Miss Patterdale let her monocle fall, and, picking it up as it swung on the end of its thin cord, began to polish it vigorously. “You don't think it can have been an accident, Charles?”
“How could it have been?”
She glanced rather vaguely round. “Don't understand ballistics myself. People do go out with guns, though, after rabbits.”
“But they don't aim at rabbits in private gardens,” said Charles. “What's more, rabbits aren't usually seen in the air!”
She looked fleetingly at the still figure on the seat. “He was sitting down,” she pointed out, but without conviction.
“Talk sense, Aunt Miriam!” Charles begged her. “Any fool could see he's been murdered! You don't even have to have a giant intellect to realise where the murderer must have been standing.” He nodded towards the rising common-land beyond the lane, where the gorse-bushes blazed deep yellow in the late sunshine. “Bet you anything he was lying up in those bushes! The only bit of bad luck he had was Mavis being in the lane at the time—and even that wasn't really bad luck, because she was too dumb to do him any harm.”
“Can't be surprised the girl was too much shocked to think of looking for him,” said Miss Patterdale fair-mindedly. “It isn't the sort of thing anyone would expect to happen! I suppose it wouldn't be any use going to search those bushes?”
He could not help laughing. “No, Best of my Aunts, it wouldn't! I don't know how long it took Mavis to assimilate the fact that Warrenby was dead, and to be sick, and to rush off in search of you, but it was quite long enough to give the unknown assassin ample time to make his getaway.”
She went on polishing her monocle, her attention apparently riveted to this task. Finally, screwing it into place again, she looked at Charles, and said abruptly: “I don't like it. I'm not going to say who I think might have done it—or, at any rate, wanted to do it!—but I shouldn't be surprised if it leads to a great deal of the sort of unpleasantness we don't want!”
“I do love you, Aunt Miriam!” said Charles, putting an arm round her, and giving her the hug of the privileged. “A turn in yourself, that's what you are! Don't worry! Abby and I are your alibis—same like you're ours!”
“Don't be silly!” she said, pushing him away. “You know what I mean!” She cast another glance at the corpse, and said with some asperity: “I shall be glad when someone comes to relieve us! If there were anything one could do! But there isn't. In fact, I imagine that the less we do the better it will be. Standing about to keep watch over a dead man! It's all very well for you to laugh, but I wasn't brought up to this sort of thing.”
However, when Charles suggested that she might as well return to her home, she gave a scornful snort, and resumed her scrutiny of the flower-beds. Fortunately, they had not long to wait before relief came in the substantial form of Police Constable Hobkirk, a stout and middle-aged man who inhabited a cottage in the High Street, and devoted as much of his time as could be spared from his not very arduous police-duties to the cultivation of tomatoes, vegetable-marrows and flowers which almost invariably won the first prizes at all the local shows.
He came up the lane on his bicycle, very hot, for he had been pedalling as vigorously as was suitable for a man of his girth, and a little out of breath. Alighting ponderously from his machine, he propped it against the hedge, and, before entering the garden, removed his cap, and mopped his face and neck with a large handkerchief.
“Good lord! I forgot all about Hobkirk!” exclaimed Charles, conscience-stricken. “I expect I ought to have notified him, not Bellingham. He looks a bit disgruntled, doesn't he? Hallo, Hobkirk! I'm glad you've turned up. Bad business, this.”
“Evening, sir.”
“Evening, miss,” said Hobkirk, a note of formality in his voice. “Now, just how did this happen?”
“Good lord, I don't know!” replied Charles. “Miss Patterdale doesn't either. We weren't here. Miss Warrenby found the body, just as you see it, and came to Fox Cottage for help.”
“Oh!” said Hobkirk noncommittally. He produced a small notebook from his pocket, and the stub of a pencil. “At what time would that have been?” he asked.
Charles looked at Miss Patterdale. “Do you know? I'm hanged if I do!”
“Come, come, sir!” said Hobkirk.
“It's no use saying come, come, in that reproving way. No doubt, if Miss Warrenby had rushed in to tell you her uncle had been shot, you'd have taken note of the time: you're a policeman. The trouble is I'm not, and I didn't.”
“Ah!” said Hobkirk, pleased with this tribute to his superior ability. “That's where it comes in, doesn't it? It'll have to be established, you know, because it's very important circumstance.”
