"There had always been bad feeling, but any one who knows anything about it knows that it was not of my making."
"Will you explain it to us?"
"If you say I must. One does not like to say ill things of the dead."
"We want to get to the bottom of this matter, Mr. Gard. Tell us all you know that will help us."
"Very well, sir, but I am sorry to have to go into that. It all began through Tom's bad treatment of his stepmother and step-sister and brother when I lived at La Closerie. I took sides with them and tried to bring him to better manners. We rarely met without his flinging some insult after me. They were generally in the patois, but I knew them to be insults by his manner and by the way they were greeted by those who did understand."
"Had you met last night before you met near the Coupée?"
"We passed Tom by La Vauroque as we came from the Doctor's. He shouted something after us, but I did not understand it."
"You don't know what it was that he said?" an unfortunate question on the part of the Sénéchal, and quite unintentionally so on his part. It necessitated the introduction of matters Gard would fain have kept out of the enquiry.
"Well," he said, with visible reluctance, "I learned afterwards, and by accident, something of what he said or meant."
"How was that, and what was it?"