“I see. Can you produce anyone to corroborate that statement?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I can't,” said Mesurier, with a slight uncomfortable laugh. “Seems silly, but the truth is I had a bad headache and I went to bed early.”
“You are a rotten liar,” observed Kenneth lazily. “Why bother? We won't give you away. I might even bestow a suitable reward on you. Or would that be indelicate?”
Giles said rather sternly: “Your own story is just as thin, Kenneth.”
“Admittedly, but I tell it with a much better grace.”
Kenneth pointed out. “What do you think, Tony? Did he do it? I don't believe he had the nerve.”
“Of course he had the nerve!” said Antonia indignantly. “The trouble with you is that you're so taken up with admiring your own cleverness in baffling the police that you don't think anyone else is capable of doing anything.”
Giles, who had ignored this interchange, was looking steadily at Mesurier. “When you say that a bobby saw your car on the night of the murder, do you mean that he saw a car of the same make as yours, or that he actually read your number on its plate?”
“My number,” Mesurier answered, “or so he thinks. But he could easily have muddled it up with another, which is, of course, what he did do.”
“I can so readily picture our friend the Superintendent lapping that story up,” remarked Kenneth. “Tony, your young man promised well at one time, but he begins to bore me now.”