Murder of the Only Witness

I see, on looking for the exact date in my case-book, that it was on Wednesday, September 21st, 1927 that Chaney and I first heard of the theft, two days previously, of the Countess of Ellingshurst’s diamonds. I remember that Wednesday morning very well. Before settling down to my work at our office—indeed, before breakfast—I had been for a walk in the Park and had extended it into Kensington Gardens; that was such a fresh, crisp autumn morning that I hated to go indoors and longed to be off to the country with a gun and a couple of dogs. Partridges in swift, low-flying coveys—stubble fields with the dew glistening on the clover—hedgerows the gossamer on which would shine and twinkle like the glitter of a million diamonds—these were the things I was hankering after as I walked briskly back to Conduit Street and business. And the worst of it was that Chaney and I just then had precious little business; nothing, at any rate, of prime importance; he, I, and our model of a clerk, Chippendale, were at that time twiddling our thumbs and wondering what would come along next. It is at those moments that something always does come along; it came on this occasion very soon after I had sat down at my desk, to answer two or three utterly unimportant and uninteresting letters.