"You wanted the part she was due to play in the new film! We'd forgotten that!"

"Well, if we're looking for motives, Clement, my sweet, you were raving mad with fury because she refused to be photographed by you. If I remember rightly, she said your works were like spilt gravy."

"Clement wouldn't drown her. He'd poison her," Judy said. "With a box of chocolates, Borgia-wise. No, come to think of it, Lejeune did it, in case he'd have to act with her. He's the virile type. His father was a butcher, and he probably inherited a callous mentality! Or how about Coyne? He would have killed her on the Bars of Iron set, if no one had been looking." She apparently had forgotten about Jason.

"Will you all kindly stop this silly chatter!" Marta said, with angry emphasis. "I know that after three days a shock wears off. But Christine was a friend of ours, and it's disgusting to make a game of the death of a person we all liked."

"Hooey!" said Judy, rudely. She had consumed her fifth drink. "Not one of us cared a brass farthing for her. Most of us are tickled to death she's out of the way."

Chapter 7

In the bright cool of Monday morning Grant drove himself down Wigmore Street. It was still early and the street was quiet; Wigmore Street's clients do not stay in town for weekends. The flower shops were making up Saturday's roses into Victorian posies where their errant petals could be gently corseted. The antique shops were moving that doubtful rug to the other side of the window out of the too questioning gaze of the morning sun. The little cafes were eating their own stale buns for their morning coffee and being pained and haughty with inconsiderates who asked for fresh scones. And the dress shops took Saturday's bargains out of the cupboard and restored the original prices.

Grant, who was en route to see Tisdall's tailor, was a little disgruntled at the perversity of things. If Tisdall's coat had been made by a London tailor it would have been a simple matter to have the button identified by them as one used by them for coats, and for Tisdall's coat in particular. That wouldn't clinch the matter but it would bring the clinching appreciably nearer. But Tisdall's coat had been made, of all places, in Los Angeles. "The coat I had," he explained, "was too heavy for that climate, so I got a new one."

Reasonable, but trying. If the coat had been made by a London firm of standing, one could walk into their shop at any time in the next fifty years and be told without fuss and with benevolent politeness (provided they knew who you were) what kind of buttons had been used. But who was to say whether a Los Angeles firm would know what buttons they put on a coat six months ago! Besides, the button in question was wanted here. It could not very well be sent to Los Angeles. The best one could do was to ask them to supply a sample of the buttons used. If they remembered!

Grant's main hope was that the coat itself would turn up. An abandoned coat which could be identified as Tisdall's, with one button missing, would be the perfect solution. Tisdall was wearing the coat when he drove away the car. That was Sergeant Williams's contribution to the cause of justice and due promotion. He had found a farmer who had seen the car at the Wedmarsh crossroads a little after six on Thursday morning.