“What about it?”
“Well,” remarked Anthony slowly, “there’s been no rain for over a week—and the temperature has been decidedly high for several days now—hasn’t it? I should have thought that anybody driving that car would have been only too glad to have kept it open. That’s the point I’ve been considering. Of course—they may have been put up after the car returned.”
He paused and rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. Bannister regarded him with the semblance of a grin playing round the corners of his mouth. He translated it into words. “I haven’t yet accepted as final your theory that this is the identical car that Miss Delaney had at Seabourne,” he reminded Anthony.
The lines of Mr. Bathurst’s mouth were firmly set. “You can take it from me that it is, Inspector,” he announced with an unmistakable air of determination, “and I hope in time to be able to prove it to you.”
“Perhaps you will. I shall want some convincing though. Still—even so—assuming for the moment that your idea is correct—the car after all may have been used late at night—when the air begins to feel a bit cold.”
“That’s perfectly true,” conceded Anthony, “and there’s yet another possible explanation—one which I’m disposed to think may eventually prove to be the correct one. The person that drove this car back to Tranfield from Seabourne wanted to be screened from observation as much as possible. So he or she had the side-screens in and the hood up.”
“That’s certainly a point, Mr. Bathurst,” admitted Bannister, “I grant you I hadn’t thought of that.” He rubbed the ridge of his jaw with his finger-tips. “Give me a hand, Mr. Bathurst,” he said, “let’s get the hood down—we shall be able to see things more clearly then. Mind your fingers! That’s the ticket! Now get these side-screens out.”
Anthony pulled the rods from the sockets prior to opening the door of the car.
“Hallo!” exclaimed the Inspector sharply, “what’s this under the seat?” Anthony watched him as he bent down to pull an object out from beneath the farther seat. It was a suit-case bearing the initials “S.D.” “What do you make of this, Mr. Bathurst—the second suit-case we’ve encountered?”
Anthony smiled whimsically. “Two ladies—two suit-cases, Inspector. I don’t know that I’m overwhelmingly surprised to run up against this second one. If Miss Delaney intended to stay in Seabourne for any length of time as the people at the ‘Lauderdale’ testify—and as the postcard from Otterton indicates also—she would almost certainly carry something in the nature of a suit-case. No,” he shook his head as though attempting to measure the situation thoroughly, “I’m not surprised, Inspector.”