CHAPTER ELEVENMacdonald had meant to spend the morning with Brian Salcombe, but when Sally Dillon’s message reached him, the chief inspector changed his plans. Thus Brian found himself in the company of Inspector Jenkins, a stout, cheerful man who had grown grey in the service of the C.I.D. Jenkins’s retiring age had overtaken him some time ago, but Jenkins didn’t want to retire, and Macdonald didn’t want to lose him: stout Jenkins undoubtedly was, and a slow mover these days, but his long experience and shrewd judgment made up for his decreasing mobility, and nobody at C.O. had as long a memory as Jenkins concerning the methods, characters, and peculiarities of the old lag class—the recidivists, whose motto was an inveterate: “Next time lucky.”
Jenkins first took Brian to St. Monica’s Ho
