Audrey said:
“And now Miss Foley’s gone north, you’ve decided to come and admire me in my home!”
“So it is your home!” murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey’s old suspicions afresh—and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. “I assure you I came here to recover; I’d heard it was the finest climate in England.”
“Recover?”
“Yes, from fire-extinguishers. D’ye know I coughed for twenty-four hours after that reception?... And you should have seen my clothes! The doctor says my lungs may never get over it.... That’s what comes of admiration.”
“It’s what comes of behaving as no married man ought to behave.”
“Did I say I was married?” asked the detective with an ingenuous air. “Well, I may be. But I dare say I’m only married just about as much as you are yourself, madam.”
Upon this remark he raised his hat and departed along the grassy summit of the sea-wall.
Audrey flushed for the second time that morning, and more strikingly than before. She was extremely discontented with, and ashamed of, herself, for she had meant to be the equal of the detective, and she had not been. It was blazingly clear that he had indeed played with her—or, as she put it in her own mind: “He just stuffed me up all through.”
She tried to think logically. Had he been pursuing the motor-car all the way from Birmingham? Obviously he had not, since according to Aguilar he had been in the vicinity of Moze since the previous morning. Hence he did not know that Audrey was involved in the Blue City affair, and he did not know that Jane Foley was at Frinton. How he had learnt that Audrey belonged to Moze, and why and what he had come to investigate at Moze, she could not guess. Nor did these problems appear to her to have an importance at all equal to the importance of hiding from the detective that she had been staying at Frinton. If he followed her to Frinton he would inevitably discover that Jane Foley was at Frinton, and the sequel would be more imprisonment for Jane. Therefore Audrey must not return to Frinton. Having by a masterly process of ratiocination reached this conclusion, she began to think rather better of herself, and ceased blushing.