“You can’t judge a man with Leonard Boyce’s record on the ex PARTE statement of a malevolent beast like Gedge.  Look back.  If there had been any affair between Althea and Boyce, the merest foolish flirtation, even, do you think it would have passed unnoticed?  You, Edith, Betty—­I myself—­would have cast an uneasy eye.  When we were looking about, some months ago, at the time of your sister-in-law’s visit, for a possible man, the thought of Leonard Boyce never entered our heads.  The only man you could rush at was young Randall Holmes, and I laughed you out of the idea.  Just throw your mind back, Anthony, and try to recall any suspicious incident.  You can’t.”

I paused rhetorically, expecting a reply.  None came.  He just sat looking at me in a dead way.  I continued my special pleading; and the more I said, the more was I baffled by his dead stare and the more unconvincing platitudes did I find myself uttering.  Some people may be able to speak vividly to a deaf and dumb creature.  On this occasion I tried hard to do so, and failed.  After a while my words dribbled out with difficulty and eventually ceased.  At last he spoke, in the dull, toneless way of a dead man—­presuming that the dead could speak: 

“You may talk till you’re black in the face, but you know as well as I do that the man told the truth—­or practically the truth.  What he said he saw, he saw.  What motives have been at the back of his miserable mind, I don’t know.  You say I can’t recall suspicious incidents.  I can.  I’ll tell you one.  I came across them once—­about a month before the thing happened—­among the greenhouses.  I think we were having one of our tennis parties.  I heard her using angry words, and when I appeared her face was flushed and there were tears in her eyes.  She was taken aback for a second and then she rushed up to me.  ’I think he’s perfectly horrid.  He says that Jingo—­’ pointing to the dog; you remember Jingo the Sealingham—­she was devoted to him—­he died last year—­ ‘He says that Jingo is a mongrel—­a throw back.’  Boyce said he was only teasing her and made pretty apologies.  I left it at that.  Hit a dog or a horse belonging to Althea, and you hit Althea.  That was her way.  The incident went out of my mind till this morning.  Other incidents, too.  One thinks pretty quick at times.  Again, this scoundrel hit me on the raw.  Boyce never wrote to us.  Sent us through his mother a conventional word of condolence.  Edith and I were hurt.  That was one of the things that made me speak so angrily of him when he wouldn’t come and dine with us.”

Once more I pleaded.  “Your Sealingham incident doesn’t impress me.  Why not take it at its face value?  As for the letter of condolence, that may have twenty explanations.”

He passed his hand over his cropped iron-grey head.  “What are you driving at, Duncan?  You know as well as I do—­you know more than I do.  I saw it in your face ever since that man opened his mouth.”