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‘This man you speak of,' he said finally, ‘we've got to get hold of him somehow or another.'

‘I don't see how that would help you,' Marsden answered. ‘You can be pretty sure he doesn't know anything about it. There's an old saying. When you want to know who is responsible for anything, find out who profits.'

‘We want more than that to show Treasury Counsel,' Bobby remarked, ‘before he would be willing to order a prosecution.'

‘You won't get it,' declared Marsden. ‘The man who finished old Sir Christopher left no evidence. If I'm right in what I think, he had every advantage and every means for doing what he did without leaving any traces, and he made use of them all very cleverly. I should say you had better give up trying only – only –'

‘Only what?' Bobby asked.

‘Only for this,' Marsden answered, ‘it's my idea there's worse coming.'

‘In what way?' Bobby asked cautiously.

‘I'm speaking in confidence,' Marsden said, ‘only it seems to me – what happened to the father might happen to the daughter next.'

‘You don't mean...?' Bobby stammered, staring.

‘I don't mean anything,' Marsden answered, ‘except that I think you're altogether likely to have a second murder on your hands before long. A wife with money is good but money of one's own is better still. So if I were you I should try to keep an eye on Miss Jennie that's Mrs Carsley now.'

Nothing more could Marsden be induced to say, but this that he had said, Bobby thought of sufficient importance to make of it a special report to headquarters.

Not that he was there allowed to see Mitchell. Special instructions seemed to have been issued on that point.

‘Old man,' explained the sergeant to whom Bobby spoke, ‘says if he wants to see you, he'll send for you, and meanwhile you're to be kept out, handcuffs and violence to be used if necessary.'

‘I shouldn't think of making it necessary,' protested Bobby, quite hurt, and went away to write a brief report, perceiving however from the large bottle of red ink ostentatiously brought for his use by one of the officers on duty that the tale of the superb adornment he had given his last report was already a current jest – for, possibly because its duties are seldom humorous, nowhere is even the tiniest, feeblest joke more keenly appreciated than at ‘The Yard'.

The report duly written and sent in, Bobby went on to spend the rest of the afternoon pursuing without success his inquiries at the different theatres, of which there seemed to him so many that when, in an evening paper he bought, he read the customary weekly article they all publish explaining that the theatre is slowly dying, he could not help wondering how many would be open if the theatre were in rude health.

His evening he spent at ‘The Green Man', equally without success, and then went on to ‘The Cedars' to assure the household there that protection was still being extended to them, to consume some more of Lewis's excellent whisky, and to listen for an hour or so to gossip and chatter from which he learned little, except that a marriage licence had been procured, that the wedding was fixed for the coming Saturday, and that Miss Laing seemed very happy about it.

‘Different she is from what she used to be so you wouldn't hardly know her,' asserted Lewis. ‘It's just as if she had been – well, thawed out, if you know what I mean.'

‘Same,' confirmed the cook, ‘as if her young days had come back to her, like it was before her poor mother died.'

‘It's love 'as done it,' said the ‘tweenie' in a whisper, her eyes shining, ‘it's because they worship the ground they tread on – I mean,' she added, perceiving a slight confusion here, ‘the ground each other treads on.'

‘Well, don't you get worshipping the ground the baker's young man treads on,' the cook warned her tartly, ‘not if it makes you spend half an hour taking in the bread when you ought to be washing up the breakfast things.'

‘Ah, all that,' said Lewis benevolently, coming to the rescue of the blushing ‘tweenie', ‘is before marriage. But afterwards – well, look at them other two, Mr Carsley and Miss Jennie that was.'

‘Why? Are they quarrelling already?' Bobby asked.

‘I wouldn't say that,' Lewis answered cautiously, ‘only there's – well, there's something if you know what I mean.'

