One doesn't associate the Staffordshire Moultries" (my Demon of
Irresponsibility at that instant created 'em), "with--with being
hard up."
"I don't know whether we're related to them," he answered
importantly. "We may be, for our branch of the family comes from
the Midlands."
I give this talk at length, because I am so proud of my first
attempt at detective work. When I left him, twenty minutes later,
with instructions to move against the owner of Holmescroft, with
a view to purchase, I was more bewildered than any Doctor Watson
at the opening of a story.
Why should a middle-aged solicitor turn plovers' egg colour and
drop his jaw when reminded of so innocent and festal a matter as
that no death had ever occurred in a house that he had sold? If I
knew my English vocabulary at all, the tone in which he said the
youngest sister "fell ill" meant that she had gone out of her
mind. That might explain his change of countenance, and it was
just possible that her demented influence still hung about
Holmescroft; but the rest was beyond me.
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