“Maybe it’s not quite cricket to criticize Cosgrove, now he’s gone,” said Crofts in an unusually reflective manner. “I do think that he might have shot straighter, you know. I don’t see what he was driving at when he brought this ruffianly man of his down here in secret, to lurk about, perhaps to thieve, and above all, to be brought among us in disguise that evening. What was the point of that, I’d like to know!”
“No doubt about it,” declared Salt. “Mr. Cosgrove, havin’ no idea what had happened to Sir Brooke the night before, expected him surely to be here by the time the Noah thing commenced.”
“What’s that to do with it?”
“Why, Mr. Cosgrove was particularly anxious to bring the pair of ’em together, I expect.”
Crofts looked at Salt as at one suddenly seized with dementia. “To bring them together? Why should he want to do that?”
“To show he meant business, Mr. Pendleton.”
Aire asked quickly, “Who was this wild man?”
“Ah, I was wonderin’ who’d ask me,” said Salt. “Please don’t mention it, ladies and gentlemen, but the man killed by the landslide was sure to be Toban First, the royal King of Ireland!”
Same day. 10.10 P.M.
A couple of snubbed and highly aggrieved juries brought in verdicts of “Wilful Murder” and “Misadventure” respectively, as they were told to, and within half an hour of my entering the mortuary, I was in the street again. For a few minutes I was busy resisting the minions of the press, who buzzed about all of us but secured small plenishments of honey. I surmise that the likelihood of exposure to blandishing newsgatherers was the principal reason why Blenkinson, finder of the stone, was the only servant brought from the Vale to give testimony.