I haven't seen him for years."
"Is that your last word, Mrs. Haymes?"
"I've nothing else to say."
Craddock came away from his interview with Phillipa Haymes feeling angry and baffled.
"Obstinate as a mule," he said to himself angrily.
He was fairly sure that Phillipa was lying, but he hadn't succeeded in breaking down her obstinate denials.
He wished he knew a little more about ex-Captain Haymes.
His information was meagre.
An unsatisfactory Army record, but nothing to suggest that Haymes was likely to turn criminal.
And anyway Haymes didn't fit in with the oiled door.
Someone in the house had done that, or someone with easy access to it.
He stood looking up the staircase, and suddenly he wondered what Julia had been doing up in the attic.
An attic, he thought, was an unlikely place for the fastidious Julia to visit.
What had she been doing up there?
He ran lightly up to the first floor.
There was no one about.
He opened the door out of which Julia had come and went up the narrow stairs to the attic.
There were trunks there, old suitcases, various broken articles of furniture, a chair with a leg off, a broken china lamp, part of an old dinner service.
He turned to the trunks and opened the lid of one.
Clothes.
Old-fashioned, quite good quality women's clothes.
Clothes belonging, he supposed, to Miss Blacklog, or to her sister who had died.
He opened another trunk.
Curtains.
He passed to a small attache-case.
It had papers in it and letters.
Very old letters, yellowed with time.
He looked at the outside of the case which had the initials C.L.B. on it.
He deduced correctly that it had belonged to Letitia's sister Charlotte.
He unfolded one of the letters.
It began: Dearest Charlotte, Yesterday Belle felt well enough to go for a picnic.
R.G. also took a day off.
The Asuogel flotation has gone splendidly; R.G. is terribly pleased about it.
The Preference shares are at a premium.
He skipped the rest and looked at the signature: Your loving sister, Letitia.
He picked up another.
Darling Charlotte, I wish you would sometimes make up your mind to see people.
You do exaggerate, you know.
It isn't nearly as bad as you think. And people really don't mind things like that.
It's not the disfigurement you think it is. He nodded his head.
He remembered Belle Goedler saying that Charlotte Blacklog had a disfigurement or deformity of some kind.
Letitia had, in the end, resigned her job, to go and look after her sister.
These letters all breathed the anxious spirit of her affection and love for an invalid.
She had written her sister, apparently, long accounts of everyday happenings, of any little detail that she thought might interest the sick girl.
And Charlotte had kept these letters.
Occasionally odd snapshots had been enclosed.
Excitement suddenly flooded Craddock's mind.
Here, it might be, he would find a clue.
In these letters there would be written down things that Letitia Blacklog herself had long forgotten.
Here was a faithful picture of the past and somewhere amongst it, there might be a clue that would help him to identify the unknown.