“Oh, no!” Alec groaned. “Tea!”
“Station!” returned Roger firmly; and station it was.
But even the station did not prove any more fruitful. On the plea of making inquiries for a friend, Roger succeeded in extracting with some difficulty, from a very bucolic porter, the information that only half-a-dozen trains in a day stopped there (the place was indeed little more than a halt), and none at all after seven o’clock in the evening. The earliest in the morning was soon after six, and no passengers had been picked up so far as he knew. No, he hadn’t seen a stranger arrive yesterday; leastways, not to notice one like.
“After all, it’s only what we might have expected,” Roger remarked philosophically, as they set off homewards at last. “If the fellow came by train at all, he’d probably go to Elchester. He’s no fool, as we knew very well.”
Alec, now that the prospect of tea and shade was definitely before him, was ready to discuss the matter rather more amicably.
“You’re quite sure now that he is a stranger, then?” he asked. “You’ve given up the idea that it’s anybody actually in this neighbourhood?”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” Roger retorted. “I’m not sure of any blessed thing about him, except that he wears large boots, is strong, and is no ordinary criminal; and that he corresponds closely with the quite distinct mental picture I had formed of the late lamented Mr. John Prince. He may be a stranger to the neighbourhood, and he may not. We know that he was still in it during the morning, because he managed to communicate with the occupants of the household. But as for anything more definite than that, we simply can’t say, not knowing his motive. By Jove, I do wish we could discover that! It would narrow things down immensely.”
“I tell you something that never seems to have occurred to us,” Alec remarked suddenly. “Why shouldn’t it have been just an ordinary burglar, who got so panic-stricken when he found he’d actually killed his householder that he hadn’t the nerve to complete what he came for and simply hurried off? That seems to me as probable as anything, and it fits the facts perfectly.”
“Ye-es; we did rather touch on the burglar idea at the very beginning, didn’t we? Do you realise that it was only five hours ago, by the way? It seems more like five weeks. But that was before the curious behaviour of all these other people impressed itself upon us.”
“Upon you, you mean. I still think you’re making ever so much too much of that side of it. There’s probably some perfectly simple explanation, if we only knew it. I suppose you mean Jefferson and Mrs. Plant?”