“I see we shall have to be quite clear about this, Inspector,” he said, bluntly. “By the look of you, you seemed to think I’d be taken aback by this evidence, because Mr Chacewater is a friend of mine. I was taken aback—naturally enough. But if you think it’s going to make any difference to the conduct of this case—and I seemed to see something of the sort in your face—you can put that out of your mind once for all. The business of the police is to get hold of the murderer, whoever he may be. Friendship doesn’t come into these affairs, Inspector. So kindly don’t suspect me of anything of that kind in future. You know what I mean; I needn’t put it into words.”
Without giving Armadale time for a reply, he picked up the last print.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the set of prints I took from the valet’s fingers,” the Inspector hastened to explain. “It corresponds to nothing I’ve found anywhere else. You can see it’s a whorl type on the thumb.”
Sir Clinton examined the print for a moment or two, then put it down.
“What about the box and the wrist-watch?” he asked.
Inspector Armadale’s face showed that here he was puzzled.
“There’s nothing on either of them—not a recent mark of any description. And yet the man who packed them up must have fingered both things.”
“With gloves on, evidently.”
“But why gloves?” the Inspector demanded.
“Why gloves?” Sir Clinton echoed, rather sarcastically. “To avoid leaving finger-prints, of course. That’s obvious.”
“But why avoid leaving finger-prints on a thing that you’re sending to a jeweller for repair?”
“Think it over, Inspector. I won’t insult you by telling you my solution. Let’s take another point. Have you the watch itself here?”
The Inspector produced it and handed it over. Sir Clinton took out a pocket-knife and opened the back of the case.
“No use,” he announced, after examining the back cover carefully. “It’s never been repaired. There are no reference marks scratched on the inside of the back as there usually are when a watch has gone back to the watch-makers. If there had been, we might have found out something about Foss in that way, by getting hold of the watch-makers. By the way, have you timed this thing as I asked you to do?”
“It’s running on time,” Armadale answered. “It hasn’t varied a rap in the last twelve hours.”
“A practically new watch; running to time; never needed repair so far; dispatched by post with no finger-marks of the dispatcher: surely you can see what that means?”
Inspector Armadale shook his head.
“It might be a secret message,” he hazarded, though without much confidence. “I mean a prearranged code.”
“So it might,” Sir Clinton agreed. “The only thing against that in my mind is that I’m perfectly sure that it wasn’t.”
Armadale looked sulky.
“I’m hardly clever enough to follow you, sir, I’m afraid.”
Sir Clinton’s expression grew momentarily stern; but the shade passed from his face almost instantly.
“This is one of these cases, Inspector, where I think that two heads are better than one. Now if I tell you what’s in my mind, it might tempt you to look at things exactly as I do; and then we’d have lost the advantage of having two brains at work on the business independently. We’re more likely to be usefully employed if we pool the facts and keep our interpretations separate from each other.”
The tone of the Chief Constable’s voice went a good way towards soothing the Inspector’s ruffled feelings, the more so since he saw the weight of Sir Clinton’s reasoning.
“I’m sorry, sir. I quite see your point now.”
Sir Clinton had the knack of leaving no ill-feelings in his subordinates. By an almost imperceptible change of manner, he dismissed the whole matter and restored cordiality again.
“Let’s get back to the pure facts, Inspector. Each of us must look at them in his own way; but we can at least examine some of them without biasing each other. Did you get any more information out of that chauffeur?”
Inspector Armadale seemed glad enough to forget the slight friction between himself and his Chief, as the tone of his voice showed when he replied.
“I could get nothing out of him at all, sir. He seems a stupid sort of fellow. But it was quite clear that somehow or other he’d picked up the idea that Foss meant to leave Ravensthorpe for good yesterday afternoon. He stuck to that definitely; and the packing up of his traps shows that he believed it.”
“We can take it, then, that Foss gave reason for the man thinking that he was going away. Put your own interpretation on that, Inspector; but you needn’t tell me what you make of it.”
The Inspector’s smile showed that ill-feeling had gone.
“Very well, Sir Clinton. And I’ll admit that I had my suspicions of the valet. He seems to have a clear bill now in the matter of the finger-prints on the weapon. Perhaps I was a bit rough on the man; but he annoyed me—a cheeky fellow.”
“Oh, don’t let’s use hard words about him,” Sir Clinton suggested chaffingly. “Let’s call him cool, simply.”
