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servant.”
    â€œOh, he’s an ex-sailor. A Salton man. Bellis took him on as chauffeur-gardener in his better days, and somehow, the man’s stuck to him. He’s been his bodyguard lately.”
    â€œI think I’ll have a word with Tarrant first. Where do I find him?”
    â€œI’ll take you round there. …”
    â€œDon’t bother if you’re busy. Tell me where the place is and I’ll find my own way.”
    Following Forrester’s directions, Littlejohn halted before an old house on the quay. In better days this had evidently been the home of some wealthy merchant. A double-fronted place with a fine door and an ornamental brass knocker covered in verdigris. The whole badly needed a coat of paint and the windows were dirty. The houses on each side had been turned into offices for produce merchants, chandlers, shipowners and the like. There was a flyblown bill in the window of Bellis’s house.
    THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY
FOR SALE.
Apply Smith & Nobbs,
Estate Agents,
Salton.
    The knocker was too stiff to function, so Littlejohn pummelled the panel of the door with his fist. The noise reverberated round the passage inside.
    â€œNobody at home. He died last night. Murdered, they say …”
    A blowsy woman with a fat, dirty face, standing out of the range of the rain in the doorway of the tenement house next-door-but-one, called in a shrill voice. She regarded Littlejohn suspiciously with dark malevolent eyes, as if he might have committed the crime himself.
    â€œWhere’s Tarrant?”
    â€œYou’ll probably find him in the
Admiral Rodney. . .”
    The woman jerked a thumb like a claw in the direction of a small clean-looking tavern a few doors away. As he made for the pub, the Inspector felt her eyes following him.
    Tarrant was sitting in the taproom with a pint mug of beer at his elbow. His face was glum. The five other occupants of the place and the landlord were casting sidelong glances of resentment at him. He had repulsed their sympathy and curiosity and insisted on drinking alone. Littlejohn sat opposite him and told him what he wanted.
    â€œWhat, another of you?” grumbled Tarrant in offended tones. He was small, very thick set, with clear blue eyes, a large nose once broken and set askew, and a firm craggy chin. His light hair was clipped close to his skull except for a quiff at the front.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you? Don’t you want us to find out who killed Mr. Bellis?” muttered Littlejohn. The rest of the company in the taproom strained their ears and tried to read the lips of the two men speaking over the beer-slopped deal table.
    â€œLike hell I do. If I knew who’d killed the boss, you wouldn’t find me here tryin’ to ferget I’ve lost ’im. I’d be out huntin’ the swine with me bare ’ands. … But because I didn’t ’appen to be on the station just when the boss’s train got in, is there any reason why you damned police should be cross-questionin’ me as if
I’d
done it? Not good enough. …”
    Tarrant emptied his mug and looked ready to order another. The landlord, a lanky, cross-eyed fellow, narrow-nostrilled and with a perpetual catarrhal sniff, kept hanging round, mopping the tables and trying to overhear what was said.
    â€œSuppose we go to the house. We can talk better, Tarrant. You have a key?”
    â€œYes. Wonder the ruddy police didn’t take that, too. They were there before I got up this mornin’. Locked every thin’ up and took away the keys. Might think I’d pinch somethin’. An’ after the way the boss trusted me when ’e was alive. Ruddy shame, I calls it.”
    Tarrant had drunk himself into a mood of self-pity and looked ready to weep. His eyes were filmed and he squinted a bit.
    â€œHow long have you been with Mr. Bellis?” asked Littlejohn as they made their way back to the house.
    â€œTen