The term had finished with the school concert but he had escaped Mr Gorringer’s annual dinner party for the staff. It was a crisp morning with pale sunlight thawing the frost on the bare hedges and he felt in splendid health and spirits. He was going to an investigation which promised to be one of the most interesting he had known. All the circumstances suggested an intricate, teasing problem and a collection of odd human beings such as he liked to meet in the course of his enquiries. Moreover he would live with the crime, as it were, remaining in the town in which it had taken place, among the people involved in it. He felt like a schoolboy leaving for his first holiday abroad, knowing that everything he saw and heard would be of stirring interest to him. Also, John Moore was in charge of police enquiries and though he would make no concessions or treat Carolus in any way but as an inquisitive member of the public, he would not impede Carolus and would always be ready to hear anything he might have to say.
