Still held by the rigour of his training, he stooped once more and made a close examination of the body, discovering in the course of it two tiny tears in the dress shirt which evidently marked the entries of the bullets which had pierced the lungs. Then, his inspection completed, he left the body undisturbed, noted the time on his wrist-watch, and made a further jotting in his pocket-book.
As he did so, a fresh idea crossed his mind. Had there been more murders? What about the maids in the house? The one who had rung him up must have been somewhere on the premises, dead or alive. Possibly the murderer himself was still lurking in the villa.
Too tired to think of risk, Dr. Ringwood set himself to explore the house; but to his amazement he discovered that it was empty. Nowhere did he see the slightest sign of anything which suggested a divergence from normal routine. The cloak-room showed that two men lived on the premises, since he noted hats of two different sizes on the pegs; and there appeared to be three bedrooms in use, apart from the servants’ rooms on the upper floor.
The next step was obviously to ring up the police, he reflected. The sooner this affair was off his shoulders, the better. But at this point there flashed across his mind the picture of a methodical and possibly slow detective who might even be suspicious of Ringwood himself and wish to detain him till the whole affair was cleared up. That would be a nuisance. Then a way out of the difficulty opened up before him. He remembered paying a visit on the previous night to a butler down with 'flu. When he had seen the patient, the man's master had come and made inquiries about the case; and Ringwood had been able to reassure him as to the man's condition.
“What was that chap's name?” Ringwood questioned his memory. “Sir Clinton Something-or-other. He's Chief Constable or some such big bug. When in doubt, go to headquarters. He'll remember me, I expect; he didn't look as if much slipped past him. And that'll save me from a lot of bother at the hands of underlings. What the devil was his name? Sir Clinton . . . Driffield, that's it. I'll ring him up.”
He glanced round the hall in which he was standing but saw no telephone.
“It's probably in the smoke-room where the body is,” he suggested to himself.
But though he searched all the likely places in the house he was unable to find any instrument.
“They haven't a 'phone, evidently,” he was driven to admit. “But in that case, I can't be in Silverdale's house at all. This must be the wrong shop.”
Then he remembered the moment when the other car had swept down upon him out of the fog.