“A forgery, then? That’s very neat of Mr. Justice. I feel inclined to take off my hat to that fellow. He thinks of everything.”
“Well, it’s a blank end for us, so far as I can see, sir.”
Sir Clinton seemed to be so lost in admiration of Mr. Justice’s ingenuity that he failed to notice Flamborough’s dissatisfaction. When he spoke again, it was on a different topic.
“What about your friend, Mr. Whalley, Inspector? It seems to me we ought to have him up and put him through it as quick as possible. Quite obviously he knows something.”
“I’ve tried to get hold of him, sir. But he’s left the town and I can’t get on his track. He’s gone off to some race-meeting or other, I expect. He often goes off like that and leaves no address. I’ll lay hands on him as soon as he comes back to Westerhaven.”
“He’s an essential witness, I suspect; so don’t let him slip through your fingers. You’d better ask for assistance from the local police in likely places.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And now, Inspector, how are you getting along with the game of eliminations? How low have you brought the possibles out of the original nine solutions?”
Flamborough produced his often-unfolded scrap of paper and scanned it once more.
“If one accepts what you said a minute or two ago, sir, then the drugging of Mrs. Silverdale was meant to be plain drugging and wasn’t wilful murder. So the last case drops out.”
He put his pencil through the line of writing.
“That leaves only two alternatives:
Hassendean Mrs. Silverdale X—Suicide Accident Y—Murder Accident
And young Hassendean, from all accounts, was hardly the lad to suicide by shooting himself twice in the body—too painful for him. So it really looks rather like Case Y. Certainly it’s coming down to brass tacks quicker than I thought it would.”
XIII
The Murder of the Informer
As he entered Sir Clinton’s office on the following morning, Inspector Flamborough blurted out bad news without any preliminary beating about the bush.
“There’s been another murder, sir,” he announced, with a tinge of what seemed grievance in his tone.
Sir Clinton looked up from the mass of papers upon his desk.
“Who is it, this time?” he demanded curtly.
“It’s that fellow Whalley, sir—the man who seemed to have some information about the bungalow affair.”
The Chief Constable leaned back in his chair and gazed at Flamborough with an expressionless face.
“This is really growing into a wholesale trade,” he said, drily. “Four murders in quick succession, and we’ve nothing to show for it. We can’t go on waiting until all the population of Westerhaven, bar one individual, is exterminated; and then justify ourselves by arresting the sole survivor on suspicion. The public’s getting restive, Inspector. It wants to know what we do for our money, I gather.”
Inspector Flamborough looked resentful.
“The public’ll have to lump it, if it doesn’t like it,” he said crudely. “I’ve done my best. If you think I ought to hand the thing over to someone else, sir, I’ll be only too glad to do so.”
“I’m not criticising you, Inspector,” Sir Clinton reassured him. “Not being a member of the public—for this purpose, at least—I know enough to appreciate your difficulties. There’s no burking the fact that whoever’s at the back of this affair is a sharper man than the usual clumsy murderer. He hasn’t left you much of a chance to pick up usable clues.”
“I’ve followed up every one that he did leave,” Flamborough argued. “I don’t think I’ve been exactly idle. But I can’t arrest Silverdale merely because I picked up his cigarette-holder in suspicious surroundings. Confound the public! It doesn’t understand the difference between having a suspicion and being able to prove a case.”
“Let’s hear the details of this latest affair,” Sir Clinton demanded, putting aside the other subject.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of this fellow Whalley for the last day or two, sir, so as to follow up that line as soon as possible,” the Inspector began. “But, as I told you, he’s been away from Westerhaven—hasn’t been seen anywhere in his usual haunts. I’ve made repeated inquiries at his lodgings, but could get no word of him except that he’d gone off. He’d left no word about coming back; but he obviously did mean to turn up again, for he left all his traps there and said nothing about giving up his bedroom.”
“You didn’t get on his track elsewhere?”
“No, I hardly expected it. He’s a very average-looking man and one couldn’t expect people to pick him out of a crowd at a race-meeting by his appearance.”
Sir Clinton nodded as a permission to the Inspector to continue his narrative.
“This morning, shortly before seven o’clock,” Flamborough continued, “the driver of a milk-lorry on the Lizardbridge Road noticed something in the ditch by the roadside. It was about half an hour before sunrise, so I expect he still had his lamps alight. It’s pretty dark, these misty mornings. Anyhow, he saw something sticking up out of the ditch and he stopped his lorry. Then he made out that it was a hand and arm; so he got down from his seat and had a closer look. I expect he took it for a casual drunk sleeping things off quietly. However, when he got up to the side of the road, he found the body of a man in the ditch, face downward.
“This milkman was a sensible fellow, it seems. He felt the flesh where he could get at it without moving the body; and the coldness of it satisfied him that he’d got a deader on his hands. So instead of muddling about and trampling all over the neighbourhood, he very sensibly got aboard his lorry again and drove in towards town in search of a policeman. When he met one, he and the constable went back on the lorry to the dead man; and the constable stood on guard whilst the milkman set off with