‘It's only the worry and the trouble,' the cook protested; ‘the gentlemen from the papers always here, and the police that aren't all quite the gentleman like Mr Owen, and even when they try to be, it would get on anyone's nerves to be asked questions hour after hour and all put down in writing, too, which makes it all so much worse, because when you say a thing, you just say it, but when it's all put down in writing, it's different altogether to my mind, so what I say is it's no wonder if Mrs Carsley and Mr Carsley look like ghosts risen from the dead or worse still – especial,' she added with an indignant look at Lewis, ‘when there's some as isn't above dropping hints and insinuations, without ever saying what's in their minds.'

‘And there's some,' retorted Lewis, helping himself again to the whisky, ‘as know very well what they mean, which, if others don't, that's their affair.'

‘What we want,' Bobby pointed out, ‘are facts. If we could identify the man who escaped over the wall next door, or even if we could trace the revolver used, it would be different. Facts are what we want.'

‘If it's facts,' Lewis said, ‘it's a certain fact none can deny that Mr Carsley – well, drink I should have put it down to, only for there not being time, because, though drink could do it, drink's not so quick as that. But if that man hasn't something on his mind that he never gets rid of by day or by night, then I' – he sought for a comparison tremendous enough, and, not finding it, concluded rather lamely – ‘then I'm wrong, that's all. But you can always tell when there's something on anyone's mind – didn't we all know it from his guilty ways when the gardener that was here before Mr James was taking the grapes out of the conservatory home to his sick wife? And when I was with the old Duchess of Kew, didn't we all know there was something heavy on her mind and weren't we shown right when she up and married the piano tuner – though there was finer men on her own staff if she had had the eyes to see.'

Bobby was aware already that Peter looked strangely ill and worn, but he was not inclined to attach much importance to that, for he knew, what these good people did not, of the conflict raging in the offices of the firm between the two partners. It was enough to give anyone a worried and a troubled air.

He talked a little longer and then took his leave earlier than usual, alleging as an excuse that he was tired from a long day's fruitless tramping to and fro. His way led him round the house into the drive and when he reached it he found the two stepsisters there, Brenda and Jennie. He guessed at once that they knew of his nightly visits and were waiting for him, and he heard Jennie say:

‘He's here again to-night, just as they said.'

Bobby thought it well to stop and offer an explanation. ‘Your servants are still a little nervous,' he said; ‘they asked me to look in sometimes, so that they could feel safer in a way, if they knew we were watching the house.'

‘They told us,' Brenda said in her slow, deep voice. ‘Of course, that is not why you come.'

Bobby made no answer. Jennie said with sudden passion that shook violently her slight and slender frame:

‘You're trying to find out things against Mr Carsley, you think it was Mr Carsley and you want to get them to say things... you think it was Peter did it and it never was. Do you think my husband would murder my father?'

‘It's not what we think that matters,' Bobby answered slowly; ‘we have to do our best, we have to do our duty. When murder's been done' – and then something made him add – ‘if it was murder.'

‘What do you mean?' Jennie asked in a quick, puzzled voice, but Brenda said nothing at all, and somehow Bobby thought that she saw a meaning in his words, a meaning that had entirely escaped her stepsister and that even to him himself was not entirely clear. ‘What do you mean?' Jennie repeated in the same puzzled tone. ‘You can't think... he would never, never have killed himself. Why should he?'

‘It's not possible he could have done it himself, the doctor's evidence shows that,' Bobby agreed, and Jennie said: ‘Well, then.'

But upon Brenda it appeared that her old cloak of silence and of stillness had descended again, for she did not move or speak, and yet in some way made her presence more vital and more forceful than that of either of the other two.

Bobby waited, determined to be as silent as she was, and yet aware that his silence was nothing more than silence, but hers was that of a swift, deep-running current. He thought to himself:

‘She knows something, there's something, but is what she knows so tranquilly the same that Carsley knows that makes him look the way he does? And that Mark Lester knows that makes him get drunk at a night club? And that the little man at “The Green Man” knows that made him clear out so quickly?'

