The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [58]
“Well, sir, it’s like this. I’ve got to see the coroner to-morrow morning, and I’ve got to give him as full an account of the case as I can; and you and Mrs. Holland, look at it whatever way you will, are going to be important witnesses. But if you think Mrs. Holland would sooner see me first thing to-morrow, why, there’s a policeman on duty in the Square, and if I may pass the word to him, I’ll feel certain I know where to find you. Perhaps if I was to climb up behind, you wouldn’t mind giving me a lift as far as Whynmouth?”
“For fear we might be tempted to take a wrong turning? Well, Inspector, I suppose we’ve deserved that. All right, come on; we’ll play fair this time.”
Rudge sat in darkness at the back of the car, instinctively spying on the two figures whose outlines were blurred against the illuminated patch of road. The impressions he had already formed of the couple were on the whole confirmed; there was little talk between them, and when there was any the initiative seemed to come from Holland; you saw, in the attentive droop of his shoulder sideways, the model of the deferential lover, whereas Elma looked straight in front of her and hardly moved when she answered. But then, she was tired, no doubt; she had much to think of; perhaps she even felt sorrow for the old man whose fortunes she had shared for so many years, now lying under that dust-sheet in the mortuary.
Rudge made an excuse to follow them into the hotel; he was privately concerned to make sure about the locking of that door into the back-yard. The Lord Marshall is an old-fashioned hotel, and there is no private entrance for visitors; they have to pass along a narrow passage, with a slight recess in the middle of it which gives you a back view of the gentlemen who are refreshing themselves at the public bar. One of these made a half-turn as they entered, and Rudge had two simultaneous impressions—that he recognised the man, and that the man did not want to be recognised. At least, he shrank back as they approached, and his face was hidden in the darkness of the space under the stairway. Returning from a mercifully brief interview with Mrs. Davis, Rudge found him again and verified his guess. It was Cropped-head, the Gazette reporter. By a promise of seeing him next day, Rudge managed to stave off his eager questionings about the progress of the case. Then he had a word with the policeman in the Square, and went back to the seclusion of his own rooms.
Inspector Rudge, we must regretfully admit, was a quite ordinary man. He did not solace himself with the violin, or the cocaine-bottle; he did not tie knots in string, or collect scarabs, or distinguish himself in any way by sidelines. The rooms to which he returned were quite ordinary rooms, from which he had not even troubled to remove the landlady’s decorations; the whisky he took out of the cupboard was so well known that the mention of its name would be an unnecessary advertisement; the same may be said of the tobacco with which he filled his pipe. If the full truth must be confessed, Inspector Rudge was so far human that he took off his boots and replaced them with a pair of dressing-slippers. Then he got down to the night’s work; and that consisted in selecting from the mass of material he had accumulated during the day the points that seemed most likely to repay investigation. These points he jotted down, in the form of questions; he added no written comment, except an occasional memorandum; but as each question was reduced to verbal shape he looked up at the ceiling and let his mind play around the possibilities which it suggested. The questions are here reproduced, with a summary of the cogitations to which each one led. When he counted them up, his orthodox mind was delighted