“I don't know,” said Giles Carrington. “Just a pricking in my toes.”
Chapter Eleven
The Inquest, held at Hanborough next morning, was not productive of any new evidence. Antonia professed herself frankly disappointed, though she listened with interest to the news that the murdered man's hands had borne traces of having done some repair on a car. When it was disclosed that the spare wheel on Arnold Vereker's car was flat, and showed a bad puncture, she leaned towards her cousin and whispered: “That dishes Kenneth's theory, anyway.”
She gave her own evidence with a cheerfulness which, combined with the absence of decent mourning, rather shocked the members of the jury. To Giles Carrington's relief she was not at all truculent. She answered the Coroner with a friendliness which was due, as she afterwards explained to Giles, to his likeness to the veterinary surgeon who had attended Juno's last accouchement.
It was evident that neither the Coroner nor the jury knew what to make of her, but her unconventional attitude towards Superintendent Hannasyde, whom she greeted, when he rose to put a question to her, as an old and valued acquaintance, made quite a good impression.
Rudolph Mesurier was not called, nor was his name mentioned, and the proceedings terminated, as had been foreseen, in a verdict of Murder against a Person or Persons Unknown.
Coming out of the Court-room Giles Carrington fell in beside Hannasyde, and murmured pensively: “It's the perfect crime, Superintendent.”
Hannasyde's slow smile crept into his eyes. “Nasty case, isn't it? What's happened to your disarming client?”
“Gone to the Police Station,” replied Giles, with complete gravity, to give Sergeant - “I'm afraid I've forgotten his name, but he breeds Airedales - an infallible prescription for the cure of eczema. Mesurier turned out to be a bit of a red herring, didn't he?”
“Oh, you spotted the snag, did you?” returned the Superintendent. “I thought you would. I'm satisfied, by the way, that he was not in his rooms between twelve and two that night, but at first glance that doesn't seem to help much. Sergeant Hemingway here, however” - he indicated his bright-eyed subordinate - “thinks there might be a way out of it. We shall see.”