Frank won: a wholly loathsome putt on the last green, which went into the hole not by the honest front-door, nor even with a kick at the honest back door, but with a stealthy, sideway entrance, after circling round the hole, decided the match.
“Oh, good putt,” said David politely, and instantly the politeness broke down. “Gosh, what a fluke!” he added.
“Rot! I tried to hole it, and did,” said Frank.
“Well, I said ‘good putt’ once,” said David. “And I can’t say it again. Simply can’t.”
After tea at the club-house, it seemed a necessity to play again, and this time, regardless of financial stringency, Frank treated David to a caddy, and they went forth with pomp, now playing seawards into the hazy east, now westwards into the blaze of the declining sun, absorbed in their game and yet absorbed in their friendship of boy-love, hot as fire and clean as the trickle of ice-water on a glacier. The knowledge of their talk had made Frank able to turn himself away from all the bad business of Adams’s letter, and instead of brooding on the irremediable worst of himself, he took hold of all that was best. And by his side was David, the friend of friends, now with his arm linked in his, now excitedly addressing a cupped ball with his largest driver, now brilliantly slicing among untrodden sand-hills, now dancing with exultation at the success of a shot that was wholly beyond expectation, now half whispering to him, “Oh, it’s the rippingest day.”
Then followed lawn-tennis, till it was so dark that the ball could hardly be seen at all, and in consequence David, standing at the net, got hit full on the end of his nose, which bled with extraordinary profusion. Indeed, had murder been committed that night at Naseby, as Frank said, when they went down for a hurried dip before dressing for dinner, it would have required no Sherlock Holmes to draw the certain but quite erroneous conclusion that the deed had been done in David’s bedroom, and the body carried down to the beach afterwards with the idea of its being taken away and out by the ebbing tide and the seaward current. A slop-pail with blood-stained water (analysed by Professor Pepper and found to be Mammalian) would be discovered in his bedroom, and at intervals down the path to the beach, further traces of the same incriminating gore.
The cool sea-water put an end to David’s bleeding, and as he dressed he began to feel delightfully uncomfortable (as in the attics of Baxminster) so grimly and gravely did Frank reconstruct the history of the crime with fearful imaginative details thrown in. A little way from them on the beach was something vague and black and humped up, and Frank suddenly pointed at it.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked David in a whisper.
“That black thing? No. What?”
“It’s the body,” said Frank.