"Was he stabbed?" demanded the first-class passenger.
"No," said the stout man. "He wasn't. He was strangled."
"Not a characteristically Italian method of killing," observed the first-class passenger.
"No more it is," said the stout man. The prim man seemed a little disconcerted.
"And if he went down there to bathe," said the thin, elderly man, "how did he get there? Surely somebody must have missed him before now, if he was staying at Felpham. It's a busy spot for visitors in the holiday season."
"No," said the stout man, "not East Felpham. You're thinking of West Felpham, where the yacht-club is. East Felpham is one of the loneliest spots on the coast. There's no house near except a little pub all by itself at the end of a long road, and after that you have to go through three fields to get to the sea. There's no real road, only a cart-track, but you can take a car through. I've been there."
"He came in a car," said the prim man. "They found the track of the wheels. But it had been driven away again."
"It looks as though the two men had come there together," suggested Kitty.
"I think they did," said the prim man. "The victim was probably gagged and bound and taken along in the car to the place, and then he was taken out and strangled and——"
"But why should they have troubled to put on his bathing-dress?" said the first-class passenger.