“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,” said Lord Peter. “You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas. Most people don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, “what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!”
“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck on his fork and frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that people think things out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you somethin’ out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’ or ‘How sad!’ an’ leave it at that, an’ half the time you forget about it, ’nless somethin’ turns up afterwards to drive it home. F’r instance, Lady Swaffham, I told you when I came in that I’d been down to Salisbury, ’n’ that’s true, only I don’t suppose it impressed you much; ’n’ I don’t suppose it’d impress you much if you read in the paper tomorrow of a tragic discovery of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went to Salisbury again next week ’n’ there was a Salisbury doctor found dead the day after, you might begin to think I was a bird of ill omen for Salisbury residents; and if I went there again the week after, ’n’ you heard next day that the see of Salisbury had fallen vacant suddenly, you might begin to wonder what took me to Salisbury, an’ why I’d never mentioned before that I had friends down there, don’t you see, an’ you might think of goin’ down to Salisbury yourself, an’ askin’ all kinds of people if they’d happened to see a young man in plum-coloured socks hangin’ round the Bishop’s Palace.”
“I daresay I should,” said Lady Swaffham.
“Quite. An’ if you found that the lawyer and the doctor had once upon a time been in business at Poggleton-on-the-Marsh when the Bishop had been vicar there, you’d begin to remember you’d once heard of me payin’ a visit to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh a long time ago, an’ you’d begin to look up the parish registers there an’ discover I’d been married under an assumed name by the vicar to the widow of a wealthy farmer, who’d died suddenly of peritonitis, as certified by the doctor, after the lawyer’d made a will leavin’ me all her money, and then you’d begin to think I might have very good reasons for gettin’ rid of such promisin’ blackmailers as the lawyer, the doctor an’ the bishop. Only, if I hadn’t started an association in your mind by gettin’ rid of ’em all in the same place, you’d never have thought of goin’ to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh, ’n’ you wouldn’t even have remembered I’d ever been there.”
“Were you ever there, Lord Peter?” inquired Mrs. Tommy, anxiously.
“I don’t think so,” said Lord Peter; “the name threads no beads in my mind. But it might, any day, you know.”
“But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose—finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”
“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. “There’s that dreadful—perhaps I’d better not say it, though, for fear you should remember it later on.”