“Oh, hell!” I said. “And I came down here to be a vegetable and get interested in all the dear little local scandals. Dear little local scandals! Libel, vilification, obscene language and murder!”

II

Joanna was quite right. The High Street was full of interested groups. I was determined to get everyone’s reactions in turn.

I met Griffith first. He looked terribly ill and tired. So much so that I wondered. Murder is not, certainly, all in the day’s work to a doctor, but his profession does equip him to face most things including suffering, the ugly side of human nature, and the fact of death.

“You look all in,” I said.

“Do I?” He was vague. “Oh! I’ve had some worrying cases lately.”

“Including our lunatic at large?”

“That, certainly.” He looked away from me across the street. I saw a fine nerve twitching in his eyelid.

“You’ve no suspicions as to—who?”

“No. No. I wish to God I had.”

He asked abruptly after Joanna, and said, hesitatingly, that he had some photographs she’d wanted to see.

I offered to take them to her.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I shall be passing that way actually later in the morning.”

I began to be afraid that Griffith had got it badly. Curse Joanna! Griffith was too good a man to be dangled as a scalp.

I let him go, for I saw his sister coming and I wanted, for once, to talk to her.

Aimée Griffith began, as it were, in the middle of a conversation.

“Absolutely shocking!” she boomed. “I hear you were there—quite early?”

There was a question in the words, and her eyes glinted as she stressed the word “early.” I wasn’t going to tell her that Megan had rung me up. I said instead:

“You see, I was a bit uneasy last night. The girl was due to tea at our house and didn’t turn up.”

“And so you feared the worst? Damned smart of you!”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m quite the human bloodhound.”

“It’s the first murder we’ve ever had in Lymstock. Excitement is terrific. Hope the police can handle it all right.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” I said. “They’re an efficient body of men.”

“Can’t even remember what the girl looked like, although I suppose she’s opened the door to me dozens of times. Quiet, insignificant little thing. Knocked on the head and then stabbed through the back of the neck, so Owen tells me. Looks like a boyfriend to me. What do you think?”

“That’s your solution?”

“Seems the most likely one. Had a quarrel, I expect. They’re very inbred round here—bad heredity, a lot of them.” She paused, and then went on, “I hear Megan Hunter found the body? Must have given her a bit of a shock.”

I said shortly:

“It did.”