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“Do you mean she really—”

“Not really. No. Just a story. The way people talk. However, as I said, she did that part of her job very regular. Brought her all her meals. Tidied her room. Gave her her sleeping draught each night. She must have been on her way to do that when she was attacked.”

“How do you make that out?” said Boone, trying not to sound too eager. This might be important.

“How do I know?” said Mrs. Burches, scornful of the ignorance of young men. “I know because she’d put on her overall. Only do that when she was going on duty, wouldn’t she?”

Later that evening Rayburn summed up for his team. Hart and Boone had both been in attendance when Mr. Goldsworthy was interrogated. They had written down his answers. When he was questioned about his visit to the cinema, he seemed to know nothing about the “surprise item.” The inspector’s questions relating to timing were specific, as were Mr. Goldsworthy’s answers.

The start, he thought, had been somewhat later than 8:40. There had been the trailers and the tiresome advertising items. He reckoned that it must have been well after nine before the main item got going. The inspector took him through it twice. Boone, who added shorthand to his other accomplishments, made a verbatim note of what Mr. Goldsworthy said.

“If he was in the cinema at nine o’clock,” the inspector said, “he couldn’t possibly have overlooked the Laurel and Hardy film. So where was he? Easy enough, in the particular seat he was occupying, to slip out and make his way back to the house; knowing Nurse Minter’s routine, he plans to get there just before nine o’clock. Listens until he hears her come out of her room, unlocks the front door, and steps in. Nurse is surprised to see him. He says, “Who’s been spilling things on the carpet?’ Nurse stoops down to see what his left hand is pointing at. Round comes his right hand with a weapon in it. An iron bar, perhaps—”

Boone wrote down, “Weapon??”

“Back to the cinema. Home by eleven. Sees what’s in the hall. Telephones the police station.”

His assistants nodded. It seemed to fit.

“And the motive. That’s clear too. He’d had sex with Minter, more than once. The old ladies heard what was going on. The only other person in the house at night was Mrs. G, who’d been given a sleeping draught. A pretty powerful one, we may guess, because if she had heard anything, even suspected it, there’d have been the devil to pay. Her body may have been weak, but there was nothing wrong with her mind. Divorce the least of it. Her Will remade. The money that helped to keep the household going cut off. Minter knows this. Starts to put on pressure. Successfully. Her account starts to look very healthy. When we get an order opening bank records, the position will be clear. Regular withdrawals of cash from his account, regular payments into hers.”

Alice said, “Do you think we’ve got enough to charge him?”

“I do. And in the old days I would have done so. Now I need the backing of the Crown Prosecution Service.”

“Surely you’ll get it, sir,” said Boone.

That was on Wednesday.

Every Thursday the three residents went out for a jaunt. This was a popular move. It enabled Mr. Goldsworthy to spend a few undisturbed hours in the office of his almost-bankrupt insurance agency, and it gave the nurse an afternoon off. Each week they hired the same car, with a driver who knew their habits. Compton Green being on the outer edge of the metropolitan sprawl, it took only a short time to get out into the countryside. The village they were making for boasted an old-fashioned tea parlour. Their table, kept for them, was tucked away at the back of it. Gertrude presided over the teapot. When they were all served she said, in the manner of a chairman opening the business of the meeting, “I should have thought they’d have worked it out by now, wouldn’t you?”

Beatrice said, “Nowadays you can’t trust anyone to take any sort of independent action.”

“Red tape,” said Florence. “Always consult someone else before you do anything. Young Mack wouldn’t have stood for it.”

“Nor would my father,” said Gertrude. “The Colonel never asked anyone’s advice over anything important. If something had to be done he did it.”

Two heads nodded approval of this masculine firmness.

“I must say,” said Beatrice, “that I find our new nurse an improvement. Don’t you, Gertie?”

“A distinct improvement,” said Gertrude. “She calls me madam.” She waved to the waitress, who hurried across. She had a great respect for the old ladies. “Could you bring us another jug of hot water?” And to Florence, “I don’t think you should eat another of those cakes, Florrie. They’ll bring you out in spots.”

“I’d rather have cakes and spots than no cakes and no spots,” said Florence defiantly.

Mr. Arbuthnot of the Crown Prosecution Service said, “I’m sorry, but no.”

Too often recently he had suffered humiliation at the hands of defending counsel.

“Tour case is ingenious, but it’s got two gaping holes in it. Look at the map. There are eight built-up streets, all well lit, between the cinema and the home. By your account, Goldsworthy went through all of them before nine o’clock. How could he hope to do so without being seen? A tall man, with a beard. Produce me one reliable witness who saw him coming or going and you close that gap. Less serious perhaps, but the defense will latch onto it, what about the weapon? Did he make a detour out into the countryside and throw it into a ditch? Double the chance of being seen. Or drop it quietly into a drain on the way back to the cinema. More likely. Have you searched all the drains?”

The unhappy inspector had to admit that he had not searched all of them. Not yet.

Although it would have been out of his place to say so, Mr. Arbuthnot nearly added, “Get on with it. Do some work.”

It was Mrs. Burches’s daughter, who was walking out with Ernie, one of the police constables, who gave them all the latest news.

“Been at it a week,” she said. “And they aren’t half making themselves unpopular. First it was questions about bicycles. Now it’s murderers. Life’s not worth living, people say.”

Many of the uniformed branch thought the same. Ten of them had been dragooned into doing work which, they thought, belonged to the detective branch. Rayburn encouraged them as much as he could, but before the end of the week he began to wonder whether his own small contingent was pulling its weight.

He said to Alice, “Boone seems to spend most of his time out in the country. What’s he up to?”

“He’s got an idea.”

“What idea?”

“I think he’d better tell you himself.”

Summoned into the presence, Detective Constable Boone launched out into waters which were full of shoals and rocks.

Taking a deep breath, he said, “It did occur to me to wonder, sir. I mean, the legal boys seem to think that the main drawback to your — to our — theory was that no one had seen Goldsworthy between the cinema and his house. Although they were all on edge about the bicycle thieves, and keeping their eyes open for strangers.”

“So?”

“What I thought was, suppose the killer was another man altogether — living out in the countryside somewhere. He hears the rumour about Mrs. Goldsworthy’s money. He could reach the back of the house without going through any main streets. He breaks in. Runs into the nurse, hits her harder than he means, sees he’s killed her, and bolts. The weapon could be miles away, in a ditch—”

“So what was Goldsworthy doing when he was meant to be in the cinema — but quite clearly wasn’t.”

“I think he was paying a visit to the massage parlour — so called — two streets away. A girl who worked there says he was a regular client.”