“I'm not criticising you, Inspector,” Sir Clinton reassured him. “Not being a member of the public—for this purpose, at least—I know enough to appreciate your difficulties. There's no burking the fact that whoever's at the back of this affair is a sharper man than the usual clumsy murderer. He hasn't left you much of a chance to pick up usable clues.”
“I've followed up every one that he did leave,” Flamborough argued. “I don't think I've been exactly idle. But I can't arrest Silverdale merely because I picked up his cigarette-holder in suspicious surroundings. Confound the public! It doesn't understand the difference between having a suspicion and being able to prove a case.”
“Let's hear the details of this latest affair,” Sir Clinton demanded, putting aside the other subject.
“I've been trying to get hold of this fellow Whalley for the last day or two, sir, so as to follow up that line as soon as possible,” the Inspector began. “But, as I told you, he's been away from Westerhaven—hasn't been seen anywhere in his usual haunts. I've made repeated inquiries at his lodgings, but could get no word of him except that he'd gone off. He'd left no word about coming back; but he obviously did mean to turn up again, for he left all his traps there and said nothing about giving up his bedroom.”
“You didn't get on his track elsewhere?”
“No, I hardly expected it. He's a very average-looking man and one couldn't expect people to pick him out of a crowd at a race-meeting by his appearance.”
Sir Clinton nodded as a permission to the Inspector to continue his narrative.
“This morning, shortly before seven o'clock,” Flamborough continued, “the driver of a milk-lorry on the Lizardbridge Road noticed something in the ditch by the roadside. It was about half an hour before sunrise, so I expect he still had his lamps alight. It's pretty dark, these misty mornings. Anyhow, he saw something sticking up out of the ditch and he stopped his lorry. Then he made out that it was a hand and arm; so he got down from his seat and had a closer look. I expect he took it for a casual drunk sleeping things off quietly. However, when he got up to the side of the road, he found the body of a man in the ditch, face downward.
“This milkman was a sensible fellow, it seems. He felt the flesh where he could get at it without moving the body; and the coldness of it satisfied him that he'd got a deader on his hands. So instead of muddling about and trampling all over the neighbourhood, he very sensibly got aboard his lorry again and drove in towards town in search of a policeman. When he met one, he and the constable went back on the lorry to the dead man; and the constable stood on guard whilst the milkman set off with the lorry again to give the alarm.”
“Did you go down yourself, by any chance, Inspector?”