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Judson stared at him, but Bobby thought there was now a certain uneasiness in his eyes, as though he had not much liked that reference to the rooms upstairs.
    â€œWell, I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Why was the back door open? it’s never used.”
    â€œYou live here, Mr. Judson?” Ulyett asked.
    â€œI’ve a flat in town. Park House, Park Lane. Convenient, but a bit cramped. I have a few friends to spend the evening here sometimes. I sleep here too occasionally. It’s hardly living here.”
    â€œIs there a caretaker?” Ulyett asked.
    Mr. Judson shook his head.
    â€œI don’t understand about the back door,” he repeated. “It was locked and bolted, no one ever used it.”
    â€œThere are three one-pound notes lying near the entrance,” Bobby said, pointing to them, though he knew they had been already noticed by his colleagues. Mr. Judson went across to stare at them. Bobby said quickly to Ulyett: “Papers have been burnt in that dustbin, the one to the right, lying on its side. I don’t know if that means anything.”
    One of the police chauffeurs was told to keep an eye on the pound notes and the burnt ashes in the dustbin, and the rest of the party entered the house and ascended the stairs. Bobby unlocked the door of the room and then waited outside with the rest of the party while Ulyett, the doctor and Mr. Judson went in. The doctor said at once:
    â€œNothing I can do. Rigor’s set in already, look at the neck.”
    â€œDo you know him, sir?” Ulyett asked Judson.
    Judson had become very pale. He was trembling slightly. He stammered:
    â€œIt’s Macklin. Macklin. One of my staff, manager of the coal export branch. I don’t understand.”

CHAPTER 6
INQUIRY BEGINS
    The activity in the house became intense as there began the usual busy routine of an investigation. With it, of course, now that it had passed into the hands of the specialists, Bobby had for the moment little to do.
    The next hour or two in fact he spent patiently doing nothing, in which indeed consists a large share of the work of the C.I.D. Meanwhile the experts and specialists bustled about, arrived, consulted, departed. The photographer photographed; the finger-print expert used up enormous quantities of his grey powder; a famous pathologist strolled in; an eager journalist, forerunner of a host of others, made an excited appearance, though how he had come to hear so soon of what had happened, not even he himself seemed to know. Instinct, perhaps, or the mysterious workings of the unconscious, since that nowadays can be used to explain anything. Or more probably the mere sight of three or four cars in procession with uniformed policemen in one of them. The burnt ash in the overturned dustbin was carefully collected – something for Hendon to try its teeth on, as one man with little faith in science remarked scornfully to Bobby. Of the three one-pound notes the one with the stain upon it was marked for the analyst, in the hope that he might be able to say whether the stain was really blood, and, if so, if it belonged to the same group as that of the victim. The famous medical expert and the police surgeon ended at last their long discussion by arriving at the same conclusions – or rather by arriving at the famous medical expert’s conclusions, since the police surgeon was a prudent man and knew who carried the heavier guns. And in one of the smaller rooms sat Superintendent Ulyett, interviewing everybody in turn, taking reports and statements, issuing instructions.
    It was getting on for the small hours before at last he sent for Bobby who had already written out a full report of the evening’s events as they concerned him. Ulyett asked a few questions on various details and informed Bobby that the doctors seemed fairly certain that death had taken place about, or soon after, five o’clock that evening.
    â€œThey seem more