“Good for you, Anthony! You mean that second lot of footprints, don’t you? Well, good-bye, my children. Amuse each other till lunch-time.”
“Where are you going, Roger?” cried Margaret.
“To look into this matter of the lady with the large feet and the jealous disposition,” Roger called back, disappearing at full speed over the bank.
Chapter VIII.
Introducing a Goat-faced Clergyman
Roger had no definite plan in his mind as he walked with quick strides along the cliff-top in the direction of Ludmouth. His impulsive flight from the other two had been dictated by two instinctive feelings—that he wanted to be alone to ponder over the significance of this fresh information, and that Anthony and Margaret would probably be not at all averse to a little dose of each other’s undiluted company. His first idea, equally instinctive, had been to make a bee-line for the Russells’ house and pour out a torrent of eager questions into the lady’s astonished ears. Second thoughts warned him against any such precipitation. He sat down on a convenient little hummock facing the sea, pulled out and re-lit his pipe and began to think.
It did not take him many minutes to see that, if this new lane of enquiry were not to prove a blind alley, there were two questions of paramount importance first requiring a satisfactory answer. Of these one was concerned with Mrs. Russell’s shoes: did they fit the second lot of footprints in that patch of mud on the cliff-path, or not? If they did, that did not actually prove anything, but Mrs. Russell remained a suspected person; if they did not, then she must be exonerated at once. The second, and far more important, was this—who had been at the Russells’ house during the time when Mrs. Vane might have been expected to call?
Roger was still considering the interesting possibility depending on the answer to this question, when a gentle voice behind him cut abruptly into his reverie.
“A charming view from this point, sir, is it not?” observed the gentle voice.
Roger turned about. A little elderly clergyman, with silvery hair and a face like a benign but beardless goat, was peering at him benevolently through a large pair of horn spectacles. “Oh, Lord, the local parson!” Roger groaned to himself—not because he disliked parsons, local or otherwise, but because parsons are inclined to talk and Roger, at that particular moment in his existence, surprisingly enough was not. Aloud he said, courteously enough, “It is indeed; particularly charming.”
The little old parson continued to beam, the sunlight glittering on his huge spectacles. He did not go nor did he very definitely stay—he hovered.