Explore "The Layton Court Mystery" by Anthony Berkeley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Long after Alec's not altogether willing departure, Roger sat smoking and thinking. On the whole, he was not sorry to be alone. Alec was proving a somewhat discouraging companion in this business. Evidently his heart was not in it; and for one so situated the ferreting out of facts and the general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that is inevitably attendant on such a task, must be singularly distasteful. Roger could not blame Alec for his undisguised reluctance to see the thing through, but he also could not help thinking somewhat wistfully of the enthusiastic and worshipping prototypes whose mantle Alec was at first supposed to have inherited. Roger felt that he could have welcomed a little enthusiasm and worshipping at the end of this eventful and very strenuous day.
He began to try to arrange methodically in his mind the data they had collected. First with regard to the murderer. He had made an effective escape from the house only, in all probability as it seemed, to enter it again by another way. Why? Either because he lived there, or because he wished to communicate with somebody who did. Which of these? Heaven only knew!