“Well, I daresay we can work it out,” said Miss Patterdale, pulling an old-fashioned gold watch out of her waistband, and consulting it. “It's ten past eight now—and I know that's right, because I set my watch by the wireless only this morning—and I should think we must have been here at least half an hour.”
“Twenty minutes at the outside,” interpolated Charles.
“It seems longer, but you may be right. When did Mavis reach us?”
“I haven't the ghost of an idea,” said Charles frankly. “I should make a rotten witness, shouldn't I? What a good job it is that I shan't be expected to know when the murder was committed!”
“I wouldn't say that, sir,” said Hobkirk darkly. “And when you found him, the deceased was sitting like he is now?”
“Hasn't moved an inch,” said Charles.
“Charles!” said Miss Patterdale. “This is not a moment for flippancy!”
“Sorry, Aunt Miriam! The worst is being roused in me.”
“Then overcome it!” said Miss Patterdale severely. “Neither Mr. Haswell nor I have touched the body, Hobkirk, if that, as I suppose, is what you want to know. Miss Warrenby may have touched, though I should doubt it.”
“I don't have to tell you, miss, that it is very highly improper for anyone to go touching anything on the scene of the crime.” The constable's slow-moving gaze travelled to a sheaf of type-written papers, clipped together at one corner, and lying on the grass beside the corpse's right foot. “Those papers, now: I take it they was there, laying on the ground?”
“Yes, and do you know what I think?” said Charles irrepressibly. “I believe the deceased must have been reading them—no, I mean perusing them, at the time he was shot.”
“That's is may be, sir,” replied Hobkirk, with dignity. “I don't say it wasn't so, but things aren't always what they seem, not by any means they aren't.”
“No, and life is not an empty dream, either. Are you supposed to be in charge of this investigation?”
Hobkirk, in his unofficial moments, rather liked young Mr. Haswell, whom he considered a well-set-up young gentleman, with friendly manners, and one, moreover, who could be relied upon to do great execution, with his inswingers, amongst the batsmen of neighbouring villagers; but he now detected in him a certain lack of respect, combined with a deplorable levity, and he answered with quelling coldness: “I'm here, sir, to take charge of things till relieved. Properly speaking, you had ought to have notified me of this occurrence, when I should, in accordance with the regulations, have reported same to my headquarters in Bellingham.”
“At the end of which exercise we should have been precisely where we are now,” said Charles. “Still, I'm sorry you aren't going to remain in charge! I say, Aunt Miriam, is it really past eight? I'd better go and give my Mama a ring: we dine at eight, and she always pictures me in the local hospital, with every bone in my body fractured, if I don't show up when I said I would.”
He strode off towards the house. Hobkirk watched him go, his countenance betraying some uncertainty of mind. In all the uneventful years of his service no case of murder had previously come his way, so that he had only a half-forgotten memory of text-book procedure to act upon. He felt vaguely that young Mr. Haswell should not be allowed to make use of the telephone belonging to the deceased. But as he had already made use of it, to summon the police, it was difficult to know on what grounds he could now be restrained. Constable Hobkirk held his peace therefore, and was secretly glad of the diversion afforded by the arrival at that moment of Dr. Warcop, in his aged but still reliable car.
Dr. Edmund Warcop, who resided in a comfortable Victorian house, inherited, like his practice, from his long-dead father, and situated on the outskirts of Bellingham, on the Trindale road, was sixty years of age and as unaccustomed as Constable Hobkirk to dealing with cases of murder. His professional methods, which were old-fashioned, might be the despair of younger and more progressive colleagues, but he enjoyed a very respectable practice, his simpler patients being as conservative as he was himself, and thinking it scarcely possible that they could be born or die without a Warcop to attend them; and the more sophisticated believing that they must be safe in the hands of a man who rode so well to hounds, and who had been established in the district for as long as most of them could remember. He held himself in high esteem, rarely called in a second opinion, and had never been known to admit himself to have been at fault. No one, observing his demeanour as he walked across the lawn towards the oak-tree, would have guessed that this was the first case of its kind which he had attended. A stranger would more readily have supposed that he was a police-surgeon of extensive experience. He nodded to Hobkirk, but favoured Miss Patterdale with a civil good-evening, and a handshake, for she was one of his patients. “I'm sorry you should have been brought into this,” he said. “Shocking business! I could scarcely believe it, when young Haswell told me what had happened. Almost under the eyes of Miss Warrenby, I understand.”
