pencilled: > “Having supper with Una. Savoy. Tuesday
“Where had Miss Drake been earlier in the evening? Do you know?”
“She had been to some rotten show called Pink Peonies or something like that. Absolute slosh so she told me.”
“You are quite sure Miss Drake was with you that evening?”
Mr. le Marchant stared at him.
“Why, of course. Haven’t I been telling you?”
“Perhaps she asked you to tell us,” said Tuppence.
“Well, for a matter of fact she did say something that was rather dashed odd. She said, what was it now?
‘You think you are sitting here having supper with me, Jimmy, but really, I am having supper two hundred miles away in Devonshire.’
Now that was a dashed odd thing to say, don’t you think so? Sort of astral body stuff. The funny thing is that a pal of mine, Dicky Rice, thought he saw her there.”
“Who is this Mr. Rice?”
“Oh, just a friend of mine. He had been down in Torquay staying with an aunt. Sort of old bean who is always going to die and never does. Dicky had been down doing the dutiful nephew. He said, ‘I saw that Australian girl one day—Una something or other. Wanted to go and talk to her but my aunt carried me off to chat with an old Pussy in a bathchair.’ I said, ‘When was this?’ and he said, ‘Oh, Tuesday about tea