“A responsibility,” Reggie murmured. “If I understand one cause of quarrel between the brothers was that Victor resented your influence, madame, which Sir Albert encouraged you to use?”
“Yes, that’s the proposition,” said Radnor Hall.
“You know it’s not,” Lady Lunt cried. “They both hated me to meddle.”
“Is that so?” Reggie said dreamily. “And you were asking me to find out who murdered Sir Albert?”
“No, I wasn’t,” Lady Lunt flashed at him. “I was asking you to save this poor boy Cranford.”
“Ah well, let’s hope it’s the same thing.” Reggie stood up. “I can play about in the park, I suppose? Many thanks.”
And he did play about in the park till dusk, and when he went back to London, Sam, the factotum, was not with him.
In the evening Donald Gordon rang him up. Donald Gordon thought Cranford was a bit of a tough, but was going to act for him. It would be a fruity case. He had arranged a consultation with Cranford at the prison to-morrow, and hoped Reggie would be there. What did Reggie think of the case? “Rotten,” said Reggie, and rang off.
The fact is that from first to last the Lunt case annoyed him. He never saw his way through it, and has always called it one of his failures. The one thing which he did, he will tell you, was to grasp that the police were mucking it—to divine that whoever killed Sir Albert and however he—or she—did it, it was not a simple, common bit of pistolling. He was right about nothing else. His apology is that he has no imagination.
At this stage he was prepared to believe anything. When he went gloomily to bed it was with the conviction that if he were Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department he could make it—or fake it—into a hanging matter for “any one of the bally crowd”. The unknown Cranford, the enigmatic Victor, Lady Lunt, Radnor Hall, you could put each of them in the dock—or several of them together. Lady Lunt stood to gain most by the death—or perhaps Radnor Hall—what were her relations with Radnor Hall? Cranford had the worst quarrel with the dead man—or perhaps brother Victor. In favour of Cranford was only the oddity of the business, and nice Nurse Dauntsey . . . a lamb. . . . Comfortable visions of her sent him to sleep.