“You really are a very nice person,” she said. “You can go on talking nonsense, if you want to. I rather like it. And if it will give you any satisfaction, I will spend that hour during which you are going to leave me alone in Norwich, at the hairdresser’s.”
“I knew I was right,” he declared. “You’re a good sort.”
“So are you,” she rejoined. “Let’s be friends. I am going to start by asking you a question.”
“For God’s sake,” he begged, “don’t ask me why I came to settle at Market Ballaston.”
“Why not?”
“Because every one’s pestering me to death with the same thing,” he complained. “No one can get that murder out of their heads. It seems to have absorbed every effort at individual thought in the whole place. Why, I’ve seen men killed by the dozen. I’ve lived in a place where there was a murder every day. Yet here they seem obsessed by their one little tragedy. I can never get away from it. I go down to the village inn. The tradespeople are just like the tradespeople in any other village. I should like a little local information and gossip. Not a bit of it. The murder, and nothing but the murder! I lunch at the Hall. Before I have been there half an hour I know that I am an object of suspicion. I must have come to the neighbourhood because of the murder. Hang it all, in self-defence I shall have to set to work and find out who did kill this fellow Endacott, and tell you all about it.”
“I hope you won’t try,” she begged earnestly.
“Another mystery!” he exclaimed. “What the mischief can it matter to you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t care much about any of these people, but I don’t like unhappiness. The man’s dead. I think all over the village the same feeling exists. I think they are afraid of what might happen if the truth really came to light.”
She leaned a little forward in the car, her eyes fixed upon the steeple of the Cathedral, slowly emerging to definite form, slender, exquisite, yet dominating, as it rose from amongst an incongruous mass of red-tiled buildings. Mr. Johnson waited for several moments. Then, as he swung into the main road, he broke the brief silence.