that it was on account of Posfort. Then she saw him starting in on that blonde tart and it was too much for her. And I'll bet you a fiver that she's fixed herself some sort of alibi for yesterday evening.”

“Maybe you're right,” I said, “but aren't we forgetting one thing? Suppose there's quite another reason for the suicide? Suppose Caroline left a note giving quite another reason?”

“I don't quite get you.”

“Well, what are we after? We're enquiring into Caroline Halsing's death and hoping to make Posfort's killer someone who was out for revenge. But if there was nothing to avenge—what then?”

“Plenty of time yet,” he told me. “All the same, I'm pretty damn sure, and so is the Super, that it was revenge. It wasn't a simple killing. Someone meant him to die a pretty painful death.”

I thought that out for a minute or two. Six bullets had been pumped into Posfort, as I had learned from Matthews. They hadn't gone through the body because they were from a 6.35 mm. Italian Feroni, a smallish gun that, pressed against Posfort's stomach, would have made very little noise. How could Lilian Rome have got such a gun? Better still, who could have got such a gun?

The thoughts were like furtive fingers, groping in the dark. Something else emerged.

“Mind if we get off at Trafalgar Square?” I said. “I'd like to consult a bookseller I know.”

There were quite a few people in that shop and we had to go right through to find the proprietor at the far end. I asked his opinion of Humbert Corland and he confirmed what Lilian Rome had told me.

“He's already a well—known name?”

“Most decidedly.”

“Got a copy of his latest?”

“If you mean The Flying Beacon, I haven't. Sold right out. There might be some more in, though, on Monday.”

“A pity,” I said. “I badly wanted to see a copy.”

“If it's just to see it,” he said, “I can show you my own. I always keep a first edition of anything that's likely to appreciate in value.”

He brought out his copy from the bottom drawer of his desk. I wasn't interested in the book itself, but the jacket. It had just what I wanted. On the back was a photograph of Corland—a youngish, earnest —looking man with an incipient but untidy moustache and glasses; and with something which to me was definitely Irish about his face. The short biography beneath it said that he had been born in Belfast and had lived there all his life. It gave a quote from the publisher's reader—“When I'd finished the MS. I knew I'd had the experience of a lifetime.” It added that the ordinary reader would think so too after reading the book. Humbert Corland, it concluded, had more than arrived.

“Well, what did you make of it?” I asked Matthews as we walked on down Whitehall.

“You tell me,” he said. “That sort of thing is rather above my head.”

“Then let me put myself in the murderer's place,” I told him. “I want to kill Posfort and the obvious way to get at him is through his job. He has to be lured somewhere where he'll be anxious to go and where I can make a safe getaway. The best way to entice him is through a mythical client. But I happen to be looking at new books on a bookstall or in a shop and I see The Flying Beacon. On the back of the jacket is all I want. I'd have preferred an American author who was supposed to be in England on a trip, but an Irish author would do at a pinch, especially if I claim to be on my way from Liverpool, so that he can't get into touch with me. That, as I see it, is how the murderer might have arrived at what he did. If I'm right, then we have to change our ideas. The murderer needn't have been anyone at Brent Street. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of authors and literary agents would fill the bill.”

He looked so glum that I had to laugh. By then we were cutting through to the Yard. A minute or two later we were in Wharton's room. A blast of fug hit us and the room was blue with smoke.

I'd thought he'd be disappointed with what we had to tell him, but he wasn't; at least he didn't even hint that we'd been wasting our time.

“Looks as if it's beginning to fit in,” he told us. “The Old Gent" —that's the hypocritically deprecating way in which he likes to allude to himself—“hasn't been asleep. She didn't commit suicide at Camden Town. She was staying with an aunt at Winchester. Died from an overdose of sleeping tablets. I've asked to have the coroner put into touch with me.”

“Anything for me to do?”

“Better get yourself a meal and be back in an hour,” he said. “I have an idea you may be going down to that Ralehurst place. You're a better hand than I at talking to parsons.”

I didn't disillusion him. Downstairs I looked up the Rev. Timothy Halsing and found he was a Cambridge man, though not from my college. I also looked up a route and decided to turn off short of Orpington. With any luck the trip should not take much more than half an hour. Then I had a meal at a pub in Masters Street and was back just inside the hour. George had had his meal brought in on a tray and he was just pushing the bell for the debris to go. He looked mightily pleased.

“Just as I guessed,” he told me. “That Caroline Halsing was two months gone.” He waited for the applause. “Well, what're you looking so miserable about?”

“Was I?” I couldn't tell him that for me it was almost a personal tragedy and shame. Even the thought of Posfort under that blanket didn't cheer me.

“You certainly haven't been idle,” I told him. “That was confidential, about the pregnancy?”

“It didn't need to be brought out at the inquest. She left a note for her aunt which was produced in court. The coroner also told me that she'd written two letters that last evening and had gone out to post them. That's one thing you might find out at Ralehurst—if one was for the father. I reckon the other'd be for Posfort, and I hope it made the swine squirm.”

“Anything from the landlady?”

“Only that for about her last twelve months she never .spent a single weekend at Camden Town. You can check that at Ralehurst, too.”

“Matthews with me, or do I go alone?”

