"Newton handled his case," said the Sergeant. "He doesn't know much about him, beyond his little lapses. Young waster with no background, and a taste for hitting the high spots. Dances and sings a bit; been on the stage, but not what you'd call noticeably; at one time did the gigolo act at a cheap dance-hall in the East End; seems to have gone pretty big with the ladies: you know the type. Not in the late Ernest's walk of life at all. In fact, I was just thinking I'd hit on the greatest discovery of the age, which was that Bertillon had made a mistake after all, when Newton said something that opened out a whole new vista before me."
"Well?"
"He said that at the time of his arrest, which took place, as you'll notice, in November of 1934, Charlie was living with an actress - that means front row of the Beauty Chorus - of the name of Angela Angel!"
Hannasyde looked up. "Angela Angel? Wasn't there a case about a year ago to do with a girl called Angela Angel? Suicide, wasn't it?"
"It was," said the Sergeant. "Sixteen months ago, to be precise." He opened the case in which he had borne Ernest Fletcher's papers away from Greystones, and picked up a photograph that was lying on the top of a pile of documents. "And that, Super, is Angela Angel!"
Hannasyde took the photograph, and recognised it at once as the one which had struck an elusive chord of memory in the Sergeant's brain earlier in the day.
"As soon as Newton mentioned the name, which he only did because of the girl having been a case herself, poor kid, I remembered," said the Sergeant. "Jimmy Gale was in charge of her little affair, which was how I came to hear a bit about it at the time. Did herself in for no particular reason that anyone ever discovered. She wasn't in trouble, she'd got a job in the chorus of the cabaret show at Duke's, and quite a bit of money put by in the bank. All the same, she stuck her head in a gas oven one night. Well, looked at as a case, there was nothing to it. But there were points which interested Gale in a mild sort of a way. For one thing, she didn't leave any letter behind, explaining why she'd done it, which, in Gale's experience, was unusual. Nine times out of ten a suicide'll leave a letter behind which'll make some poor devil feel like a murderer for the rest of his life, whether he deserves to or not. She didn't. What's more, they never found out what her real name was. She even opened her bank account under the name of Angela Angel. She didn't seem to have any relations, or if she had they never came forward to claim her; and she wasn't, by all accounts, one of those who tell their girlfriends the whole story of their lives. None of the rest of the chorus knew much about her when it came to the point. But what they did know was that about seven or eight months before she killed herself she got off with a very nice gentleman, who set her up in style in a smart flat with the usual trimmings."
"Fletcher?"
"Taking one thing with another, and adding up a few simple figures, that's what it looks like, Chief. Not that I've got his name yet, for I haven't. There are two girls still dancing at Duke's who were there in Angela's time, but they neither of them seem to think they ever heard what her boy-friend's real name was. All they could think of was Boo-Boo, which was what she called him, but which doesn't sound to me the sort of name any self respecting man would put up with except from a girl he happened to have gone nuts over. So that's not much help."
"Any description?"