“But that limits the number of possible murderers still further, surely. It would need to be a fellow who knew the Maze intimately, otherwise he’d have got tied up in it.”
Sir Clinton smiled a trifle derisively.
“Didn’t you hear me inquire about that at Whistlefield? The Maze is open day and night. Anyone could learn all about it, and no one would be much the wiser, since it’s in an outlying part of the grounds. A man could come up the river in a boat, drop into it, and cut a whole series of private marks on the hedges to guide him to the centre—bend twigs or something like that, which wouldn’t give away the fact that he’d been at work. Or he could even bring in a thread and trail it behind him to help him out again, and roll it up as he retreated. No, you can’t bank much on that point, Squire.”
“Well, who did it, then?” demanded Wendover, exasperated by the upsetting of his idea.
Sir Clinton looked up with something suspiciously like a grin on his face.
“It might have been anybody,” he said, oracularly. “But it seems more likely that it was somebody, if you catch my meaning.”
Wendover betrayed no pique at this indirect discomfiture.
“One doesn’t get much out of you, that’s clear,” he responded ruefully.
Sir Clinton seemed to feel that he might say something further without breaking through his self-imposed limitations.
“What’s wrong with your outlook on the business, Squire, is that you want to treat a real crime as if it were a bit clipped out of a detective novel. In a ’tec yarn, you get everything nicely sifted for you. The author puts down only things that are relevant to the story. If he didn’t select his materials, his book would be far too long and no one would have the patience to plough through it. The result is that the important clues are thrown up as if they had a spotlight on them, if the reader happens to have any intelligence.”