“It appears that on the night of the affair at the bungalow, when Mrs. Silverdale met her death, Peter Whalley was walking along the Lizardbridge Road, coming towards town,” Sir Clinton began. “It was a foggy night, you remember. He'd just passed the bungalow gate when he noticed, ahead of him, the headlights of a car standing by the roadside; and he appears to have heard voices.”
The Inspector listened to this with all his ears. Where had Sir Clinton fished up this fresh stock of information, evidently of crucial importance? Then a recollection of the Chief Constable's warning flashed through his mind and he schooled his features into a mask of impassivity. A glance at Markfield showed that the chemist, though outwardly uninterested, was missing no detail of the story.
“It seems,” Sir Clinton went on, “that the late Mr. Whalley came up to the car and found a man and a girl in the front seat. The girl seemed to be in an abnormal state; and Mr. Whalley, from his limited experience, inferred that she was intoxicated. The man, Whalley thought, had stopped the car to straighten her in the seat and make her look less conspicuous; but as soon as Whalley appeared out of the night, the man started the car again and drove slowly past him towards the bungalow.”
Sir Clinton mechanically smoothed out his papers, glanced at them, and then continued:
“The police can't always choose their instruments, Dr. Markfield. We have to take witnesses where we can get them. Frankly, then, the late Mr. Whalley was not an admirable character—far from it. He'd come upon a man and a girl alone in a car, and the girl was apparently not in a fit state to look after herself. An affair of this sort would bring two ideas into Mr. Whalley's mind. Clothing them in vulgar language, they'd be: ‘Here's a bit o’ fun, my word!’ and ‘What is there in it for me?’ He had a foible for trading on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures, you understand?”
Markfield nodded grimly, but made no audible comment.
“The late Mr. Whalley, then, stared after the car; and, to his joy, no doubt, he saw it turn in at the gate of the bungalow. He guessed the place was empty, since there hadn't been a light showing in it when he passed it a minute or two before. Not much need to analyse Mr. Whalley's ideas in detail, is there? He made up his mind that a situation of this sort promised him some fun after his own heart, quite apart from any little financial pickings he might make out of it later on, if he were lucky. So he made his best pace after the car.”
Sir Clinton turned over a page of the notes before him and, glancing at the document, knitted his brows slightly.
“The late Mr. Whalley wasn't a perfect witness of course, and I'm inclined to think that at this point I can supply a missing detail in the story. A second car came on the scene round about this period—a car driving in towards town—and it must have met the car with the man and the girl in it just about this time. But that's not in Mr. Whalley's statement. It's only a surmise of my own, and not really essential.”
Inspector Flamborough had been growing more and more puzzled as this narrative unfolded. He could not imagine how the Chief Constable had accumulated all this information. Suddenly the explanation crossed his mind.