“You might put it like that.”
Roger considered further. “You’ve gone into the question of motive, of course. Has it struck you what a tremendous lot of people had a motive for wishing this unfortunate lady out of the way?”
“The difficulty is to find anybody who hadn’t,” the inspector agreed.
“Yes, that’s what it really does amount to. Very confusing, considering how valuable a motive usually is. Establish your motive and there’s your murderer, is a pretty sound rule at Scotland Yard, I understand. Help yourself to some more whisky, Inspector.”
“Well, thank you, sir,” said the inspector, and did so. “Yes, you’re right. I can’t say I ever remember a case when so many people had a reason, big or little, for wishing the victim dead. Here’s luck, Mr. Sheringham, sir!”
“Cheerio!” Roger returned mechanically.
They fell into silence. Roger realised that the inspector, while pretending outwardly to be ready enough to discuss the case, was in reality determined to do nothing of the kind, at any rate so far as giving away his own particular theory was concerned. Official reticence, no doubt, and of course perfectly right and proper; but distinctly galling for all that. If the inspector would only consent to work with him frankly, Roger felt, they really might achieve excellent results between them; as it was, they must work apart. This professional jealousy of the amateur was really rather petty, especially as Roger would not insist upon any large share of the credit for a swift and successful solution. Well, at least he would present his rival (for such, apparently, was what the inspector was determined to be) with no more gratuitous clues such as that interesting scrap of paper, that was flat!
In the meantime, all being fair in love and war, it was always open to him to pick his opponent’s brains to the best of his ability. He tried a new tack.
“You were asking me on the way back what I meant by applying the word ‘imprudent’ to Mrs. Vane,” he said with an air of ingenuous candour. “I’ll tell you. From what I can gather about her, the lady was anything but imprudent. She certainly married the doctor for his money, so far as my information goes; she cozened that extremely generous settlement out of him; and I’m quite sure that over anything which might affect her material welfare, imprudent is the very last thing in the world she would be. So if she struck that boy as being so, she was bluffing.”
“You mean, that she never intended to tell her husband at all? I see. Yes, that’s my opinion too. It wouldn’t square with my information about her either, not by a long chalk.”