He bit his lip. After a moment she said: "Were you responsible for - things that have happened?"
"I can't answer you, and I don't want to lie to you," he said curtly. "I can only tell you that from me you stand in no danger whatsoever. But I'm not the only one mixed up in this." He made a little gesture of despair. "It's no good going on like this. If you won't go, you won't. But I have warned you, and you can believe that I know what I'm talking about."
She began to twist the strap of her handbag round her finger. "I do believe that you - wouldn't hurt me, or any of us," she began.
He interrupted her. "Hurt you! My God, no! Can't you understand, Margaret? I - I love you!"
She bent her head still lower over the absorbing strap. "Please - you mustn't…!" she said inarticulately.
"I know I mustn't. But you don't know what it's like for me to see you here… I wish to God I'd met you under other circumstances!" He ran his fingers up through his crisp black hair. "And yet I don't know that I'd have had a better chance," he said despondently. "The whole thing seems hopeless, and it's no good for anyone in my - line of business - to think of a girl like you."
In a very muffled voice Margaret said: "If I - if I knew it was honest - I - I shouldn't care - what your line of business was." She tried to achieve a lighter note. "As long as it isn't keeping a butcher's shop, or - or anything like that," she added with a wavering smile.
He made a movement as though he would take her hand again, but checked it. "I've no right to speak at all till I can - clear up all this mess," he said. "But to know that you - well, one day I hope I shall be able to say all the things I want to say now. One thing I must ask you though: Will you trust me enough not to mention to anyone that you saw me in your grounds last night?"
All the reason she possessed told her to say "No," but something far stronger than reason made her say instead: "All right, I — I will."
"My God, you are a wonderful girl," he said unsteadily.
She got up. "I must go. But I'd like to warn you of something. I didn't tell my people that you were there last night. You guessed I hadn't, didn't you? But Peter and Charles have motored into Manfield to-day, to tell the County Police what has been happening at the Priory. And - I think they'll tell the inspector to keep an eye on you."
"Thank-you," he said. His smile flashed out. "Don't worry your head over me," he said. "The police aren't going to get me."
She held out her hand. "I should be - very sorry if they did," she said. "Good-bye."
He took her hand, looked at it for a moment as it lay in his, and then bent his head and kissed it.
Chapter Eleven
Hawing extricated the car from the ditch with the aid of a farm-horse, Charles and Peter drove it into Manfield, the market town that lay some six miles to the east of Framley. Here was the headquarters of the County Police, and in the red-brick police-station they found the District Inspector.
This individual was of a different type from Constable Flinders. He was a wiry man of medium height, with foxy hair and a moustache meticulously waxed at the ends. He had a cold blue eye and a brisk manner, and his air of business-like competence promised well.
He listened without comment to the story Charles unfolded, only occasionally interrupting to put a brief question. His face betrayed neither surprise nor interest, and not even the episode of the discovered skeleton caused him to do more than nod.
"One had the impression," Charles said afterwards, "that such occurrences were everyday matters in this part of the world."
"You say the picture fell," the inspector recapitulated. "You have a suspicion someone was responsible. Any grounds for that, sir?"
"None," said Charles.
"Except," Peter put in, "that we can neither of us see how the falling picture could have knocked the rosette in the panelling out of place."
The inspector made dots on his blotting-pad with the point of a pencil he held. "Very hard to say that it could not, sir, from all you tell me. You haven't tested it?"
"No," said Charles, "funnily enough we haven't. Though there are quite a lot of pictures in the house, and if we'd smashed one in the test we could always have tried another."
The first sign of emotion crept into the inspector's face. The cold blue eyes twinkled. "Very true, sir," he said gravely. "Now there is the entrance into the cellars. You say you heard this move on several occasions, and on the last you went down and saw someone make his escape that way. Did you recognise this person?"
"No," Charles said. "There was hardly time for that."
"Very good, sir. And since you have sealed up that entrance no further attempt has been made to break into the house?"
"On the contrary. My aunt encountered the Monk in the library."
The inspector made more dots. "The lady being, I take it, a reliable witness?"
"Most reliable. Moreover, up till then she had no belief in the story that the Priory is haunted."
"Quite so, sir. And on that occasion you discovered the window into the library to have been open?"
"Unbolted. It was shut, however."
"But I understand it could be opened from outside?"
"Yes, certainly it could."
"And this — Monk - would have had plenty of time to escape by that way, pausing to shut the window behind him, in between the time of the lady's falling into a faint, and your arrival on the scene?"
"Plenty of time. So much so that neither my brotherin-law nor I thought it would be of any use to search the grounds."
"I see, sir. And since that occasion no one has, to your knowledge, been in the house?"
"Not to my knowledge. But last night, as I told you, my sister-in-law distinctly saw the Monk in the grounds. A moment later Mr. Ernest Titmarsh ran up to her."
The inspector nodded. "If you don't mind, sir, we'll take the people who have acted suspiciously in your opinion, one by one. Ernest Titmarsh: that's the first?"
"No. The first was a fellow who's staying at the Bell Inn, in the village."
"Name, sir?"
"Strange, Michael Strange. He is the man whom we found wandering close to the house when we first heard the stone move. He's a man I'd like you to get on to."
"Inquiries will be made, sir."
"He is also the man whom we overheard talking in an exceedingly suspicious manner to James Fripp, traveller for Suck-All Cleaners. About whom I have received the following information." He took a letter from his pocketbook, and handed it to the inspector.
The inspector read the letter through. The inquiry agent had not been able to discover very much about ,James Fripp, for the firm for which he worked had engaged him only a month previously, and knew nothing about his former occupation. But the agent gave, for what it was worth, the information that before the war a man going under the name of Jimmy Fripp, and corresponding more or less with Charles' description of the commercial traveller, had been on two occasions imprisoned for burglary. His last incarceration took place in 1914; he had been released shortly after war broke out, and had joined the army. Since the end of the war he had been lost trace of, nor could the agent discover what type of work, honest or otherwise, he had been employed in. It seemed possible that the Fripp in question might be the same man, but no proof of this was forthcoming.
The inspector folded the letter, and gave it back to Charles. "Thank you, sir. You don't need to worry about him; we've got our eye on him all right."
"The man I'm really worrying about," Charles answered, "is Strange. We know he's in collusion with Fripp, and that being so there can be little doubt that Fripp is working under his orders."
The inspector nodded, but again repeated: "You don't need to worry. We'll look after Mr. Strange too."