“It isn’t very hopeful, I’m afraid,” said Joan, as they looked together at the finished plan; “but I’m afraid it is all we have to go upon.”
“Not quite all, I hope. Did he tell you what the man he spoke to looked like—I mean the chap who gave him a match outside the Monico?”
“Yes, he was a tall, dark man, clean-shaven and very blue in the chin, wearing a long black overcoat and a squash hat. And he almost certainly had some trouble of the eyes. He wore glasses; but he kept blinking all the time behind them.”
“That ought to help. Now what about this woman, Kitty? What is she like?”
“He says she is about forty, but dresses—and paints—to look younger. She’s getting fat, has bright golden hair—certainly dyed—and wears a great many rings. She’s fairly tall, and walks with a bit of a waddle. Her eyes are dark and piercing, he says, and she has a smile that looks as if it was switched on and off like an electric light.”
“I must say she doesn’t sound attractive.”
“But he says she is—extraordinarily; and, what is more, she’s very well known. He has heard her other name, but he can’t remember it. He thinks she has had several surnames.”
“That seems to be all we can get to start with. What I propose to do is to follow your stepfather’s route, trying to find some one who saw him at each point where he stopped.”
“Yes, but you can leave a bit of it to me. We know that Marian and Helen and Carter all saw him coming here at a few minutes past ten, and the servants here say he left at about a quarter-past. He tells me he stopped outside the theatre just after that. If so, some one very likely saw him. I’ll see about that, and I’ll try to find out as well whether any one saw him passing again later. He must have passed at about 11.20 to half-past—I mean when he stood at the corner of Liskeard Street, and again just before twelve on his way back to the Club.”
“Very well. You take this end and I’ll follow the rest of his wanderings. And there is no reason why I shouldn’t get to work at once. It will be best to go over the ground in the evening, just as he did.”