“Is that really true? I’ve always heard that about taste depending on sight, and not being able to distinguish one wine from another with one’s eyes shut. Miles, if I put a handkerchief over your eyes, could you tell your beer from Mr. Brinkman’s cider? Oo, I say, let’s try! I’ll give them you in spoonfuls.”
“I’ll shut my eyes, but play fair,” suggested Bredon. The idiocy of men!
“No, you won’t, you’ll do what you’re told. Anybody got a clean hanky? Thank you so much, Mr. Leyland. . . . There, that’s right. Now, open your mouth, but not too wide, or you’ll choke. . . . Which was that?”
“Cider, I thought.”
“It was vinegar, really, with a little water in it.”
“Oh, shut up, that’s not fair.” Miles tore away the handkerchief from his eyes. “Hang it all, I won’t strut; I’m a married man!”
“Then Mr. Brinkman shall try instead; you will, won’t you, Mr. Brinkman?” It is to be feared that Angela favoured him with an appealing look; at any rate, he succumbed. With the instinct of the blindfolded man, he put his cigarette down on the edge of his plate. It was easy work for Angela to drop the spoon, and set Mr. Pulteney grovelling for it. Meanwhile, she hastily picked up Brinkman’s cigarette, and read the word “Callipoli.”
Chapter XII.
The Makings of a Trap
It was Bredon and Leyland, this time, who took their evening walk together. To Bredon, events seemed to be closing in like a nightmare. Here was he pledged to uphold the theory of suicide; and he had depended largely for his success on Leyland’s inability to produce a suitable candidate for the position of murderer. But now there seemed to be a perfect embarras of murderers. Macbeth wasn’t in it.
“Well,” he said, “at least we have something positive to go upon now. Brinkman’s part in this business may be what you will, but he certainly takes an unhealthy interest in it, to the extent of hanging about round corners where he’s no business to be. At least we can confront him with his behaviour, and encourage him to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I imagine you will have no objection to that, since it’s not Brinkman you suspect of the murder?”