“Nonsense, dear!” said Mrs. Ainstable, sitting down, and taking a cigarette from the box on the table. “Resting, when we actually have the C.I.D. on the premises? It's far too interesting! Like living in one of Gavin's books.”
He looked at her, but said nothing. Glancing up, as she lit her cigarette, she smiled at him, reassuringly, Hemingway thought.
The Squire transferred his attention to Hemingway. “Sit down, won't you? What can I do for you?”
The tone was more that of a commanding officer than a man undergoing interrogation. Hemingway recognised it, appreciated it, and realised that the Squire was not going to be an easy man to question. But those responsible for putting him in charge of this case had not chosen him at random. “Old County families mixed up in this business. Likely to be sticky,” had said the Assistant Commissioner, to Hemingway's immediate superior and lifelong friend, Superintendent Hinckley. “I think we'll send Hemingway down. I don't pretend to know how he does it—and probably it's just as well that I don't, for I've no doubt he behaves in a thoroughly unorthodox fashion—but he does seem to be able to handle that kind of difficult witness.” To which Superintendent Hinckley had replied, with a grin: “He can be exasperating, can't he, sir? Still, there it is! Myself, I've got a notion it's those unconventional ways of his that kind of take people off their guard. And it's a fact, as you said yourself, that he does bring home the bacon. He's got what he calls—”
But at this point the Assistant Commissioner had interrupted him, uttering savagely: “Flair! You needn't tell me! And it's perfectly true, blast him!”
The Chief Inspector would have had no hesitation in ascribing the first question he put to the Squire to his mysterious flair. Taking a chair on the opposite side of the table, he said, at his most affable: “Thank you, sir. Well, I thought I'd best come up to have a chat with you, because I understand you were by way of being a friend of Mr. Warrenby's.”
This unexpected gambit had the effect of producing a silence which lasted just long enough to satisfy the Chief Inspector. No one, watching him, would have supposed that he way paying any particular attention to either of his auditors, but although he choose that moment to pat one of the Sealyhams, who was sniffing his trouser-leg, he missed neither the Squire's stare, nor the slight rigidity which held his rather restless wife suddenly still, her gaze lowered to an unblinking scrutiny of her burning cigarette.
The Squire broke the silence. “Don't know that I should put it as high as that,” he said. “I got on perfectly well with him. No sense in living at loggerheads with one's neighbours.”
“No,” agreed Hemingway. “Though, by all accounts, he wasn't an easy man to get on with. Which is why I thought I might find it helpful to have a talk with someone who wasn't what you might call prejudiced against him. Or for him, if it comes to that. What with Miss Warrenby on the one side, and pretty well everyone else on the other, the thing I want is an unbiased view. How did he come to get himself so much disliked, sir?”
The Squire took a moment or two to answer this, covering his hesitation by pushing the cigarette-box towards Hemingway, and saying: “Don't know if you smoke?”