Bundy looked him over. “Are you joining Dickson on board the Saucy Annie again?” he inquired.
“No; my grandfather’s dead,” said Ludovic.
“He’ll be a loss,” remarked Mr Bundy thoughtfully. “Howsever, if you’re giving up the smuggling lay, I’m tedious glad. What might you be wanting me to do?”
“Come upstairs, and I’ll tell you,” said Ludovic.
As good luck would have it, there was no one in the coffee-room. Ludovic led Bundy through it and up the stairs to the front bedchamber which had once been Miss Thane’s. It still smelled faintly exotic, a circumstance which did not escape Mr Bundy. “I thought there was a wench in it,” he observed.
Ludovic paid no heed to this sapient remark, but having locked the door, just in case Sir Tristram should take it into his head to come up to see him again before he left the inn, thrust Bundy towards a chair, and told him to sit down. “Abel, you know why I took to smuggling, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.
Mr Bundy laid his hat on the floor beside him, and nodded.
“Well, understand this!” said Ludovic. “I didn’t commit that murder.”
“Oh?” said Bundy, not particularly interested. He added after a moment’s reflection: “Happen you’ll have to prove that if you’m wishful to take the old lord’s place.”
“That’s what I mean to do,” replied Ludovic. “And you are going to help me.”