“What is it?” asked Jennins eagerly.
“No, no,” said Gimblet. “It is too wild an idea at present, though indeed I do not think I can be mistaken. But you have all the facts before you, Jennins, and are as able to come to the right conclusion as myself. I will leave you to think over the puzzle, while I go back to my flat and see if the answer to the wire I sent to Mrs. Vanderstein has yet arrived. It ought to be there by now.”
But he found no telegram awaiting him. He was annoyed and surprised at this, but the time taken by foreign telegrams is always uncertain, and Mrs. Vanderstein might have been out when his reached Boulogne. Lunch was being kept warm for him, and he made a hearty meal of Scotch woodcock and asparagus; with which he drank iced coffee and ate sponge cake instead of bread. There were strawberries to finish up with, and he left the dining-room with a peaceful smile on his face.
It was three o’clock, and the telegram was still undelivered.
Gimblet decided to wait in for it, and, having now leisure to think of others, rang up Sidney on the telephone and told him of the discovery of Barbara Turner’s whereabouts.
Incoherent questions came to him over the wire, but after a minute or two Sidney said “good-bye” and rang off hastily. The detective smiled as he hung up the receiver. In his mind’s eye he saw the young man dash out and drive swiftly in the direction of the hospital, and indeed the picture his imagination drew for him could not have been more accurate.
The afternoon passed and the evening wore away, and yet no wire came from Mrs. Vanderstein. It was tiresome, and Gimblet felt irritated with the lady for her lack of courtesy. Surely she might have replied by now. He felt that she held the clue to many things which perplexed him, and he could not understand her failure to give it to him. His own telegram had been very urgent. Well, the police were sending a man to see her; he was to go over by the 2.20 from Charing Cross, and by now he would be arriving at Boulogne. There could not be much more delay, telegram or no telegram.
Gimblet gave up waiting and went out again. He felt he must go to Scholefield Avenue once more. The tragedy that had taken place there filled his thoughts; and, being convinced in spite of Jennins’ contemptuous incredulity that the two mysteries were in some remote way connected, he was inclined to go and see if there were not some trifling point about things at No. 13 which he had overlooked, instead of waiting longer for the minute glimmer of light which Mrs. Vanderstein might be able to throw upon the darkness with which the whole affair was enveloped.
Scholefield Avenue looked very quiet and peaceful in the evening light; the few boys who still hovered about the gate, survivals of the crowd which the report of the murder had gathered there earlier in the day, wore the tranquil air of those to whom time is no object, and Gimblet, looking up and down the road, where the shadows lay long and the air was cool in the green twilight of the overhanging trees, thought again what a good place the murderer had chosen for his deed. Who would ever suspect evil in so calm and bright an oasis among the mazes of dusty, traffic-worn streets which surrounded it on every hand?
The house was in charge of a couple of policemen, who let Gimblet in without demur when he showed them his card, and followed him with their eyes with looks in which curiosity and admiration were blended. He went over the garden again, examining half-obliterated footmarks, and poking about between flowering plants lest something should be thrust away there and had escaped his notice. Then into the house, where he renewed his search, but without result. He looked into the drawing-room again, where all was as he had left it except that the body had been removed to a bedroom, then went into the library and gazed again at the dirty finger marks on the white paint of the door. Whose fingers were they, he wondered, which had left so many imprints? Was it the murdered woman who had been shut up in that room? Had Mrs. Vanderstein and her companion been there too, or was Jennins right, and their presence in that vicinity on Monday night been a figment of Miss Finner’s excited imagination?