“Rather. We all said we’d never seen him in such form.”
“Is he generally in form?”
“He’s quite good company, you know, if you take him the right way. He’s rather vain and childish—well, like I’ve been telling you—and self-important; but quite amusing in his way, and——” Bill broke off suddenly. “I say, you know, it really is the limit, talking about your host like this.”
“Don’t think of him as your host. Think of him as a suspected murderer with a warrant out against him.”
“Oh! but that’s all rot, you know.”
“It’s the fact, Bill.”
“Yes, but I mean, he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t murder anybody. It’s a funny thing to say, but—well, he’s not big enough for it. He’s got his faults, like all of us, but they aren’t on that scale.”
“One can kill anybody in a childish fit of temper.”
Bill grunted assent, but without prejudice to Mark. “All the same,” he said, “I can’t believe it. That he would do it deliberately, I mean.”
“Suppose it was an accident, as Cayley says, would he lose his head and run away?”