‘Just a few minutes later. I went direct.’
‘You didn’t stop on the way?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Well now, monsieur, please don’t answer till you have considered carefully. Was there any way in which the cask could have been tampered with between the time it was loaded up here and your handing it over to Jean Duval at the Gare St. Lazare?’
‘None, monsieur. No one could have got on the lorry without my knowledge, much less have done anything to the cask.’
‘And I take it from that, it would have been equally impossible to remove it entirely and substitute another?’
‘It would have been absolutely out of the question, monsieur.’
After thanking and dismissing the driver, they returned to the manager’s room.
‘The position, then, seems to be this,’ said Lefarge, as they sat down. ‘The cask left your yard containing a group of statuary, and it arrived in London containing the dead body of a woman. The change must therefore have been effected along the route, and the evidence of the steamer people seems to narrow it down to between here and Rouen.’
‘Why Rouen?’ asked both gentlemen in a breath.