"How did you obtain this job?"
"Through one of them Prisoners' Help Societies.
Bloke met me when I came out."
"What was he like?"
"Not exactly a parson, but looked like one.
Soft black hat and mincing way of talking. Got a broken front tooth.
Spectacled chap.
Saunders his name was.
Said he hoped I was repentant, and that he'd find me a good post.
I went to old Whalley on his recommendation."
Poirot rose once more.
"I thank you.
I know all now.
Have patience." He paused in the doorway and added: "Saunders gave you a pair of boots, didn't he?"
Grant looked very astonished.
"Why, yes, he did. But how did you know?"
"It is my business to know things," said Poirot gravely.
After a word or two to the Inspector, the three of us went to the White Hart and discussed eggs and bacon and Devonshire cider.
"Any elucidations yet?" asked Ingles, with a smile.
"Yes, the case is clear enough now; but, see you, I shall have a good deal of difficulty in proving it.
Whalley was killed by order of the Big Four - but not by Grant.
A very clever man got Grant the post and deliberately planned to make him the scapegoat - an easy matter with Grant's prison record.
He gave him a pair of boots, one of two duplicate pairs.
The other he kept himself.
It was all so simple.
When Grant is out of the house, and Betsy is chatting in the village (which she probably did everyday of her life), he drives up wearing the duplicate boots, enters the kitchen, goes through into the living-room, fells the old man with a blow, and then cuts his throat.
Then he returns to the kitchen, removes the boots, puts on another pair, and, carrying the first pair, goes out to his trap and drives off again."
Ingles looked steadily at Poirot.
"There's a catch in it still.
Why did nobody see him?"
"Ah!
That is where the cleverness of Number Four, I am convinced, comes in.
Everybody saw him - and yet nobody saw him.
You see, he drove up in a butcher's cart!"
I uttered an exclamation.
"The leg of mutton?"
"Exactly, Hastings, the leg of mutton.
Everybody swore that no one had been to Granite Bungalow that morning, but, nevertheless, I found in the larder a leg of mutton, still frozen.
It was Monday, so the meat must have been delivered that morning; for if on Saturday, in this hot weather, it would not have remained frozen over Sunday.
So some one had been to the Bungalow, and a man on whom a trace of blood here and there would attract no attention."
"Damned ingenious!" cried Ingles approvingly.
"Yes, he is clever. Number Four."
"As clever as Hercule Poirot?" I murmured.
My friend threw me a glance of dignified reproach.
"There are some jests that you should not permit yourself, Hastings," he said sententiously. "Have I not saved an innocent man from being sent to the gallows?
That is enough for one day."
Chapter 5 DISAPPEARANCE OF A SCIENTIST
Personally, I don't think that, even when a jury had acquitted Robert Grant, alias Biggs, of the murder of Jonathan Whalley, Inspector Meadows was entirely convinced of his innocence.
The case which he had built up against Grant - the man's record, the jade which he had stolen, the boots which fitted the footprints so exactly - was to his matter-of-fact mind too complete to be easily upset; but Poirot, compelled much against his inclination to give evidence, convinced the jury.
Two witnesses were produced who had seen a butcher's cart drive up to the bungalow on that Monday morning, and the local butcher testified that his cart only called there on Wednesdays and Fridays.