His eyes sent out a flash. I could see the muscles of his hand clench against his knee. I had scored a point, and his anger was correspondingly increased.
“Perhaps I had better explain,” he began in a tone of elaborate forbearance. “I live at Wembly. Most of the land between here and there belongs to me. Pastimes happens to be outside the limit, and so it escaped my memory. I have not been over it before. I did not know the last tenants. For the last few weeks I have been looking for a house for my friend—a member of the family who is returning from abroad. Invalided!”
He pronounced the last word with emphasis, staring fixedly at me the while. I adapted my features to express polite commiseration.
“It is natural that he should wish to live within driving distance of his friends.”
“Oh, quite!”
“The moment that I saw Pastimes I knew for a sure thing that it would be just his house—”
“I am sorry, but as he has not seen it, he can’t be disappointed. There must be other houses—”
“I have already said I have been searching round for—the—last—three—weeks,” Mr Maplestone repeated, in the carefully deliberate tone which disguises irritation. “Nothing else will suit anything like so well.”
I murmured indefinitely, and glanced at the screen. Mentally I could see Charmion leaning back in her chair, smiling her slow fine smile, inquisitively waiting to see just how firm or how weak I could be. I was not inclined to be weak. There was something in the personality of this big domineering man which roused an imp of contradiction. We sat silent, eyeing one another across the room.
“I believe you and—er—Mrs Fane are strangers to this neighbourhood?”