The liver on the stove was burning. There was a smell of scorching
through the rooms and a sort of bluish haze of smoke. I hurried back
and took it off. By the time I had cleaned the pan, Mr. Holcombe was
back again, in his own boat. He had found it at the end of the next
street, where the flood ceased, but no sign of Ladley anywhere. He had
not seen the police boat.
"Perhaps that is just as well," he said philosophically. "We can't go
to the police with a wet slipper and a blood-stained rope and accuse a
man of murder. We have to have a body."
"He killed her," I said obstinately. "She told me yesterday he was a
fiend. He killed her and threw the body in the water."
"Very likely. But he didn't throw it here."
But in spite of that, he went over all the lower hall with his boat,
feeling every foot of the floor with an oar, and finally, at the back
end, he looked up at me as I stood on the stairs.
"There's something here," he said.
I went cold all over, and had to clutch the railing. But when Terry
had come, and the two of them brought the thing to the surface, it was
only the dining-room rug, which I had rolled up and forgotten to carry
up-stairs!
At half past one Mr.
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