"What are you talking about?" said Hannasyde impatiently. "If you'd forget Glass and attend to this case -'
"Forget him! I wish I could! Thanks to you, he's been to the pictures, and what he's got to say about it would make your hair stand on end. However, he found the postman, and Mrs. North was seen about ten o'clock - though not recognised - and she was not carrying anything. So at any rate she was speaking the truth about the time she left Greystones. You heard about Carpenter?"
"Yes, I've been talking to Fenton about that. From what he could pick up from this Light-Fingered Alec of his, it looks as though we ought to find Carpenter at home any time after 9.30 p.m. We'll drop round to see him, Skipper."
The Sergeant nodded. "Right you are. What time?"
"Oh! Give him half-an-hour's law, just to be sure of catching him. I'll meet you at the corner of Glassmere Road and Barnsley Street at 10.00 p.m. Meanwhile, you'll like to hear that the hall porter at Chumley Mansions recognised Fletcher's photograph as soon as I showed it to him. He was "Smith" all right."
"Well, we never had much doubt, did we?" said the Sergeant. "Was he able to tell you anything more?"
"Nothing of much use to us. Like everyone else who came into contact with Fletcher, he seems to have found him invariably pleasant. He knows nothing more about the girl than he told Gale at the time of her death."
"I must say it looks as though Angela Angel's suicide and the late Ernest's murder do hang together," pondered the Sergeant. "But I'm damned if I see where North fits into it, if they do."
"We shall probably know more when we've heard what Carpenter has to say," replied Hannasyde.
"What you might call the key to the whole mystery," agreed the Sergeant.