"It was the way the prison doctor and governor and the rest came down to certify death after an execution. Also the way they carried the body up again, so the prisoners wouldn't get a look at it from windows."
"Ah! So I reasoned! The passage must lead to—"
'To the prison mortuary on the ground floor of Wing B," Masters said slowly. "Along a little passage, turn left to another passage, up a flight of steps into the mortuary. Mr. Drake was sitting all night with his back to one wall of the mortuary."
"I was?"
"Oh, ah. The door's a little way down from where you were sitting, in the wall between the aisle and the paper-bales. Listen, Mr. Stannard!"
Masters held up a pencil and studied its point
"We know how you got up into the mortuary, pretty well done in," said Masters, "and with a bad ankle. You managed to get to the condemned cell, and rang the alarm-bell till the rope broke. The constable found you there afterwards. Now could you give me some answers?'
"What the devil do you think I've been doing?"
"Now, now! No call to get excited!’
Stannard’s cigar had burnt down raggedly. He dropped it into an ashtray beside the sofa. With some fervency Martin wished that the Chief Inspector, who could at times be as yielding yet as smothering and stifling as a feather bed, would end a questioning which was having such bad effect on — Ruth, for one.