They had got halfway to the car when the police sergeant overtook them.
"Excuse me, sir."
"You are forgiven," said the Saint liberally. "What have you done?"
"How did you happen to be here, sir?"
"Me? I just happened to see the fire from the main road, so I beetled over to have a look at it."
"I see." The sergeant wrote busily in his notebook. "Anything else, sir?"
The Saint's hesitation was imperceptible. Undoubtedly there had been various things else; but it would have been very complicated to go into them. And when Simon Templar had got the scent of mystery in his nostrils, the last thing he wanted was to have the police blundering along the same keen trail — at least not before he had given a good deal of thought to the pros and cons.
"No," he said innocently. "Except that this bloke Kennet seemed to be still in the house, so I just had a dart at fishing him out. He wouldn't be any relation of the M.P. by any chance, would he?"
"His son, I believe, sir, from what I've heard in the village. Staying with Mr Fairweather for the week end. He must have been suffocated in his sleep, pore devil — let's hope 'e was, anyway. It'll cause a bit of a stir, all right."
"I shouldn't be surprised," said the Saint thoughtfully.