“I’ll come along with you till you meet the car.”
Sir Clinton took leave of Michael Clifton, who obviously intended to go to bed immediately. As soon as he was well clear of the house, Cecil turned to the Chief Constable.
“You skated over thin ice several times in that yarn of yours. Especially the bits about Maurice. Toothache! Neuralgia! That infernal Inspector of yours swallowed it all down like cat-lap. From his face, you’d have thought he picked up an absolute cert. that no one else could see. I almost laughed, at that point.”
He changed suddenly to a serious tone.
“How did you spot what was really wrong with Maurice?”
“One thing led to another,” Sir Clinton confessed. “I didn’t hit on it all at once. The Fairy Houses set me thinking at the start. One doesn’t keep toys like that in good repair merely on account of some old legend. They were quite evidently meant for use. And then, Cecil, you seemed to have some private joke of your own—not a particularly nice joke either—about them. That set me thinking. And after that, you dropped some remark about Maurice having specialized in family curses.”
“You seem to have a devil of a memory for trifles,” Cecil commented, in some surprise.
“Trifles sometimes count for a good deal in my line,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “One gets into the habit of docketing them, almost without thinking about it. I must have pigeon-holed your talk about the Fairy Houses quite mechanically. Then later on I remembered that these things were dotted all over your estate and nowhere else. On their own ground, the Chacewaters were always within easy distance of one or other of these affairs. Ancient family curse; curious little buildings very handy; one brother grinning—yes, you did grin, and nastily too—at them, when you know he hates another brother like poison. It was quite a pretty little problem. And so . . .”
“And so?” demanded Cecil, as Sir Clinton stopped short.
“And so I put it out of my mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing I cared to think much about in connection with Ravensthorpe,” Sir Clinton said, bluntly. “Besides, it was no affair of mine.”