Part 30 (1/2)

I obediently went in search of Beef, and found him moaning at the bar, with a whisky and soda in his hand.

I do feel bad, he said. I 'ope I never 'ave a case wot takes me abroad again. Don't you feel at all queer?

Not at all, I a.s.sured him. It's quite smooth.

Smoove you call it? I call it 'orrible.

Stute doesn't seem too cheerful, I said to rea.s.sure him, but it's not seasickness with him. He's worried about this case.

Wonderful man, said Beef. 'E doesn't miss nothink. Look at the way 'e notices every detail. Thorough, that's wot 'e is. I shouldn't 'ave seen 'arf of wot 'e 'as. Still, that's training.

Bit different from the amateurs? I suggested, glad that Beef was realizing his own limitations.

Different thing altogether. 'E 'asn't got a lot of these 'ere theories like wot they went on. He 'as facts, and works from that.

Have you got any solution, Beef? I asked narrowly.

Beef turned to the barman. I'll 'ave another whisky, he said.

Have you? I repeated sternly, watching his crimson face.

Well, he admitted, I 'ave got wot might be the beginnings of an idea. Only it wouldn't do for me to say nothink yet. Besides, I think 'e's on to it now, or part of it anyway. So don't you go an' open your mouth.

I won't. But I think you might tell me.

It 'asn't gone far enough to say a word at present, returned Beef.

But we were interrupted. Stute hurried down and stood between us. There was more vivacity in his pa.s.sionless face than I had ever seen.

Come on deck, he said, presumably to both of us, but more to me than to Beef, I've got something to tell you.

We followed him on to the deck, but no sooner had we started to pace it than Beef excused himself hurriedly again, and went below.

'I believe I've got it, Stute said. I'm not sure, but you may as well hear what I think.

I nodded, and reflected that Stute had become a much more human person recently.

You remember when we were considering the girl Smythe, he said, we were up against what seemed an insuperable barrier. He had no time to murder her after being seen with her by Meadows, and before being seen without her in the pub by Sawyer. Or if he had time he had no place. We dismissed the chance of the person in the white mackintosh being someone else impersonating Smythe, and we thought it most unlikely that she had been obliging enough to wait in Braxham to be murdered later in the evening. That was, more or less, our case against its having been the girl.

Well?

Suppose, Townsend, suppose he had killed her before being seen by Meadows. ...

But. ...

Yes, Meadows saw her all rightbehind the, headlight of the motor-bike. But did he hear her? Did he, in fact, have any reason to suppose that she was alive at that time?

My G.o.d! The possibilities which this opened up were positively gruesome.