“No, I wouldn't say that. He didn't overplay his part at all. What he told me tallied with what the Superintendent gave me. He also said that as far as he was concerned the whole world could know the truth about him, and I'm inclined to believe him. The trouble is—and he told me this too, which may have been honesty, or may have been because he knew I was wise to it—Mrs. Lindale doesn't look at it like that.”
“I'm not surprised,” said Harbottle austerely.
“Now, don't lets have any psalm-singing!” said Hemingway, with a touch of irritability. “I've got a lot of sympathy for that chap. I should say life isn't all beer and skittles for him, with a wife—or whatever you like to call her, which I can guess, knowing you!—who can't get over thinking she's a black sinner. What's more, I don't suppose it ever will be—not unless Nenthall is obliging enough to pop off. And don't give me any stuff about the wages of sin!”
“I won't. But it's true, for all that,” said the Inspector. “Is this the footpath he and the Squire came along together? I've never seen this end of it till today.”
“It is, and it was about here that the Squire turned off into the plantation. I should say he did, too—either when he said he did, or a bit later. Perhaps both.”
“Both?”
“Well, if he's the man I'm after, he had to park the rifle somewhere, hadn't he? Seems to me his own plantation would have been as good a place as any. Easy to have picked it up, and to have nipped back to Fox Lane when Lindale was out of sight.”
“But the shot wasn't fired from his rifle,” objected Harbottle.
“I know it wasn't. It may be that we shall have to pull in his agent's rifle, and his game-keeper's as well.”
Harbottle frowned over this. “I don't think the Squire's the man to commit a murder with another man's gun—and that man one of his own people,” he said.