ten o'clock
`` The in-coming tide had jammed him right up under a cross-beam . '' `` What time was that ? ' `` Well , at high tide last night . Hewson , returning with the ten o'clock boat , noticed the moonlight glittering upon the knife . '' The knife to which the Inspector referred possessed a long curved blade of a kind with which I had become terribly familiar in the past . The dead man still clutched the hilt of the weapon in his right hand , and it now lay with the blade resting crosswise upon his breast . I stared in a fascinated way at this mysterious and tragic flotsam of old Thames .