“I should say so maybe.”
“He was clean shaven, you say?”
“Yes, miss—not even one of these toothbrush moustaches.”
“Was his chin at all shiny?” I asked on a sudden impulse.
Mrs. James stared at me with awe.
“Well, now you come to mention it, miss, it was . However did you know?”
“It’s a curious thing, but murderers often have shiny chins,” I explained wildly.
Mrs. James accepted the statement in all good faith.
“Really, now, miss. I never heard that before.”
“You didn’t notice what kind of a head he had, I suppose?”
“Just the ordinary kind, miss. I’ll fetch you the keys, shall I?”
I accepted them, and went on my way to the Mill House. My reconstructions so far I considered good. All along I had realized that the differences between the man Mrs. James had described and my tube “doctor” were those of non-essentials. An overcoat, a beard, gold-rimmed eyeglasses. The “doctor” had appeared middle-aged, but I remembered that he had stooped over the body like a comparatively young man. There had been a suppleness which told of young joints.
The victim of the accident (the moth-ball man, as I called him to myself) and the foreign woman, Mrs. de Castina, or whatever her real name was, had had an assignation to meet at the Mill House. That was how I pieced the thing together. Either because they feared they were being watched