“Were you really? But, then, you don’t look like my idea of a detective, either!”
Sir Clinton laughed.
“I’m afraid you’re hard to please, Mrs. Fleetwood. Mr. Wendover’s just as bad. He’s a faithful reader of the classics, and he simply can’t imagine anyone going in for detective work without a steely eye and a magnifying glass. It jars on his finer feelings merely to think of a detective without either of them. The only thing that saves me is that I’m not a detective nowadays; and he salves his conscience by refusing to believe that I ever was one.”
Wendover took up the challenge.
“I’ve only seen you at work once in the detective line,” he confessed, “and I must admit I thought your methods were simply deplorable, Clinton.”
“Quite right,” Sir Clinton admitted: “I disappointed you badly in that Maze affair, I know. Even the success in the end hardly justified the means employed in reaching it. Let’s draw a veil, eh?”
They had reached the door of the hotel, and, after a few words, Cressida and her husband went into the building.
“Nice pair they make,” Wendover remarked, glancing after them as they went. “I like to see youngsters of that type. They somehow make you feel that the younger generation isn’t any worse than its parents; and that it has a good deal less fuss about it, too. Reinstates one’s belief in humanity, and all that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” Sir Clinton concurred, with a faint twinkle in his eye. “Some people one takes to instinctively. It’s the manner that does it. I remember a man I once ran across—splendid fellow, charm, magnetic personality, and so on.”
His voice died away, as though he had lost interest in the matter.
“Yes?” Wendover inquired, evidently feeling that the story had stopped too soon.
“He was the worst poker-sharp on the liner,” Sir Clinton added gently, “Charm of manner was one of his assets, you know.”
Wendover’s annoyance was only half-feigned.
“You’ve a sordid mind, Clinton. I don’t like to hear you throwing out hints about people in that way. Anyone can see that’s a girl out of the common; and all you can think of in that connection is cardsharps.”
Sir Clinton seemed sobered by his friend’s vexation.
“You’re quite right, squire,” he agreed. “She’s out of the common, as you say. I don’t know anything about her history, but it doesn’t take much to see that something’s happened to her. She looks as if she’d taken the world at her own measure at first, trusted everybody. And then she got a devil of a shock one day. At least, if that isn’t in her eyes, then I throw in my hand. I’ve seen the same expression once or twice before.”
They entered the hotel and sat down in the lounge. Wendover glanced from the window across the links.
“This place will be quite good when the new course has been played over for a year or two. I shouldn’t wonder if Lynden Sands became fairly popular.”
Sir Clinton was about to reply when a pageboy entered the lounge and paraded slowly across it, chanting in a monotonous voice:
“Number eighty-nine! Number eighty-nine! Number eighty-nine!”
The chief constable sat up sharply and snapped his fingers to attract the pageboy’s attention.
“That’s the number of my room,” he said to Wendover, “but I can’t think of anyone who might want me. Nobody knows me in this place.”
“You number eighty-nine, sir?” the pageboy demanded. “There’s somebody asking for you. Inspector Armadale, he said his name was.”
“Armadale? What the devil can he be wanting?” Sir Clinton wondered aloud. “Show him in, please.”
In a minute or two the inspector appeared.
“I suppose it’s something important, inspector,” Sir Clinton greeted him, “otherwise you wouldn’t have come. But I can’t imagine what brings you here.”
Inspector Armadale glanced at Wendover, and then, without speaking, he caught Sir Clinton’s eye. The chief constable read the meaning in his glance.
“This is a friend of mine, inspector—Mr. Wendover. He’s a J.P. and perfectly reliable. You can speak freely before him, if it’s anything official.”
Armadale was obviously relieved.
“This is the business, Sir Clinton. This morning we had a phone message from the Lynden Sands doctor. It seems the caretaker at a big house hereabouts—Foxhills, they call it—was found dead, close to his cottage. Dr. Rafford went up to see the body; and at first he thought it was a case of apoplexy. Then he noticed some marks on the body that made him suspicious, and he says he won’t give a death certificate. He put the matter into our hands at once. There’s nobody except a constable hereabouts, so I’ve come over myself to look into things. Then it struck me you were staying at the hotel here, and I thought I’d drop in on my way up.”
Sir Clinton gazed at the inspector with a very faintly quizzical expression.
“A friendly call?” he said. “That’s very nice. Care to stay to lunch?”
The inspector evidently had not expected to find the matter taken in this way.
“Well, sir,” he said tentatively, “I thought perhaps you might be interested.”
“Intensely, inspector, intensely. Come and tell me all about it when it’s cleared up. I wouldn’t miss it.”
Faint signs of exasperation betrayed themselves in the inspector’s face.
“I thought, perhaps, sir, that you’d care to come over with me and look into the thing yourself. It seems a bit mysterious.”
Sir Clinton stared at him in well-assumed amazement.
“We seem to be rather at cross-purposes, inspector. Let’s be clear. First of all, I’m on holiday just now, and criminal affairs have nothing to do with me. Second, even if I weren’t on holiday, a chief constable isn’t specially attached to the find-’em-and-grab-’em branch of the service. Third, it might cause professional jealousy, heartburnings, and whatnot, if I butted into a detective’s case. What do you think?”
“It’s my case,” Armadale said, abandoning all further attempt at camouflage. “The plain truth is, from all I heard over the phone, that it seems a rum
