“You’ve got quit of your cold now, sir. You were quite hoarse that night you came to the house—as if you’d got a touch of sore throat or something like that.”
“That’s true. I’ve no cold now. Anything more?”
Mrs. Marple subjected him to another prolonged scrutiny.
“No, sir. You’re just like you were that night.”
“And you recognised me from some newspaper portrait, it seems?”
“Yes, sir. I saw your picture in the evening paper once. It was just a head-and-shoulders one; but I’d have recognised you from it even if you hadn’t shown me your card.”
Sir Clinton reflected for a moment.
“Can you remember what was on that card?” he asked.
Mrs. Marple consulted her memory.
“It said: ‘Sir Clinton Driffield (and some letters after the name), Chief Constable.’ Then in the left-hand corner was the address: ‘Police Headquarters, Westerhaven.’ ”
Sir Clinton caught Flamborough’s eye and they exchanged glances. The Inspector had little difficulty in seeing that his first impression had been wrong. It was not the Chief Constable who had ransacked Avice Deepcar’s house.
Sir Clinton took out his card-case and handed a card to Mrs. Marple.
“It wasn’t that card I showed you, was it?”
Mrs. Marple scanned the card for a moment.
“Oh, no, sir. This one reads quite different.”
Sir Clinton nodded and took back the card.
“I think that’s really all I want to know, Mrs. Marple. Perhaps Inspector Flamborough may want to ask you a question or two later on.”
Avice Deepcar seemed by no means satisfied at this close to the interview.
“That’s all very fine, Sir Clinton,” she said, “but you seem to think you’ve satisfied me. You haven’t. You can’t invade my house in this way and then pass the whole thing off as if it were part of your routine. And you can’t carry away a pile of my private letters and keep them without my consent. I insist on having them back. If you don’t, I’ll see my solicitor at once about the matter. And may I remind you again that you owe me some apology for your proceedings?”
Sir Clinton seemed in no way ruffled.
“Of course I apologise for anything I’ve done which may have inconvenienced you, Miss Deepcar. I’m quite sincere in saying that I very much regret that you should have been worried in this way. Nothing that I have done has been meant to throw any suspicion on you, I can assure you. As to the letters, I think your best plan will be to consult your solicitor as you suggest. Ask him to ring me up at once, and I’ll try to settle the matter as soon as we can. I’ve no wish to cause you any trouble—none whatever.”
Avice glanced suspiciously from him to the Inspector. It was evident that this solution did not satisfy her; but obviously she realised that nothing would be gained by attempting to argue the point.
“Very well,” she said at last, “I’ll go straight to my solicitor now. You’ll hear from him very shortly.”
Sir Clinton held the door open for her and she passed out of the room, followed by Mrs. Marple. After a few seconds, the Chief Constable turned to Flamborough.
“What do you make of it all, Inspector?”
“Well, sir, that Mrs. Marple seems to me honest enough, but not very bright.”
Sir Clinton nodded in assent.
“She recognised her visitor from his resemblance to some blurred newspaper portrait; and she recognised me from my resemblance to her visitor. That’s your idea?”
“It looks like it. I never saw you wearing a single eyeglass, sir. And it occurs to me that a single eyeglass helps to change the normal expression of a face owing to the wrinkling that you make in holding it in your eye. Also if it’s an unfamiliar thing, one would drop it when one began to read documents, so as not to be hampered by it.”
“True. I suppose that satisfies you—along with the faked visiting-card which was meant to impress her with the fact that a high official had descended on her—that I personally wasn’t mixed up in the business. I’ve the best of reasons for knowing that myself, of course, since I know I was elsewhere at the time. But what do you make of the raid?”
“Documents were what the man was after, obviously, sir.”
“It seems clear enough that he expected to get hold of something compromising amongst her correspondence. If you ask me, Inspector, Mr. Justice doesn’t seem to stick at much in his self-appointed task.”
“I was pretty sure it was some of his work, sir. The Deepcar girl and Silverdale had a common interest in getting Mrs. Silverdale out of the way; there’s no doubt about that. And some people are perfect fools in what they put down on paper. It’s quite on the cards that Mr. Justice thought he might find something useful amongst Silverdale’s letters to Avice Deepcar.”
“He evidently found something which he thought worth taking away, at any rate,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I had a notion that once you arrested Silverdale, things would begin to move faster. If Mr. Justice has got hold of any evidence, it’ll be in our hands before long, I’m prepared to bet.”
“He’s saving us some trouble, if there is anything in writing,” the Inspector said, with a grin. “We would hardly have raided the Deepcar house on such a long chance as that; and he’s done the job for us.”
“A most useful and altruistic person, evidently,” Sir Clinton commented ironically. “Now what about the rest of the affair, Inspector? If you accept Miss Deepcar’s evidence, then the bottom’s out of your case against Silverdale. He couldn’t be with her and at the bungalow simultaneously.”
“Why should we accept her evidence at all?” Flamborough demanded crossly. “She had as much interest in getting Mrs. Silverdale out of the way as Silverdale himself had. Their interests are absolutely at one in the affair. It’s more than an even chance that she was his accomplice in the business—standing ready with this tale of hers to prove an alibi for him. I don’t reckon her statement was