He then bent over the corpse, while Miss Patterdale walked away to inspect yet another flower-bed, and the constable respectfully watched him. He glanced up after a brief examination, and said: “Nothing for me to do here. Instantaneous, of course. Poor fellow!”
“Yes, sir. How long would you say he's been dead?”
“Impossible to say with any certainty. More than a quarter of an hour, and not more than an hour. We must bear in mind that the body has been all the time in hot sunshine.”
These remarks he repeated five minutes later, when a police-car set down at Fox House Detective-Sergeant Carsethorn, accompanied by a uniformed constable, and two men in plain clothes. The Sergeant asked him whether there was anything else he could tell them about the murder, adding, but without malice, that Dr. Rotherhope, who, besides constituting Dr. Warcop's chief rival in Bellingham was also the police-surgeon, had been called out to a confinement, and was thus not immediately available.
Beyond informing the Sergeant that the bullet had entered the skull through the temporal bone, and would be found lodged in the brain, Dr. Warcop had nothing more to tell him. It was the Sergeant himself who observed that the shot had not been fired at very close quarters, no powder-burns being discernible.
By this time Charles had rejoined the group on the lawn. When he saw the Sergeant he was surprised, and said: “Hallo! You're not the chap who dealt with that pilfering we had at the office. What's become of him?”
“Detective-Inspector Thropton, sir. He's away, sick.”
“He will be fed-up!” remarked Charles. “Mama says I'm to bring Mavis home with me, Aunt Miriam, for the night.”
“I shall be requiring to ask Miss Warrenby a few questions, sir, before she leaves the house.”
“She isn't here: she's at my house,” said Miss Patterdale. “She came running to me for help, and I left her there, in charge of my niece. Can you interview her there?”
“Certainly, madam, that will be quite agreeable to me,” said the Sergeant politely. “The young lady will prefer not to return until the body of the deceased has been removed to the mortuary. Very understandable, I'm sure. The ambulance is on its way.”
He turned aside to confer with his subordinates, one of whom was preparing to photograph the corpse, issued some low-voiced directions, and then announced that he would like to see Miss Warrenby without further loss of time.
“What ought we to do about the house?” asked Miss Patterdale. “There's no one inside, and although I don't suppose anybody would burgle it, we can't leave it like this, can we? At the same time, I don't like to shut the front-door, because I don't think Miss Warrenby had her handbag with her, in which case she won't have the key.”
“One of my men will be staying here to keep an eye on things, madam,” replied the Sergeant. “Everything will be quite safe.”
“Then, if you have no objection, I'll go with you,” said Miss Patterdale. “Are you coming, Charles?”
He nodded, and accompanied her out into the lane. The Sergeant waited until he had skilfully turned his car in the narrow space afforded for this manoeuvre, and then started up the engine of the police-car. Miss Patterdale was thus able to reach Fox Cottage far enough in advance of him to give her time to prepare Mavis's mind for the coming ordeal, which, as she trenchantly observed to Charles, was an extremely desirable circumstance.
However, when they stood once more in the low-pitched parlour they found that Miss Warrenby had regained her composure, and was drinking tea, a stimulant she had preferred to gin. She received the news that she was to be questioned by the police with a wan smile, and said that she had known this must happen, and had been doing her best to collect her thoughts. When the Sergeant arrived, and offered her a formal apology for being obliged to trouble her at such a time, she said that she quite understood, and was anxious to be as helpful as possible. Since she had already discussed her part in the affair with Abby, going over her every movement and mental reaction in exhaustive detail, she was able to tell her story fluently, and even to establish the approximate time of the murder.
“You see, Mrs. Cliburn and I stayed on after the others had gone to talk about the prizes for the village whist-drive,” she explained. “And I know it was ten past seven when I left The Cedars, because I caught sight of the clock in the drawing-room, and that's what it said. I'd no idea it was as late as that. I told Mrs. Haswell I must simply fly, or Poor Uncle would be wondering what had become of me, and I ran across her garden to the gate on to the footpath, and came home that way. And it only takes about five minutes to reach the stile from there, so it must have been about a quarter past seven, or perhaps twenty past when it happened.”
“Thank you, miss: that's very clear. And after you heard the shot, you didn't hear or see anything else?”
“No, only a sort of smack, and I didn't think anything of that at the time. I mean, it was so soon after the bang that it seemed part of it, in a way.”
