midnight
`` Perhaps she 's right , '' responded Allingham . `` All we have been able to discover is that two electric cabs , both provided with outside means of locking the doors and windows , took the opposing candidates and went off twenty miles or so into the country , on the night before election , breaking up an important debate that might have turned the current of affairs in another direction -- '' '' -- Um , perhaps , '' interrupted Bailey . `` Perhaps not . Anyway , all this we knew before midnight , the evening it happened . '' `` Yes . And while there are no electric cabs in Roma , there are plenty of them within a radius of twenty-five miles of us . And the Burke gang could easily have brought any of them here .