“He's on his way to Winchester,” he told me. “We might unearth some more. You'll do better on your own. You've got that sort of gift of the gab.” I don't think he saw me wince. “Better take a police car and driver. It'll look more impressive.”

AT THE RECTORY

I DIDN'T set off at once for Ralehurst. Downstairs I rang Lilian Rome.

“Ludovic Travers, Miss Rome. Sorry to bother you again so soon, but if a certain suicide took place at Winchester, how did you know about it? My information is that everything was rather hushed up.”

“My nephew happened to see her there,” she said. “He'd met her here and knew her well.”

“Yes, but about the suicide.”

“Well, Martin's in the Navy and he was back at sea when it happened, but my sister lives near Winchester and she sent him a copy of the local newspaper and she sent me one too.”

“I've got you. And your nephew's still at sea?”

“Well, no. He's actually coming to see me tomorrow. I'm taking him out to lunch and we are going to a matinee.”

“Fine. But just one other thing. We discussed the possibility of a certain man's connection with that Winchester affair. Have you any reason to suspect that any member of her family had the same idea?”

She hesitated.

“Not an actual member of the family.”

“Well, who?” I asked her impatiently.

“Courtney Haze. I believe he came here to see—to see you—know—who about it.”

“Look,” I said. “This is strictly between ourselves, but I'm just going down to Ralehurst myself. I've got to see you this evening—and your nephew.”

“But how —”

“Don't say it can't be done,” I told her. “It's got to be done. If he isn't in town, you must get him here. At eight o'clock, shall we say, at your flat?”

“Well, I'll try.”

“That's fine,” I said. “Believe me, it's for your own good. Neither of you wants to be mixed up in an inquest.”

It took well over the time I'd thought to get to Ralehurst, for traffic was bad through the suburbs as far as the bypass. It was quite a tiny village. Against the church was the rectory: one of those Georgian buildings whose upkeep should have been a nightmare to an incumbent, but when we came up to it I knew that Halsing must have money of his own, for the place had nothing about it of the unkempt. A slightly pre—war Morris saloon was standing in the drive just short of the porch and our car drew in behind it.

A youngish maid in neat black opened the door. I asked if I could see Mr. Halsing.

“This way, sir,” she said, with never a word or question as to who I was. I stepped into an entrance hall and she crossed it to a door on the left and showed me into a smallish room that was obviously a study.

“If you'll wait here, sir, I'll tell Mr. Halsing you've arrived.”

“Just a minute,” I said, and gave her a smile. “How did he know I was coming?”

“I don't know, sir,” she said. “All I was told was when you came to show you straight in the study.”

“Well, in case there's some mistake, you'd better give Mr. Halsing this card.”

She took it, gave me a rather anxious look, and went. I took one of the old—fashioned chairs and looked round. It was the usual rectorial study: a desk over which was a calendar with the name of a religious society, books—ecclesiastical mostly—in a quite nice Chippendale case, and on the walls some Medici prints of Italian primitives. A reproduction oriental rug covered most of the floor and there was a dull fire in the tiny grate.

The door opened suddenly and Halsing came in. He was a tall, handsome—looking man with a rather aesthetic face that reminded me of Forbes—Robertson. His eyes were crinkling at the sight of me, but I don't think he really smiled.

“Please don't get up, Mr. Travers.” His voice was beautifully modulated. “I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long.”

I assured him he hadn't kept me more than a minute. “Do smoke, please, if you wish. I'm afraid I don't smoke myself, but I'm quite used to it.”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “I'm here, as you may have guessed, on very distressing business. In fact it's going to be hard for me to tell you exactly why I am here.”

He drew up a chair to face my own. If his look had ever been welcoming it had suddenly ceased to be so.

“The fact that I am what I am, Mr. Travers, makes me used to what you call distressing business. Just what is it you wish to see me about?”

“Perhaps you'll be so good as to answer a question first. Everything said here, by the way, is in the strictest confidence, but have you learned about the death—the murder—of a man named Posfort?”

“Yes,” he told me evenly. “A friend just brought me the news.”

I wasn't feeling happy; not because of what I would have to say but because of that isolation in which he suddenly seemed to be wrapping himself. It was as if I were under the microscope—not he.

“Someone murdered Posfort,” I said, “and we have to find the one who did it. We start with motives, Mr. Halsing. Does that tell you why I'm here?”

The thin lips took quite a time to unclamp. “Would you explain yourself further? Please don't consider my feelings.”

I told him practically all we knew, and his eyes hardly blinked and the thin lips never undamped.

“We consider, therefore, we have every reason to question every member of your family. It's almost a certainty that nothing will come of it, but it has to be done. All of you must have wished the man Posfort some sort of punishment for the damnable thing he did.”

“My dear sir, must you indulge in homiletics? What you're telling me in so many words is that a member of my family might have killed him. You wish to question us?”

It was hard to show sympathy or even to be urbane. That detachment, that near omniscience, was beginning to irritate me.

“Either confidentially beforehand,” I said, “or publicly at Posfort's inquest. With your co—operation, that's something we hope to avoid. What was in that letter your daughter wrote you on her last evening, Mr. Halsing?”

“That,” he told me slowly, “is something between myself and my daughter—my late daughter.”

“You have that letter?”

“I destroyed it.”

“It mentioned Posfort as responsible for her condition?”

