'I got the same from Hardy.' Sinclair puffed at his pipe. 'What did you make of it?'
The inspector shrugged. 'I wondered why Miller didn't talk to them again. Even if he believed the guilty man had been killed in action he'd still have wanted to question the others to get the full story from them.'
'I had the same reaction.' Sinclair nodded agreement.
'It's obvious Miller no longer regarded them as suspects. He must have had someone else in mind.
We've been chasing the wrong fox, damn it!'
'But still someone he thought was dead,' Madden pointed out quickly. 'He closed the case, remember.'
The chief inspector grunted. He shook his head pessimistically. 'I've been wondering what to do next.
It occurred to me the Belgian police might be able to help us, so I sent a telegram to the Brussels Surete half an hour ago asking them to check their records.
After all, those were Belgian citizens who were murdered.'
He sighed heavily. 'The trouble is, Brussels was under German occupation at the time and I'm not sure the civilian police were ever involved in the investigation. I've a nasty feeling they'll simply refer us to the British military authorities and we'll be back where we started. With Miller's missing memorandum.'
Harold Biggs had been looking forward to spending that Saturday afternoon at the races. He and his pal, Jimmy Pullman, had planned to drive to Dover in Jimmy's second-hand Morris, lose a few shillings on the nags and then look in later at the Seaview Hotel where there was a regular Saturday tea dance.
They might, if they were lucky, pick up a couple of girls. But a summons from Mr Henry Wolverton, senior partner in the firm of Dabney, Dabney and Wolverton, on Friday morning put a stopper on that.
'There's something I want you to do tomorrow, Biggs. Old client of the firm. Widow of client actually.
Got herself into a state about something. Written me a letter.' Wolverton, a stout middle-aged man with an unhealthily red face, spoke habitually in short sentences as though he couldn't summon up the breath for longer utterances. 'Wants someone to go and see her tomorrow afternoon. Has to be then.' He peered up at Harold over the top of his half-spectacles. 'Out of normal working hours, I know. You don't mind, do you?'
'No, sir,' said Biggs, minding strongly.
'He's got his nerve,' Jimmy Pullman remarked when they met later in the Bunch of Grapes for a lunch-time drink. Jimmy worked in a gents clothing store. 'Catch Mr Henry Bloody Wolverton spending his Saturday afternoon traipsing around the countryside.
You should have told him where to get off, Biggsy.'
Harold shrugged, pretending unconcern. He accepted a Scotch egg from the plate Jimmy pushed along the pub counter towards him. His job as a solicitor's clerk was the same one he'd held before the war and he'd been happy when early demobilization enabled him to reclaim it. Other men returning later to civilian life had not been so fortunate.
'What do you have to do, anyway?' Jimmy demanded. 'And why tomorrow afternoon?'
Biggs took out the letter Mr Wolverton had given him and squinted through his horn-rimmed spectacles at the nearly illegible handwriting, which meandered drunkenly across the page. 'All she says is she needs someone to do something for her and it has to be tomorrow afternoon. She's underlined 'afternoon' several times. She says it's important. She's underlined that, too.' Biggs sipped his beer.
'And she lives at bloody Knowlton?' Jimmy scowled. 'What's her name?'
Biggs glanced at the letter again. 'Troy,' he said.
'Winifred Troy.'
The early-afternoon bus left for Knowlton at a quarter to two, and Biggs reached the bus station with five minutes to spare, having spent the morning working at the office. He just had time to dash back to his lodgings and exchange his dark suit and black bowler for plus-fours and a checked cap. A pair of two-tone shoes, which he'd recently bought at a reduced price through the good offices of Jimmy Pullman, completed his ensemble. He was ready for a trip to the country.
The journey to Knowlton took forty minutes. The bus service, linking Folkestone and Dover via a string of inland villages, was a post-war innovation, and it looked like the business was flourishing. Every seat in the green- painted vehicle was taken and Harold was obliged to share his own with a dough-faced woman in the late stages of pregnancy.
To pass the time — and to take his mind off the disagreeable thought that the short, panting breaths he heard coming from beside him might herald an impromptu birth — he began to conduct a mental exercise. He had recently completed a correspondence course in Pelmanism, a method of memory training designed to eliminate mind-wandering and increase concentration. The course, a popular one in Biggs's set, had been heavily promoted. 'How to Eliminate Brain Fag!' the advertisements trumpeted. Harold was convinced that his memory was sharper as a result and he set out now to recall as much as he could of what he had read in the previous day's newspaper.
The main story on the front page had dealt with the Irish peace talks, which had dragged on in London all summer. A formal conference of the parties was due to open shortly, but diehard elements in Sinn Fein were opposed to any agreement that excluded the province of Ulster from a United Ireland. The report recalled that a shipment of 500 sub-machine-guns destined for Sinn Fein had been seized recently in New York.
There had been further debate in the House of Commons on the government's decision to admit women to the civil service in three years' time. Despite recent rains most of southern England was still in the grip of drought and rigid economies would be necessary for the remainder of the year. The price of whisky had been increased again. A bottle now cost 12/6d.
Most of these stories he had only glanced at (though he seemed to have retained the salient facts!). But there was one item he had read with close attention, a lengthy article dealing with the police investigation into the murders at Melling Lodge in Surrey two months earlier.
Biggs had followed the case with interest from the start. It was a talking point in his office and in the Bunch of Grapes where he usually spent his lunch hour. The apparently reasonless crime had caught people's imaginations. Some thought it the work of a maniac — Jimmy Pullman held to this view — but Harold felt there was more behind the murders than met the eye. 'It'll turn out to be the person you least expect,' he had predicted. 'Someone like the postman.'
He'd been disappointed initially when the opening words of the article — Important developments are expected soon in the continuing investigation into the horrific murders at Melling Lodge — were not borne out in succeeding paragraphs. Instead, the report detailed the progress of the inquiry to date. Or lack of progress, since it was plain the police had made little headway. The writer questioned whether the investigation was on the right track. If, indeed, it ever had been.
The shock felt at the killings seemed to have induced a sense of 'panic', he asserted. 'Wild theories' had abounded at the outset and even now, when it was increasingly clear that what they were dealing with was 'an isolated incident of senseless violence', there seemed to be an unwillingness, even among experienced officers, to approach the matter in 'a straightforward way'.
Harold was gratified to discover that he was able to retrieve key words and phrases from the text.
A move to seek the help of 'outside experts' had been checked, thanks to prompt action at the 'highest levels' in the Yard. But the investigation had continued to flounder in the eyes of many, who questioned whether proper attention had been given to 'the most basic areas of crime detection'.
A description of the man sought had been available to the police for some time, but there was doubt whether this area of the inquiry had been pursued with 'sufficient thoroughness'. Another 'solid lead' was the motorcycle and sidecar that the murderer was known to have used. It was rare in police work for a physical clue of this nature to yield no results, the reporter declared, leaving unspoken the implication that the detectives in charge of the case had somehow failed to make the most of it.
Somewhere in England is a man answering to the description who owns a motorcycle. Surely it only requires a methodical approach by the police of this land acting in concert to uncover his identity.
This somewhat dramatic assertion had lodged intact in Harold's newly improved memory. But he was puzzled by the article as a whole. He couldn't determine whether the reporter was giving his own opinions or those of the 'informed circles at Scotland Yard' to whom he referred from time to time. And it was only right at the very end of the report that the 'important developments' heralded in the opening paragraph were finally revealed:
The lack of progress has pointed to the need for a fresh approach. It is understood that the officer at present
