Ellery promised his good offices—for what they were worth.
“And Mr. H. G. Wells?”
Ellery again promised with rather more hesitation, to do what he could.
“And Mr. Bennett?”
This time Ellery, foreseeing further additions to the list, suggested that he should come back and have another talk with Mr. Pu in a day or two. He would certainly do anything possible to help him.
“And Mr. Bertrand Russell?” the Burmese was saying, as Ellery managed to talk himself out of the room.
Here at last, Ellery said to himself, as he left the hotel, was proof, proof positive, even all but certainty. Woodman had lied about his doings on Tuesday evening, and his alibi was a fake. At the time when he had said that he was writing letters in the small writing-room he was really somewhere else. He had left the writing-room at a few minutes before eleven, and he had only returned to it, by the stairs which led directly to the basement, about three-quarters of an hour later. The inference was obvious—to Ellery at least. But his new certainty that Woodman was the criminal was still of course very far from complete demonstration. A man might lie about his movements, and still not be a murderer. What should the next step be? He would see Joan, and convince her now that his suspicions had been rightly directed. She could hardly still doubt.
Chapter XXX.
A Letter and Its Consequences
One of Joan’s duties, during these troublous days, was to deal with Sir Vernon’s private letters. The management of the Brooklyn Corporation had passed, for the time being, into the hands of a subordinate; but there were many private letters to be read and answered. Ill as he was, Sir Vernon liked to be consulted about some of these; and Joan always set aside a few to discuss with him each morning. On the day following Ellery’s successful investigation at the Cunningham Hotel, Joan sat opening the letters at breakfast. Most of them contained little of interest; but there was one, marked Private, which was clearly of importance. As Joan read it, she felt that yet another of the clues leading to the discovery of the murderer had come unexpectedly into her hands.
The letter was from Sir John Bunnery, the successful solicitor, well-known in the sporting world as “the bookmaker’s attorney,” a nickname which he had earned by his long association with legal cases connected with the Turf. Sir John had been a friend of Sir Vernon’s in earlier years; but the two men had quarrelled many years ago, and since then they had seen nothing of each other. Carter Woodman, however, was, as Joan knew, a friend of Sir John’s, and she was not surprised when, glancing down the letter, she read his name.