“You didn't see anyone? No one on the common, for instance?”
“No, I'm sure I didn't. Of course, I wasn't looking particularly, but I should have been bound to have noticed if there had been anyone.”
“You didn't look particularly?” repeated the Sergeant. “The shot was fired from close enough to give you a fright, wasn't it, miss?”
“Yes, but, you see, I didn't know that. I'm afraid I'm silly about guns. I can't bear sudden bangs. I just thought it couldn't have been as close as it seemed.”
The Sergeant made a careful note in his book, but offered no comment on this explanation. After a minute, he said: “Do you know of any person, miss, who had a grudge against your uncle?”
“Oh, no!” she replied earnestly.
“You know of no quarrel with any person?” She shook her head. “To your knowledge, he had no enemies?”
“Oh, I'm sure he hadn't!”
There was little more to be elicited from her; and after a few further questions the Sergeant took his leave, telling her that she would be advised of the date of the inquest.
The prospect of having to give evidence at an inquest seemed to affect Miss Warrenby almost as poignantly as its cause, and it was several minutes before she could be reconciled to it. She reiterated her conviction that her uncle would have strongly disliked it, and was only partly soothed by an assurance from Miss Patterdale that neither the post-mortem examination nor the inquest would preclude her from burying her uncle with all the ceremonial she seemed to consider was his due. When Charles conveyed his mother's message to her, her eyes filled with grateful tears, and she begged him to thank Mrs. Haswell very, very much for her kindness, and to say how deeply touched she was by it. But she was quite sure Uncle Sampson would have wished her to remain at Fox House.
Nobody could imagine on what grounds she based this conviction. Abby, who was quite uninhibited, asked bluntly: “Why on earth?”
“It has been our home for such a long time,” said Mavis, visibly investing it with ancestral qualities. “I know he would hate to think I couldn't bear to live there any more. Of course, it will be dreadfully painful just at first, but I've got to get over that, and I believe in facing up boldly to unpleasant things.”
The slight discomfort which was too often provoked by Miss Warrenby's nobler utterances descended upon the company. After an embarrassed silence, Charles said, in a practical spirit: “Have you got to get used to living there alone? I suppose it's been left to you, but will you be able to keep it up?”
She looked startled, and a little shocked. “Oh, I haven't thought of such things. How could I? Please don't let's talk about them! It seems so sordid, and the very last thing one wants to think about at such a time. I just feel it's my duty to stay at home. Besides, I have to remember poor Gladys. She'll be coming out on the last bus, and I couldn't bear her to find the house all locked up and deserted. Whatever would she think?”
“Well, she couldn't think of much worse than the truth,” said Miss Patterdale. “However, that certainly is a point: you don't want to lose a good maid on top of everything else. I was thinking you'd be alone in the house: I'd forgotten about your Gladys. If you'd really prefer to go back, you'd better stay here until later, and then I'll take you home, and stay with you till Gladys arrives. Good gracious, look at the time! You must all be famished! Charles, you'd better stay to supper: luckily it's cold, except for the potatoes, and they're ready to put in the deep-frying-pan. Abby, lay the table, there's a good child!”
“I don't think I could eat anything,” said Mavis, rather faintly. “I wonder if I might go upstairs and lie down quietly by myself, Miss Patterdale? Somehow, one feels one would like to be alone at a moment like this.”
To the imperfectly disguised relief of Charles and Abby Miss Patterdale raised no objection to this, but took her young friend up to her own bedroom, drew the curtains across the windows, gave her an aspirin, and recommended her to have a nice nap.
“Not but that I've no patience with these airs and graces,” she said severely, when she came downstairs again. “Anyone would think Sampson Warrenby had been kind to the girl, which we all know he wasn't. If he's left his money to her, which I should think he must have done, because I never heard that he had any nearer relations, she's got a good deal to be thankful for. I can't stand hypocrisy!”
“Yes, but I don't think it is, quite,” said Abby, wrinkling her brow. “I mean, she's so frightfully pious that she thinks you jolly well ought to be sorry if your uncle dies, and so she actually is!”
“That's worse! Don't forget the spoon and fork for the salad!” said Miss Patterdale, disappearing in the direction of the kitchen.
