Chapter ThreeDetective Sergeant Frank Abbott was reflecting on the general unsatisfactoriness of crime. Not only did it flout morality and break the law, but it haled deserving detective sergeants of the Metropolitan Police Force out to remote suburbs in weather wet enough to drown a fish. His errand had nothing whatever to do with the case of William Smith, so there is no more to be said about it than that it had got him just nowhere at all. The weather, on the other hand, had improved. The rain no longer came down in sheets. There was much less of it, and what there was no longer descended, it remained in the air and thickened it. It remained on the skin, the eyelashes, the hair, and with every breath it rushed into the lungs. Visibility was particularly poor.
Making for the tube statio
