“I learnt an additional fact at the police station—rather a painful one, I’m afraid.”
“Everything about the whole damned business is painful. What was it?”
“One or two of the cups had been inscribed as having been won by poor Cecil for his successes at various games——”
“Never won a cup in his life. The boy’s a perfect fool at any kind of sport. Always has been.”
“Yes. And he hadn’t really won them. But he’d had them inscribed himself.”
“But they couldn’t have been,” Sir Thomas repeated obtusely. “He wasn’t any good at games.”
“It was he who’d had them engraved at his own expense, Sir Thomas. He—he invented the inscriptions.”
“But what for?”
The old man’s utter lack of comprehension was baffling in its completeness.
The doctor told him of the document that the Inspector had read to him, and which they had thought to be the draft for an inscription on the big thirty-pound cup. Sir Thomas listened, his heavy face more and more deeply discoloured, his mouth half opened, his eyes startled and incredulous-looking.