Left-Handed Death by Richard Hull

Author:Richard Hull [Hull, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Agora Books
Published: 2019-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Inspector Hardwick on the other hand had started the morning in very good form. For such part of the night as had been left to him, he had slept well, the war news was good — a commonplace at the time — and there was work to do. Naturally he was cheerful.

It is — or was — a common belief that the best detectives look first for motives and having by deduction spotted their man, then prove that he did it. In fact the method adopted by Hardwick at any rate consisted of the more prosaic way of starting by finding out who had the opportunity, by his presence at a given time in a given area, to commit the murder. The first thing to do therefore was to establish Foster’s movements on the day before and since at the critical time Reeves claimed to have been with him, the first thing was to investigate in detail the story that Reeves had told. There was the office end to be looked into, there might be some hope of proving Reeves’ movements from the office to the Café Royal though the chance must be a poor one. There was the Café Royal itself — though a crowded place such as that might well miss him. Finally there was the journey back by bus. With the times limited it should of course be possible with the help of the LPTB to interview all the conductors and conductresses on duty on the route. At least it should be if the LPTB duty roster had continuity as it probably had. If there had been the kind of scene which Reeves had described, it might well be that it would be remembered. Bus conductors and conductresses were well used to scenes of course and it might have passed unnoticed. The conductor too might have been on the top deck. Still it might be worth trying. He rang up the LPTB himself to ask for their co-operation.

He got it and got it almost as a matter of course. Yet the LPTB sounded a little sad about it. There was, they explained, the usual spring trouble about the introduction of summer schedules and you never know whether a little thing like that might not start it off. Someone might say that they were being kept when they ought to be off duty and that they had little enough time off anyhow, a not wholly unjustifiable remark, the particular LPTB official agreed in confidence. Still, if Hardwick would come himself or send someone to the terminus, he could see each conductor and conductress in turn. They gave him the hours at which he could on that Thursday first get those who had been passing up Regent Street on the route in question between, should they say, two and three in the afternoon so as to be sure, but if the Inspector did not come himself would he be good enough to send someone equally lucid as to what he wanted and equally tactful? The Inspector would know what the Unions were.

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