He examined the edge with care.
“This seems to be the genuine article, Inspector. I can’t see any hole in the edge, which they told me was drilled to distinguish the replicas from the real thing. No, there’s no mark of any sort here.”
He handed it back to the Inspector, who examined it in his turn. Sir Clinton took it back when the Inspector had done with it, and placed it in his pocket.
“I think, Inspector, we’ll say nothing about this find for the present. I’ve an idea it may be a useful thing to have up our sleeve before we’ve done. By the way, do you still connect Foxton Polegate with this case?”
Armadale looked the Chief Constable in the eye as he replied.
“I’m more inclined to connect Cecil Chacewater with it, just now, sir. Look at the facts. It’s been common talk that there was ill-feeling between those two brothers. Servants talk; and other people repeat it. And the business that ended in the final row between the two of them was centred in these Leonardo medallions. That’s worth thinking over. Then, again, Cecil Chacewater disappeared for a short while. You couldn’t get in touch with him. And it was just at that time that queer things began to happen here at Ravensthorpe. Where was he then? It seems a bit suggestive, doesn’t it? And where was he last night? If you looked at him this morning, you couldn’t help seeing he’d spent a queer night, wherever he spent it. That was the night when this body was brought here from wherever the shooting was done. And when you asked Cecil Chacewater how he’d come home, he said he’d arrived by the first train this morning. That was a lie. He didn’t come by that train. He’d been here before that.”
To the Inspector’s amazement and disgust Sir Clinton laughed unaffectedly at this exposition.
“It’s nothing to laugh at, sir. You can’t deny these things. I don’t say they prove anything; but you can’t brush them aside by merely laughing at them. They’ve got to be explained. And until they’ve been explained in some satisfactory way things will look very fishy.”
Sir Clinton recovered his serious mask.
“Perhaps I laughed a little too soon, Inspector. I apologize. I’m not absolutely certain of my ground; I quite admit that. But I’ll just give you one hint. Sometimes one case looks as if it were two independent affairs. Sometimes two independent affairs get interlocked and look like one case. Now just think that over carefully. It’s perhaps got the germ of something in it, if you care to fish it out.”