The barrister coughed.
“And yet I noticed one small thing that may help you, inspector. You saw that water-colour sketch?”
“The one you are going to buy,” the inspector assented with a grin. “Ay. I should like to have had a good look round at those drawings. But that blessed housekeeper wasn't giving us any chances.”
“Not that she knew of,” John Steadman said quietly. “Did you notice the big ‘Christopher Hoyle’ in the left-hand corner of the painting, inspector?”
“I saw it,” said the inspector, “but it didn't tell me much.”
“No. That alone did not,” John Steadman went on. “But I looked at that and I looked at several of the others. And I am as sure as I can be without subjecting them to a test that in each case that big flourishing Christopher Hoyle has been scrawled with a paint brush on the top of another signature. One, moreover, that from the little I could see of it bore no sort of resemblance to Christopher Hoyle. What do you make of that, inspector?”
“Is Mr. Christopher Hoyle a man with two names?” the inspector questioned. “Or has he some reason to wish to appear to be an artist in simple Burford society when in reality he is nothing of the kind?”
“The latter, I imagine,” John Steadman said after a pause. “Because—I don't know whether you know anything of painting, inspector?”
“Bless you, not a thing!” the inspector said energetically. “If I have to do with a picture case, I have to call in experts! But you mean——”
“Judging from the three or four sketches I was able to examine I should say that none of them—no two of them were done by the same hand. There is as much difference in painting as in handwriting, you know, inspector.”