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his cap, but I can’t see it clearly. But it looks a bit like the one that Sergeant Marriott drew for you.’
    â€˜He certainly fits the description that the skipper gave me.’ Not that that was any great help; to Catto and many other civilians, one army officer looked much like another.
    Fortunately for the watching detectives, two cabs came along Prince of Wales Drive one after the other. The army officer hailed one, and Catto hailed the following one.
    The gunner officer’s cab crossed Albert Bridge, turned into King’s Road, Chelsea, and finally stopped outside a three-storied dwelling in Elm Park Gardens.
    Catto and Watkins remained in their cab until they saw which house the army officer had entered.
    â€˜I hope to God that was him,’ said Watkins.
    â€˜So do I,’ said Catto. He paid the cab driver and took a note of the plate number without which details the DDI would disallow his claim. It was not unknown for the Receiver’s clerks to question cab drivers about particular fares, but they almost always confirmed them. Cabbies had no wish to upset the police officers who used them. And might use them again. The police and cab drivers were never good friends, even at the best of times.
    â€˜What do we do now, Henry?’ asked Watkins. ‘Do we wait?’
    â€˜If Villiers has gone there for what the guv’nor thinks he’s gone there for, he won’t be out until tomorrow morning, Cecil. No, we’ll pack it in and hope for the best.’
    â€˜I s’pose we’d better find a bus that’ll take us back to the nick, then, Henry.’
    At eight thirty on the Tuesday morning, Marriott stepped into Hardcastle’s office. ‘Catto and Watkins seem to have done a good job, sir,’ he said.
    â€˜Remains to be seen,’ grunted Hardcastle, unwilling to offer praise to detectives who were only doing their jobs. ‘Do we know who lives at this Elm Park Gardens address?’
    â€˜I got Carter to do a check on the burgesses’ register last night, sir, and there appears to be only one eligible voter there. His name’s Valentine Powell. It could be his wife that Villiers has been visiting, but of course she’s not shown on the register.’
    â€˜She wouldn’t be, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle testily. ‘Women don’t have the vote. Good God, you’ve seen enough of those damned suffragettes to know that.’
    Marriott did know that, only too well, but he knew better than to reply to the DDI’s observation; it would set him off on one of his diatribes about votes for women. ‘Valentine Powell’s shown as an absentee voter, sir.’
    â€˜Probably in the army or the navy, I suppose,’ suggested Hardcastle. ‘One way to find out: we’ll go and speak to whoever is there now.’
    â€˜But what do we hope to achieve, sir?’ Once again Marriott was mystified by the DDI’s proposed course of action; an action that seemed to be straying from the main thrust of the murder enquiry. Nevertheless, he knew from previous experience, how often Hardcastle’s ‘flights of fancy’, as he called them, produced a useful result.
    â€˜To find out whether the bold Captain Villiers is lying to us, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Or whether he really was there on New Year’s Eve. Or perhaps he was somewhere else,’ he added significantly.
    â€˜You surely don’t think he had anything to do with Reuben Gosling’s murder, do you, sir?’
    â€˜You know me, Marriott. Everyone’s a suspect until I have evidence to the contrary.’
    The cab set Hardcastle and Marriott down in Elm Park Gardens at a little after eleven o’clock, Hardcastle having decided that Captain Villiers would have left by then. Assuming, of course, that it was Villiers whom Catto and Watkins had followed, and if it was Villiers that he
had
spent the night in Mrs Powell’s bed.
    The