“Very well, Sir Clinton. And I’ll admit that I had my suspicions of the valet. He seems to have a clear bill now in the matter of the finger-prints on the weapon. Perhaps I was a bit rough on the man; but he annoyed me—a cheeky fellow.”
“Oh, don’t let’s use hard words about him,” Sir Clinton suggested chaffingly. “Let’s call him cool, simply.”
“Well, his finger-prints weren’t on the handle of the sword, anyhow,” the Inspector admitted.
“I hardly expected them to be,” was all the comment Sir Clinton saw fit to make. “Now what about friend Foss? By the way, I don’t mind saying that I still think these two affairs at Ravensthorpe are interconnected. And one thing’s clear at any rate: Foss wasn’t the man in white. You remember he was wearing a cow-boy costume according to the valet’s evidence; and we found that costume in his wardrobe, which confirms Marden.”
The Inspector seemed to be taking a leaf out of Sir Clinton’s book. He refrained from either acquiescing in or contradicting the Chief Constable’s statement that the two cases were linked.
“Foss had more ready money in his pocket than most people carry; he was in a position to clear out of Ravensthorpe at any moment without needing to go back to his flat or even to a bank. I think these facts are plain enough,” he pointed out. “And they fit in with the chauffeur’s evidence, such as it is.”
“And he had no latch-key of his flat with him,” Sir Clinton supplemented. “Of course it was a service flat and he may have left the key behind him instead of carrying it with him. One could find that out if it were worth while.”
“There’s a good deal that needs explaining about Foss,” the Inspector observed. “I’ve got his photograph here, taken from the body yesterday.”
He produced it as he spoke.
“Send a copy to Scotland Yard, Inspector, please, and ask if they have any information about him. Considering everything, it’s quite likely we might learn something. You might send his finger-prints also, to see if they have them indexed there.”