"What did I tell you?" he said, when Hannasyde had finished. "The whole stage is getting cluttered up with supers. I'll tell you something else, too; by the time we're through we shall have had just about all we can stand of this North woman. I wouldn't mind betting she thinks we've got nothing better to do than run round in circles while she gets on with this three-act problem play of hers. I'm surprised at you, Chief, letting yourself get dragged into her differences with her husband. What's more, where's the sense of her hiding all this IOU business from him? He's bound to find out in the end."
"I daresay, but I can't see that it's any part of my job to tell him."
The Sergeant sniffed. "What's the husband like? Give any reason for coming home a week before he was expected?"
"None. He's a good-looking chap. Got a bit of a chin, and thinks more than he says. Determined fellow, I should imagine; not easily rattled, and by no means a fool."
"I hope we bring it home to him," said the Sergeant uncharitably. "From the sound of it, he's going to be as big a nuisance as his wife. No alibi?"
"So he said. In fact, he made me a present of that piece of information."
The Sergeant cocked an eye at him. "He did, did he? Did it strike you he might be fancying himself in the part of a red herring?"
"It's a possibility, of course. He may suspect his wife of having killed Fletcher. It depends how much he knows about her dealings with the man."
The Sergeant groaned. "I get it. A nice game of battledore and shuttlecock, with you and me cast for the shuttlecocks. Of course, our heads won't really start aching till Mrs. North gets on to it that the man she saw may have been Charlie Carpenter. We'll have her eating all that evidence of hers about the late Ernest showing him off the premises then. Probably boloney, anyway."
"It may be, but she spoke the truth about her fingerprints being on the door. I verified that before I left Marley. The real discrepancy is in the time. At 9.35 p.m. Budd left Greystones by the garden-gate. I think we can take that as being true. Mrs. North was walking up Maple Grove at that time, and states that she saw a fat man come out of Greystones."