“Oh, if we knew that, the chase would be half over.”
“Mr. Mortimer Shearsby, of course, would use maps a lot, being a keen cyclist.”
“So he would.” Mr. Tuke shifted his cramped legs again. “By the way,” he went on, “though your job has been to run the rule over the Mortimer Shearsbys, I take it you are well up on the case as a whole? You know all about the other surviving members of the family?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Vance has kept me up-to-date on the London end.”
“Including the news of the extra cousin from Belgium?” The sergeant nodded. “A bit of a teaser he is, isn’t he? I mean, it seems to me unless something can be pinned on one of the others, he’s got to be found.”
“He’s got to be found, anyway. Well, who has figured in the case so far who might fill the bill?”
The puzzled look returned to Sergeant Webley’s face. “No one, sir.”
“What about Mr. Joseph Eady?”
The Sergeant turned from his steady watch on the Morris to stare, a little open-mouthed, at his passenger.
“Crumbs!” he said. “I never thought of that!” Then he frowned. “But this Eady’s a crook. They know all about him at the Yard.” He paused, peering through the windscreen again, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. “My word, of course this other chap . . .”
“Yes, he was a crook too, when last heard of.”
“And he’d know where young Mr. Shearsby lived,” the Sergeant said, half to himself. “They’d met. That would account for the ticket to Whipstead. Eady always meant to go there. How do the times fit? . . .” He shook his head as he glanced at Mr. Tuke. “No, it won’t work, sir. The train was on time, 6.43. Say Eady left the station a minute later. He had to walk nearly six miles to get that bus at 8.10. He only had a bit over an hour and twenty-five minutes. He must be a fast walker to have done it at all. He’d have no time for any fancy work. And anyway, Mr. Shearsby was in the pub in the village at seven-fifteen, when Eady couldn’t even have got to the lane.”
“You’ve run ahead of me,” Mr. Tuke said with a smile. “I hadn’t got so far as to envisage your Holy Joe as a murderer. That he might be the missing cousin was just an idea that came into my head. It leaves a whole lot unexplained.”
“It’s worth following up, sir,” the sergeant said. “How old would this cousin be?”
“In the late fifties.”
“And Eady’s grey-haired and sort of venerable looking. And once a crook, always a crook, generally speaking.”
“There is also this, for what it’s worth,” Mr. Tuke remarked, warming to his own theory. “I observed to the A.C. the other day that this Martin Dresser, if he is alive and in England, must have been earning his living somehow since he came back. Because his son never paid any money to him that can be traced. And the son’s rather odd reticence about his father might be accounted for if the latter was making a living by some shady means, and the son knew it.” Sergeant Webley seemed scarcely to be listening. His brows met in another frown of concentration as he stared, almost unseeing, at the Morris car down the street.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute,” he muttered. “Do you know if Mr. Raymond Shearsby had a bicycle?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“I bet he did. Everybody in the country has a bike nowadays. And he never had a car. How about this, Mr. Tuke? Say Mr. Shearsby went to the pub that evening on foot. No one’s mentioned a bike. Well, then, while he’s gone Eady comes into the lane, about seven-thirty. He goes on to the cottage. He’d have to pass it. Nobody there, but the bike’s lying somewhere in view. Eady walks back down the lane and meets Mr. Shearsby on his way home. Perhaps he’d taken his time, and sat on the bridge for a smoke, or something. Well, Eady knocks him out, and shoves him in the stream. Then he runs back to the cottage, nips on the bike, and rides like smoke for the bus route. He leaves the bike under a hedge, and catches the bus easy.”
Mr. Tuke was laughing. “It does you credit, Sergeant. I mean it.”
“Well, it’s possible, sir. And you can’t get over Eady being in that lane just about the right time. It makes the murder earlier than I thought, but that’s nothing. I don’t really know a lot about this Stocking affair. The Herts people are handling it, under Mr. Vance—I’ve just followed it on the map, so to speak, having an eye on Mr. Mortimer Shearsby and his bike, and knowing the country a bit. It’s a pity,” said the Sergeant, shaking his head, “that Eady’s never been charged. They won’t have his dabs. They’ll have the cousin’s, because of that old trouble at the bank.”
Mr. Tuke knocked the ash of his cigar out of the car window.
“Incidentally,” he observed, “you—and I, for that matter—have been talking glibly of murders. But when I last heard of Inspector Vance he seemed to be still hedging.”
The sergeant looked surprised. “He don’t talk like it,” he said. “You have to hedge a bit in reports, sir. He knows better, I’ll lay.”
Mr. Tuke grinned. “Well, we’ll go on hoping for the best. A chapter of accidents is so dull.”
“And we’ve got something to work on,” the Sergeant said, rubbing his hands with professional glee. “The more I think of Eady being this Martin Dresser, the more I like it. And his being in that lane just when he was sticks in my gizzard. As for my notion about the bicycle, we’ll soon find out if Mr. Raymond Shearsby had one, and what happened to it. Yes, sir, we’re getting a move on, what with all that, and now this car——” He stiffened suddenly. His
