"Where is the wife now?" interrupted Hannasyde.
"Pushing up daisies," replied the Sergeant. "Died of pneumonia following influenza, a couple of years ago. Alfred knew Charlie had been to gaol, but he hadn't had word of him since he came out, and didn't want to. He never saw Angela, but he says he was pretty sure she wasn't on the stage when Charlie picked her up. From what the wife told him, he gathered it was a regular village-maiden story. You know the sort of thing. Romantic girl, brought up very strict, falls for wavy-haired tenor, and elopes with him. Well, poor soul, she paid for it in the end, didn't she?"
"Did Alfred Carpenter remember what her real name was?"
"No, because he never knew it. But taking one thing with another, it looks to me as though one mystery's solved at least, which is why no one ever turned up to claim Angela when she did herself in. If she came from a strait-laced sort of home you may bet your life she was cast off, same as Charlie was. I've known people like that."
Hannasyde nodded. "Yes, but it doesn't help us much. Did you dig anything out of Carpenter's landlady, or the proprietor of the restaurant he worked at?"
"What I dug out of Giuseppe," replied the Sergeant acidly, "was a highly talented performance, but no good to me. How these foreigners can keep it up and not get tired out beats me! He put on a one-man show all for my benefit, hair-tearing, dio-mios, corpo-di-baccos, and the rest of it. I had to buy myself a drink to help me get over it, but he was as fresh as a daisy when he got through, and starting a row with his wife. At least, that's the way it looked to me, but I daresay it was only his way of carrying on a quiet chat. Anyhow, he doesn't know anything about Charlie."
"And the landlady?"
"She doesn't know anything either. Says she's one for keeping herself to herself. That doesn't surprise me, either. She's not my idea of a comfortable body anyone would confide in. And there we are. It's Neville or no one, Chief. And if you want to know what he did with his weapon, how about him having slid a stout stick up his sleeve?"
"Have you ever tried sliding a club up your sleeve?" inquired Hannasyde.
"Not a club. Call it a malacca cane."
"A malacca cane would not have caused those head injuries. The weapon was heavy, if a stick a very thick one, more like a cudgel."
The Sergeant pursed his lips. "If it's Neville we don't have to worry about the weapon he used to do in his uncle. He had plenty of time to get rid of that, or clean it, or whatever he did do with it. As far as the second murder's concerned - I suppose he couldn't have got that paper-weight into his pocket, could he?"
"Not without its being very noticeable. The head of the statue on top must have stuck out."
"Might not have been noticed in the bad light. I'll get on to Brown again - he's the chap with the coffee-wagon - and that taxi-driver. Not but what I'm bound to say we questioned them pretty closely before. Still, you never know."
"And the hat?"
"The hat's a nuisance," declared the Sergeant. "If he hasn't got an opera hat, perhaps he borrowed the late Ernie's, just because he knew no one would expect him to wear one. He could have carried it shut up under his arm without the butler's noticing it when he left the house. When he changed hats, he must have stuffed his own into his pocket."
"Two bulging pockets now," observed Hannasyde dryly. "Yet two witnesses - we won't commit the girl; she was too vague - said there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. And that raises another point. The taxi-driver, who seemed to me quite an intelligent chap, described his fare's appearance as that of an ordinary, nice-looking man. He didn't think he would know him again if confronted with him. When pressed, he could only repeat that he looked like dozens of other men of between thirty and forty. Now, if you met Neville Fletcher, do you think you'd recognise him again?"
"Yes," said the Sergeant reluctantly. "I would. No mistaking him. For one thing he's darker than most, and not what I'd call a usual type. He's got those silly long eyelashes too, and that smile which gets my goat. No: no one in their senses would say he's like dozens of others. Besides, he's younger than thirty, and looks it. Well, what do we do now?"
Hannasyde drummed his fingers lightly on the desk, considering. The Sergeant watched him sympathetically. Presently he said in his decided way: "Angela Angel. It comes back to her. It may sound far-fetched to you, Skipper, but I have an odd conviction that if only we knew more about her we should see what is so obstinately hidden now."
The Sergeant nodded. "Sort of a hunch. I'm a great believer in hunches myself. What'll we do? Advertise?"
Hannasyde thought it over. "No. Better not."
"I must say, I'm not keen on that method. What's more, if her people didn't come forward at the time of her death it isn't likely they will now."
"I don't want to precipitate another tragedy," Hannasyde said grimly.
The Sergeant sat up with a jerk. "What, more headbashings? You don't think that, do you?"
"I don't know. Someone is pretty determined that we shan't penetrate this fog we're groping in. Everything about the two murders suggests a very ruthless brain at work."
"Maniacal, I call it," said the Sergeant. "I mean, just think of it! You can understand a chap cracking open another chap's head if he was worked up into a white-hot rage. At the same time you'd expect him to feel a bit jolted by what he'd done, wouldn't you? I don't reckon to be squeamish, but I wouldn't like to have done the job myself, no, nor to have seen it done. Nasty, messy murder, I call it. But our bird isn't upset. Not he! He waltzes off and repeats the act - in cold blood, mind you! Think that's sane? I'm damned if I do!"
"All the more reason for being careful not to hand him a motive for killing someone else."
"That's true enough. But if we are dealing with a lunatic, Super, it's worse than I thought. You can catch up on a sane man. His mind works reasonably, same as your own; and, what's more important, he always has a motive for having committed his murder, which again is helpful. But when you come to a madman's brain you're properly in the soup, because you can't follow the way it works. And ten to one he hasn't got a motive for murder - not what a sane person would consider a motive, that is.
"Yes, there's a lot in what you say, but I don't think our man's as mad as that. We've a shrewd idea of what his motive was for killing Carpenter, and presumably he had one for killing Fletcher."
The Sergeant hunted amongst the papers before him on the desk, and selected one covered with his own handwriting. "Well, Super, I don't mind telling you that I've had a shot at working the thing out for myself. And the only conclusion I've come to is that the whole thing's impossible from start to finish. Once you start putting all the evidence down on paper you can't help but see that the late Ernest wasn't murdered at all. Couldn't have been."
"Oh don't be absurd!" said Hannasyde rather impatiently.
"I'm not being absurd, Chief. If you could chuck Mrs. North's evidence overboard, all well and good. But, setting aside the fact that she's got no reason to tell lies now she knows that precious husband of hers isn't implicated in the crime, we have the postman's word for it that a woman dressed like her came out of Greystones at just after 10.00 p.m. on the 17th. So that fixes her. If it weren't for his having compared his watch with the clock in the late Ernest's study, I'd say old Ichabod was mistaken in the time he saw a chap coming out of the side gate. But he's a conscientious, painstaking officer, is Ichabod, and he's not the sort to state positively that it was 10.02 if it wasn't. I mean to say, you ought to hear him on the subject of false witnesses. Ticked me off properly, when I tried to shake his evidence a bit. But if you can make his evidence fit Mrs. North's, all I can say is you're cleverer than I am. It wasn't so bad when the only fixed times we had were 10.02, when Ichabod saw the unknown, and 10.05 when he discovered the body of the late Ernest. But the moment we began to collect more fixed times the whole case got so cock-eyed there was no doing anything with it. We're now faced with four highly incompatible times, unless you assume young Neville murdered his uncle, and Carpenter saw it, and bolted for his life. We've .got 9.58, or thereabouts, when Ernest saw Mrs. North's man off; 10.01, when Mrs. North left; 10.02 when Ichabod's man left by the side gate; and 10.05 when Ernest was found dead. Well, it just doesn't add up, and that's all there is to it. Unless you think Neville did it, and Mrs. North's covering him up?"