“There’s just one point that occurred to me since you told us about that interview you and Maurice had with Foss before you went to the museum. You were sitting on the terrace, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Joan confirmed.
“Then you must have seen Foss’s car drive up when it came to wait at the front door for him?”
“I remember seeing it come up just before we went to the museum. I didn’t say anything about it before. It didn’t seem to matter much.”
“That was quite natural,” Sir Clinton reassured her. “In fact, I’m not sure that it matters much even yet. I’m just trying for any evidence I can get. Tell me anything whatever that you noticed, no matter whether it seems important or not.”
Joan thought for almost a minute before replying.
“I did notice the chauffeur putting the hood up, and I wondered what on earth he was doing that for on a blazing day.”
“Anything else?”
“He had his tool-kit out and seemed to be going to do some repair or other.”
“At the moment when he’d brought the car round for Foss?” demanded the Inspector, rather incredulously. “Surely he’d have everything spick and span before he left the garage?”
“You’d better ask him about it himself, Inspector,” said Joan, tartly. “I’m merely telling what I saw; and I saw that plain enough. Besides, he may have known he’d plenty of time. Mr Foss was going away with us and obviously he wasn’t in a hurry to use the car.”
Sir Clinton ignored the Inspector’s interruption.
“I’ve got my own car at the door,” he observed. “Perhaps you could go out on to the terrace and direct me while I bring it into the same position as you saw Foss’s car that afternoon.”
Joan agreed; and they went down together.
“Now,” said Sir Clinton as he started the engine, “would you mind directing me?”
Joan, from the terrace, indicated how he was to manœuvre until he had brought his own car into a position as near as possible to that occupied by Foss’s car on the afternoon of the murder.
“That’s as near as I can get it,” she said at last.
Sir Clinton turned in his seat and scanned the front of Ravensthorpe.
“What window is this that I’m opposite?” he inquired.
“That’s the window of the museum,” Joan explained. “But you can’t see into the room, can you? You’re too low down there.”
“Nothing more than the tops of the cases,” Sir Clinton said. “You’d better get aboard, Inspector. There’s nothing more to do here.”
He waved good-bye to Joan as Armadale stepped into the car, and then drove down the avenue. The Inspector said nothing until they had passed out of the Ravensthorpe grounds and were on the high road again. Then he turned eagerly to the Chief Constable.
“That was a splash of blood you found on the wall of the underground room, wasn’t it? I recognized it at once.”
“Don’t get excited about it, Inspector,” said Sir Clinton, soothingly. “Of course it was blood; but we needn’t shout about it from the house-tops, need we?”
Armadale thought he detected a tacit reproof for his exclamation at the time the discovery was made.
“You covered up that word or two of mine very neatly, sir,” he admitted frankly. “I was startled when I saw that spot of blood on the wall, and I nearly blurted it out. Silly of me to do it, I suppose. But you managed to smother it up with that bungling with your lamp before I’d given anything away. I’d no notion you wanted to keep the thing quiet.”
“No harm done,” Sir Clinton reassured him. “But be careful another time. One needn’t show all one’s cards.”
“You certainly don’t,” Armadale retorted.
“Well, you have all the facts, Inspector. What more do you expect?”
Armadale thought it best to change the subject.
“That water that we saw down there,” he went on. “That never leaked in through the roof. The masonry overhead was as tight as a drum and there wasn’t a sign of drip-marks anywhere. That water came from somewhere else. Someone had been washing up in that cellar. There had been more blood there—lot’s of it; and they’d washed it away. That tiny patch was a bit they’d overlooked. Isn’t that so, sir?”
“That’s an inference and not a fact, Inspector,” Sir Clinton pointed out, with an expression approaching to a grin on his face. “I don’t say you’re wrong. In fact, I’m sure you’re right. But only facts are supposed to go into the common stock, remember.”
“Very good, sir.”
But the Inspector had something in reserve.
“I’ll give you a fact now,” he said with ill-suppressed triumph. “As you came away, you happened to ask Mr Chacewater if he’d come home by the first train this morning.”
“Yes.”
“And he said he did?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Armadale, with a tinge of derision in his voice, “he took you in, there; but he didn’t come over me with that tale. He didn’t come by the first train; he wasn’t in it! And what’s more, he didn’t come by train to our station at all, for I happened to make inquiries. I knew you were anxious for him to come back, and I thought I’d ask whether he’d come.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Sir Clinton.
