“Yes, Anthony,” Roger replied meekly. “Is she keeping house now?”
“She’s gone into the village to do some shopping. She’ll be coming back here when she’s through.”
“A proper little gent,” remarked Roger, pulling out his own pipe and filling it lazily, “a proper little gent, such as I could wish any cousin of mine to be, would have gone with her and carried her parcels for her.”
Anthony flushed slightly. “She wouldn’t let me, damn you. She said that— She wouldn’t let me.”
“Yes, she’s quite right,” Roger admitted handsomely. “Villages are appalling places for gossip, aren’t they?” He concealed his grin in the operation of applying a match to his pipe.
“Did you have any luck?” Anthony asked hastily.
“Well, yes and no.” His cousin’s leg successfully stretched, Roger was ready enough to revert to the main theme. “First of all I was waylaid by that wretched little parson, whose curiosity strikes me as being really indecent. He tried his best to pump me as to what I thought about it all, what the inspector thought about it all, whether any arrest was imminent, whether any other clues had been discovered, and all the rest of it, and though I’m afraid I was outrageously rude to him in my frantic efforts to get away, he managed to waste a perfectly good quarter-of-an-hour of my valuable time; finally I told him that a Bible and prayer-book marked with the initials ‘S. M.’ had been found on the ledge close to where the tragedy had taken place, and the police were looking for the owner. While he was still gasping, I effected my get-away.”
“You are an ass, Roger,” grinned Anthony.
“So it may seem to you,” Roger replied blandly. “In reality I am a person of remarkable astuteness and cunning. Well, then I went back to the inn, borrowed mine host’s bicycle and headed for Clouston Hall. I don’t mind walking it in the cool of the evening, but I was hanged if I was going to do so in the middle of a day like this. All fell out as arranged.”
“You mean, Woodthorpe’s cleared?”