“Only a vague one. Sometime in the autumn or before Christmas. By Jove, yes; it escaped me at the time, but she said that soon after the Colonel’s death another gentleman called and took her mistress out to dinner. I was so busy thinking about the colonel that I slipped the significance of that statement. It must have been you, Mr. Bruce.”
“So it seems.”
The barrister’s active brain was already assimilating this new information. If a woman like Mrs. Hillmer had lost a dear and valuable friend—one who practically formed the horizon of her life—she would certainly have worn mourning for him. It was a singular coincidence that Mrs. Hillmer “lost” Colonel Montgomery about the same time that Lady Dyke disappeared. Detective and maid alike had drawn a false inference from Mrs. Hillmer’s words.
“We must find Colonel Montgomery,” he said, after a slight pause.
“Find him!”
“Yes.”
“I hope neither of us is going his way for some time to come, Mr. Bruce,” laughed the policeman.
“White, I shall never cure you from jumping at conclusions. Upon your present evidence Colonel Montgomery is no more dead than you are.”
“But the maid said—”
“I don’t care if fifty maids said. There are many more ways of ‘losing’ a friend than by death. Pass me the Army List, on that bookshelf behind you there.”