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his attitude had been one of reticence, particularly with regard to his financial position and his private affairs.
    “He was a bad husband to me. He’s dead, and I don’t want to say anything against him. But I’m telling you, Mr Whatever-your-name-is, that I’m not going into mourning for him. He’s deserted me three times in my married life, and once he gave me a black eye, and I’ve never forgiven him for that. It was my right eye,” she added.
    Mr Reeder could wonder if there were any greater enormity in blacking the right than the left eye, but he did not pursue inquiries in this direction.
    All the woman could tell him was that her husband had taken a job in the country, that he was making a lot of money, and that when she had seen him in town he was “dressed flash, like a gentleman.”
    “When I say a gentleman,” she said, “he might have been a waiter. He had a white shirt-front on and a black tie, and he was looking as though he’d come into a fortune. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked him for any money.”
    So far as she knew, he had no friends; at any rate, she could not supply the name of any person from whom particulars of his life might be secured.
    “When you say he worked in the country, which part of the country? Have you any idea what station he came from or went to?” he persisted.
    She thought a while.
    “Yes, Charing Cross. My brother saw him there one night, about two years ago.”
    She had none of his belongings, no notebook or papers of any kind.
    “Not even,” she said, “as much as a tobacco tin.”
    She had cut herself completely and absolutely adrift from him, never wanted to hear from or see him again, and her accidental meeting with him in the street was only to be remembered because it was so profitable.
    Mr Reeder returned to headquarters, to consult with investigators who had followed other lines of inquiry, and learned that they too had come to a dead end. J G Reeder was puzzled and exhilarated, and could have wished that he controlled the inquiries instead of being an independent seeker after knowledge.
    Here was a man, an ex-policeman, so prosperous that he could afford the finest silken underwear, found in a field, with no marks to identify him, obviously murdered, obviously conveyed from the scene of the murder by a car and deposited in the dark in a ditch which only those closely acquainted with the ground could have known existed.
    There was another woman in London who could give him information: the “highbrow lady” with the pallid face, who loved classical music and strong drink. London would be combed for her; there was a possibility that she might easily be found.
    The next morning he went early to the concert hall and interviewed the attendant. Mr Reeder might know little about music, but he knew something about music-lovers, and if this woman was a regular concert-goer, the attendant might remember her. Fortune was with him, for two men knew her, one by name. She was a Miss Letzfeld and she was especially to be remembered because she suffered from an inferiority complex, believed that attendants deliberately slighted her and pestered the management with letters of complaint. By luck, one of these letters had been kept. Miss Letzfeld lived at Breddleston Mews in Kensington.
    Mr Reeder went straight to the address and, after repeated knockings, gained the attention of the occupant. She came down to open the door, rather unpleasant to see in the clean daylight. A thin, long-faced girl, with sleepy eyes and an ugly mouth, wrapped in a dingy dressing gown.
    To his surprise she recognised him.
    “Your name’s Reeder, isn’t it? Didn’t Billy introduce you – at the Queen’s Hall? You’re a detective, aren’t you?” And then, quickly: “Is anything wrong?”
    “May I come up?” he asked.
    She led the way up the narrow stairs, her high-heeled shoes drumming unmusically on the bare, uncarpeted treads.
    The room into which he was ushered was expensively