The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [74]
At each of the small stations between Whynmouth and Passfield Junction Rudge jumped out of the train and enquired if the Vicar had been seen alighting on the day in question. But it was not till he reached the junction that he got any information.
Mr. Mount was slightly known to the stationmaster, and he believed he had seen him on that day entering a third-class carriage of the down express. Rudge went at once to the booking-office, and there he learned that only three third-class tickets had been issued by that train—a single to Exeter and two returns to Drychester. From this it seemed pretty clear that Mount had booked to Drychester.
In due course Rudge reached Drychester. But here he had not the same luck. Drychester station was a busy place, very different to the small roadside junction. No one knew Mount and no one had noticed a clergyman resembling him.
It looked, however, as if Mount had reached Drychester at 2.40. If so, he would have been too late to have caught the earlier of the two trains to town, and must therefore have gone by the second, leaving Drychester at 4.50. That is, he would have had two hours and ten minutes in Drychester. What could he have done in that time?
Rudge could form no idea. He thought first of going down to the cathedral and making enquiries of the vergers, but he wasn’t anxious that it should be known that he was making this investigation. At last as a sort of forlorn hope he decided to interrogate the taxi-men at the station, on the off-chance that Mount might have driven to his destination.
Armed with his photograph, Rudge went round the men. He did not expect to get much, and he was therefore agreeably surprised when he suddenly found he had struck oil. But he did not realise, not for a long time after, how deep and how rich was the well he had tapped.
When he showed the photograph to one of the men, a little weazened rat of a fellow, it produced a reaction.
“Aye,” said the man, “I’ve seen the gent all right, I ’ave. But not ’ere. I’ve seen ’im in Lingham.”
“Oh,” said Rudge, “in Lingham, have you? That’s no good to me. I’m looking for traces of him here.”
“I didn’t see ’im ’ere, guv’nor. Never seen ’im but the once; in Lingham.”
Rudge’s fate, Mount’s fate, and the fate of several other persons trembled in the balance. Rudge was about to pass on to the next driver, but fortunately for himself, he didn’t. Fortunately for himself, he asked the fateful question: “When was that?”
“Last Tuesday night,” the taxi-man replied, “at a ’ouse near Lingham, about a ’arf a mile beyond the village, an’ down on the river.”
“Beside the church?”
“That’s right, guv’nor.”
“And what time was that?”
The man paused in thought. “About midnight or a bit after.”
Rudge’s heart gave a sudden leap. Midnight or later on the night of the crime was a very critical hour in the case. At midnight the terrible drama which led to Admiral Penistone’s death must already have been under way. What the Vicar was doing at midnight was something that he would be extraordinarily glad to know.
“Better tell me all about it,” Rudge suggested, carefully keeping the eagerness out of his voice.
But the man’s story, instead of clearing up the situation, seemed only to make it still more incomprehensible. It seemed that on that night, the night of the crime, he had been on duty when the last train arrived from town, the 7.0 p.m. from Waterloo. It arrived at 10.20, and he got a fare from it. It was a lady, a small, middle-aged woman with a bright, quick manner. As far as the taxi-man could see in the somewhat poor light of the lamps,