“A search warrant! But——”
“Yes, a search warrant; and I shall insist upon the police executing it.”
“I haven’t the least doubt you will; but—but what do you mean to search?”
“Every house in the neighbourhood. Every house until I find him.”
“But he isn’t in a house. Do try to be reasonable, Miss Blow. Even if he’s murdered—and I’m quite sure he’s not—he wouldn’t be in a house. His body would be hidden in a wood or a bog-hole or a river, or wherever it is that murderers usually do hide bodies.”
“You admit then that he has been murdered.”
“No, I don’t. You mustn’t catch up my words like that. All I said was that, if he had been murdered, he wouldn’t be living in a house, and so a search warrant wouldn’t be any use to you. You don’t really want a warrant at all. You don’t even want the police. All you have to do is to go prowling round the country, poking into any shadowy-looking hole you see with the point of your umbrella until you come across his body.”
The interview was beginning to tire Lord Manton. He was not accustomed to being bullied by handsome girls, and he did not like it.
“Perhaps you’d like to start at once,” he said politely.