He stepped back on to the path again.
“Now, Inspector, we'll have to leave you here in charge. It seems to be your usual rôle in these days. I'll send a couple of men up to relieve you—the fellow who makes our scale-models, too. You can set him to work. And I'll make arrangements for the removal of Mrs. Silverdale's body.”
“Very good, sir. I'll stay here till relieved.”
“Then Dr. Ringwood and I had better get away at once.”
They walked round the bungalow to the car. As he drove away, Sir Clinton turned to the doctor.
“We must thank you again, doctor, for coming out here.”
“Oh, that's all right,” Ringwood assured him. “I got Ryder to look after my patients—at least the worst ones—this morning. Very decent of him. He made no bones about it when he heard it was you who wanted me. It hasn't been a pleasant job, certainly; but at least it's been a change from the infernal grind of Carew's practice.”
Sir Clinton drove for a few minutes in silence, then he put a question to the doctor.
“I suppose it's not out of the question that young Hassendean might have driven from the bungalow to Ivy Lodge with those wounds in his lungs?”
“I see nothing against it, unless the P.M. shows something that makes it impossible. People with lung-wounds—even fatal ones—have managed to get about quite spryly for a time. Of course, it's quite on the cards that his moving about may have produced fresh lesions in the tissues. What surprises me more is how he managed to find his way home through that fog last night.”