`Oh, that's all right,' Mrs Larkin agreed, patting the puffs of hair over her ears. `If you birds are on the level with me, I'm on the level with you'… Well, I'm off to the pub. G'night. See you at the inquest'
13. Wherein Miss Bitton Burbles
When she had gone the rest of them sat silent. Dr Fell was wheezing sleepily. And again Hadley began to pace about.
'So that's settled, he said. `I think we can take Mrs Bitton off the list of suspects. I doubt if Larkin's lying. Her in formation is too exactly in line with all the other facts she couldn't possibly have known. Now what?'
'What do you suggest?'
`It all rests on what it was Driscoll remembered he'd forgotten to do when he spoke to Mrs Bitton in front of the Traitors' Gate. He started for somewhere, but he didn't get very far away, and then he ran into somebody…. the murderer.'
`Fair enough,' grunted the doctor.
`Now, first, there's the direction he, might have gone.' Larkin didn't see him go. But we know he didn't go along Water Lane towards the Byward or Middle Tower; towards the gate, in other words. Because Larkin was standing there, and she would have seen him pass.
`There are only two other directions he could have gone. He could have gone straight, along Water Lane in the other direction. The only place he could have gone in that direction is towards another arch, similar to the Bloody Tower and a hundred feet or so away in the same wall the inner ballium wall. From that arch a path leads up to the White Tower, which is almost in the centre of the whole enclosure. Now, unless all our calculations are wrong, and there's some piece of evidence we haven't heard, why on earth should he be going to the White Tower? Or, for that matter, to the main guard, the store, the hospital, or any place he could have reached by going through the arch?
`Besides, he hadn't got very far away from the Traitors' Gate before he met the murderer. Traitors' Gate is an ideal place for murder on a foggy day. But if Driscoll had been starting for the White Tower and met the murderer quite some distance from Traitors' Gate, it wouldn't have been very practical for the murderer to drive that steel bolt through him, pick him up, carry him back, and pitch him over the rail. The risk of being seen carrying that burden any distance, even in the fog, would have been too great.'