Mrs. Ratcliffe made a movement to sit erect and then sank back again. "I don't know what you're talking about. I most certainly never told my maid I was going to Yorkshire. I said New York."
That was so patently possible that Grant hastened to get in first with, "Well, she thinks you said Yorkshire," before Mrs. Ratcliffe inevitably said, "How do you know?"
"There isn't anything a police inspector doesn't know," he said.
"There isn't anything he won't do, you mean," she said angrily. "Have you been walking out with Annie? I shouldn't be surprised if you suspected me of having done the murder myself."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Grant. "Inspectors suspect all the world."
"Well, I suppose I can only give thanks that your suspicions led to nothing worse than walking out my maid."
Grant caught Miss Dinmont's eyes on him under the short brim of her hat, and there was a new expression in them. The conversation had given away the fact that Mrs. Ratcliffe had some connexion with the queue murder, and Miss Dinmont was being given furiously to think. Grant smiled reassuringly at her. "They don't think I'm nice to know," he said. "But at least you can stick up for me. Justice is the thing I live for." Surely she must see, if she thought about it, that his inquiries in this direction could not be very incriminating to Lamont. The chances must be the other way about.
"Let's go and have tea," Miss Lethbridge said. "Come along to our hotel. Or shall we go somewhere else, Meg? I'm sick of anchovy sandwiches and currant cake."
Grant suggested a tea-shop which had a reputation for cakes, and began to bundle Mrs. Ratcliffe's scattered belongings together. As he did so, he let the writing-pad drop so that it fell open on the sand, the first sheet exhibiting a half-written letter. Staring up at him in the bright sunlight were the round large letters of Mrs. Ratcliffe's script. "Sorry!" he said, and restored the block to the pile of papers and magazines.
Tea as a gastronomic function might have been a success, but as a social occasion Grant felt that it failed miserably. Two out of his three companions regarded him with a distrust of which he could not fail to be conscious, and the third — Miss Lethbridge — was so cheerfully determined to pretend that she was not aware of her sister's ill humour that she tacitly confessed her own awareness of tension. When they had taken leave of each other, and Grant and his companion were on their way to the station in the fading light, he said, "You've been a brick, Miss Dinmont. I'll never forget it." But she did not answer. She was so quiet on the way home that his already discontented thoughts were further distracted. Why couldn't the girl trust him? Did she think him an ogre to make such unscrupulous use of her as she suspected. And all the time his looker-on half was smiling sardonically and saying, "You, a police inspector, asking for trust! Why, Machiavelli was fastidious compared with a C.I.D. man."