‘When they’d got together they’d go out and they’d search.
Sometimes they found her at once and sometimes they wouldn’t find her for weeks. Sometimes she was quite near her home in a place you’d have thought we must have looked at already. Maniac, I suppose it must have been. It’s awful,’ said Mrs Copleigh in a righteous tone, ‘it’s awful, that there should be men like that. They ought to be shot. They ought to be strangled themselves. And I’d do it to them for one, if anyone would let me. Any man who kills children and assaults them.
What’s the good putting them in loony bins and treating them with all the home comforts and living soft. And then sooner or later they let ’em out again, say they’re cured and send them home. That happened somewhere in Norfolk. My sister lives there and she told me about it. He went back home and two days later he’d done in someone else. Crazy they are, these doctors, some of them, saying these men are cured when they are not.’ ‘And you’ve no idea down here who it might have been?’ said Tuppence. ‘Do you think really it was a stranger?’ ‘Might have been a stranger to us. But it must have been someone living within – oh! I’d say a range of twenty miles around. It mightn’t have been here in this village.’ ‘You always thought it was, Liz.’ ‘You get het up,’ said Mrs Copleigh. ‘You think it’s sure to be here in your own neighbourhood because you’re afraid, I suppose. I used to look at people. So did you, George. You’d say to yourself I wonder if it could be t/t chap, he’s seemed a bit queer lately. That sort of thing.’ ‘I don’t suppose really he looked queer at all,’ said Tuppence. ‘He probably looked just like everyone else.’ ‘Yes, it could be you’ve got something there. I’ve heard it said that you wouldn’t know, and whoever it was had never seemed mad at all, but other people say there’s always a terrible glare in their eyes.’ ‘Jeffreys, he was the sergeant of police here then,’ said Mr Copleigh, ‘he always used to say he had a good idea but there was nothing doing.’ ‘They never caught the man?’ ‘No. Over six months it was, nearly a year. Then the whole thing stopped. And there’s never been anything of that kind round here since. No, I think he must have gone away. Gone away altogether. That’s what makes people think they might know who it was.’ ‘You mean because of people who did leave the district?’ ‘Well, of course it made people talk, you know. They’d say it might be so-and-so.’ Tuppence hesitated to ask the next question, but she felt that with Mrs Copleigh’s passion for talking it wouldn’t matter if she did.
‘Who did you think it was?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s that long ago I’d hardly like to say. But there was names mentioned. Talked of, you know, and looked at. Some as thought it might be Mr Boscowan.’ ‘Did they?’ ‘Yes, being an artist and all, artists are queer. They say that.
But I didn’t think it was him!’ ‘There was more as said it was Amos Perry,’ said Mr Copleigh.
‘Mrs Perry’s husband?’ ‘Yes. He’s a bit queer, you know, simple minded. He’s the sort of chap that might have done it.’ ‘Were the Perrys living here then?’ ‘Yes. Not at Watermead. They had a cottage about four or five miles away. Police had an eye on him, I’m sure of that.’ ‘Couldn’t get anything on him, though,’ said Mrs Copleigh.
‘His wife spoke for him always. Stayed at home with her in the evenings, he did. Always, she said. Just went along sometimes to the pub on a Saturday night, but none of these murders took place on a Saturday night, so there wasn’t anything in that.
Besides, Alice Perry was the ‘rAnd you’d believe when she gave evidence. She’d never let up or back down. You couldn’t frighten her out of it. Anyway, he’s not the one. I never thought so. I know I’ve nothing to go on but I’ve a sort of feeling if I’d had to put my finger on anyone I’d have put it on Sir Philip.’ ‘Sir Philip?’ Again Tuppence’s head reeled. Yet another character was being introduced. Sir Philip. ‘Who’s Sir Philip?’ she asked.