“It may be news to you that a halfpenny is an inch in diameter.”
“Thank you. Don’t tell me how many thruppenny bits will go on a half-crown, or I shall scream. Yes, I knew you were measuring distances. Some womanly intuition told me so. But what’s the idea, particularly?”
“I thought we’d take the motor out today, and try some of these places along the river to see where it was the Burtell cousins stopped on their trip. We might be able to collect some reminiscences of them—whether, for example, there was a third person with them at any stage of their journey. You know, I’m beginning to want a third person badly.”
“Are you going to have beer at all these pubs? It looks to me as if I should have to drive home.”
“Heaven help the woman, she talks as if you could go into a pub and order beer at any hour of the day you like. No, we’ve got to think up some reason for visiting these places and asking questions. What shall it be?”
“Give your name as Carmichael, and say you want to look in the bathroom to see if any of the soap’s missing.”
“Don’t rag. This is the sort of lie you are generally rather good at thinking up.”
“Don’t flatter, and don’t put the corner of the map in the marmalade. You could, of course, arm yourself with a set of cheap railway-guides or something of that sort, and pretend to be travelling them—ask them to put one in the commercial room. But you wouldn’t get much out of them that way. No, I think you’ll have to tell a little of the truth, Miles dear. I think we must pretend that the Burtells left something behind—say a camera; we know they had a camera with them. In decency they’ll have to let us go up into the bedroom and look round for it. Or in the coffee-room, at places where they stopped for luncheon. You’ll have to be just a friend of Nigel Burtell’s, and you happen to be motoring in this part of the country. You’re not quite certain which pubs they stopped at, because Nigel Burtell couldn’t remember all the names himself. Wouldn’t something like that do? Of course you can have a drink as well, when it isn’t closing-time.”
This, eventually, was the plan of campaign adopted. It would be tedious to record their researches in detail. Bredon had argued out their probable stages with some accuracy, assuming, with justice, that on the morning of Derek’s disappearance they had come from the nearest inn above Shipcote, that at Millington Bridge. Everywhere the impressions left behind them were those of an ordinary pleasure tour; nothing remarkable was recorded about their behaviour. The only exception was at Millington Bridge itself, at which they had arrived late after a long day on the river, about ten o’clock, and had not wanted an evening meal.
“Very late they was, and it was your speaking of the camera put me in mind of it; because the first gentleman came up and he said have you got two rooms, and I said yes, but you’re late, you know, we don’t ordinarily take in people so late; where’s the other gentleman? Oh, he says, he left his camera behind in the canoe, and he’s gone back to fetch it, in case it should rain in the night. And rain it did, too, regular downpour. I’ll go up to my room, he says, for I’m dog-tired, and the other gentleman won’t be more than ten minutes or so. It wasn’t hardly that, not hardly five minutes, before I heard the second knock, and as soon as I saw someone with a camera standing outside. Oh, I says, you’re the other gentleman; you’ll be in Number Three. So Lizzy showed him the way upstairs, and that’s the room the camera should have been in if it had been left behind. Let’s see, that was the gentleman that had his breakfast in bed; left it on a tray on the mat, I did. Number Two came down to breakfast, and it was him as paid the bill; I see him go off myself, but whether he had the camera with him or no I couldn’t really say. The other gentleman must have gone on earlier, for I never saw him go off, and of course it would be more likely he took the camera with him. I did both the rooms myself, after they’d gone, and it isn’t likely I should have failed to overlook anything, is it?”
Bredon, who was alert for any indication, suggested afterwards that it sounded as if the two cousins might have quarrelled, since they neither reached nor left the inn together; but he agreed with Angela that this was very little result to derive from their morning’s inquiries. “It’s all very well,” he said, “but we must do something. If the fellow’s still alive, he’s stealing a march on us all the time, and may be God knows where by now. Besides, one of the papers has been suggesting to its readers that they should all take their holiday on the Thames, and lend a hand with searching; they’ll be all over the place by tomorrow.”
It was at about six that evening, when they were sitting out on the lawn by the river, that a visitor was announced for Bredon. He had scarcely had time to rise from his chair when the visitor followed in person.
“Leyland!” cried Bredon. “Are the police beginning to take the thing seriously, then?”
“Yes, too late, as usual. How are you, Mrs. Bredon? And, as usual the county police didn’t call in Scotland Yard until they had made an utter mess of the thing themselves. Let your man get away, give him four hours’ start, and then call in the Yard—that’s the way it’s done.”
“Let what man get away?”
“Why, this Burtell.”
“Which Burtell? Nigel?”
“That’s the one.”
“Nigel Burtell? But I saw him yesterday.”
“It would have been a
