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up—possibilities.”
    â€œPossibilities are all we’ve got so far.”
    â€œWhen’s the inquest?”
    â€œDay after tomorrow. Purely formal and an adjournment.”
    â€œWhat’s the medical evidence?”
    â€œOh, stabbed with a sharp instrument. Something like a kitchen vegetable knife.”
    â€œThat rather lets out Miss Pebmarsh, doesn’t it?” I said thoughtfully. “A blind woman would hardly be able to stab a man. She really is blind, I suppose?”
    â€œOh, yes, she’s blind. We checked up. And she’s exactly what she says she is. She was a teacher of mathematics in a North Country school—lost her sight about sixteen years ago—took up training in Braille, etc., and finally got a post with the Aaronberg Institute here.”
    â€œShe could be mental, I suppose?”
    â€œWith a fixation on clocks and insurance agents?”
    â€œIt really is all too fantastic for words.” I couldn’t help speaking with some enthusiasm. “Like Ariadne Oliver in her worst moments, or the late Garry Gregson at the top of his form—”
    â€œGo on—enjoy yourself. You’re not the wretched D.I. in charge. You haven’t got to satisfy a superintendent or a chief constable and all the rest of it.”
    â€œOh well! Perhaps we’ll get something useful out of the neighbours.”
    â€œI doubt it,” said Hardcastle bitterly. “If that man was stabbed in the front garden and two masked men carried him into the house—nobody would have looked out of the window or seen anything. This isn’t a village, worse luck. Wilbraham Crescent is a genteel residential road. By one o’clock, daily women who might have seen something have gone home. There’s not even a pram being wheeled along—”
    â€œNo elderly invalid who sits all day by the window?”
    â€œThat’s what we want—but that’s not what we’ve got.”
    â€œWhat about numbers 18 and 20?”
    â€œ18 is occupied by Mr. Waterhouse, Managing Clerk to Gainsford and Swettenham, Solicitors, and his sister who spends her spare time managing him. All I know about 20 is that the woman who lives there keeps about twenty cats. I don’t like cats—”
    I told him that a policeman’s life was a hard one, and we started off.

Seven
    M r. Waterhouse, hovering uncertainly on the steps of 18, Wilbraham Crescent, looked back nervously at his sister.
    â€œYou’re quite sure you’ll be all right?” said Mr. Waterhouse.
    Miss Waterhouse snorted with some indignation.
    â€œI really don’t know what you mean, James.”
    Mr. Waterhouse looked apologetic. He had to look apologetic so often that it was practically his prevailing cast of countenance.
    â€œWell, I just meant, my dear, considering what happened next door yesterday….”
    Mr. Waterhouse was prepared for departure to the solicitors’ office where he worked. He was a neat, grey-haired man with slightly stooping shoulders and a face that was also grey rather than pink, though not in the least unhealthy looking.
    Miss Waterhouse was tall, angular, and the kind of woman with no nonsense about her who is extremely intolerant of nonsense in others.
    â€œIs there any reason, James, because someone was murdered in the next door house that I shall be murdered today?”
    â€œWell, Edith,” said Mr. Waterhouse, “it depends so much, does it not, by whom the murder was committed?”
    â€œYou think, in fact, that there’s someone going up and down Wilbraham Crescent selecting a victim from every house? Really, James, that is almost blasphemous.”
    â€œBlasphemous, Edith?” said Mr. Waterhouse in lively surprise. Such an aspect of his remark would never have occurred to him.
    â€œReminiscent of the Passover,” said Miss Waterhouse. “Which, let me remind you, is Holy Writ.”
    â€œThat is a little