“Would you mind giving me any orders you want carried out immediately, sir?” he asked. “Anything in the way of information you need from the village?”
Sir Clinton looked at him in mock surprise, and answered with a parody of the “Needy Knifegrinder”:
“Orders! God bless you! I have none to give, sir. This is your case, inspector, not mine.”
Armadale succeeded in finding a form of words to turn the flank of his superior's line:
“Well, sir, suppose you were in my place, what would you think it useful to find out?”
“A deuce of a lot of things, inspector. Who killed Peter Hay, for one. Who stole the diary, for another. When I'm likely to get any lunch, for a third. And so on. There's heaps more of them, if you'll think them up. But, if I were in your shoes, I'd make a beginning by interviewing young Colby, who found the body; then I'd investigate the sweet-shop, and find out who bought pear-drops there lately; I'd make sure there are no fingerprints on any of the silver; I'd get the P. M. done as quickly as possible, since amyl nitrite is volatile, and might disappear if the body's left too long; and I think I'd make some very cautious inquiries about this long-lost nephew, if he's anywhere in the vicinity. And, of course, I'd try to find out all I could about Peter Hay's last movements yesterday, so far as one can discover them from witnesses.”
Inspector Armadale had been jotting the chief constable's advice down in shorthand; and, when Sir Clinton finished speaking, he shut his note-book and put it back in his pocket.
“Peter Hay puzzles me,” Wendover said thoughtfully, as they made their way to the car.
“Perhaps Peter Hay knew too much for his own safety,” Sir Clinton answered, as he closed the door of Foxhills behind them.
A fresh line of thought occurred to Wendover.