His next step was to telephone. Here again he was fortunate, for Henderson himself answered the call. He was enthusiastic when he discovered Fayre at the other end of the line and pinned him down then and there for lunch at his house.
Lord Staveley, as soon as he heard his plans, insisted on his commandeering one of the cars for the day and by twelve o’clock he was in Carlisle. He chose a busy garage near the station as a likely place to start his inquiries.
He found the manager in the office and, on the plea that he was acting for a farmer whose cart had been run into on the evening of March the twenty-third, ascertained that no car answering to the very meagre description he was able to give had been garaged there on the night in question. He drew as complete a blank at three other garages he visited and was compelled at last to give up the quest in despair. In one case he did hit on a car with Y.0.7. as the beginning of the registered number, but the owner was well known to the garage proprietor and the car had been in his keeping for a week prior to the day of the murder and, to his knowledge, had not been outside the garage during that time.
Rather disheartened, he drove on to Henderson’s and found the doctor and his wife awaiting him. They gave him a welcome that more than made up for his unsuccessful morning. Henderson, a huge, burly man with the strength of an ox and the gentlest of bedside manners, had married in the interval and was evidently immensely proud of his tiny, very capable-looking Scotch wife. They entertained Fayre lavishly and, so infectious was their open-hearted friendliness, that, by the time lunch was over, he felt as though the intervening years had vanished like a dream and that he was back again in his old student days. Henderson was able to give him news of several old friends he had lost sight of and they were so deeply engaged in discussing the past that it was not until they were settled with their pipes beside the fire in the doctor’s study that Fayre found an opportunity to bring up the subject of Gregg.
Henderson recognized the name at once as that of a man he had known fairly well at St. Swithin’s and was interested to learn what had become of him.
“Very able chap, he was, but a bit of a roughneck. He was very raw when he first arrived, I remember, and had to put up with a good deal of chaff. Came from somewhere in the North, I believe, and had got most of his training from an old local doctor who took an interest in the boy. Apart from that he was mostly self-educated. Correspondence schools and that sort of thing. Rather an interesting fellow, in his way.”
“Did you see anything of him after he left?”
“Lost sight of him entirely. I’ve a sort of idea that I heard a rumour at one time that he had a practise somewhere in London, but I’m rather hazy.”
“Do you remember at all who his associates were at the hospital? I’ve an idea that he knew some one I’m interested in and I don’t care to ask him point-blank.”
“His great pal was a man named Baxter. They used to go about a good deal with a couple of nurses, one of whom was by way of being engaged to Baxter. I remember that because there was a certain amount of talk about it. The girl had the reputation of being hot stuff and Baxter was supposed to be making rather a fool of himself over her. It’s extraordinary how it all comes back when one starts talking about old times. There was a St. Swithin’s man here the other day and we began gassing and, I give you my word, I felt at the end as if it was yesterday that we were there together. We were talking about Baxter, among other things, so that he’s fairly fresh in my memory.”