“Down!” commanded Mrs. Ainstable. “I'm so sorry! Down, you idiot!”
Hemingway, having wrestled successfully with the setter's advances, and brushed the hairs from his coat, said: “Yes, you're a beauty, aren't you? Now, that'll do! Down!”
“How nice of you not to mind him!” said Mrs. Ainstable. “He isn't properly trained yet.” Her tired, strained eyes ran over the Chief Inspector. “You want to see my husband, I expect. He went down to the estate room a little while ago, so I'll take you there, shall I? It'll save time and since that's where he kept his rifle I'm sure you'd like to see the place.”
“Thank you, madam.”
Her light laugh sounded. “I don't think we've ever had so much excitement in Thornden before!”
“I should think you must hope you never will have again,” said Hemingway, following her down a passage to a door opening on to a rather overgrown shrubbery.
“I must admit that I wish it had never happened,” she replied. “So horrid to have a murder in one's midst! It worries my husband, too. He can't get over his belief that he's responsible for Thornden. Have you any idea who did it? Oh, I mustn't ask you that, must I? Particularly when my husband is one of the possibles. I wish I'd waited for him, and made him drive home with me.”
“You left the tennis-party early, didn't you, madam?”
“Yes, I only looked in for tea. I'm rather a crock, and don't play tennis. And it was so insufferably hot, that day!”
“Do you know what time it was when you left, madam?”
“No, I don't think I do. Does it matter? Sometime after six, I should say. Ask Mr. Plenmeller! I met him just as I was starting. He might know when that was.”
“That would have been when he was returning with some papers for your husband?”
Again she laughed. “Yes, were you told about that?”
“I was told he made an excuse to leave the party after tea, and came back half an hour later. I didn't know he had met you, madam.”
She paused, turning her head quickly to look at him. “That sounds as if someone were trying to make mischief! Well, it serves him right! Hoist with his own petard. Were you told why he made an excuse to go away?”
“No, I can't say I was madam. Do you know why?”
“Yes, of course: everyone knew! It was quite atrocious and entirely typical. When they made up two sets after tea, Miss Warrenby was one over, and she elected to sit out. Which meant she would talk to Gavin Plenmeller. So he said he must go home to fetch some papers for my husband. You can't be surprised that he makes enemies.”
“No,” agreed Hemingway. “And you think everyone knew why he went away?”
“Oh, well, everyone who heard him! Mrs. Haswell said that he and Miss Warrenby must keep one another company, upon which he told Mr. Lindale, in what he may have meant to be an undertone but which was all too audible, that this was where he must think fast. Whether Miss Warrenby heard it, I don't know: I did! Here we are: this is the estate room. Bernard, are you very busy? I have brought Chief Inspector Hemingway to see you.”
Two steps led up to the open door of the room, which was a large, square apartment, severely furnished with a roll-top desk, a stout table, some filing cabinets, and several leather-seated chairs. A map of the estate hung on one wall, and a door at one side of the room gave access to another and smaller office. The Squire was seated at the table, official forms spread before him. He looked up under his brows, and favoured Hemingway with a hard stare before rising to his feet. “Scotland Yard?” he said brusquely. “You ought to be resting, Rosamund.”
“Nonsense, dear!” said Mrs. Ainstable, sitting down, and taking a cigarette from the box on the table. “Resting, when we actually have the C.I.D. on the premises? It's far too interesting! Like living in one of Gavin's books.”
He looked at her, but said nothing. Glancing up, as she lit her cigarette, she smiled at him, reassuringly, Hemingway thought.
The Squire transferred his attention to Hemingway. “Sit down, won't you? What can I do for you?”
The tone was more that of a commanding officer than a man undergoing interrogation. Hemingway recognised it, appreciated it, and realised that the Squire was not going to be an easy man to question. But those responsible for putting him in charge of this case had not chosen him at random. “Old County families mixed up in this business. Likely to be sticky,” had said the Assistant Commissioner, to Hemingway's immediate superior and lifelong friend, Superintendent Hinckley. “I think we'll send Hemingway down. I don't pretend to know how he does it—and probably it's just as well that I don't, for I've no doubt he behaves in a thoroughly unorthodox fashion—but he does seem to be able to handle that kind of difficult witness.” To which Superintendent Hinckley had replied, with a grin: “He can be exasperating, can't he, sir? Still, there it is! Myself, I've got a notion it's those unconventional ways of his that kind of take people off their guard. And it's a fact, as you said yourself, that he does bring home the bacon. He's got what he calls—”
But at this point the Assistant Commissioner had interrupted him, uttering savagely: “Flair! You needn't tell me! And it's perfectly true, blast him!”
The Chief Inspector would have had no hesitation in ascribing the first question he put to the Squire to his mysterious flair. Taking a chair on the opposite side of the table, he said, at his most affable: “Thank you, sir. Well, I thought I'd best come up to have a chat with you, because I understand you were by way of being a friend of Mr. Warrenby's.”
This unexpected gambit had the effect of producing a silence which lasted just long enough to satisfy the Chief Inspector. No one, watching him, would have supposed that he way paying any particular attention to either of his auditors, but although he choose that moment to pat one of the Sealyhams, who was sniffing his trouser-leg, he missed neither the Squire's stare, nor the slight rigidity which held his rather restless wife suddenly still, her gaze lowered to an unblinking scrutiny of her burning cigarette.
The Squire broke the silence. “Don't know that I should put it as high as that,” he said. “I got on perfectly well with him. No sense in living at loggerheads with one's neighbours.”
“No,” agreed Hemingway. “Though, by all accounts, he wasn't an easy man to get on with. Which is why I thought I might find it helpful to have a talk with someone who wasn't what you might call prejudiced against him. Or for him, if it comes to that. What with Miss Warrenby on the one side, and pretty well everyone else on the other, the thing I want is an unbiased view. How did he come to get himself so much disliked, sir?”
The Squire took a moment or two to answer this, covering his hesitation by pushing the cigarette-box towards Hemingway, and saying: “Don't know if you smoke?”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hemingway, taking a cigarette.
“Difficult question to answer,” said the Squire. “I never came up against Warrenby myself: always very civil to me! but the fact of the matter was that he was a bit of an outsider. Pushing, and that sort of thing. No idea how to conduct himself in a place like this. Got people's backs up. Before the War, of course,—but it's no use thinking backwards. Got to move with the times. No use ostracising fellows like Warrenby, either. Got to accept them, and do what one can to teach them the way to behave.”
Yes, thought the Chief Inspector, you're a hard nut to crack, Squire! Aloud, he said: “Would you have put it beyond him to have gone in for a bit of polite blackmail to get his own way, sir?”
The ash from Mrs. Ainstable's cigarette dropped on to her skirt. She brushed it off, exclaiming: “What a lurid thought! Who on earth did he find to blackmail in these respectable parts?”
“Well, you never know, do you?” said Hemingway thoughtfully. “I've been having a talk with his head-clerk, and it set me wondering, madam.”