Jennie said:

‘You only come to try to get the servants to talk – well, there's nothing they can tell you.'

‘Perhaps not,' Bobby agreed, ‘but there are some who could tell us everything if they would.'

Then Brenda spoke:

‘There is always someone who knows, there must be. Only you cannot always tell what you know, not even if you want to, not even if you try.' She paused and then added: ‘Why do you trouble yourself so much? Murderers are not always hanged, why should they be? But they never escape, never. Always in the end they pay for what they've done.' Again she was silent; and when neither of the others answered, she began to move slowly back towards the house. Jennie followed, a little as if she were compelled to do so. The last glimpse Bobby had of the two tragic stepsisters was as they paused together for an instant on the threshold of the lighted hall before they entered.

Puzzled and troubled, even more than before, he went on to his lodgings where he found waiting for him a message instructing him to report to Mitchell in the morning. When he did so, he found the Superintendent a good deal worried by the suggestion now put forward by Marsden that Peter might not only be guilty of the first murder, but might also be planning a second, in order to get his wife's fortune into his own hands.

‘It's a thing that'll bear looking into,' he said, rather dismally; ‘but what's a poor department to do with one fellow saying another chap means to do him in and that other chap declaring on his side that the first fellow means to murder his wife, and all the time the very strong probability existing that the two of them are working together to confuse the issues, to put us off altogether? How's this for a theory? Carsley shot the old man, Marsden robbed the safe, and the two of them were working together then and now are working together to fool us? How does that strike you?'

‘If it's that,' observed Bobby, ‘I don't see, sir, where the little chap at “The Green Man” comes in, or what he can have told Lester that gave him the horrors, as the barmaid said. I've a feeling myself that if only we could lay hands on him...'

‘I daresay,' agreed Mitchell, ‘but we can't – at least, we haven't so far. Carry on with “The Green Man” though, he may turn up there, though it looks to me as if he were keeping out of the way on purpose. Perhaps it might be as well to try some of the other pubs in the neighbourhood, he may be using one of them now. Only why does he want to keep away from us? But that's the worst of this case. It's not only the facts we can't get at, we don't know what motives people have, why one gets drunk, and another comes “unfrozen” as your butler says, and another won't come forward. There's that elderly man you saw who left a footprint in the garden and spoke to Doran, we can't trace him either. You saw the appeals in the paper asking him to come forward?'

‘Yes, sir. I suppose he hasn't responded?'

Mitchell shook his head.

‘No one will tell us anything in this case,' he complained. ‘How's a poor detective to find anything out, if no one will tell him anything?'

‘It makes it very difficult,' agreed Bobby. ‘I hope the tickets for the Regency were what you wanted, sir?' he added as Mitchell seemed to lapse into silence.

‘Oh, yes, thanks,' answered Mitchell, ‘quite good seats, very good show, rather a lot of corpses in the last act, if you ask me, bit of a surprise, too, because I always thought Shakespeare was all spouting blank verse, and that last act had any gangster film I ever saw beat to a frazzle. Yes, a good show – and gave us a lot to think about, quite a lot to think about.'

That was the end of the interview; and Bobby, finding himself dismissed, went back to his task of inquiring at the theatres for some trace of the man he was looking for. His lack of success was complete, however, and when he had come to the end of his list, he went back to the Regency merely to gratify a piece of private curiosity, for somehow he had got it into his head, from what Mitchell had said, that it was not only entertainment the Superintendent had been in search of in his visit to the theatre. Moreover, Mitchell came from Aberdeen and was not therefore, in Bobby's considered opinion, very likely to have spent twelve and six on a stall, when cheaper seats were available, unless for some special reason, or unless he hoped to put it down on his expenses list.

The six-foot-six commissionaire Bobby remembered noticing before was still magnificent outside the Regency, and Bobby introduced himself.

‘You remember that sketch I showed you the other day?' he said. ‘I suppose you haven't seen anyone like it round here since, have you?'