"Find out if the man at the coffee-stall saw anyone passing down this road about half-an-hour ago. Wait, I'll try and get out of the landlady exactly when Carpenter came home."
He walked down the passage to the kitchen at the back of the house, where he found the landlady fortifying herself with gin. She whisked the bottle out of sight when he appeared, and broke at once into a torrent of words. She knew nothing; and her poor husband, whom the shock would kill, was upstairs in bed with the influenza, and she had been with him for the past hour. All she could take her oath to was that Carpenter was alive at 9.30, because he had shouted up the stairs to her, wanting to know if a parcel of shoes hadn't come for him from the cobbler, as though she wouldn't have put it in his room if it had, as she told him, pretty straight.
"Steady! Could anyone have entered the house without your knowing it?" Hannasyde asked.
"They did, that's all I know," she said sullenly. "If someone got in, it must have been by the area door, and it isn't my blame. Carpenter, he ought to have bolted it when he come in. "Tisn't the first time he's been too lazy to put the chain up. The key's lost. I've been meaning to get a new one made."
"Did he use that door?"
"Yes, he did. Saved trouble, see?"
"Who else is in the house?"
"Me and my 'usband, and my gal, Gladys, and the first-floor front."
"Who is that?"
"A very nice lady. Stage, but she's resting."
"Who is on the ground-floor?"
"No one. He's away. His name's Barnes. He travels in soap."
"How long has Carpenter lodged here?"
"Six months. He was a nice young fellow. Smart, too."
"Were you friendly with him? Did he tell you anything about himself?"
"No. Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies, is what I say. As long as he paid his rent, nothing else didn't matter to me. I guessed he'd had his bit of trouble, but I'm not one for poking my nose into what don't concern me. Live and let five's my motto."
"All right, that's all for the present." Hannasyde left her, and went along the passage to the door that gave on to the area. The bolts were drawn back, and the chain hung loose beside the wall.
A few minutes later the police ambulance drew up outside the house. The divisional surgeon, the photographer, and the finger-print expert were soon busy in the basement room, and a fresh-faced young sergeant was dispatched to assist Hemingway in his search for possible witnesses.
Sergeant Hemingway returned just after Carpenter's body had been removed, and joined Hannasyde in the basement room, where he was engaged, with the help of an inspector, in searching through the dead man's possessions.
"Well?" Hannasyde said.
"Yes, I got something," the Sergeant answered. "The coffee-merchant only arrived at his pitch at 9.30, since when, Chief, the only person he's seen come down the road, setting aside you, me and the Constable on his beat, was a medium-sized man in evening dress, who walked quickly down the other side of the street, making for the taxi-rank in Glassmere Road. And what do you make of that?"
"Any description?"
"No. He didn't notice him particularly. Says it was too dark to see his face. But what he does say, Super, is that he wasn't wearing an overcoat, and he wasn't carrying anything in his hands. Talk about history repeating itself! I don't need to ask if you've found the weapon here. I wouldn't believe you if you said you had."
"I haven't. Did you find anyone to corroborate the coffee-stall owner's evidence?"
"If you can call it corroboration," said the Sergeant with a sniff. "There's a couple propping the wall up at the other end of the street. You know the style: kissing and canoodling for the past hour. I wouldn't set much store by what they say, but for what it's worth the girl seems to think she saw a gentleman in evening dress and an opera hat pass by about half-an-hour ago. Not what you'd call a lot of traffic on this road. I've put Lyne on to the houses opposite, on the chance someone may have been looking out of a window."
"Did the couple at the other end of the street notice whether the man in evening dress was carrying a stick?"
"Not they. First thing they said was they hadn't noticed anyone at all. I had to press them a bit before they came out of the ether, so to speak. Then the girl remembered seeing a man with a white shirt-front on the other side of the road, and the boy-friend says after thinking hard, yes, he believes he did see someone, only he didn't look at him particularly, and whether it was before or after the Constable passed them, he wouldn't like to say. Actually, it was just before, if the coffee-merchant is to be believed, which I think he is. What's more, they were going opposite ways, and there's an outside chance they may have passed each other. Shall I get hold of the chap who has this beat?"
"Yes, as soon as possible. Obviously he saw nothing suspicious, but if he did meet the man in evening dress he may be able to describe him."
"Not much doubt who he was, if you ask me," said the Sergeant. "It's North all right. But what he does with his weapon has me fairly beat. Sleight-of-hand isn't in it with that chap. You got any ideas, Chief?"
"No. Nor have I any idea why, if it was he, he had to kill Carpenter."
The Sergeant stared at him. "Well, but it's plain enough, isn't it, Chief? Carpenter must have seen the murder of the late Ernest. My own hunch is that he was trying his hand at blackmailing North for a change."
"Look here, Hemingway, if Carpenter was shown off the premises at 9.58 by Fletcher, how can he have seen the murder?"
"Perhaps he wasn't shown off the premises," said the Sergeant slowly. "Perhaps Mrs. North made that up." He paused, and scratched his chin. "Yes, I see what you mean. Getting what you might call involved, isn't it? It looks to me as though Charlie Carpenter knew a sight more about this business than we gave him credit for."
Chapter Eleven
The amorous couple, interrogated at the police station by Hannasyde, were eager to be of assistance, but as their evidence was vague, and often contradictory, it was not felt that either could be considered a valuable witness. The girl, who was an under-housemaid enjoying her evening out, no sooner discovered that the fact of her having seen a man in evening dress was considered important by the police than she at once began to imagine that she had noticed more than she had at first admitted.
"I thought he looked queer," she informed Hannasyde. "Oo, I thought, you do look queer! You know: funny."
"In what way funny?" asked Hannasyde.
"Oh, I don't know! I mean, I can't say exactly, but there was something about him, the way he was walking - awfully fast, you know. He looked like a gangster to me."
At this point her swain intervened. "Go on!" he said. "You never!"
"Oh, I did, Syd, honest, I did!"
"You never said nothing to me about it."
"No, but I got a feeling," said Miss Jenkins mysteriously.
"You and your feelings!"
"Tell me this," interposed Hannasyde. "Was the man dark or fair?"
But Miss Jenkins refused to commit herself on this point. Pressed, she said that it was too dark to see. Mr. Sydney Potter said indulgently: "You never sor a thing. It was this way, sir: me and my young lady were having what you might call a chat. We didn't notice no one particularly. What I mean is, not to be sure of them."
"Did you see the man in evening dress?"
Mr. Potter said cautiously: "Not to remember, I didn't. There was two or three people passed, but I didn't take no notice. It's like this: I do seem to think there was a toff walking down the other side of the road, but I wouldn't like to swear to it."
"Yes, and he must have met the policeman, what's more," put in Miss Jenkins. "It was just a minute after he went by that I saw the policeman. Fancy if he done it under the policeman's nose, as you might say. Oo, some people haven't half got a nerve! I sort of know it was a gangster."