"Owen Hughes told her in a letter from Hollywood. He forgot that it was a secret that she had taken his cottage. He even mentioned the early-morning swimming."
"So simple. I see…Was she very expert with a motorboat, then?"
"She had been practically brought up on one, it seems. Used the river constantly. No one would have thought of questioning her comings and goings. She may have made that night journey down the river more than once before the opportunity she was looking for turned up. Curious, but one never thinks of the river as a high road to anywhere. We had considered the possibility of a motorboat, naturally, but not a motorboat from London. Not that it would have helped us very much if it had. The man's coat she wore was very misleading. Lots of women wear men's oilskins yachting; but I don't think it would have occurred to me."
There was a short silence.
Each man watched in his mind that boat's journey down the misty river, out to the many-lighted estuary, and along the many-lighted coast. One little town after another, from flaring dockyard lights among the flats to twinkling villa lights among the cliffs, must have lit that progress. But later, there must have been darkness; complete darkness and silence, as the summer fog pressed down on the water. What had her thoughts been, in that time of waiting? Alone, with time to reflect. And with no stars to remind her of her greatness. Or was her madness even then so sure that she had no doubts?
And afterwards — each man watched that, too. The surprise. The friendly greeting. Chris's green cap bobbing alongside the gray hull — the cap that had never been found. The woman leaning over to talk to her. And then —
Grant remembered those broken nails on Christine's hands. It had not been so easy, then.
"That finishes the case, sir, but it was really something else that brought me to see you. Another case altogether."
"Yes? Here's tea. You needn't wait, Binns. Sugar, Inspector?"
"I want to know where you took Rimnik."