Throw the inkstand…" he repeated. "Why, I was only thinking of your poltergeist, and what it did to the vicar…"
"Oh, that?" She raised her eyebrows quizzically, and grinned. "I say, we did have a row! You should have been here. Of course none of us believed your father was mad, really — except maybe my father — but we didn't believe him when he told us about that American what’s-his-name—"
"Spinelli?"
" 'M. But that's what made it worse when we heard this morning…" She dug the toe of her shoe round in the grass, uneasily. "And that reminds me" she went on, as though she would dismiss the subject. "We don't really want to go up to the house now, do we? If we went along to Henry Morgan's, and maybe had a cocktail…?"
The power of sympathy showed the answer in both their faces. They were beginning to turn round and head the other way almost as soon as she had uttered the words, and Patricia gave a conspirator's gurgle of enjoyment. She knew, she said, a short-cut; a side gate in the boundary wall, not far from the coppice where the Guest House stood, which would lead them out to Hangover House.
"I don't know why," she continued, as though she hated thinking about the matter, but was determined to flounder through it; "I don't know why," she went on suddenly, "that Spinelli man should want to kill Mr. Depping. But he did do it; and Spinelli's an Italian, and probably a member of the Black Hand, and they do all sorts of queer things — don't they? You know. You know all about criminals, don't you?"
"Urn" said Hugh judicially. He was beginning to feel remorseful. He wanted to explain everything to this little ginch, but for some reason he found he couldn't.
"All sorts of queer things" she repeated, evidently satisfied by this logic. "Anyway, Fd be a hypocrite— and so would most of us — if we pretended we'd miss Mr. Depping. I mean, I'm jolly sorry he's dead, and it's too bad, and I'm glad they've caught the man who killed him… but there were times when I wished he'd move away, and — and never come back." She hesitated. "If it hadn't been for Betty, the few times we've seen her, I think we'd all have flown against Dad and Mr. Burke and said, 'Look here, throw that blighter out'"
They were skirting the boundary wall, and she slapped at it with sudden vehemence. It was beginning to puzzle Hugh all the more.
"Yes," he said. "That's the queerest part of it, from what I've seen…"