“There’s a big car been over here,” Bell said. “Yet you wouldn’t think it was much of a motor road.” It was a narrow gravel road and very loose. Just below the steep pitch of the bridge a car had been stopped, and in stopping or starting again had torn up the loose gravel. Thence to the canal was only half a dozen yards. The path was much trampled and the grass and bushes by the bank beaten down. “All that may have been done fishing him out,” Bell said. “But that don’t explain the car. They took him off in a wood cart. I suppose since motors were invented there never was one came down this road and stopped just here.”
“Not till last night,” Lomas nodded.
“So somebody,” said Reggie, “somebody put Herbert in a car, brought him down here, and chucked him in. Who was somebody? Geoffrey and the angel wife, eh, Lomas, old thing?”
“Somebody put in some fine work, what? He wouldn’t have been found for weeks or for ever, but a barge came along and stirred him up. And they don’t have a barge along here once a month.”
“Yes, there’s plenty of brains about somewhere. Well, let’s get busy. Herbert’s happy home comes next.”
The car again broke the law on the way back.
Herbert Charlecote had lived in a big block of flats several stories up.
“Did himself pretty expensively, don’t you know,” Lomas said, looking round the elaborate room.
“He’s paid for all now, sir,” said Superintendent Bell.
“Do you know, I don’t feel sentimental about dear Herbert’s doom,” Reggie smiled. “You’d better get on to his papers. I want a man on the ’phone,” and he went out and was gone some time.