No, Grant could think of nothing against that, but his eye was on the piece of paper that Tad was fishing from his pocket.
‘Did you find the book?’
‘Oh, yes. I had only to lean in and pick it up. That guy doesn’t do any homework, it seems. It’s the dullest list of engagements outside a prison. Not a gardenia from start to finish. And no good to us anyway.’
‘No good?’
‘He was busy, it seems. Will I write out that advertisement for the papers?’
‘Yes, do. There’s paper in my desk.’
‘Which papers shall we send it to?’
‘Write six, and we can address them later.’
He looked down at Tad’s child-like copy of the entries in Lloyd’s engagement book. The entries for the 3rd and 4th of March. And as he read them the full absurdity of his suspicions came home to him. What was he thinking of? Was his mind still the too-impressionable mind of a sick man? How could he ever have dreamed that Heron Lloyd could possibly have been moved to murder? Because that was what he had been thinking, wasn’t it? That somehow, in some way that they could not guess, Lloyd had been responsible for Bill Kenrick’s death.
He looked at the crucial entries, and thought that even if it were proved that Lloyd had not kept these particular engagements it would be fantastic to read into that absence any more than the normal explanation: that Lloyd had been indisposed or had changed his mind. On the night of the 3rd he had apparently attended a dinner. ‘Pioneer Society, Normandie, 7.15’ the entry read. At 9.30 the following morning a Pathé Magazine film unit were due to arrive at 5 Britt Lane and make him into number something-or-other of their Celebrities At Home series. It would seem that Heron Lloyd had more important things to think of than an unknown flyer who claimed to have seen ruins in the sands of Arabia.