Well, he was getting on. He now knew how the cartridge had been put in the gun and how the trigger mechanism had been fixed. Cora had put the finishing touch to the trap. Just before she had given him the gun she had deliberately slipped back the safety catch. He remembered distinctly hearing the soft little click as the catch snapped hack. It was almost as if she and Sydney had planned the murder of Crispin.
His mind shied away from this idea. He remembered Cora’s look of loathing.
“We don’t touch murder. That’s something we don’t stand for. We didn’t tell you to shoot him. We only wanted you to frighten him.”
Then why had they fixed the gun like that?
George rubbed his sweating face with his hand. There was something wrong. He had had a feeling all along that there was something wrong, but he had been so besotted with Cora that he had not heeded his own uneasiness.
Begin at the beginning, he said to himself. The telephone booth at Joe’s. That started it.
“It’s a club in Mortimer Street, not far from you. They’re not on the blower, otherwise I’d’ve rung ’em,” Sydney had said.
But they had been on the blower. He had seen for himself the telephone booth in the Club.
Sydney must have known that. But if he hadn’t lied about the telephone, there would have been no reason for George to go to Joe’s and leave a message for Cora. And that would have meant that he would never have met her, never have fallen in love with her, never have been a besotted fool and never have allowed himself to be persuaded to commit murder.
The more he thought about it, the plainer it became. The story about the key and Cora not being able to get into the flat had been part of the plot. It was so simple that it had never crossed his mind that he was walking into a trap.