The police had been chary in the details which they issued for publication, but news editors and special reporters were not slow to make the most of the material available. Everybody who could conceivably have had any knowledge of the tragedy, not to mention a great many who could not, was pestered by interviewers. Mrs. Brent’s particular friend, making a quiet and quick getaway from No. 34, had the fright of his life when he was held up just outside the house by a determined young man whom he took to be an enquiry agent, but who was in fact merely a reporter thirsting for a personal story from a resident. Jackie Roach, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed himself. Not only did the murder, as he had foretold, stimulate his sales, but for the first and last time in his life, he was himself part of the news he sold. To be shouting: “Special! Murder! All the latest!”—to be thrusting into eager hands papers with your own picture on the front page—to be photographed in the act of doing so by another pressman—to know that that picture would be in tomorrow’s paper, and that tomorrow you might be photographed selling a paper with a picture in it of yourself selling a paper with a picture of yourself—it all fairly went to a chap’s head, more even than the drinks which those reporters kept on standing you every time you thought of something extra for them to put in the story.

Roach had of course given his statement to the police and been warned that he must attend the inquest. In the meantime, he had been told to keep his mouth shut. But it wasn’t in human nature to keep one’s mouth shut when there were so many temptations to open it for the admission of free beer, and Jackie was too honest a man not to do his best to give value for his entertainment. It was wonderful, too, what questions they thought of asking. Things that the police had never bothered him about. For instance, he just happened to mention that he knew Crabtree, Mr. James’s servant, and they fairly buzzed with excitement. When had he seen him last? Where was he now? Jackie was blest if he knew. But his very ignorance, it seemed, was news enough, and on the morning after the discovery of Ballantine’s death, “WHERE IS RICHARD CRABTREE?” was a question which was worth a headline to itself in some newspapers.