CHAPTER FOUR“Well—it’s a starting point,” said Detective Inspector Reeves, “and that’s more than we might have hoped for, last night being what it was.…”
“ ‘Come thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell . . .’ ” murmured Macdonald, but Reeves didn’t rise to the familiar quote. He was already staring out of the window as the train crawled dejectedly westwards through inspissated, sulphurous gloom. Macdonald, watching his younger colleague, knew that Reeves was chewing over the essentials of the evidence given by Sarah Dillon and the comments made by Dr. Garstang, which Macdonald had related. Reeves had a capacity for concentrating on reported evidence to the exclusion of everything else: he examined it bit by bit, rejecting what he thought irrelevant—or “fancy,” as he would h