The murder of Sampson Warrenby naturally formed the sole topic for conversation over the supper-table, Miss Patterdale making no attempt to restrain the enthusiasm of her niece and (adopted) nephew, but maintaining her own belief that it would lead to unpleasantness. Charles was able to perceive, academically speaking, that there might be a great deal of truth in this; but Abby said simply that she had never hoped to realise an ambition to be, as she phrased it, mixed up in a murder-case. Miss Patterdale, regarding her with a fondly indulgent eye, very handsomely said that she was glad it had happened while she was there to enjoy it.
The subject was still under discussion when, having washed up all the plates and cutlery, the party sat down to drink coffee in the parlour. Miss Patterdale had just ascertained that Mavis, under the influence of aspirin, had sunk into a deep sleep, when a knock on the door heralded the arrival of Gavin Plenmeller, who had come, as he unashamedly confessed, to Talk About the Murder.
“Good heavens, is it all over the village already?” exclaimed Miss Patterdale, ushering him into the parlour.
“But could you doubt that it would be? We had the news in the Red Lion within ten minutes of Hobkirk's setting out for the scene of the crime. Mrs. Hobkirk brought it to us, and very grateful we were. News has been coming in for the past hour and more: I was quite unable to drag myself away, though there was a duck and green peas waiting for me at home. Instead, I ate a singularly nauseating meal at the Red Lion. I can't think how we ever came to be famed for our hostelries. Thank you, I should love some coffee! Where is the heroine of this affair?”
“Lying down upstairs,” answered Abby. “How did you know she was here?”
“It is easy to see that you are a town-dweller,” said Gavin, dropping a lump of sugar into his cup. “I used to be one myself, and I'm so glad Walter made it possible for me to return to Thornden. Life is very dull in London. You are dependent on the Radio and the Press for all the news. Of course I know that Mavis Warrenby is here! I'm delighted to learn, however, that she's lying down upstairs: I didn't know that, though I suppose I might have guessed it. Now we can talk it all over without feeling the smallest gene.”
“How much is known in the village?” asked Charles.
“Oh, much more than the truth! That's why I came. I want to know what really happened. Now, don't tell me it was an accident! That was the first rumour that reached the Red Lion, but nothing would induce me to lend it ear. Of course Sampson Warrenby was murdered! He is recognisable as a character created only to be murdered.”
“You mean if he's been a character in one of your books,” said Abby.
“Well, he may yet be that.”
“Charles thinks he must have been shot from the bushes opposite the house, on the common,” said Miss Patterdale.
Gavin turned his eyes enquiringly to Charles, who briefly explained his reasons for holding this opinion. “He was sitting in the garden with his profile turned to the lane, presumably reading some papers he's taken out with him. It wouldn't have been a very difficult shot.”
“But where was Mavis while all this marksmanship was going on? Report places her actually on the scene of the crime.”
“No, she wasn't quite that close, though darned nearly. According to her story, she was getting over the stile at the top of the lane when she heard the shot. That's where the murderer was in luck: a second or two later and she would have been on the spot—might even have stopped the bullet.”
“No, she mightn't,” contradicted Abby. “That's fatuous! The man wouldn't have fired if she'd been in the way!”
“Who knows?” murmured Gavin. “I shall go and view the terrain tomorrow morning. Can't you see the stile from the common? I rather thought you could.”
“Yes, I thought of that too,” agreed Charles. “Several explanations possible. The murderer may have been too intent on taking aim to look that way. He may have been lying with the gorse bushes shutting off the stile from his sight.”
“I find both those theories depressing. They make it seem as if the murderer is a careless, slapdash person, and that I refuse to believe.”
“But that's what they usually are, aren't they?” asked Abby. “Real murderers, I mean, not the ones in books. I know I've read somewhere that they nearly always give themselves away by doing something silly.”
“True enough,” said Charles. “It 'ud be nice if ours turned out to be a master of crime, but I'm bound to say I haven't much hope of it.”
“If you have cast your mind round the district one can only be surprised that you have any,” remarked Gavin. “Which brings us to the really burning question exercising all our minds: who did it?”
“I know,” said Abby sympathetically. “I've been thinking of that, and I haven't the ghost of a notion. Because it isn't enough to dislike a person, is it? I mean, there's got to be a bigger motive than that.”
“Besides,” said Charles caustically, “we have it on Mavis's authority that her uncle had no enemies.”
“Did she say that?” asked Gavin, awed.
“Yes, she did,” nodded Miss Patterdale. “When the detective questioned her. I must say, I thought that was going too far. Silly, too. The police are bound to find out that no one could bear the man.”
