That was polite of the Superintendent, but when his words were repeated to Inspector Colwall, the Inspector only said, Yes, in a dispirited tone. The good man from Scotland Yard would automatically take charge of the case, and very likely tick everyone off into the bargain, he thought, uneasily aware of his own shortcomings as a detective. He went off duty in a frame of mind almost as gloomy as anyone’s at Lexham Manor, and very nearly as resentful as that of the good man from Scotland Yard, who, far from feeling any elation at being given a promising case to handle, told his subordinate that it was just his luck to be sent into the wilds of Hampshire on Christmas Day.

Sergeant Ware, an earnest young man, ventured to say that the case sounded as though it might be interesting.

‘Interesting!’ said Inspector Hemingway. ‘It sounds to me like a mess. I don’t like the lay-out, I don’t like the locality, and if I don’t find a whole crowd of suspects, all telling a lot of silly lies for no reason at all, my instinct’s wrong, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Well, perhaps it is, this time,’ suggested Ware.

The Inspector fixed him with a bright and fulminating eye. ‘Don’t you get insubordinate with me, my lad!’ he warned him. ‘I’m never wrong.’

The Sergeant grinned. He had worked with Inspector Hemingway many times, and had almost as great a respect for his foibles as for his undoubted ability.

‘And don’t stand there smirking as though you were off on a Cheap Day Excursion, because if I were to burst a blood-vessel you’d very likely get blamed for it!’

‘Why should I, sir?’ asked Ware, diverted.

‘Because that’s the way things turn out in the Force,’ said the Inspector darkly.

Nine

There was no apparent reason to suppose, on the following morning, that Inspector Hemingway was regarding the case with a less jaundiced eye. On the journey into Hampshire, he spoke bitterly and at length on the subject of the play which he had been helping to produce in his hometown, and which was to be performed on Boxing Day. He saw no prospect of being present upon this interesting occasion, and the trend of his remarks led Ware to infer that without his masterful hand upon the reins the play had little chance of succeeding, if, indeed, it could be performed at all.

The Drama was one of the Inspector’s pet hobby-horses, and the Sergeant sat back in his corner of the railway compartment, and resigned himself to the inevitable. The expression of interest which concealed his almost total inattention did not deceive the Inspector for an instant. ‘Yes, I know you aren’t listening,’ he said. ‘If you listened more, you’d be a better detective, besides being a lot more respectful to your superiors. The trouble with you young chaps is that you think you’ve got nothing to learn.’

The Sergeant had never been disrespectful to his superiors in all his blameless life, and his painstaking efforts to broaden his knowledge were notorious, but he attempted no protest. Merely he grinned, and said that he had never been much of a one for the theatre.