"And how d'you suppose he knew Cathcart was going to be in the thicket that night?"
Peter considered.
"Perhaps he sent for him," suggested Mary.
"That's right, that's right," cried Peter eagerly. "You remember we thought Cathcart must somehow or other have heard from Goyles, making an appointment—but suppose the message was from Grimethorpe, threatening to split on Cathcart to Jerry."
"You are suggesting, Lord Peter," said Mr. Murbles, in a tone calculated to chill Peter's blithe impetuosity, "that, at the very time Mr. Cathcart was betrothed to your sister, he was carrying on a disgraceful intrigue with a married woman very much his social inferior."
"I beg your pardon, Polly," said Wimsey.
"It's all right," said Mary, "I—as a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me frightfully. Denis was always—I mean, he had rather Continental ideas about marriage and that sort of thing. I don't think he'd have thought that mattered very much. He'd probably have said there was a time and place for everything."
"One of those watertight compartment minds," said Wimsey thoughtfully. Mr. Parker, despite his long acquaintance with the seamy side of things in London, had his brows set in a gloomy frown of as fierce a provincial disapproval as ever came from Barrow-in-Furness.
"If you can upset this Grimethorpe's alibi," said Sir Impey, fitting his right-hand fingertips neatly between the fingers of his left hand, "we might make some sort of a case of it. What do you think, Murbles?"
"After all," said the solicitor, "Grimethorpe and the servant both admit that he, Grimethorpe, was not at Grider's Hole on Wednesday night. If he can't prove he was at Stapley he may have been at Riddlesdale."