There was no stop now before Rugby, and it was unlikely that any passenger would enter from the corridor to break up this disagreeable solitude à deux. Pender could, of course, go out into the corridor and not return, but that would be an acknowledgment of defeat. Pender lowered Murder at the Manse and caught the man’s eye again.

“Getting tired of it?” asked the man.

“Night journeys are always a bit tedious,” replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. “Would you like a book?”

He took The Paper-Clip Clue from his briefcase and held it out hopefully. The other man glanced at the title and shook his head.

“Thanks very much,” he said, “but I never read detective stories.

They’re so — inadequate, don’t you think so?”

“They are rather lacking in characterization and human interest, certainly,” said Pender, “but on a railway journey—”

“I don’t mean that,” said the other man. “I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent — they bore me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Pender. “At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.”

“Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,” admitted the other man.

“Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,”

objected Pender. “Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the News of the World intervened.”

“Yes,” said the other man, “but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elaboration, the lies, the paraphernalia. Absolutely unnecessary.”

“Oh come!” said Pender. “You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.”