"Le Touquet! Le Touquet!" exulted Jammy's mind. Now he was getting somewhere! Marta Hallard was not only within reach of Christine on that fatal morning, but she had the means to cover the distance easily. Le Touquet had opened the doors of his memory. Clements and she and Jammy in that far corner by the cocktail cupboard, and she answering Clements's idle questions. She had flown over, it appeared, with someone in a private plane, and had come back by the same method. And the plane had been an amphibian!
On that misty morning a plane had landed either on the downs or on the sea, had stayed a little, and had gone again without having entered into the consciousness of any but one lonely swimmer. Jammy was so sure of it that he could see the thing come out of the fog like a great bird and drop onto the water.
Who had piloted that plane? Not Harmer. Harmer hadn't been out of England. That was why the police were taking such an interest in him. Harmer had been only too much on the spot. He had an alibi of sorts, but Jammy didn't know whether it was a good one or not. The police were so damned secretive. Well, he was on the track of something that the police, for all their vaunted efficiency, had missed. Marta was a friend of Grant's: it was natural that he should overlook her: he had never seen her look at Harmer, as Jammy was seeing her now; and he didn't know about that plane, Jammy would take his oath. And the plane made all the difference.
And if it was a case of a plane, then there were two in the business. The pilot, if not an accomplice, was certainly an accessory before the fact.
At this point Jammy mentally stopped to draw breath. He looked surprisedly along the well-dressed silent rows to the smart black-and-white figure in the middle distance. What connection had that familiar presence with the person his mind had drawn? There was the real Marta Hallard, her soigne, gracious, serene self. How had he let his mind make her into something so tortured, so desperate?
But she was still looking every now and then at Jason, her eyes resting longer on him than they did on Lydia. And there was something in that unguarded face that joined the real Marta to that shadowy one that his imagination had created. Whatever she might be, Marta Hallard was after all capable of strong feeling.
A patter like rain fell into Jammy's thoughts; the polite percussion of gloved hand on gloved hand. Lydia had apparently reached her peroration. Jammy sighed happily and felt for his hat. He wanted to get out into the air and think what his next move was to be. He hadn't been so excited since Old Man Willindon had given him the exclusive story of how and why he had beaten his wife into pulp.
But there was going to be a question time, it would seem. Miss Keats, sipping water and smiling benevolently between sips, was waiting for the audience to collect its wits. Then some bold spirit began, and presently questions were raining around her. Some were amusing; and the audience, a little tired by the warm air, Lydia's voice, and the dullish lecture, laughed easily in relief. Presently the questions grew more intimate, and then — so inevitably that half the audience could see it coming — the query came:
Was it true that Miss Keats accurately foretold the manner of Christine Clay's death?
There was a shocked and eager silence. Lydia said, simply and with more dignity than she usually possessed, that it was true; that she had often foretold the future truly from a horoscope. She gave some instances.