"There's no need to take on about it," said the Sergeant, mollified. "It's just got to be a bad habit with you, which you ought to break yourself of. I'm sorry if I told you off a bit roughly. Forget it!"
"Open rebuke," said Glass with unabated gloom, "is better than secret love."
The Sergeant fought for words. As he could think of none that were not profane, and felt morally certain that Glass would, without hesitation, condemn those with Biblical aphorisms, he controlled himself, and strode on in fulminating silence.
Glass walked beside him, apparently unaware of having said anything to enrage him. As they turned into the road where the police station was situated, he said: "You found no weapon. I told you you would not."
"You're right," said the Sergeant. "I found no weapon, but I found out something you'd have found out two days ago if you'd had the brains of a louse."
"He that refraineth his lips is wise," remarked Glass. "What did I overlook?"
"Well, I don't know that it was any business of yours, strictly speaking," said the Sergeant, always fair-minded. "But the grandfather clock in the hall is a minute slow by the one in the late Ernest's study, which synchronised with your watch. What's more, I found out from Miss Fletcher that it's been like that for some time."
"Is it important to the case?" asked Glass.
"Of course it's important. I don't say it makes it any easier, because it doesn't, but that's what I told you: in cases like this you're always coming up against new bits of evidence which go and upset any theory you may have been working on. On the face of it, it looks as though the man you saw - we'll assume it was Carpenter - did the murder, doesn't it?"
"That is so," agreed Glass.
"Well, the fact of that hall clock's being a minute slow throws a spanner in the works," said the Sergeant. "In the second act of her highly talented performance, Mrs. North stated that that clock struck the hour, which was 10 p.m., while she was in the hall, on her way to the front door. You saw Carpenter making his getaway at 10.02. That gave him a couple of minutes in which to have killed the late Ernie, disposed of the weapon, and reached the gate. It's my opinion it couldn't have been done, but at least there was an outside chance. Now I discover that when Mrs. North left the study it wasn't 10.00, but 10.01, and that's properly upset things. It begins to look as though Carpenter wasn't in on the murder at all, but simply went down to try his luck at putting the black on the late Ernie, and was shown off the premises as described by Mrs. North. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Carpenter turns out to be one of those highly irrelevant things that seem to crop up just to make life harder. The real murderer must have been hiding in the garden, waiting for his opportunity, and while you were taking notice of Carpenter, and deciding to go and investigate, he was doing the job." ~
Glass considered this for a moment. "It is possible, but how did he make his escape? I saw no one in the garden."
"I daresay you didn't see anyone, but you didn't go looking behind every bush, did you? You flashed your torch round, and thought there was no one in the garden. There might have been, and what was to stop him making his getaway while you were in the study?"
They had reached the police station by this time. Glass paused on the steps, and said slowly: "It does not seem to me that it can have happened like that. I do not say it was impossible, but you would have me believe that between 10.01, when Mrs. North left the house, and 10.05, when I discovered the body, a man had time to come forth from his hiding-place, enter the study, slay Ernest Fletcher, and return to his hiding-place. It is true that I myself did not enter the study until 10.05, but as I came up the path must I not have seen a man escaping thence?"
"You know, when you keep your mind on the job you're not so dumb," said the Sergeant encouragingly. "All the same, I've got an answer to that one. Who says the murderer escaped by way of the side gate? What was to stop him letting himself out the same way Mrs. North did - by the front door?"
Glass looked incredulous. "He must be a madman who would do so! Would he run the risk of being seen by a member of the household, perhaps by Mrs. North, who had only a minute or two before passed through the study door into the hall, as he must have known, had he been lying in wait as you suggest?"
"Heard you coming up the path, and had to take a chance," said the Sergeant.
"Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom!" said Glass scornfully.
"Well, for all you know he was destitute of wisdom," replied the Sergeant. "You go and get your dinner, and report here when you've had it."
He went up the steps, and into the building. It was not until he had passed out of Glass's sight that it occurred to him that the constable's last remark might not have been directed at the unknown murderer. A wrathful exclamation rose to his lips; he half turned, as though to go after Glass; but thought better of it. Encountering the Station Sergeant's eye, he said: "Somebody here must have had a grudge against me when they saddled me with that pain in the neck."
"Glass?" inquired Sergeant Cross sympathetically. "Chronic, isn't he? Mind you, he isn't usually as bad as he's been over this case. Well, it stands to reason, doesn't it? His sort has to have a bit of sin in front of them to get properly wound up, as you might say. Do you want him taken off?"
"Oh no!" said the Sergeant, with bitter irony. "I like being told-off by constables. Makes a nice change."
"We'll take him off the job," offered Cross. "He's not used to murder-cases, that's what it is. It's gone to his head."
The Sergeant relented. "No, I'll put up with him. At least he's a conscientious chap, and apart from this nasty habit he's got of reciting Scripture I haven't anything against him. I daresay he's got a fixation, poor fellow."
An hour later, mellowed by food, he was propounding this theory to Superintendent Hannasyde, who arrived at the police station just as his subordinate came back from a leisurely dinner.
"You never know," he said. "We shall quite likely find that he had some shocking experience when he was a child, which would account for it."
"As I have no intention of wasting my time - or letting you waste yours - in probing into Glass's past, I should think there is nothing more unlikely," replied Hannasyde somewhat shortly.
The Sergeant cast him a shrewd glance, and said: "I told you this wasn't going to be such a whale of a case, Chief. Said so at the start. Bad morning?"
"No, merely inconclusive. Budd had been doublecrossing Fletcher; Neville Fletcher seems to be up to his eyes in debt; and North did not spend the evening of the 17th at his flat."
"Well, isn't that nice?" said the Sergeant. "Stage all littered up with suspects, just like I said it would be! Tell me more about friend Budd."
Hannasyde gave him a brief account of the broker's exploits. The Sergeant scratched his chin, remarking at the end of the tale: "I don't like it. Not a bit. You can say, of course, that if he had to hand over nine thousand shares which he hadn't got, and couldn't get without pretty well ruining himself, he had a motive for murdering the late Ernest. On the other hand, what he said to you about Ernest's not being able to come out into the open to prosecute him rings very true. Very true indeed. He's not my fancy at all. What about North?"
"North, unless I'm much mistaken, is playing a deep game. He told me that after dinner at his club he returned to his flat, and went early to bed. What actually happened was that he returned to his flat shortly after 8.30 p.m., and went out again just before 9.00. He came back finally at 11.45."
"Well, well, well!" said the Sergeant. "No deception? All quite open and above-board?"
"Apparently. He paused to exchange a word with the hall porter on his way in at 8.30; when he went out the porter offered to call a taxi, and he refused, saying he would walk."