Part 18 (1/2)

Indeed? You are sure it wasn't for you're Rogers?

Not so far as I can remember. I have an ideacan't be sure, mind youthat it was just addressed to 'Mr. Rogers' and nothing more. But that may be my fancy.

You remember delivering it?

Yes. Because I said to Mr. Rogers that you want to be careful of them thin envelopes in case they get lost among the others.

He took it himself.

That's right.

And where had it come from?

Ah. Now you're asking, said Fawcett. I don't know nothing about foreign postage. He implied that he was nothing less than an authority on the home variety. I can only say this came from abroad.

Well, I'm much obliged to you, Fawcett. That's all we shall require.

And Fawcett, though he couldn't afterwards have explained his reason for it, said, Thank you, sir, and left.

Stute was uncharacteristically silent and thoughtful for a moment, then he said, Might be worth following up. Send me that constable with the ridiculous name, Beef.

Galsworthy! Beef shouted without rising from his chair.

Stute winced but turned to the young man. Go round to Mr. Rogers, the bootmaker, and ask him if he remembers a letter arriving by air mail from abroad about a week before his adopted nephew came home. Find out who had written it, and to whom it was addressed, and anything else you can. And by the way, I would like a specimen of young Rogers's handwriting.

Very good, sir.

Once more we were alone.

My recollection of the whole of that day, in fact, is of spending hours in Beef's little office, with Stute receiving reports and sending out enquiries. It was a day for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the edges of our evidence, and squeezing out the last detail from local informants. Before mid-day the man who had searched the warehouse returned to say that he had found nothing. It was Beef's second constable who had done this job, a rather lanky young man, with a large nose, called Curtis.

There was nothing there, sir, he said quite coolly to Stute, to whom he was making his report, and you can take it that unless anyone had a key and went in from the door that opens on to the street, no one has been there. There was dust and cobwebs round the windows and doors on the river side which hadn't been disturbed for months.

And nothing in the place?

Nothing at all, sir.

Thank you, Curtis.

Stute never showed any sign of disappointment when he drew blank. And he had another disappointment a few minutes later when Galsworthy returned from the bootmaker's.

Well? he snapped at the constable.

I saw Mr. Rogers, sir, began Galsworthy rather breathlessly, and he remembered the letter perfectly. It was to him, he says, and had been sent by young Rogers himself from Rio de Janeiro on the way home.

Did you ask him what it was about?

Yessir. Nothing special, he said. It appears that young Rogers had the habit of sending them an air mail letter now and again when he was out there. Mr. Rogers looked to see if he'd kept it, but he hadn't. He found an old envelope addressed in young Rogers's writing and gave it to me. Here you are, sir.

We examined a dirty envelope. The writing was firm and straight, not altogether the writing of an illiterate man, but not ornate or scholarly.