"Um. A matter of taste, perhaps. Personally, I've seen so much trouble caused by secret marriages that I'm inclined to eye them doubtfully. But—may I ask you a few questions about the less romantic adventures of the young man? Mrs. Varr declared this afternoon that her husband had driven him from the house. Was their disagreement—violent?"
"You must make allowances for my sister's nervous condition," answered Miss Ocky quickly. Her perceptions were instantly alive to whither this shift in the conversation might lead, and she resolved to limit the information she gave him as much as possible to the facts he would surely discover for himself. "Simon and Copley talked over the situation, night before last; Lucy naturally exaggerates the affair."
"Mr. Varr and his son quarreled. Isn't that the plain truth?"
"Doesn't a quarrel depend somewhat on the natures of the two people involved, Mr. Creighton? Simon was fearfully obstinate, and Copley is a little high-tempered—just to the extent that is becoming to a young man with any spirit—and I suppose that what might be merely a normal discussion between two such natures might—might seem like a quarrel to other people. Mightn't it?" she added, not very hopefully.
Despite himself, the detective was forced to grin at this ingenuous, or ingenious, argument.
"They quarreled," he summed it up, regaining his gravity. "If you will recollect, Miss Copley, when you came into the sitting-room a while ago you excused your sister's indisposition on the plea that she had been through enough the last two days to wreck an Amazon. Why two days, unless it was the quarrel between her husband and her son that worried her all of yesterday?"
"Oh, heavens! You're worse than a dictaphone!" Miss Ocky made a face at him. "There's no help for it—I must go into a silence."
"Please don't, until I've asked one more thing. You can answer freely, or the station master will. If Copley went to town last night, what trains were available?"
"Only one," she admitted slowly. "There's a through train from the West that stops at Hambleton for water—at midnight!"
"Ah," said Peter Creighton, then wished he hadn't.