“Tommy,” said Tuppence, when her husband returned from showing the Scotland Yard man out. “Why do you think Inspector Marriot keeps repeating that it’s a perfectly clear case?”
“I don’t know. Smug satisfaction, I suppose.”
“Not a bit of it. He’s trying to get us irritated. You know, Tommy, butchers, for instance, know something about meat, don’t they?”
“I should say so, but what on earth—”
“And in the same way, greengrocers know all about vegetables, and fishermen about fish. Detectives, professional detectives, must know all about criminals. They know the real thing when they see it—and they know when it isn’t the real thing.
Marriot’s expert knowledge tells him that Captain Hale isn’t a criminal—but all the facts are dead against him. As a last resource Marriot is egging us on, hoping against hope that some little detail or other will come back to us—something that happened last night—which will throw a different light on things.
Tommy, why shouldn’t it be suicide, after all?”
“Remember what she said to you.”
“I know—but take that a different way. It was Bingo’s doing—his conduct that drove her to kill herself. It’s just possible.”
“Just. But it doesn’t explain that fragment of newspaper.”
“Let’s have a look at Marriot’s photographs. I forgot to ask him what Hale’s account of the matter was.”
“I asked him that in the hall just now. Hale declared he had never spoken to Lady Merivale at the show. Says somebody shoved a note into his hand