"Do you know anything of his past life — before he employed you?"
"No, sir. I assured the police officer of that this morning."
He went over his story in a patient fashion. Mr. Depping had been a man of moods; touchy, irritated by trifles, apt to go into a rage with the cook if his meals were not shaded exactly to his fastidious palate, fond of quoting Brillat-Savarin. Very learned, no doubt, but not a gentleman. Storer appeared to base his sad deductions to this effect on the statements that (a) Mr. Depping tended to call the servants by their first names when he was drunk, and to mention his business affairs, (b) he used American expressions, and (c) he was freely and often — said Storer — vulgarly generous with his money. At one time (while devoted to his whisky drinking) he had said that the only reason why he employed Storer was because the valet looked so bloody respectable: and the only reason why he employed Achille Georges was because the world considered a taste for fine foods and wines to be the mark of a cultured man.
"That's what he said, sir," affirmed Storer, with an expression which on any less dismal face would have been sly. His nose sang on: " The world is so full of fools, Charley,'—which is not my name, sir—'the world is so full of fools,' he said to me, "that anybody who can get emotional over an omelette, or tell you the vintage of a wine, is considered a very superior sort of person.' Then he would glare over those half-glasses of his, and grip the whisky bottle as though he meant to throw it."
The valet's eyes wheeled round his narrow nose as though he appreciated this too. "But I must say, sir, in all justice, that he said he would have kept Achille anyway, because of the soups he could make. They were good soups," agreed Storer, judicially. "Mr. Depping was very fond—"
"My good man," interposed the bishop testily, "I am not at all concerned with his tastes in food—"
Tarn," said Dr. Fell suddenly. He had wheeled round as the valet's narrative went on. "Was he fond of crawfish soup, by any chance?"
"He was sir," replied Storer imperturbably. "It was his favorite. Achille had been preparing it frequendy of late."
Dr. Fell removed the cloth again from the dinner dishes of last night, and nodded towards them. "Then it's damned funny," he said. "Here's crawfish soup, nearly untasted. On the other hand, he seems to have been especially rough on a kind of pineapple salad. He's eaten most of his dinner except the soup… Never mind. Carry on."
The bishop of Mappleham, who had paid no attention to this, fixed on an idea which had been growing in his son's mind for some time.