“It did not.”

I let out a breath.

“I must say that you're not being very helpful. If you prefer something more direct, what about your own alibi for last night at seven o'clock?”

“I must decline to answer that,” he told me evenly.

“You think it an insult to your cloth?”

He wasn't listening to me, but to the sudden noise of a car. That study window faced the side gardens and I couldn't see the car, but almost at once I heard a man's voice saying not to wait, and then a thank—you—sir and the car—or taxi—moving round.

“Will you pardon me for just a moment,” Halsing said and was getting to his feet.

“By all means.”

But he had already gone. I sat on for three or four minutes and what was disturbing me was not that lack of co—operation on his part, for he had seemed to me to have tacitly admitted that it had been Posfort who was responsible for the death of his daughter. What did worry me was the fact that he had known that I was coming, and the only one who could have warned him, or advised him, seemed to be Wharton. And if George had rung him, then I couldn't see why. It took away the whole element of surprise: in fact it seemed the last thing that should have been done. And when I did have another idea I didn't have time to pursue it, for the door was opening again.

“I'm so sorry. Would you care to come into the drawing—room? My son —in—law's just arrived and perhaps you'd care to see him.”

The tone had been much milder. I followed him across the hall and he ushered me through a door to a beautifully proportioned room. With the experience of one who has merely dabbled a good deal in antiques I was aware of the old—fashioned water—colour drawings and the silk pictures on the walls, and the Queen Anne bureau—bookcase and, beyond me, the blazing fire in the handsome basket grate. Two fine Dresden conversation groups were on the mantelpiece and above them hung an eighteenth—century portrait of a divine—probably a Romney. Ralehurst Rectory, I thought to myself, was not without money.

“Courtney, I don't think you know Mr. Travers.”

“Oh, but I do,” said Courtney Haze, and he was smiling as he held out his hand. “This is my brother, Roland, by the way. Do sit down, won't you?”

I'd seen Courtney Haze scores of times on the stage or in films, but there was nothing of the actor about him at that moment, unless it was a superb self—possession. His brother was younger and only slightly like him, though the moustache might have had something to do with that. Halsing took a chair rather in the background and I sensed at once that it was to be Courtney Haze who would be in command.

“I saw you at the Old Bailey some time back,” he said. “You were giving evidence in the Vinton case. I was about to do something of the kind myself in Martha's Husband, and I found you most useful.”

“1 saw you in the play,” I told him, “but I didn't spot myself. I didn't see the film.”

“The play's just finished,” he said, “as you probably know, and I'm having a bit of a holiday before rehearsals.”

“And your wife? I admire her enormously too.”

“Bridget? She's still in Two Times Two. That's probably going on for ever.”

“You won't mind me saying it”—that was the quiet voice of his brother—“but you don't look much like a detective.”

I smiled as I brought out my warrant card.

“Oh, I don't mean that. I mean —”

“He means what he said,” Courtney told me, “that you don't look like a copper.”

“Even the Yard moves with the times,” I told them amiably. “Some of us are less obvious than the others.”

Halsing cut in there.

“I've mentioned your business this afternoon and I'm wondering if you'd care to come to the point.”

“Yes,” Courtney said. “Apparently you want to question us.”

I went over the whole thing again and his eyes never left my face. His brother had his face turned towards the fire and he turned back only when I had to put the somewhat abrupt question.

“So, you see, I'd like a definite answer from someone. Perhaps you'll supply it, Mr. Haze. Was or was not Posfort responsible for your sister—in—law's death?”

'This is confidential, you said?”

“Strictly so—at the moment.” I smiled. “Naturally if you were to tell me that you'd killed Posfort, then it couldn't stay so.”

“I didn't kill him,” he said. “Frankly, I'd have done so with the greatest pleasure in the world—if I could have got away with it.”

“That answers the question,” I told him, and turned to his brother. “What about you, Mr. Haze? Had you any reason to feel the same?”

“Perhaps, yes,” he said quietly. “I knew Caroline pretty well: in fact I'd once hoped to marry her. As it was, I was a kind of elder brother.” His smile was apologetic. “I'm telling you that because you'd probably find it out.”

“That's very frank,” I said. “If I can have both your alibis for last night at seven o'clock, which is when Posfort was killed, then neither of you will be troubled again.” I turned to Courtney. “You, Mr. Haze?”

“Well, I think I can satisfy you. I was actually watching my wife's show—a sort of busman's holiday. The play begins at seven prompt and my wife saw me there. She's on, as you know, when the curtain goes up.”

“And you, Mr. Haze?”

“I was at Mariand, about twenty miles from here. That's where I live. It's well over half an hour from Town.”

“And you were actually doing what?”

“Well, I had to look in at a British Legion concert in the village. I was a bit late—five minutes or so after seven o'clock—and I had to go early.” He smiled. “Between ourselves, I'm not frightfully keen on concerts.”

A minute or two and I was putting away my notebook.

“That seems absolutely satisfactory. I'm sorry you had to be troubled, but I'm under orders, as you probably guess. Just one other thing. As a matter of red—tape, the alibis will have to be checked. I may speak to Mrs. Haze?”

“Why not, my dear fellow?”

And so to his brother.

