She shrugged her shoulders. “There’s awfully little to tell really,” she replied. “We’d known each other off and on for some time—my husband was connected with the turf in those days, and we used to meet at race meetings a good deal. In the end, about two years ago, he took this flat and—there you are.”

“And since then he has lived with you here?”

“Yes. Perhaps that’s putting it too definitely, though. He might be here for weeks on end, perhaps, and then unaccountably he’d disappear for a bit. Then one day he’d ring up and ask me to meet him for dinner somewhere and afterwards he’d come back here and stay perhaps for a night, perhaps for another long spell. He was an unexpected man in lots of ways. I don’t know where he went between whiles. This was his headquarters, though, and of course it was always ready for him whenever he cared to use it.”

The phrase woke an echo in Mallett’s mind. Where had he heard something very like that before? Of course, Mrs. Ballantine had used almost the same words in her evidence at the inquest. Mount Street and Belgrave Square had both been open to Ballantine, but he had elected to die in Daylesford Gardens! The reflection prompted his next question.

“Did he ever mention Daylesford Gardens to you—or Colin James?”

“Never. I’m positive of that. As a matter of fact, he didn’t discuss outside matters very much.”

“You never tried to find out where he went to ‘between whiles’, as you put it?”

“No. I could guess sometimes, of course. He was always a bit polygamous, was Pompey. I never expected to have him all to myself. I know that sounds rather cattish, Mr. Mallett, but I don’t mean to be unkind. He was just made that way. He was an awfully good sort in so many ways, really, you know. People didn’t understand him, and he had an iceberg for a wife, but he’d do anything for anyone who knew how to be kind to him.” She sighed, and then, turning her lustrous eyes on the inspector, said vehemently: “I’m sure there’s a woman at the bottom of this! What else should he have gone to a dreadful little place like that for?”

“There is no evidence of the presence of any woman in the house at Daylesford Gardens,” Mallett reminded her. “But there is evidence that he may have been meditating leaving the country about the time that he was killed. What would you say to that, Mrs. Eales?”