"Come ahead," Bristow invited. "You'll have to be up here in this neighbourhood anyway if you want to see Withers. He came up to Number Five just a few minutes ago. You can catch him there."
After supper he went back to the front porch in time to see in the dusk the white uniform and cap of a trained nurse as she came down the hill. He surmised that she was one of the six nurses who lived in No. 7, the house between his and that of the murdered woman. These nurses were employed throughout the day at the big sanitarium located just over the brow of the hill at the end of Manniston Road.
Perhaps, she could tell him what he wanted to know.
"I beg your pardon," he called to her persuasively, "but may I trouble you to come up here for a moment?"
She obeyed the summons with slow, hesitant steps.
He pushed forward a chair for her and bowed.
"Unfortunately," he apologized, "I don't know your name."
She enlightened him: "Rutgers; Miss Emily Rutgers." In his turn, he told her briefly of his connection with the murder.
"I was wondering," he began, "whether you had ever heard anything unusual from Number Five."
Miss Rutgers, who was blond and too fat, had a heavy, peculiarly hoarse voice. She wanted to be certain that he had authority to "question people" about the case. He made that clear to her.