“Anyone I can check with about you, Mr. Haze?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I sat next to a Mrs. Kinter, who keeps our general stores, and I did just give something to the rector. I think both will give me a clean bill. At least, for seven o'clock.”

I closed my notebook again and rose.

“I'm more than grateful to both of you. I don't expect you'll be hearing from us again.”

“You will have some tea?”

That, surprisingly, was Halsing.

“Thank you, no, sir. I'd like to get back before any mist comes on.”

I shook hands with the two Hazes and turned back to follow Halsing to the door. Then that door fairly burst open, and a man of about thirty came in, and he was flourishing a newspaper. There was a look of Halsing about him.

“Have you heard —”

He stopped short at the sight of me.

“We have heard,” cut in Halsing almost angrily. “That is if you mean about the death of that man Posfort.” He turned to me. “This, Mr. Travers, is James, my son.”

“How d'you do,” James Halsing said.

“Mr. Travers is from Scotland Yard,” his father said. “Also both Courtney and Roland brought newspapers, so you see we're well informed. Mr. Travers has been asking questions.”

“Haven't I seen you before?” James said.

“It's possible,” I said, “but I doubt it. But perhaps I can remove you from the list too. Let me explain.”

A minute or two and he was giving his alibi. It wasn't worth a great deal, as I had to tell him, for it was merely a visit to a cinema at Orpington.

“No—one saw you there?”

“Should they?”

“Don't be flippant, James,” Courtney told him sharply. “It's damn bad manners.”

“I don't see it. Here I'm being virtually suspected —”

“Oh, shut up!” That was Roland. The voice had been quiet but incisive. “Can't you answer a perfectly simple question?”

“I suppose so, and without your help. No—one saw me,” he told me, “if that's what you want to know. All I can do is tell you about the picture. Oh, yes, and there was the cinema—park attendant. I tipped him when I took my motorbike.”

“That would be when?”

“About half—past eight.”

“I'm very grateful to you,” I said. “Now I'll be getting along.”

Courtney was suddenly there.

“I'll show Mr. Travers out, sir. I have to go out in any case.”

Halsing held out his hand in goodbye, but there was still something hostile in his look. Courtney Haze and I went out to the car and he halted just short of his brother's Morris. It wasn't cold standing there, though dusk was already in the sky.

“How'd you get on with my father—in—law?” he asked me.

I smiled.

“Well, he wasn't exactly communicative.”

“You've got to go easy with him,” he told me. “That business of Caroline nearly killed him. She was the apple of his eye, you know. Mind you, he never was exactly a riot of fun, but he could be very pleasant, and genial. Now he's sort of shrivelled up.”

“Why did he seem so disinterested in Posfort's death?”

“Just because he isn't interested,” he said. “It's Caroline he's thinking of. What's happened to Posfort won't bring her back. You didn't know Caroline —”

“I knew her by sight.”

“You did!”

I told him what I knew of her and how delightful I had always found her. His only comment was a wonder why I should be keen on finding who had killed Posfort.

“Frankly, if I could put a spoke in your wheel I would. If I knew the fellow who did it I'd do my damnedest to see him in the clear.”

“All the same,” I told him, “that won't stop you from telling me one or two things I want to know. What's James, your brother—in—law, do for a living?”

“James? He's just got an M.C, in Malaya. He's home on a couple of months' leave. A harum—scarum sort of chap. You mustn't take him too seriously.”

“Much of his leave gone?”

“About five weeks. Strictly between ourselves, he and Caroline were remarkably fond of each other. The rector rather let out that Caroline said in that last letter she wrote him that James was one of the people she couldn't face. That seems to be why she did what she did before he got home.”

That was all. He shook hands and said we must lunch at the Garrick some time, and he'd give me a ring. He gave me a wave of the hand as the car circled round, and I looked back to see him still standing there as we went through the gate. I wondered what our parting would have been like if I had told him that James Halsing was the man I'd seen the previous night peering round the corner and along the short corridor at the end of which was Room 323.

I sat at the back of the car because I wanted to think. That visit had been exploratory—a kind of reconnaissance—but it had produced plenty of ideas, and ideas were the things that mattered. The Yard doesn't pounce indiscriminately, it takes its time. It's the nearest thing I know to the mills of God: it grinds slowly but exceedingly small. Even in that matter of James Halsing it would not pounce till Wharton was ready.

But what about James Halsing? By harum—scarum his brother—in—law had probably meant reckless to the point of lunacy: though that did not detract from the merit of what he had done in Malaya. Nowadays they don't give away M.C.s in Christmas crackers. And if it was he who had killed Posfort, would that recklessness and indifference to danger explain why he had stayed near the scene of the killing for almost half an hour after that killing had been done? Somehow I couldn't quite believe it.

Then what about that testimony of the chambermaid? Had two men been concerned? Was James Halsing one of them, and had he stayed on to cover in some way the tracks of his accomplice? Again I couldn't quite believe it. All the same, if there had been two men, what combination could they be of the men I'd seen that afternoon?

What of the Rev. Timothy Halsing? No—one could conceivably believe that he could have made himself an instrument of justice. The fact that he looked like an Edwardian actor didn't make him one, and all I had seen in his taciturnity and self—repression had been the shattering grief about which Courtney Haze had told me. No divine wrath and no thundering condemnations: Posfort's name, as I remember, he had never even mentioned.

