"I think so. You were afraid that if you told the police they might suspect you had…"
"Executed vengeance on Mr. Fane. Exactly."
"You hadn't, had you?".
Rich laughed shortly, a snap of a laugh.
"I had not. I wasn't fond enough of Polly for that. Again, don't misunderstand the position." He made the face of a man always caught by the same misunderstanding. "I wasn't — interested in Polly. In her private life, that is. Polly liked her friends young, I believe. She would have laughed at anybody over forty.
"I could not even be sure it was the same girl. But I knew Polly had disappeared in the middle of July, leaving all her things behind. It was a shock. It was a damned shock. So I decided to keep my mouth shut."
"Again, easily understandable." "
"Thank you. I hope the police think so. But I hope they don't think that, even if I had known Arthur Fane killed Polly (which I didn't), I should have got back at him by getting him stabbed. I should simply have gone to the police."
Rich shook his head. He stared at the grass ahead of him. Despite himself, a vein of cynical amusement seemed to well up inside him as he reflected, and his eye twinkled. He was a misunderstood John Bull.
"Lord," he added, "the number of women I haven't seduced!"