‘Where does your wife think you are?’ I asked.

‘Relieving at—at Torquay.’

‘Does she believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She doesn’t mind getting no letters from you?’

‘No.’

‘Doesn’t it ever occur to her that you might be with another woman?’

‘No.’

‘Careful, Muller!’ I said.

I merely raised the revolver to the level of his eyes. He shrieked that he had been lying. He pawed the air with his right hand as if he could catch the bullet in its flight. The wretched fellow feared death as he would a ghost. I admit that death is a horrid visitor, but surely distinguished? Even a man going to the gallows feels that he should receive the guest with some attempt at dignity.

‘From whom do you take your orders?’ I asked.

‘The hotel manager.’

‘No one else?’

‘Nobody else, I swear!’

‘What hotel?’

He gave me the name of the hotel and its manager. I won’t repeat it here. It ought to be above suspicion, but for that reason, if no other, I have little doubt that our people suspect it. If they don’t, they have only to check which of them in the last week of October lost a night porter who never returned.

‘What crime did you commit?’ I asked.

It was obvious that they had some hold on him in order to make of him so obedient and unquestioning a tool. Night porters, in my experience, are remarkable for their brusque independence.

‘Assault,’ he muttered, evidently ashamed of himself.

‘How?’

‘She invited me to her room—at least I thought she did. I shouldn’t have done it. I know that. But I was going off duty. And then—then I went for her a bit rough-like. I thought she’d been leading me on, you see. And she screamed and the manager and her father came in. She looked a child. I thought I’d taken leave of my senses. She had just been laughing at me friendly, sir, when she came in of an evening, and I’d thought … I could have sworn that …’

‘I know what you thought,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t they charge you?’

‘For the sake of the hotel, sir. The manager hushed it up.’

‘And they didn’t sack you?’

‘No. The manager made me sign a confession and they all witnessed it.’

‘So you have done what you were told ever since?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you get another job?’

‘They wouldn’t give me any references, sir, and I don’t blame them.’

He was genuinely ashamed. He had come out of the realms of a panic-stricken imagination as soon as he was reminded of the real trouble of his everyday life. They had a double grip on the poor devil. They had not only ensured his obedience, but shattered his self-respect.

‘Don’t you see that they framed you?’ I asked.

I was sure of it. Any really competent little bitch of seventeen could have managed those enigmatic smiles and performed that disconcerting change from temptress to horrified child.

‘I’d like to believe it, sir,’ he said, shaking his head.

No wonder Quive-Smith was exasperated by him!

I myself became a human being again. Muller might, for all I knew, have been a gangster of the most savage, and therefore cowardly type. I had to break him down. It wasn’t only acting; I should have killed him without hesitation if he hadn’t proved useful. But I was almost as relieved as he when I could lay brutality aside. I told him to pull up his pants, and gave him a bit of string to hold them and a cigarette. I kept the revolver in sight, of course, just to remind him that all in the garden was not yet roses.

‘They know you at the farm?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I drove the major over there.’

‘In what capacity? His servant?’

‘Yes. He told them I was taking my own holiday on the coast.’

‘Have you been at the farm since?’

‘Once. I had lunch there the day that … that …’

‘That you buried me alive.’

‘Oh, sir! If only I had known!’ he cried. ‘I thought you were one of them—honest, I did! I didn’t care if they murdered each other. It was a case of the more the merrier, if you see what I mean.’

‘You seem to be pretty sure now that I’m not one of them,’ I said.

‘I know you’re not. A gentleman like you wouldn’t be against his own country.’

Wouldn’t he? I don’t know. I distrust patriotism; the reasonable man can find little in these days that is worth dying for. But dying against—there’s enough iniquity in Europe to carry the most urbane or decadent into battle.

However, I saw what use Muller had been to his employers. A night porter must be able to sum up his customers on mighty little evidence, especially when they arrive without any baggage. He must, for example, know the difference between a duke and stock-pusher though they speak with the same accent and the latter be much better dressed than the former.

I explained to him that he might consider himself out of danger so long as his nerve did not fail; he was going down to the farm to tell Patachon that Quive-Smith had been called back to London, to pack his things, and to take them away in the car.

Quive-Smith had almost certainly warned his hosts that he might be off any day, so the plan was not outrageously daring. Muller had the right air of authority; with the rug over his arm, he looked trained and respectable in spite of being somewhat muddy. He was dressed in such a way that he could pass for a night watchman in Chideock or a man-servant on a holiday: a stout tweed suit, an old pullover of suede, and a stiff white collar.

The chief risk was that Muller, when he found himself in the farm, would decide that his late employers were more to be feared than I. That point I put to him with the utmost frankness. I told him that if he wasn’t out of the house in a quarter of an hour I should come and fetch him and claim to be the major’s brother. I also told him that he was useful to me just so long as nobody knew the major was dead, and that the moment when his usefulness ceased, whether in ten minutes or two weeks, would be his last.

‘But if you are loyal to me for the next few days,’ I added, ‘you can forget that matter of criminal assault. I’ll give you money to go abroad and never see your late employers again. They’ll leave you in peace. You’re no further use to them, and you don’t know enough to be worth following. So there you are! Give me away, and I’ll kill you! Play straight with me, and there’s a new life open to you wherever you want to lead it!’

There were a good many holes in the argument, but he was in no state for analytical thinking. He was deeply impressed and became maudlin with relief. Quive-Smith was quite right about him; he was the perfect Second Murderer. He attached himself with dog-like simplicity and asked only to be allowed to obey.

He took the major’s head while I took his heels, and we moved cautiously down into the road that ran along the foot of the hill. There, thankfully and immediately, we dropped our white burden in the ditch. I saw the sweat burst out on the back of Muller’s thick neck as soon as he was convinced that we had not been seen.

At the five-bar gate where Patachon’s private track swung across the home paddock to the farm we stopped. I told Muller that I should wait for him there, and should enter the car when he got out to open the gate. I gave him Quive-Smith’s keys and I gave him a story to tell. The major was dining with friends in Bridport. He had learned that he had to go abroad at once. His address for forwarding letters was Barclays Bank, Cairo. I knew from a letter in his pocket that he kept an account with a branch of Barclays—and Cairo is a complicated town through which to trace a man’s passage.

‘But what will I do if they don’t believe me?’ he asked.

‘Of course they’ll believe you,’ I answered. ‘Why the devil shouldn’t they?’

I was none too sure of that, but his best chance of success was to show the utmost confidence.

I gave him a pound to tip the girl who had made the major’s bed—if there were such a girl—and another which he was to hand to Mrs Patachon for her daughter’s savings bank.