‘I see.’

‘And that I think is all,’ said Mrs Ramsay, as she got up.

There was now a sudden decision in her manner.

‘It must have been a hard choice,’ I said gently. ‘I’m very sorry for you.’

I was, too. Perhaps the real sympathy in my voice got through to her. She smiled very slightly.

‘Perhaps you really are…I suppose in your job you have to try and get more or less under people’s skins, know what they’re feeling and thinking. It’s been rather a knockout blow for me, but I’m over the worst of it…I’ve got to make plans now, what to do, where to go, whether to stay here or go somewhere else. I shall have to get a job. I used to do secretarial work once. Probably I’ll take a refresher course in shorthand and typing.’

‘Well, don’t go and work for the Cavendish Bureau,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Girls who are employed there seem to have rather unfortunate things happen to them.’

‘If you think I know anything at all about that, you’re wrong. I don’t.’

I wished her luck and went. I hadn’t learnt anything from her. I hadn’t really thought I should. But one has to tidy up the loose ends.

Going out of the gate I almost cannoned into Mrs McNaughton. She was carrying a shopping-bag and seemed very wobbly on her feet.

‘Let me,’ I said and took it from her. She was inclined to clutch it from me at first, then she leaned her head forward, peering at me, and relaxed her grip.

‘You’re the young man from the police,’ she said. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first.’

I carried the shopping-bag to her front door and she teetered beside me. The shopping-bag was unexpectedly heavy. I wondered what was in it. Pounds of potatoes?

‘Don’t ring,’ she said. ‘The door isn’t locked.’

Nobody’s door seemed ever to be locked in Wilbraham Crescent.

‘And how are you getting on with things?’ she asked chattily. ‘He seems to have married very much below him.’

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

‘Who did-I’ve been away,’ I explained.

‘Oh, I see.Shadowing someone, I suppose. I meant that Mrs Rival. I went to the inquest. Such acommon -looking woman. I must say she didn’t seem much upset by her husband’s death.’

‘She hadn’t see him for fifteen years,’ I explained. 

‘Angus and I have been married for twenty years.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a long time. And so much gardening now that he isn’t at the university…It makes it difficult to know what to do with oneself.’

At that moment, Mr McNaughton, spade in hand, came round the corner of the house.

‘Oh, you’re back, my dear. Let me take the things-’

‘Just put it in the kitchen,’ said Mrs McNaughton to me swiftly-her elbow nudged me. ‘Just the Cornflakes and the eggs and a melon,’ she said to her husband, smiling brightly.

I deposited the bag on the kitchen table. It clinked.

Cornflakes, my foot! I let my spy’s instincts take over. Under a camouflage of sheet gelatine were three bottles of whisky.

I understood why Mrs McNaughton was sometimes so bright and garrulous and why she was occasionally a little unsteady on her feet. And possibly why McNaughton had resigned his Chair.

It was a morning for neighbours. I met Mr Bland as I was going along the crescent towards Albany Road. Mr Bland seemed in very good form. He recognized me at once.

‘How are you? How’s crime? Got your dead body identified, I see. Seems to have treated that wife of his rather badly. By the way, excuse me, you’re not one of the locals, are you?’ 

I said evasively I had come down from London.

‘So the Yard was interested, was it?’

‘Well-’ I drew the word out in a noncommittal way.

‘I understand. Mustn’t tell tales out of school. You weren’t at the inquest, though.’

I said I had been abroad.

‘So have I, my boy. So have I!’ He winked at me.

‘Gay Paree?’ I asked, winking back.

‘Wish it had been. No, only a day trip to Boulogne.’

He dug me in the side with his elbow (quite like Mrs McNaughton!).

‘Didn’t take the wife. Teamed up with a very nice little bit. Blonde. Quite a hot number.’

‘Business trip?’ I said. We both laughed like men of the world.

He went on towards No. 61 and I walked on towards Albany Road.

I was dissatisfied with myself. As Poirot had said, there should have been more to be got out of the neighbours. It was positively unnatural thatnobody should have seen anything! Perhaps Hardcastle had asked the wrong questions. But could I think of any better ones? As I turned into Albany Road I made a mental list of questions. It went something like this: 

Mr Curry (Castleton) had been doped

—When?

ditto had been killed

—Where?

Mr Curry (Castleton) had been taken to No. 19

—How?

Somebody must have seen something!

—Who?

ditto-What?

I turned to the left again. Now I was walking along Wilbraham Crescent just as I had walked on September 9th. Should I call on Miss Pebmarsh? Ring the bell and say-well, what should I say?

Call on Miss Waterhouse? But what on earth could I say toher?

Mrs Hemming perhaps? It wouldn’t much matter what one said to Mrs Hemming. She wouldn’t be listening, and whatshe said, however haphazard and irrelevant,might lead to something.

I walked along, mentally noting the numbers as I had before. Had the late Mr Curry come along here, also noting numbers, until he came to the number he meant to visit?

Wilbraham Crescent had never looked primmer. I almost found myself exclaiming in Victorian fashion, ‘Oh! if these stones could speak!’ It was a favourite quotation in those days, so it seemed. But stones don’t speak, no more do bricks and mortar, nor even plaster nor stucco. Wilbraham Crescent remained silently itself. Old-fashioned, aloof, rather shabby, and not given to conversation. Disapproving, I was sure, of itinerant prowlers who didn’t even know what they were looking for.

There were few people about, a couple of boys on bicycles passed me, two women with shopping-bags. The houses themselves might have been embalmed like mummies for all the signs of life there were in them. I knew why that was. It was already, or close upon, the sacred hour of one, an hour sanctified by English traditions to the consuming of a midday meal. In one or two houses I could see through the uncurtained windows a group of one or two people round a dining table, but even that was exceedingly rare. Either the windows were discreetly screened with nylon netting, as opposed to the once popular Nottingham lace, or-which was far more probable-anyone who was at home was eating in the ‘modern’ kitchen, according to the custom of the 1960’s.

It was, I reflected, a perfect hour of day for a murder. Had the murderer thought of that, I wondered? Was it part of the murderer’s plan? I came at last to No. 19.

Like so many other moronic members of the populace I stood and stared. There was, by now, no other human being in sight. ‘No neighbours,’ I said sadly, ‘no intelligent onlookers.’

I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I had been wrong. Therewas a neighbour here, all right, a very useful neighbour if the neighbour had only been able to speak. I had been leaning against the post of No. 20, and the same large orange cat I had seen before was sitting on the gate post. I stopped and exchanged a few words with him, first detaching his playful claw from my shoulder.

‘If cats could speak,’ I offered him as a conversational opening.

The orange cat opened his mouth, gave a loud melodious miaow.

‘I know you can,’ I said. ‘I know you can speak just as well as I can. But you’re not speaking my language. Were you sitting here that day? Did you see who went into that house or came out of it? Do you know all about what happened? I wouldn’t put it past you, puss.’