It was lunchtime when I finally arrived at a snowbound Scotland Yard.  I spent a few minutes writing up my fruitless interview, but broke off when I felt someone standing behind me.  I turned.  It was Chief Inspector Driscoll.

'You've an aunt in Three Sisters, haven't you, Stratford?' he snapped.  I paused, wondering why he was asking.

'Well?' he demanded, his tiny moustache twitching impatiently.

I nodded, then hastily added, 'Yes, sir, I occasionally stay with her when I'm on a walking holiday.'

'Thought so,' he said with a brief triumphant smile.  Driscoll prided himself on knowing everything about his men down to the last insignificant detail.  He took pleasure in parading his collection of trivia, recalling things that might have been mentioned over a year before, and then only in passing.  I had noticed that it was usually the things one did not want remembered that he retained.  A white lie, an embarrassing error, a social gaffe: it would all be filed for later use.  It was the nicer things, like praise for a job well done or recommendation for promotion, that somehow slipped his mind.  The only reason that he remembered my aunt was that he disapproved of my love of walking.

'You are going down to visit her; he informed me.  That is where Hopkinson has gone, according to his statement.  It is my opinion that you might get some local insight into his character from your aunt.  Besides, it will save putting someone up at the local inn overnight.'

His moustache twitched again, probably in disapproval.  Driscoll wasn't against drinking as such, but he was against both beer and public houses.  He was a port man himself and felt that ale played on a man's emotion to the detriment of civilised behaviour.

A sudden thought struck me.  'But if you want me to stay the night...'

'That means your train leaves this afternoon,' he finished.  'We want this Seavers thing cleared up quickly.  You've got nearly an hour until the train leaves, plenty of time to pack.'  He thrust a thin folder into my hand and strode back to his office.

Within five minutes I was in Great Scotland Yard hailing a cab.  It took a good half-hour to reach my lodgings in Notting Hill and the first thing I did when I entered my rooms was to check the tattered Bradshaw that usually propped up a short leg on the hatstand by the door.  Driscoll had underestimated the time and I found that I still had an hour before the four o'clock train departed Paddington for Three Sisters.  I allowed myself a cup of tea and threw a change of clothes and some other essentials into a bag.  I let my landlady know that I would be away and set out on the short walk to the station.

It felt strange, beginning the familiar ritual of the journey knowing that it was business rather than pleasure that motivated me.  I often visited my aunt on the spur of the moment.  I found long ago that the strain of police work could be cleared by long walks in the countryside, and I used her house as a base.  She and I were the only surviving members of our branch of the family.  She had never married, and my parents had died some years before.

I arrived at Paddington with ten minutes to spare, settled into a comfortable compartment and finally began to read the file that had sent me on my way.  In the main it detailed the case I had been involved in: the suicide of Gordon Seavers.  Inspector Hetton was handling the case, but I had been roped in to go to Oxford when he was detained elsewhere.  He had given me an informal briefing over a pie and a pint in a public house near Scotland Yard, but this was the first time I had actually seen the file.  Hetton was a conscientious worker; the report was crammed full of detail and fact but contained precious little emotion.