“Around twenty-two or twenty-three according to her looks, but something she said made me place her at about twenty-five.”
“What did Opal Sunley tell you about what happened in Hocksley’s flat?”
“According to her story, she arrived for work at the usual time in the morning, saw bloodstains, went out to look at the automobiles, saw that someone had been riding in the back of Hocksley’s automobile, and spilling blood. She couldn’t find either Hocksley or Mrs. Perlin. So she notified the police.”
“That’s all she told you?”
“Just about. I had to worm it out of her about her boy friend. I think that was the main reason she didn’t want the police to report her as having been in that bungalow at one-forty-five in the morning. Yet she was driving a borrowed car. I got the license number, of course.”
“The boy friend’s car?”
“No. Strangely enough it’s not. It belongs to a girl by the name of Ethel Prentice who is evidently a close friend of Opal’s — lets her take a jalopy in times of need.”
“Anything else?”
“Oh, she told a few things about her job over there. This man Hocksley was very much of a man of mystery, and so is Karr who lives in the flat above him. Somehow, that’s taxing credulity just a little bit too much. Two men of mystery drifting into an apartment house. They arrive within a week of each other, and, before that, the flats have been vacant for five months.”
“You think Karr and Hocksley have some connection?”