“I see!” The detective sat silent for a minute, his eyes scanning the flying landscape. “Well, it is pretty much what I expected to hear,” he said at last. “It strengthens my suspicions so far——”
“I can't understand your suspicions,” John Steadman said impatiently. “This man Hoyle is a bit of a humbug, evidently, but what connexion can there be between him and Luke Bechcombe's murder?”
“His daughter?” the inspector suggested without looking round.
The barrister shrugged his shoulders. “That girl is no murderess.”
“No,” agreed the inspector. “But she is helping the guilty to escape.”
John Steadman raised his eyebrows. “Who is the guilty?”
For answer Inspector Furnival's keen, ferret eyes looked back at him, focused themselves on the barrister's face as though they would wring some truth from it.
But John Steadman's face would never give him away. In his day he had been one of the keenest cross examiners at the bar. His eyes had never been more blandly expressionless than now as they met the inspector's inquiringly.
Defeated, the detective sank back in his corner of the car with a deep breath, whether of relief or disappointment John Steadman could not tell.
They were just entering Burford again. Before the car stopped the inspector said quietly: