Bathurst, Anthony (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction
“Well,” remarked Anthony slowly, “there’s been no rain for over a
week—and the temperature has been decidedly high for several days
now—hasn’t it? I should have thought that anybody driving that car
would have been only too glad to have kept it open. That’s the point
I’ve been considering. Of course—they may have been put up after the
car returned.”
He paused and rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers.
Bannister regarded him with the semblance of a grin playing round the
corners of his mouth. He translated it into words. “I haven’t yet
accepted as final your theory that this is the identical car that Miss
Delaney had at Seabourne,” he reminded Anthony.
The lines of Mr. Bathurst’s mouth were firmly set. “You can take it
from me that it is, Inspector,” he announced with an unmistakable air
of determination, “and I hope in time to be able to prove it to you.”
“Perhaps you will. I shall want some convincing though. Still—even
so—assuming for the moment that your idea is correct—the car after all
may have been used late at night—when the air begins to feel a bit
cold.”
“That’s perfectly true,” conceded Anthony, “and there’s yet another
possible explanation—one which I’m disposed to think may eventually
prove to be the correct one. The person that drove this car back to
Tranfield from Seabourne wanted to be screened from observation as
much as possible. So he or she had the side-screens in and the hood
up.”
“That’s certainly a point, Mr. Bathurst,” admitted Bannister, “I grant
you I hadn’t thought of that.” He rubbed the ridge of his jaw with his
finger-tips. “Give me a hand, Mr. Bathurst,” he said, “let’s get the
hood down—we shall be able to see things more clearly then. Mind your
fingers! That’s the ticket! Now get these side-screens out.”
Anthony pulled the rods from the sockets prior to opening the door of
the car.
“Hallo!” exclaimed the Inspector sharply, “what’s this under the
seat?” Anthony watched him as he bent down to pull an object out from
beneath the farther seat. It was a suit-case bearing the initials
“S.D.” “What do you make of this, Mr. Bathurst—the _second_ suit-case
we’ve encountered?”
Anthony smiled whimsically. “Two ladies—two suit-cases, Inspector. I
don’t know that I’m overwhelmingly surprised to run up against this
second one. If Miss Delaney intended to stay in Seabourne for any
length of time as the people at the ‘Lauderdale’ testify—and as the
postcard from Otterton indicates also—she would almost certainly carry
something in the nature of a suit-case. No,” he shook his head as
though attempting to measure the situation thoroughly, “I’m not
surprised, Inspector.”
“I grant you all that,” replied Bannister, “but I don’t know that I
expected to meet it in a motor-car at Tranfield. It’s locked,” he
added—trying the two catches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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