“But, miss, Mr. Woodman is such a short-tempered gentleman. And you don’t know how angry he’d be if he knew what I have been saying to you.”
“You’ll have to look after him, Moorman. See that he doesn’t worry too much. By the way, I suppose I couldn’t catch him now at lunch. Where does he usually lunch?”
“Generally at the Blue Boar up Holborn, miss. He generally goes to the Blue Boar every day when he’s in this part.”
“If I try there, and don’t find him, where else could I try? Does he ever go to any other restaurant?”
“I don’t quite know where he’d be, miss. One day last week he went to the Avenue by Hatton Garden. But I don’t think he’s been there since. He’s never been there but the once to my knowledge.”
“When was that, Moorman?”
“As it happens, miss, I can tell you. It was the day we heard of those terrible murders. Last Wednesday, miss.”
“Thank you, Moorman. I’ll see if he’s at either of those places. If not, I may come back.”
But Joan did not go to either of the places of which Moorman had told her. Instead, she went to the nearest telephone box, and ’phoned to Ellery, who was lunching at his club, to come at once and meet her outside Chancery Lane Station. Meanwhile, she went into an A. B. C. and ordered a cup of coffee. As she waited she took out the coat-button and had a good look at it.
She was not in much doubt. The button was of a quite peculiar kind—a bright brass button identical with those which George Brooklyn always wore on his summer evening coat. Here was luck indeed. According to her theory Carter Woodman had been mistaken for George Brooklyn because he had deliberately come out of Liskeard House wearing George’s coat and opera hat. George was very particular with his dress, and the coat was quite unmistakable. With these, if not in them, he must have returned to the Cunningham Hotel, where he would have stowed them away somewhere safely for the night. But the next morning his first object would be to get rid of their incriminating presence. She had guessed that he would pack them away in the bag which he usually carried, and so leave for the office bearing them away without any risk of arousing suspicion. Then her first thought had been that he would leave them in some railway cloak-room, or drop them quietly into the river. But this would involve the risk that the bag might turn up, and be identified as his. What would be the safest way of disposing of the hat and coat without leaving the bag, or running any risk of identification? She thought she had guessed at least one way in which it might have been done, and it was to follow this up that she wanted Ellery’s help. She had now proved definitely to her own satisfaction that the coat had been in Woodman’s bag; but she was not sure whether the police would be willing to accept the evidence of a solitary coat-button.