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the colour of his eyes. I saw him in profile as you'll appreciate. Perhaps fifty as to age. I'm going by the walk. A youngish man moves quite differently.”
    Lejeune made a mental survey of the distance across the street, then back again to Mr Osborne, and wondered. He wondered very much...
    A description such as that given by the chemist could mean one of two things. It could spring from an unusually vivid imagination - he had known many examples of that kind, mostly from women. They built up a fancy portrait of what they thought a murderer ought to look like. Such fancy portraits, however, usually contained some decidedly spurious details - such as rolling eyes, beetle brows, ape-like jaws, snarling ferocity. The description given by Mr Osborne sounded like the description of a real person. In that case it was possible that here was the witness in a million - a man who observed accurately and in detail and who would be quite unshakable as to what he had seen.
    Again Lejeune considered the distance across the street. His eyes rested thoughtfully on the chemist.
    He asked: “Do you think you would recognize this man if you saw him again?”
    “Oh yes,” Mr Osborne was supremely confident. “I never forget a face. It's one of my hobbies. I've always said that if one of these wife murderers came into my place and bought a nice little package of arsenic, I'd be able to swear to him at the trial. I've always had my hopes that something like that would happen one day.”
    “But it hasn't happened yet?”
    Mr Osborne admitted sadly that it hadn't.
    “And not likely to now,” he added wistfully. “I'm selling this business. Getting a very nice price for it, and retiring to Bournemouth.”
    “It looks a nice place you've got here.”
    “It's got class,” said Mr Osborne, a note of pride in his voice. “Nearly a hundred years we've been established here. My grandfather and my father before me. A good old-fashioned family business. Not that I saw it that way as a boy. Stuffy, I thought it. Like many a lad, I was bitten by the stage. Felt sure I could act. My father didn't try to stop me. 'See what you can make of it, my boy,' he said. 'You'll find you're no Sir Henry Irving.' And how right he was! Very wise man, my father. Eighteen months or so in repertory and back I came into the business. Took a pride in it. I did. We've always kept good solid stuff. Old-fashioned. But quality. But nowadays -” he shook his head sadly - “disappointing for a pharmacist. All this toilet stuff. You've got to keep it. Half the profits come from all that muck. Powder and lipstick and face creams; and hair shampoos and fancy sponge bags. I don't touch the stuff myself. I have a young lady behind the counter who attends to all that. No, it's not what it used to be, having a chemist's establishment. However, I've a good sum put by, and I'm getting a very good price, and I've made a down payment on a very nice little bungalow near Bournemouth.”
    He added:
    “Retire while you can still enjoy life. That's my motto. I've got plenty of hobbies. Butterflies, for instance. And a bit of bird watching now and then. And gardening - plenty of good books on how to start a garden. And there's travel. I might go on one of these cruises - see foreign parts before it's too late.”
    Lejeune rose.
    “Well, I wish you the best of luck,” he said. “And if before you actually leave these parts, you should catch sight of that man -”
    “I'll let you know at once, Mr Lejeune. Naturally. You can count on me. It will be a pleasure. As I've told you, I've a very good eye for a face. I shall be on the lookout. On the qui vive, as they say. Oh yes. You can rely on me. It will be a pleasure.”

The Pale Horse

Chapter 4
    I came out of the Old Vic, my friend Hermia Redcliffe beside me. We had been to see a performance of Macbeth. It was raining hard. As we ran across the street to the spot where I had parked my car, Hermia remarked unjustly that whenever one