I winked at her.
“But how I do enjoy myself.”
III
As a form of relaxation I do jig-saw puzzles. Paula gets them for me from a legless hero she goes along and talks to on her afternoon off. This guy spends all his time cutting jig-saws from railway posters Paula gets for him. They make terrific puzzles and one takes me about a month to do. Then I pass it on to a hospital and get another off Paula’s pal.
From long experience in doing these puzzles I have found the apparently small and unimportant-looking piece is very often the key to the whole picture, and I’m always on the look-out for such a piece. In the same way, when I’m on a job I’m always on the look-out for some insignificant trifle that appears to have no bearing on the case, but very often has.
I had been sitting in my office for the past hour, brooding. The time was a few minutes past seven. The office was closed for the night. Only the whisky bottle remained.
I had jotted down a number of notes that looked impressive, but didn’t add up to much. And on reading through the list of likely clues I paused at Douglas Sherrill’s name. Why, I asked myself, had Janet suddenly broken off the engagement a week before Macdonald Crosby’s death? This fact didn’t appear to have any bearing on the case, but it might have. I couldn’t be sure until I found out just why the engagement had been broken off. Who could tell me? Douglas Sherrill, obviously, but I couldn’t go to him without tipping my hand, and I wasn’t ready to do that at the moment. Then who else was there? I consulted my notes. John Stevens, Crosby’s butler, was a possibility. I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see what kind of a guy Stevens was. If he looked as if he could be trusted it might pay me to take him into my confidence. Martha Bendix had said he now worked for Gregory Wainwright.
No time like the present, I thought, and turned Wainwright up in the book. I put through the call, and after the second or third ring a stately voice said, “This is Mr. Wainwright’s residence.”
“Is that Mr. John Stevens?” I asked.
There was a pause, the voice said cautiously, “Stevens speaking. Who is that, please?”