II
There was nothing to be learnt from the other three lodgers¹ in thehouse. Two of them, a bank clerk and an elderly man who worked in ashoe shop, had been there for some years. The third was a girl of twenty-two who had come there recently and had a job in a nearby departmentstore. All three of them barely knew Mrs. Davis by sight.
The woman who had reported having seen Father Gorman in the streetthat evening had no useful information to give. She was a Catholic who at-tended St. Dominic’s and she knew Father Gorman by sight. She had seenhim turn out of Benthall Street and go into Tony’s Place about ten minutesto eight. That was all.
Mr. Osborne, the proprietor² of the chemist’s shop on the corner of Bar-ton Street, had a better contribution to make.
He was a small, middle-aged³ man, with a bald domed⁴ head, a round in-genuous face, and glasses.
“Good evening, Chief Inspector⁵. Come behind, will you?” He held up theflap of an old-fashioned counter. Lejeune passed behind and through adispensing alcove⁶ where a young man in a white overall was making upbottles of medicine with the swiftness of a professional conjurer, and sothrough an archway into a tiny room with a couple of easy chairs, a tableand a desk. Mr. Osborne pulled the curtain of the archway behind him ina secretive manner and sat down in one chair, motioning to Lejeune totake the other. He leaned forward, his eyes glinting in pleasurable excite-ment.
“It just happens that I may be able to assist you. It wasn’t a busy evening—nothing much to do, the weather being unfavourable. My young ladywas behind the counter. We keep open until eight on Thursdays always.
The fog was coming on and there weren’t many people about. I’d gone tothe door to look at the weather, thinking to myself that the fog was comingup fast. The weather forecast had said it would. I stood there for a bit—nothing going on inside that my young lady couldn’t deal with — facecreams and bath salts and all that. Then I saw Father Gorman comingalong on the other side of the street. I know him quite well by sight, ofcourse. A shocking thing, this murder, attacking a man so well thought ofas he is. ‘There’s Father Gorman,’ I said to myself. He was going in the dir-ection of West Street, it’s the next turn on the left before the railway, asyou know. A little way behind him there was another man. It wouldn’thave entered my head to notice or think anything of that, but quite sud-denly this second man came to a stop—quite

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