For what it was worth, Joan had already been able to confirm her stepfather’s first statement about his movements. A door porter at the Piccadilly Theatre had seen him standing for a minute or two outside the main entrance “a bit before half-past ten,” and had noticed him walking off along Piccadilly towards the Circus. Thereafter, although Joan and Ellery hunted high and low, they could get no further trace of him until his meeting with Kitty Frensham in Leicester Square at a quarter to eleven. They found and interrogated without success the policeman who had been on duty in Piccadilly Circus. They even inquired of the porter outside the Monico and the Criterion and of a few street sellers who were standing at the corners. There was no information to be obtained; but they agreed that this did not greatly matter, if only they could get evidence bearing on Walter Brooklyn’s movements after half-past eleven, or still better, from 10.45 onwards. They would begin at the other end, and try to trace his movements between 11.30 and midnight. Accordingly, they walked down together to Trafalgar Square. Here there were two possible lines of investigation. Walter Brooklyn had first leaned for some moments over the parapet opposite the National Gallery: he had then walked down to the top of Whitehall, and had there paused to set his watch by a clock standing out over one of the shops. There was a slender chance that some one might have noticed him on one or other of these occasions.
“How shall we make a start here?” asked Ellery, rather forlornly, as they stood at the corner of Cockspur Street, overlooking Trafalgar Square. At the foot of the Nelson Column stood the usual curious—and incurious—crowd listening to some orator descanting on the rights—or wrongs—of labour.
“Follow the old precept, of course,” said Joan promptly. “Ask a policeman. There seem to be plenty about.”
Ellery went up to the nearest and began to explain his business. He was speedily referred to the sergeant, who was standing at the edge of the crowd, eyeing the little knot of speakers on the plinth, as if he was meditating a possible arrest. “He’ll know who was on duty on Tuesday night. I wasn’t,” said the constable.
The sergeant was communicative. First, he bade them wait a few minutes while he listened to what the speaker, then on her feet—for it was a woman—was saying. What she said appeared to give him satisfaction; for he smiled happily, as he entered a note in his book. Then the speech became more commonplace, and the sergeant, bidding a constable take notes while he was busy, signified his willingness to attend to Joan and Ellery. But, before they could tell him of their concerns, they had to listen awhile to his, which related mainly to the iniquity of allowing seditious meetings to be held openly in Trafalgar Square. “They tell us to take it all down, they do—every word; and then they do nothing. They shove it away in some pigeon-hole or other.”
“They” were presumably the powers that ruled, at the Home Office, over the doings of the Metropolitan Police.
“What I say is, What’s the police for, if it isn’t to stop this kind of thing?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the plinth.
“But you make an arrest sometimes, don’t you?” Joan asked.
“Once in a blue moon, maybe. But even then, more often than not the Home Secretary lets ’em go. Disgusting, I call it, and demoralising for the country. If I had my way . . .”
He had his way for a few minutes, as far as words went, and then, as the reward of patient listening, he let Ellery have his say. But he was not helpful.