There aren't any police brands on me. As for last Wednesday night, I spent it in my car."

"You mean you didn't go to bed at all?"

"That's what I mean."

"And where was the car?"

"In a lane with hedges as high as houses each side, parked on the grass verge. An awful lot of space goes to waste in England in these verges. The ones in that lane were about forty feet wide."

"And you say you slept in the car? Have you someone who can bear witness to that?"

"No. It wasn't that kind of park. I was just sleepy and lost and couldn't be bothered going any further."

"Lost! In the east of Kent!"

"Yes, anywhere in Kent, if it comes to that. Have you ever tried to find a village in England after dark? Night in the desert is nothing to it. You see a sign at last that says Whatsit two and a half miles and you think: Good old Whatsit! Nearly there! Hurrah for England and signposts! And then half a mile on you come to a place where three ways fork, and there's a nice tidy signpost on the little bit of green in the middle and every blame one of that signpost's arms has got at least three names on it, but do you think one of them mentions Whatsit? Oh, no! That would make it far too easy! So you read 'em all several times and hope someone'll come past before you have to decide, but no one comes. Last person passed there a week last Tuesday. No houses; nothing but fields, and an advertisement for a circus that was there the previous April. So you take one of the three roads, and after passing two more signposts that don't take any notice of Whatsit, you come to one that says Whatsit, six and three-quarters. So you start off all over again, four miles to the bad, as it were, and it happens all over again. And again! And by the time Whatsit has done that on you half a dozen times, you don't care what happens as long as you can stop driving around corners and go to sleep. So I just stopped where I was and went to sleep. It was too late to drop in on Chris by that time, anyway."

"But not too late to get a bed at an inn."

"Not if you know where an inn is. 'Sides, judging by some of the inns I've seen here, I'd just as soon sleep in the car."

"You grow a heavy beard, I notice." Grant nodded at Harmer's unshaven chin.

"Yes. Have to shave twice a day, sometimes. If I'm going to be out late. Why?"

"You were shaved when you arrived at Miss Clay's cottage. How was that?"

"Carry my shaving things in the car. Have to, when you have a beard like mine."

"So you had no breakfast that morning?"

"No, I was planning to get breakfast from Chris. I don't eat breakfast anyway. Just coffee, or orange juice. Orange juice in England. My God, your coffee — what do you think they do to it? The women, I mean. It's —»

"Leaving the coffee aside for a moment, shall we come to the main point? Why did you tell the sergeant on duty that you had slept at Sandwich?"

The man's face changed subtly. Until then he had been answering at ease, automatically; the curves of his broad, normally good-natured face slack and amiable. Now the slackness went; the face grew wary, and — was it? — antagonistic.

"Because I felt there was something wrong, and I didn't want to be mixed up in it."

"That is very extraordinary, surely? I mean, that you should be conscious of evil before anyone knew that it existed."

"That's not so funny. They told me Chris was drowned. I knew Chris could swim like an eel.