What of Courtney Haze? And need the confederate have been a man? Mightn't his wife swear to that alibi of his because she knew exactly on what he had been engaged? He was an actor. His voice might have been that of the Corland who had booked the room, and he could have made himself up to some close resemblance of that photograph of Corland on the jacket of a book. Had James Halsing been in it too? Or had he had suspicions and had been at the Royalty merely as the Peeping Tom that he had looked?

What of Roland Haze? Why had he told me so frankly that he had once hoped to marry Caroline Halsing? But he had added that he had settled down to being merely a kind of elder brother, which had been as much as telling me not to get ideas into my head. Had it been necessary for him to tell me anything at all, except the details of the alibi for which I'd asked? I didn't know. I did know that he had spoken with an amused acceptance of my presence. But he also had a definite individuality, even if, like his brother and everyone else connected with Caroline, he would stir never a finger to help find the man who had killed Posfort. I had liked the way he had put James Halsing in his place. The two Hazes, when I came to think back, had acted very much together, even if Roland—I put his age as the middle thirties—had let his brother do most of the talking. Courtney, of course, was nearer fifty than forty. But all that was no clue to any supposed alliance of the two brothers in the matter of killing Posfort.

When I walked into Wharton's room that evening I had little of importance to report except that matter of James Halsing.

“Before we decide about him, let me get something clear,” Wharton said. “The parson hadn't heard about the murder. He heard of it from that Roland Haze, who came along specially in his car. Doesn't that strike you as unnecessary? Why couldn't he have telephoned?”

I didn't know. All I could suggest was that the news would mean more to the family—counting Roland as part of it—than we might perhaps appreciate.

“Then what about the Courtney one? He was sent for. Why should he have to come down from Town?”

“Town isn't so far,” I said. “A few minutes to Orpington and then a taxi.”

“Yes, but why the family conference? Posfort was dead. Why the devil should they want to argue about it? Unless”—he leaned across the desk and wagged a finger at me—“the whole lot of 'em were in it up to the neck. And there was the son. He comes bursting in with a newspaper. Why? Did he know what was going to be in the paper?”

“No use asking me, George,” I said. “But what are you going to do about him?”

“Have him here at once,” he said. “Just for a friendly chat. I'll get the local people to bring him in.”

STILL THE TUNNEL

I JUST had time to dictate the report and snatch a meal at home, and then I had to find a taxi to get me to Lilian's flat. I couldn't help thinking again what a well—preserved woman she was, though even the best of corsetings couldn't conceal quite all the bulging. Her rather plump face didn't look so unreservedly friendly, in spite of the way she ushered me in.

“How nice to see you again. This is Martin, my nephew. Martin Collier.”

“How d'you do, sir.”

He was in mufti and he didn't look a day over twenty—five, for he had that boyish look of the young naval officer; the smooth, tanned cheeks and the clear eyes. It turned out that he was twenty—six, exactly the age of Caroline Halsing.

“You'll have a drink, sir?” He waved a hand towards the side table. “Whisky or —”

“Whisky would be very nice,” I said. “Not too much and just a splash of soda.”

“And you, Aunt?”

“Just a small whisky too, dear.”

We all had whiskies and we lifted them and drank. It was cosy there in front of the electric fire, even if the room was just a bit too warm.

“Mind if I call you Lilian?” I asked her over my glass. She smiled. “I'd like you to.”

“Well, then, Lilian, I've a small bone to pick with you. Why did you let Courtney Haze know that I was on my way to Ralehurst?”

“He told you so?”

“Don't let's beg the question,” I told her, and friendlily enough. “As a matter of fact he didn't. It turned out to be a simple deduction. You told him and he told his father—in—law, and the whole family was practically waiting for me. Why'd you do it?” She had flushed.

“Because I'd told you something I shouldn't. About Courtney Haze's visit to the office. To see Gordon.”

“Well, perhaps you were right,” I told her. “But about that visit. What actually took place? Or don't you know.”

“I don't know,” she said. “I just happened to be in the outer room when he came in. He said he'd like to see Gordon, so I took him along to my room and rang from there, and Gordon asked me what he wanted. Courtney had told me he wanted to see him on urgent private business, and Gordon told me he'd ring through when he was ready. Courtney and I had a chat—I told you I'd met him and his wife—and then Gordon rang. I was rather busy after that and when I called Gordon about an hour later he wasn't there, and Miss Barnes told me he and Courtney Haze had gone out. By the way, I fired her this morning. Paid her cash in lieu of notice.”

“Not sorry to hear it,” I said. “You said something to Gordon later?”

“Only to ask what Courtney Haze had wanted. He was quite snappy about it. Said it was something to do with an autobiography and it had fallen through.”

“You didn't believe him?”

“I knew he was lying.”

“Wonder why Courtney didn't give him a damn good hiding?”

The smile was almost a sneer.

“Gordon could lie his way out of anything.”

“Now you, young fellow,” I said. “What do you know about things?”

“Not very much,” he said. “It shook me pretty badly when I got the news of what she'd done. I just couldn't believe it. Or understand it.”

Caroline hadn't been mentioned, so it was plain what was in his mind.

“You knew Caroline well?”

“Ever since she began working in Aunt's office. That was two years ago.”

