“Oh, she was alone all right. Nobody with her.”
“And between that time and when you met us, nobody came out of the gate?”
“Not a soul.”
“You’d have seen them if they had?”
“Of course I should. Nobody come out till that wild chap did.”
The majesty of the law moved portentously down the steps and paused by the white gate post which bore the imprint of a hand in red.
“Kind of amateur he must have been,” he said pityingly. “To leave a thing like that.”
Then he swung out into the road.
It was the day after the crime. Tommy and Tuppence were still at the Grand Hotel, but Tommy had thought it prudent to discard his clerical disguise.
James Reilly had been apprehended, and was in custody. His solicitor, Mr. Marvell, had just finished a lengthy conversation with Tommy on the subject of the crime.
“I never would have believed it of James Reilly,” he said simply. “He’s always been a man of violent speech, but that’s all.”
Tommy nodded.
“If you disperse energy in speech, it doesn’t leave you too much over for action. What I realise is that I shall be one of the principal witnesses against him. That conversation he had with me just before the crime was particularly