“Interpret, please,” said Angela, returning to the drawing-room. “Why, you’ve been going on with your patience the whole time! I suppose you didn’t listen to a word I was saying?”
“How often am I to tell you that the memory and the attention function inversely? I remember all you said, precisely because I wasn’t paying attention to it. First of all, it was Sholto, because he was ringing you up on business, but it was somebody you know quite well—at least I hope you don’t talk like that to the tradesmen.”
“Sholto, yes, ringing up from the office. He wanted to talk to you.”
“So I gathered. Was it quite necessary to tell him I was drunk?”
“Well, I couldn’t think of anything else to say at the moment. I couldn’t tell him you were playing patience, or he might have thought we were unhappily married. Go on, Sherlock.”
“Mottram, living at some place in the Midlands you’ve never heard of, but staying at a place called ‘Chilthorpe’—he’s died, and his death wants investigating; that’s obvious.”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“From the way you said ‘Oh’—besides, you said he’d died in his bed, or implied it. And there’s some question of half a million insurance—Euthanasia, I suppose? Really, the Euthanasia’s been responsible for more crimes than psychoanalysis.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you’ve got it all right. What did he die of?”
“Something that generally means suicide—or rather, you think it does. The old sleeping draught business? Veronal?”