“You were in love with her?”

He wasn't looking at me but at the fire.

“Well, about a year ago I thought she'd get engaged to me, and then she suddenly began to change. Wouldn't take me seriously any longer, if you know what I mean. I did get her to go out with me once or twice, but there was nothing to it. I might have been going out with my own sister.”

“Had you any reason to think she'd got attached to some other man?”

“As a matter of fact I did,” he said. “I tackled her with it, but she was just maddening about it. Hinted and then took it back. That sort of thing. Oh, and something else. She began telling me I was too young. Inexperienced, and so on. What d'you think of that? I was the same age as her, and I told her so.”

“That looks like a lead to Posfort,” I said. “Know anything about a man called Roland Haze?”

“Oh, him!” he said. “Nothing serious there. He was far too old for her. He was a kind of relation. Her sister married his brother,” I smiled.

“Wait a minute, young fellow. Roland Haze can't be a day over thirty —five or six. That makes me a Methuselah. You really think he was too old for her?”

“Well, he was stuffy. He must have tons of money. He's a director of those marmalade people, Vargo, or something.”

His look said that that ought to ring some sort of bell, but it didn't.

“What's money to do with it?”

“Well, he's stuffy. Lives in some village or other as if he hadn't got a penny.”

“Some like it that way,” I said. “But did Caroline say he was too old? I had an idea he used to be in love with her.”

“Then he got over it long before I knew her,” he said. “She regarded him as more like an uncle. He used to take her out sometimes, but just like an uncle. Or an elder brother.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“Once or twice,” he said. “He was quite a nice chap. Quiet and —well, stuffy.”

“I see. And what about your meeting Caroline in Winchester?”

“If you mean the last time I saw her”—his eyes turned away again —“all I can say is I was absolutely shocked at the sight of her, and she told me she'd been ill and was taking a holiday with her aunt. I wanted her to come and have some coffee with me, but she wouldn't. I hadn't got a lot of time, but I rang the house from Southampton the next day and the aunt told me she wasn't too well again and couldn't see anybody. I guess that's about all.”

There was a heavy silence. I broke it.

“Suppose you'd known then what you know now. What would you have done to Posfort?”

“Done?” He looked round at me, brows knitted. “I'd have given him the hiding of his life, even if he was as big as a house. And I'd have done it in public. I'd have made such a stink that he'd have been ashamed to show his face in Town.”

“But you didn't,” I said. “You didn't even shoot him last night.”

“No,” he said. “But I'd like to shake hands with the one who did.”

“Martin, don't say such things!”

“It's true, Aunt Lilian,” he told her evenly, “so why be afraid to say it?”

“Where were you, actually, at seven o'clock last night?” I asked. “Just for the records.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “That's different. As a matter of fact I'm not prepared to tell you.”

“You must be joking.”

“Oh no, I'm not. I'm simply not prepared to tell you. No one can make me tell you. I know I didn't kill him. I didn't even know he was dead till I saw a late morning paper.”

I tried to point out the seriousness of what he was doing, but it made no difference. I had to leave it there and switch the talk back to Caroline and himself. But nothing new came of it and after some general chat I rose to go. Ten minutes later I was ringing Lilian Rome from a booth in the Underground.

“Travers, Lilian,” I said. “But just prevaricate for once and don't let your nephew know.”

“As a matter of fact he's gone,” she said. “He left just after you did.”

“Well, I don't think he had any hand in that business of last night,” I told her. “It's purely a private reason why he won't talk. Apparently you got into touch with him this morning —”

“It was he who rang me.”

“The point is, where from?”

There was a silence.

“That's queer,” she said. “He didn't say where from. And I haven't asked him since. We just agreed to meet for lunch tomorrow and to do a show.”

“Yes, but how did you get in touch with him so as to get him to your flat tonight?”

“Of course,” she said. “I knew he sometimes stayed at the Chichester, just off Regent Street, so I rang him on chance, and he was there.”

“That's fine,” I said. “Don't worry about him. I'm pretty sure he's absolutely in the clear.”

I took a train to Leicester Square and walked through to the Chichester Hotel. I didn't go in for a minute or two, for I was wondering if the risk was worth while. Then as I moved to cross the road I saw someone emerge from the hotel doors, and the hall porter was with him, carrying a largish bag. The light was good and I knew the man was Martin Collier.

The porter whistled and almost at once a taxi drew up. A second or two and it moved off, and just as I stepped forward to get its number a car came by and I had to dodge back quickly to avoid it. And by then the taxi had rounded the corner into Coote Street.

I went into the hotel and flashed my card at the desk. It was a quiet, first—class hotel and the clerk rather raised his eyebrows. I explained about a hotel swindler we were looking for and together we had a look at the book. When I left a minute or two later I knew that Martin Collier had stayed at that hotel the previous night. And the Chichester was exactly four minutes' sharp walking from the Royalty. I knew because I tried it out.

When I got back to the Yard there was a message for me. James Halsing was with Wharton and Matthews, and Wharton wasn't anxious for Halsing to see me, so I wrote a report downstairs about the visit to Lilian Rome's flat. I added a rider and I could have added two. What I didn't say was that unless there had been any collaboration between Lilian and her nephew—and, frankly, I thought that a pretty fantastic idea—then Lilian could be crossed off as a suspect. After all, it had been a man who had booked Room 323 and lured Posfort there.

