“Do they do much of that sort of thing down there?” the good woman would enquire.
“Seems to be the chief industry of the place. Do you mean to say you don’t remember that old maiden lady being murdered by her own gardener and buried in the fowl-run? You women! you take no interest in public affairs.”
“I do remember something about it, now you mention it, dear,” the good woman would confess. “Always seems such an innocent type of man, a gardener.”
“Seems to be a special breed of them at Ditchley-in-the-Marsh,” he answers. “Here again last Monday,” he continues, reading with growing interest. “Almost the same case—even to the pruning knife. Yes, hanged if he doesn’t!—buries her in the fowl-run. This is most extraordinary.”
“It must be the imitative instinct asserting itself,” suggests the good woman. “As you, dear, have so often pointed out, one crime makes another.”
“I have always said so,” he agrees; “it has always been a theory of mine.”
He folds the paper over. “Dull dogs, these political chaps!” he says. “Here’s the Duke of Devonshire, speaking last night at Hackney, begins by telling a funny story he says he has just heard about a parrot. Why, it’s the same story somebody told a month ago; I remember reading it. Yes—upon my soul—word for word, I’d swear to it. Shows you the sort of men we’re governed by.”
“You can’t expect everyone, dear, to possess your repertoire,” the good woman remarks.
“Needn’t say he’s just heard it that afternoon, anyhow,” responds the good man.
He turns to another column. “What the devil! Am I going off my head?” He pounces on the eldest boy. “When was the Oxford and Cambridge Boat-race?” he fiercely demands.