‘Ah. Been brought up to it, you see, Mr Tiny living like that in India. He never had his curries hot, like some folks makes ’em, so the dogs, they was quite accustomed, as you might say, and the little cats, too.’

‘Why did Mrs Dalby Whittier give the curry away?’

‘Her said, according to young Bob, as Mr Bill ’ad refused it. Said it give ’im the – well, the—’

‘Us calls it the backyard trot,’ put in Anstey, helping her out. ‘You understand, mam? And he didn’t want that over Christmas. Young Bob, ’e said she were proper put out about it, and said she’d made it very special, and Mr Tiny ’adn’t even tried it though she’d made it just the way ’e liked. Said ’e ’ad to go over to Fairford, so she eat what she could of it ’erself and saved ’is ’ot, and sent us over what Mr Bill wouldn’t eat.’

‘At what time, then, did he leave for Fairdyke?’

‘W’y, at about a quarter to twelve, I reckon, but when Mrs Whittier left, well, to be exact to an hour or so, I couldn’t say, I be sure. I never see ’er go.’

‘You did think that Mrs Whittier might have claimed to be the wife?’ said Jonathan, as he and his aunt walked homewards down the hill. ‘If so—’

‘It all keeps coming back to Tiny, doesn’t it?’ said Deborah, later. ‘And yet I can’t think of him as a murderer. He doesn’t seem the type.’

‘There isn’t a type,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘There is no common denominator. Neil Cream and Hawley Harvey Crippen are as far apart mentally as Charlotte Corday and Constance Kent; a murderer such as George Joseph Smith is not really akin to one like Patrick Mahon. A savage and a sadist such as Jack the Ripper is not really much like Seaman Thompson. The extraordinary tavern keeper George Chapman bears no traceable resemblance to the equally unusual chicken farmer, Norman Thorne, except that both had what is oddly known as a Christian upbringing. We could multiply instances—’

‘I’d rather hear the stories,’ said Jonathan. ‘At least, I’d like to hear the ones I don’t already know. And what about the murderer of Steinie Morrison?’

‘He bears no resemblance to the murderer of Mrs Buck Ruxton, except that neither was an Englishman. But now to our own problems, for, although Mr Fullalove’s knee was not so badly injured as he would like us to suppose, it was quite bad enough to have prevented him from propping his cousin’s body up against that gate where Jonathan saw it, and I cannot believe that he would have had time to watch Jonathan go to the bungalow, move the body, damage his knee, and so on. He had an accomplice.’

‘Do we know that?’ enquired Sally.