“That’s a pity,” Eric remarked. “One day, however, it’ll come to you, and when it does we may hope to discover the guilty person.”
That night in the billiard-room Winsloe asked us what had taken place at the inquest, endeavouring to put his question unconcernedly. Eric and I could, however, see how anxious he was.
“Nobody knows yet who he is,” Jack answered, as he chalked his cue preparatory to making a shot. “The police have discovered nothing—except that a woman was seen coming from the wood just about four o’clock.”
“A woman!” I cried, staring at him. “Who said so? It was not given in evidence.”
“No,” he replied. “Booth told me just as we came out that somebody had said so, but that he did not give it in evidence, as he considered it wiser to say nothing.”
I held my breath.
“Who was the woman?” asked Winsloe, apparently as surprised as myself.
“He didn’t tell me. In fact, I don’t think she was recognised. If she had been, he would, of course, have interrogated her by this time.”
Ellice Winsloe was silent. I saw as he stood back in the shadow from the table that his brows had contracted and that he was pensive and puzzled. And yet upstairs in his bag he had a portrait of the dead man, and was, therefore, well aware of his identity.
Now that we reflected we agreed that we really knew very little of Ellice Winsloe. He was Jack’s friend rather than ours. The son of a Cornishman whose income was derived from his interest in certain tin mines, he had, on his father’s death, been left well off. Jack had known him at Magdalen, but had lost sight of him for some years, when of a sudden they met again one night while at supper at the Savoy, and their old friendship had been renewed. Ellice, it appeared, was well known in a certain set in town, and up to the present moment we had both voted him as a good all-round sportsman, a good fellow and a gentleman. But this secret knowledge which he refused to betray, and his evident fear lest the dead man be identified, aroused our serious suspicions.