XVI
Mr. Sheringham Lectures on Neo-Platonism
“Alec,” interrupted Roger plaintively, “if you say one more word to me about bulls, cows, or any other farmyard impedimenta, I shall burst at once into loud tears. I warn you.”
They were walking once more along the white, dusty road; but the springy exhilaration of the outward journey had gone out of their steps. A short but pithy conversation with the ancient rustic, conducted mostly in earsplitting yells, had speedily shown the crestfallen Roger the precise nature of the wild goose (or should it be wild bull?) he had been chasing. Alec, it might be noticed in passing, was not being at all kind about it.
“If ever anything could have been more obvious!” Roger pursued mournfully. “My reasoning was perfectly sound. It almost looks as if Mrs. William and that idiot of a landlord were trying deliberately to deceive me. Why couldn’t they have said straight out that the disgusting animal was a bull and have done with it?”
“I don’t expect you gave them a chance,” Alec remarked with an undisguised grin.
Roger gave him a dignified look and relapsed into silence.
But not for long. “So here we are, back again at the precise point we had reached before we ever came across that miserable piece of paper,” he resumed unhappily. “A whole valuable hour wasted.”
“You’ve had some exercise, at any rate,” Alec pointed out kindly. “Jolly good for you, too.”
“The point is, what are we going to do next?”
“Go back to tea,” said Alec promptly. “And talking about wasting valuable time, I believe that’s all we’re doing at all with regard to this business. If such a clear clue as that fizzles out in this way, why shouldn’t the whole thing be equally a mare’s nest? I don’t believe there ever was a murder, after all. Stanworth committed suicide.”
“Let’s see,” Roger went on, completely disregarding this interruption, “we were setting out to get on the trail of a Mysterious Stranger, weren’t we? Well, that’s where we shall have to take the thing up from. Luckily I kept my wits about me enough to put a few questions about strangers to those two, and we drew a blank. We will now visit the station.”
“Oh, no!” Alec groaned. “Tea!”
“Station!” returned Roger firmly; and station it was.
But even the station did not prove any more fruitful. On the plea of making inquiries for a friend, Roger succeeded in extracting with some difficulty, from a very bucolic porter, the information that only half-a-dozen trains in a day stopped there (the place was indeed little more than a halt), and none at all after seven o’clock in the evening. The earliest in the morning was soon after six, and no passengers had been picked up so far as he knew. No, he hadn’t seen a stranger arrive yesterday; leastways, not to notice one like.
“After all, it’s only what we might have expected,” Roger remarked philosophically, as they set off homewards at last. “If the fellow came by train at all, he’d probably go to Elchester. He’s no fool, as we knew very well.”
Alec, now that the prospect of tea and shade was definitely before him, was ready to discuss the matter rather more amicably.
“You’re quite sure now that he is a stranger, then?” he asked. “You’ve given up the idea that it’s anybody actually in this neighbourhood?”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” Roger retorted. “I’m not sure of any blessed thing about him, except that he wears large boots, is strong, and is no ordinary criminal; and that he corresponds closely with the quite distinct mental picture I had formed of the late lamented Mr. John Prince. He may be a stranger to the neighbourhood, and he may not. We know that he was still in it during the morning, because he managed to communicate with the occupants of the household. But as for anything more definite than that, we simply can’t say, not knowing his motive. By Jove, I do wish we could discover that! It would narrow things down immensely.”
“I tell you something that never seems to have occurred to us,” Alec remarked suddenly. “Why shouldn’t it have been just an ordinary burglar, who got so panic-stricken when he found he’d actually killed his householder that he hadn’t the nerve to complete what he came for and simply hurried off? That seems to me as probable as anything, and it fits the facts perfectly.”
“Ye-es; we did rather touch on the burglar idea at the very beginning, didn’t we? Do you realise that it was only five hours ago, by the way? It seems more like five weeks. But that was before the curious behaviour of all these other people impressed itself upon us.”
“Upon you, you mean. I still think you’re making ever so much too much of that side of it. There’s probably some perfectly simple explanation, if we only knew it. I suppose you mean Jefferson and Mrs. Plant?”
“And Lady Stanworth!”
“And Lady Stanworth, then. Well, dash it all, you can’t expect them to take us into their confidence, can you? And that is the only way in which their part can be cleared up. Not that it seems to me in the least worth clearing up. I don’t see that it could possibly have anything to do with the murder. Good Lord, it’s practically the same thing as accusing them of the murder itself! I ask you, my dear chap, can you imagine either Mrs. Plant or Lady Stanworth—we’ll leave Jefferson out for the moment—actually plotting old Stanworth’s murder! It’s really too ludicrous. You ought to have more sense.”
“This particular topic always seems to excite you, Alexander,” observed Roger mildly.
“Well, I mean, it’s so dashed absurd. You can’t really believe anything of the sort.”
“Perhaps I don’t. Anyhow, we’ll shelve it till something more definite crops up. It’s quite hot enough already, without making each other still more heated. Look here, let’s give the whole thing a rest till we get back. It will clear
