“And what does Lady Lunt want now?”
“I’m hanged if I know,” said Barnes, after some hesitation. “She thinks there’s more in it than the detectives see, and she’s not satisfied about this arrest.”
“Now go easy. Two other people have called me in, and I don’t know who I’ll act for. So don’t spoil anybody’s game. Lomas wired for me——”
“Lomas! So Scotland Yard isn’t so mighty cocksure.”
“Did Lomas seem so? Rude fellow. And then there’s V. Cranford.”
“Cranford’s got to you already! He’s lost no time.”
“Oh, he’s in very good hands. Now let’s take a walk. You’ll show me where Lunt was killed, and I’ll have a look at him.” Reggie shed his fur coat and became brisk.
It was his bailiff who had found Sir Albert Lunt, taken the news to the house, and telephoned for Gerald Barnes. Sir Albert Lunt had been walking back from his home farm across the park, which was an undulating stretch of turf over chalk, broken here and there by some fine beeches and coverts of gorse and bramble. A gravel path ran straight from the home farm to the main chestnut avenue. Barnes halted at a place where the turf was trampled in half-frozen footprints. Reggie looked round him. “Humph! Well out of sight of any house. Nobody heard the shot?”
“Nobody noticed it. It’s a good way from the house, you see, and a mile from the farm. A shot or so—what’s that in the open country? You often hear a gun somewhere.”
“Quite. Where’s that path go to?” Reggie pointed to a track across the turf diverging from the gravel.