Fountain gave a laugh. "Fraid so. He does look a typical villain, doesn't he? I say - ought not to joke about it, you know. You were going to tell us just how you found Dawson's body."
Amberley's account, his cousin complained, did not err on the side of sensationalism. It was very brief, even a little bald. He stressed no points and advanced no theories. While he talked he was aware of an atmosphere of almost painful anxiety. It did not come from Felicity, frankly thrilled; nor from Corkran, still flippant; but Joan sat with her eyes fixed on his face, a haunted expression in her own; and Fountain, impatient of Anthony's interruptions, jarred by Felicity's evident enjoyment, listened intently, his cigar held unheeded between his fingers, its long ash fallen on the floor at his feet. That he was honestly upset by the murder nobody looking at him could doubt. He wanted to know everything that Amberley could tell him and again he pressed the question: "Are you sure you passed no one on the road?"
Amberley's story, shorn of all decorative detail, did not take long to recount. A silence followed it which was at length broken by Corkran. He proposed cheerfully that he and Fountain and Amberley should play a three-ball game of golf next afternoon to get rid of the taste of the inquest.
Fountain did not want to play; so much was apparent in his quick headshake. "You two play. I shall have to go to town."
"Will you? What for?" asked his step-sister.
"I must see about engaging a new butler," he answered shortly. "I spoke to Finch's Registry Office on the telephone today. I'm afraid it may be a bit of a job. Servants don't like coming to such an isolated place. And then there's this dreadful business. Puts them off, you know. Bound to."
"Oh, my godfathers, does that mean we've got to have Collins gliding about the place indefinitely?" groaned Corkran.
"I must get someone. It isn't Collins' work and he doesn't like doing it." Fountain saw that his cigar had gone out and threw it away. He made an effort to shake off his evident depression and got up, suggesting a game of snooker.
He marshalled them all into the billiard room, quite in his usual manner, nor was any further reference made to the murder. Yet for all his laughter, for all Corkran's airy persiflage, Amberley was conscious of that vague sensation of discomfort which seemed to brood over the house and which Anthony had tried ineffectively to describe.
He was not sorry when the evening came to an end, but the visit, little though he might have enjoyed it, had given him something to think about. Silently he cursed himself for his rash, unaccustomed quixotry in shielding by his silence the girl he had found beside the murdered man's car.