They dined together at Richmond, which suburban town they had reached by Edward’s directions, and George, replete after so much suffering, became most genial. He betrayed in his conversation the fact that Sudie might or might not know the truth; he had not dared to communicate with her. William Bailey had done so after getting his new clothes, but there had been no one at home. There was only a man in, making an inventory, and the footman thought the message had something to do with him. What Sudie might have heard from others he didn’t know.
“Where did the telephone message come from?” asked Edward who remembered the torturing anxiety of his Chief upon that point which now seemed so futile.
“I don’t know,” George bleated, if I may use so disrespectful a term of a man with £100 a week. “I really don’t know. He hired a motor, I know that, and he drove it himself.”
“Oh he did, did he? Where did he drive it to?”
“To a station,” said George lucidly.
“A long way off?” asked Edward.
“Oh dear!” said George, “Don’t ask me. Right away over all sorts of places.”
“Now, Demaine, listen,” said Evans, concentrating “Could you see the sea?”
“No,” said George with a shudder.
“Could you see the river,—anything?”