“The tune changes a bit; and his irritation seems to be on the up-grade. One gets the impression that he's casting round for a fresh method of getting his way and that he hasn't found one that will do? Is that your reading of it?”
“Yes,” Flamborough confirmed. “He talks about getting his way ‘by hook or by crook,’ and one or two other phrases that come to the same thing.”
“Well, that brings us up to a week ago. There seems to be a change in his tone, now. More expectation and less exasperation, if one can put it that way.”
“I read it that by that time he'd hit on his plan. He was sure of its success, sir. Just go on to the next entry please. There's something there about his triumph, as he calls it.”
Sir Clinton glanced down the page and as he did so his face lit up for a moment as though he had seen one of his inferences confirmed.
“This what you mean?” he asked. “ ‘And only I shall know of my triumph’?”
“That's it, sir. High-falutin and all that; but it points to his thinking he had the game in his hands. I've puzzled my brains a bit over what he really meant by it, though. One might read it that he meant to murder the girl in the end. That would leave him as the only living person who knew what had happened, you see?”
“I'm not in a position to contradict that assumption,” Sir Clinton confessed. “But so far as that goes, I think you'll find the point cleared up in a day or two at the rate we're going.”
“You're very optimistic, sir,” was all the Inspector found to reply. “Now I've left one matter to the end, because it may have no bearing on the case at all. The last year of that journal is full of groans about his finances. He seems to have spent a good deal more than he could afford, in one way and another. I've noted all the passages if you want to read them, sir. They're among the set marked with white slips.”
“Just give me the gist of them,” the Chief Constable suggested. “From that, I can see whether I want to wade through the whole thing or not.”