“I said it sounded a bit corny.”
“There!” said Freddie, personally vindicated. “That’s the very word he used. He said it was corny. That’s what he said as soon as he read it.”
“That’s what I thought too,” said Esther, “only I didn’t like to say so. Probably it’s just some crackpot trying to be funny.”
“On the other hand,” Simon mentioned, “a lot of crackpots have killed people, and plenty of real murders have been pretty corny. And whether you’re killed by a crackpot or the most rational person in the world, and whether the performance is corny or not, you end up just as dead.”
“Don’t a lot of criminals read detective stories?” Lissa asked.
The Saint nodded.
“Most of them. And they get good ideas from them, too. Most writers are pretty clever, in spite of the funny way they look, and when they go in for crime they put in a lot of research and invention that a practising thug doesn’t have the time or the ability to do for himself. But he could pick up a lot of hints from reading the right authors.”
“He could learn a lot of mistakes not to make, too.”
“Maybe there’s something in that,” said the Saint. “Perhaps the stupid criminals you were talking about are only the ones who don’t read books. Maybe the others get to be so clever that they never get caught, and so you never hear about them at all.”
“Brrr,” said Ginny. “You’re giving me goose-pimples. Why don’t you just call the cops?”