"Who?"
"The housemaid! She could have heard us talking at breakfast."
"My dear Peter, she's no crook's accomplice!"
"She's a dam' silly girl though, and if Strange wanted to pump her he could."
They had emerged from the outskirts of the town into the open country, and Charles put his foot on the accelerator. "Yes, that's possible, of course. One thing that seems to me quite obvious is that Strange is going to be more than a match for Inspector Tomlinson."
Peter waited until the car had swung round a bend in the road before he spoke. Charles' driving, skilful though it might be, kept his passengers in a constant state of breathlessness. "Do you think Tomlinson means to do anything, or does he discount all we say in favour of the ghost theory?"
"The impression I got was that he gave us the benefit of the doubt, but privately considered us a fanciful pair who'd got the wind up. He'll send a man over to lurk about the place for a couple of days, and that'll be the end of it."
"Give him a trial," Peter said. "I must say he didn't seem to be overburdened with ideas, but he may have kept them to himself."
They reached the Priory to find the others just getting up from lunch. "Oh, Charles!" Celia exclaimed, "the tennis-net has arrived, and Bowers and Coggin have been putting up the stop-netting all the morning. And if you'll come and do the measuring I'll mark the court out, and we can play after tea."
This programme was faithfully carried out, and not even the depressions and the bumps in the court damped Celia's enthusiasm. "It adds to the fun," she said, when Charles failed to reach a ball that bounced unaccountably to the right.