“But did you all stand by and allow this flight of fancy to go unchallenged?”
“Yes,” said Abby, “though I should think the detective must have known it was a whopper, if he happened to be looking at Charles when he said it. His jaw dropped a mile. The thing is you can't very well chip in and say the man was utterly barred, when his niece thinks he wasn't.”
“Well, I very nearly did,” confessed Miss Patterdale. “Because it's nonsense to say that Mavis thought he was liked in the neighbourhood. She knew very well he wasn't. It's all on a par with pretending to be heartbroken that he's dead. I don't say she isn't shocked—I am, myself—but she can't be sorry! I'll do her the justice to admit that she has always put a good face on things, and not broadcast the way he treated her, but I know from what she's told me, when he's been worse than usual, that she had a thoroughly miserable time with him.”
Gavin, who had been listening to this speech with a rapt look on his face, said: “Oh, I am glad I came to call on you! Of course she did it! It's almost too obvious!”
Abby gave an involuntary giggle, but Miss Patterdale said sharply: “Don't be silly!”
“All the same, it's a pretty fragrant thought,” said Charles, grinning.
“It's nothing of the sort! Now, I won't have you making that kind of joke, any of you! It's in very bad taste. Mavis says those things because she thinks one ought not to speak ill of the dead, that's all.”
“In what terms does she speak of the Emperor Domitian, and the late Adolf Hitler?” enquired Gavin, interested.
“That,” said Miss Patterdale severely, “is different!”
“Well,” said Gavin, setting down his empty cup, and dragging himself out of his chair, “if I am not to be allowed to suspect Mavis, I must fall back upon my first choice.”
“Who's that?” demanded Abby.
“Mrs. Midgeholme—to avenge the blood of Ulysses. I won't deny that I infinitely prefer her as a suspect to Mavis, but there's always the fear that she'll turn out to have an unbreakable alibi. Mavis, we all know, has none at all. That, by the way, will be our next excitement: who had an alibi, and who had none. You three appear to have them, which, if you will permit me to say so, is very dull and unenterprising of you.”
“Have you got one?” Abby asked forthrightly.
“No, no! At least, I hope I haven't: if that wretched landlord says I was sitting in the Red Lion at the time I shall deny it hotly. Surely the police cannot overlook my claims to the post of chief suspect? I write detective novels, I have a lame leg, and I drove my half-brother to suicide. What more do the police want?”
“You know,” said Charles, who had not been attending very closely to this, “I've been thinking, and I shouldn't be at all surprised, taking into account the time when it happened, if quite a few people haven't got alibis. Everyone was on the way home from our party—the Squire, Lindale, the Major, old Drybeck!”
“Don't forget me, and the Vicar's wife!” interrupted Gavin.
“I don't mind adding you to the list, but I won't have the Vicar's wife. She can't have had anything to do with it, and only confuses the issue.”
“What about the Vicar himself?” asked Abby, her chin propped on her clasped hands. “Where was he?”
“Went off to visit the sick, didn't he? Anyway, he's out of the running too.”
“So are Major Midgeholme, and Mr. Drybeck,” Abby pointed out. “We ran them home.”
“On the contrary! I set the Major down at the cross-road, because he told me to. I don't know what he did when I drove on. Not that I think he's a likely candidate for the list, but we must stick to the facts. I then set old Drybeck down outside his house. We left him waving goodbye to us: we didn't actually see him enter his house, and for anything we know, he didn't.”
“No, that's true,” agreed Abby, her eyes widening. “And he really is a likely candidate! Gosh!”
“Now, that's quite enough!” Miss Patterdale interposed. “Talk like that can lead to trouble.”
“That's all right, Aunt Miriam,” said Charles. “I bet he isn't the only one who might have done it.”
“Well, just you remember that!” she admonished him. “It's all very well to talk like that about people like poor old Thaddeus Drybeck, but you wouldn't think it nearly so amusing if someone were to do the same about your father, for instance.”
Charles stared at her. “Dad? But he wasn't there!”
“Of course he wasn't. But what would you feel like if we started to make up stories of where he might have been? You shouldn't let your tongue run away with you.”
She appealed to deaf ears. Young Mr. Haswell, betraying an unfilial delight in this novel aspect of his parent, gave a shout of laughter, and gasped: “Dad! Oh, what a rich thought! I must ask him if he can account for his movements!”