“Come to that, ’ow am I to know as you don’t think I’m the right person, mister?” queried the man shrewdly. “I was there all right, wasn’t I?”
“I’m ready to take your word for it that you never budged from the corner of the lane, and I’m taking my chances there, you know. But if I’m straight with you I look to you to be straight with me.”
The tramp leaned back on his pillows wearily. “What do you want me to say?” he asked bitterly. “That I saw the bloomin’ murderer goin’ up the lane with the weapon in ’is ’and? I tell you, I didn’t see no one, ’cause there wasn’t no one to see.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“As sure as I’m lyin’ ’ere, which I wish I wasn’t.”
The conversation languished and Fayre had almost made up his mind to give it up as a bad job and depart when the man turned on him suddenly.
“What time would you say that there murder was committed, mister?” he asked.
“According to what little we have been able to find out, about six-thirty. It must have been then, if the car you saw had anything to do with it.”
Fayre took some sheets of paper out of his pocket and looked up the notes he had made.
“Here you are. You saw the car going towards the farm at about six-twenty and you saw it again, coming away, at six-forty or thereabouts. At six-thirty you were at the Lodge gates of Galston. If you can prove that, I think you may consider yourself out of it altogether.”