What I did say was that something else could be ruled out: the idea that the murderer had to be one who was connected with the literary agency. Everyone who had been anything of a friend of Caroline Halsing, let alone her relations. must have heard from her over and over again the detailed workings of Drench and Posfort. I ended that report with an unwonted touch of optimism. Only twenty—four hours since the enquiry had begun and already we were certain, or so it seemed, of the motive for the murder. Posfort's killing, as I'd be prepared to swear, was a settling of accounts for what he'd done to Caroline Halsing.

Just as I'd finished I was called upstairs. Wharton was sitting back in his desk chair and scowling at what turned out to be a copy of James Halsing's statement.

“You got him here pretty quick,” I said to Wharton.

“We ran him down in Town,” he told me. “He went back with his brother—in—law, the actor. Have a glance at this.”

I gave Matthews a look as I took that statement, but he merely shrugged his shoulders. I soon knew why.

It was at about ten o'clock on that Thursday morning, the statement ran, when the telephone went at Ralehurst Rectory, and James Halsing answered it.

“Is that the Reverend Halsing?”

“Who's speaking, please?”

“It doesn't matter who's speaking. Who are you?”

“I'm his son, James Halsing. Can I take a message?”

There was a slight pause.

“Perhaps you'll do as well, Mr. Halsing. You know what happened to your sister?”

It was Halsing who paused.

“I say, who are you?”

“I'm a friend of your sister. You don't know me, but I knew her, and I know all about Posfort. I want to put a proposition up to you.”

“What is it?”

“If you feel like landing Posfort in trouble, I can help you. I mean real trouble. Something he'll be very sorry for. Are you game to do it?”

“Depends exactly what it is.”

“I'll tell you about that personally. Can you be at the Royalty Hotel at seven—thirty tonight? Room 323. Seven—thirty sharp.”

“Yes, I think I can manage it. All the same, I'd rather you told me what it's all about.”

“I'll be there myself,” the voice said. “If I'm not I'll be downstairs in the main lobby. Look for a shortish man in a brown suit and I'll have a red carnation in my buttonhole. And one very important thing. Not a word to a soul, even your father. Now I come to think of it, I don't think he'd approve.”

So James Halsing rode his motor—bike to Orpington and left it in the car—park at the cinema and took a train to Town. At seven—thirty he went to Room 323, but something unusual seemed to be happening, for that was when the photographers were leaving. So he nipped downstairs and looked for the man in the brown suit. He was not there, so he went upstairs again. He was reconnoitring that room when I saw him. And feeling then that something was badly wrong, he nipped downstairs again, had another quick look for the man in the brown suit and then went back to Orpington.

The voice on the telephone, he said, had been that of an educated man, but rather hard to describe. There had been something muffled about it. Asked what he thought the scheme might have been, he said he didn't know, unless the idea had been to catch out Posfort in the hotel room with another woman.

“Well, what d'you make of it?” Wharton said.

“I'm inclined to believe it,” I told him. “If he was making up a yarn he'd have thought of something that didn't fit in as well as it does. He didn't know that Posfort was lured to that room, too, by someone calling himself Corland. That's something the newspapers haven't yet got.”

“I liked him,” Matthews said. “I think everything he told us was true. And that hotel scheme, whatever it was, would have been right up his alley.”

“Yes,” Wharton said, “but suppose it had been the father who'd answered the telephone. What then?”

“Who knows?” I said. “Probably the voice would have told him it had important information about the daughter. Then old Halsing might have turned up at that room instead of his son.”

“The idea being to incriminate one of the family.”

That was obviously what had been at the back of the whole thing, to have a ready—made suspect who would divert attention from the real murderer. That muffled disguise of the voice might have meant anything. What it didn't do was prove that the owner of the voice was someone whom James Halsing knew.

“We've got two choices,” Wharton said: “to believe the story or disbelieve it. Let's say we believe it, till we can prove otherwise.”

“That's the best line, sir,” Matthews said. “After all, once he was challenged about that statement to Mr. Travers, he didn't try any more lies. He owned up the alibi was a fake.”

“Admitted, but where's it get us?”

Nobody had any ideas, unless it was that the murderer was an even cleverer person than we'd thought.

“Not so clever,” Wharton said. “If we believe James Halsing, then he's merely eliminated what might have been a genuine suspect. But let's say this statement is a pack of lies. Where's that get us?”

Obviously, again, the first thing to do was to prove it lies, and how to do that nobody knew. James Halsing had admitted being at the Royalty at seven—thirty and only some fantastic stroke of luck could prove he was there a quarter of an hour before.

“How did you get on?” I asked Matthews. He'd spent his evening checking at the Royalty and the men there had come across no—one who had seen anyone entering or emerging from Room 323. As we seemed to be getting nowhere, I gave an account of my own evening. Wharton didn't seem at all excited about Martin Collier and his refusing to give an alibi.

“According to you, he's just a young service officer, like that young Halsing. You're not telling me that either had the brains to carry out that murder?”

“But why wouldn't he give an alibi?” Matthews wanted to know.

Wharton looked at his watch. “Ten o'clock. A bit late now, but you slip round in the morning and see if he had a young lady in tow. And you might get something from the hall porter about where he went to in that taxi. If not, his aunt might know where he is.”

