“This has made a bit of a stir, I can tell you,” he remarked, with complacency.
“I am sure it would. Well, it was the chief topic of conversation when I was in London.”
“Is that a fact?” Avowedly indifferent to the opinion of his neighbours, even Whitmarsh was not proof against the pronouncement of the metropolis. “What do they say about it up there?”
“I should be inclined to think that the interest centres round the explanation you will give at the inquest of the cause of the quarrel.”
“There! What did I tell you?” exclaimed Mrs Whitmarsh.
“Be quiet, mother. That’s easily answered, Mr Carrados. There was a bit of duck shooting that lay between our two places. But perhaps you saw that in the papers?”
“Yes,” admitted Carrados, “I saw that. Frankly, the reason seemed inadequate to so deadly a climax.”
“What did I say?” demanded the irrepressible dame. “They won’t believe it.”
The young man cast a wrathful look in his mother’s direction and turned again to the visitor.
“That’s because you don’t know Uncle William. Any reason was good enough for him to quarrel over. Here, let me give you an instance. When I went in on Thursday he was smoking a pipe. Well, after a bit I took out a cigarette and lit it. I’m damned if he didn’t turn round and start on me for that. How does that strike you for one of your own family, Mr Carrados?”