Was there any other line I could follow? I reflected earnestly and then sprang to my feet delightedly. Of course! I must visit the “scene of the crime.” Always done by the best sleuths! And no matter how long afterwards it may be, they always find something that the police have overlooked. My course was clear. I must go to Marlow.
But how was I to get into the house? I discarded several adventurous methods, and plumped for stern simplicity. The house had been to let—presumably was still to let. I would be a prospective tenant.
I also decided on attacking the local house-agents, as having fewer houses on their books.
Here, however, I reckoned without my host. A pleasant clerk produced particulars of about half a dozen desirable properties. It took all my ingenuity to find objections to them. In the end I feared I had drawn a blank.
“And you’ve really nothing else?” I asked, gazing pathetically into the clerk’s eyes. “Something right on the river, and with a fair amount of garden and a small lodge,” I added, summing up the main points of the Mill House, as I had gathered them from the papers.
“Well, of course there’s Sir Eustace Pedler’s place,” said the man doubtfully. “The Mill House, you know.”
“Not—not where——” I faltered. (Really, faltering is getting to be my strong point.)
“That’s it! Where the murder took place. But perhaps you wouldn’t like——”
“Oh, I don’t think I should mind,” I said with an appearance of rallying. I felt my bona fides was now quite established. “And perhaps I might get it cheap—in the circumstances.”
A master touch that, I thought.