My instructions were to look into the alibis of the Haze brothers. Bridget Halsing would probably not be properly awake, I said, till the afternoon, so I'd run down to Marland in the morning and check Roland Haze's alibi first. Wharton, I thought, wasn't looking too happy. He said he too had had a dud day, though he mentioned only a call on Posfort's solicitors and a finding out that there had been no will. Not that a will would have helped, as he said. Money wasn't a motive, or else his name was Robinson.

As I walked home I couldn't get out of my head that idea of collaboration. By the time I was at the flat, the trickles of thought were a stream. Everything, I could tell myself, pointed to at least a couple of hands and brains in that murder scheme, even if one hand alone had held the gun. And however much Wharton had sneered at it, you couldn't altogether discard the evidence of that chambermaid. Wharton might shut his ears to that evidence, but that was far from proving it unreliable. As I saw things, the tragedy of Caroline Halsing affected her whole family and her friends. That the father had been stunned into a kind of indifference was far from a proof that others concerned had been content to let Posfort not only get away with responsibility for her death but be left free to play fast and loose with a new woman.

What disheartened me, as it was probably disheartening Wharton, was the knowledge that collaboration would make that murder one that could never be solved. All A. had to do was to swear to the alibi of B. and that would be the end of it. That was why I lay so long awake, with every possible combination of A. &B. running through my mind. Maybe it was the very monotony of it all that finally sent me to sleep.

When I woke in the morning I was still convinced that I was right. And though I had no need of confirmation that the murderer was a friend or relation, I saw even more clearly how the actual killing fitted so snugly in: that blasting of holes in Posfort's belly and the agonising death that had followed.

“You tortured Caroline Halsing, now see how you like this!”

That was what the murderer had virtually said, and if I had not been doing the job I was I could have found in my heart some sneaking sympathy. As it was, I had an alibi to check, though when I had got my car at the garage I didn't make for Westminster Bridge. I had rung Norris the previous day at the Agency and I thought I'd better look in at Broad Street.

But everything there turned out to be well in hand. I did have another look at my map. Marland was more to the west than Ralehurst and rather more off the beaten track. I made the two villages about twenty miles apart—not that that mattered. What I decided to do was to take the turn at Lewisham clock and make for the by—pass. If the side roads after that were too tortuous, then I might come home another way.

ALIBIS

IT was not a good journey. Stream after stream of traffic held me up as far as the by—pass, and then I twice went wrong in country lanes. It was eleven o'clock when I got to the village of Marland. Far out as it was, it had not wholly escaped suburbia, maybe because it was a railway junction. I had to go through quite a long avenue of bungalows before I got to the village itself. Even as scenery if turned out to be worth the while, for it was as pretty a village as I'd seen in a long time. It had quite a spacious green, round which were one or two large houses among the cottages. Facing it, too, was the general store, and a tiny lane led off to the church, no more than a hundred yards away. Next door to the store was what looked like quite a good pub, the Fox and Geese.

It might be as well, I thought, to see where Haze actually lived, and I was told to go straight on for a couple of hundred yards and take a fork to the left and it would be the last house before the railway station. I would have called it a cottage rather than a house, and remarkably presentable it was. Its roof was thatched and a side garage had been skilfully built on. There was a garden at the front with the usual crazy paving path and what seemed a much larger garden at the back. The cottage itself looked as if it might have two small rooms at the front and a kitchen at the back and maybe three bedrooms. The whole place was in a beautiful state of repair.

The railway station was no eyesore. I went on down the hill to reverse my car and I wouldn't have known it was there if I hadn't seen the level—crossing at the bend. Soon after I'd turned the car round I overtook what looked like a railway porter coming off duty. I drew the car alongside him. “Which is Mr. Haze's house?”

“On the right, just ahead of you,” he told me. “But you won't find him at home. He was on the eight fifty—five this morning.”

“He lives there alone?”

“He does now,” he said. “Ever since his mother died. That was a year and more ago. Now he has someone to look after him.”

I asked if I could give him a lift, but he said he had only a few yards to go. I drove on to the green and parked the car just short of the pub. A bell tinkled above the door of the little shop as I went in. The smell of paraffin, cheese and leather took me nostalgically back to the Suffolk village of my boyhood. I was smiling to myself as a pleasant—faced woman came in from the back.

“I wonder if you could help me,” I said. “I went to see Mr. Haze, but he doesn't seem to be at home. I called on him on Thursday evening, but he wasn't at home then, either.”

“He goes to Town every day,” she told me. “But you wouldn't have found him on Thursday night because he was at the concert. Got up by the British Legion, it was.”

“You saw him there?”

“He sat right next to me.”

“What time was that?”

“About seven,” she said. “He came in just as it started and he sat next to me the whole while.”

“Then I probably just missed him,” I said. “He'll be home this afternoon?”

“Bound to be,” she said. “Far as I know he always comes home about dinner—time Saturdays. Most of the gentlemen round here do.”

“Then no doubt I'll see him later. I have to go to the rectory in any case. It's by the church, isn't it?”

By the church it was. I went along the narrow lane, past the village hall, and there, practically on the church—yard, was a Georgian house, almost the spit of th