Marchant’s friend, Mr. Sago, or Tapioca or something, saw her there about tea time.”
“We haven’t checked his statement, remember,” said Tommy. “If, as you said to begin with, le Marchant is a friend of Una Drake’s, he may have invented this story.”
“Oh, we’ll hunt up Mr. Rice,” said Tuppence. “I have a kind of hunch that Mr. le Marchant was speaking the truth. No, what I am trying to get at now is this. Una Drake leaves London by the twelve o’clock train, possibly takes a room at a hotel and unpacks. Then she takes a train back to town arriving in time to get to the Savoy. There is one at four forty gets up to Paddington at nine ten.”
“And then?” said Tommy.
“And then,” said Tuppence, frowning, “it is rather more difficult. There is a midnight train from Paddington down again but she could hardly take that, that would be too early.”
“A fast car,” suggested Tommy.
“H’m,” said Tuppence. “It is just on two hundred miles.”
“Australians, I have always been told, drive very recklessly.”
“Oh, I suppose it could be done,” said Tuppence, “she would arrive there about seven.”
“Are you supposing her to have nipped into her bed at the Castle Hotel without being seen? Or arriving there explaining that she had been out all night and could she have her bill, please?”
“Tommy,” said Tuppence. “We are idiots. She needn’t have gone back to Torquay at all. She has only got to get