As I left the room I was aware of a small army of young men with bright, alert faces and a kind of superficial resemblance to each other. Several of them were already known to me by sight as having haunted the Vicarage the last few days. Seeking to escape, I plunged back into the Blue Boar and was lucky enough to run straight into the archaeologist, Dr. Stone. I clutched at him without ceremony.
“Journalists,” I said briefly and expressively. “If you could deliver me from their clutches?”
“Why, certainly, Mr. Clement. Come upstairs with me.”
He led the way up the narrow staircase and into his sitting-room, where Miss Cram was sitting rattling the keys of a typewriter with a practised touch. She greeted me with a broad smile of welcome and seized the opportunity to stop work.
“Awful, isn’t it?” she said. “Not knowing who did it, I mean. Not but that I’m disappointed in an inquest. Tame, that’s what I call it. Nothing what you might call spicy from beginning to end.”
“You were there, then, Miss Cram?”
“I was there all right. Fancy your not seeing me. Didn’t you see me? I feel a bit hurt about that. Yes, I do. A gentleman, even if he is a clergyman ought to have eyes in his head.”
“Were you present also?” I asked Dr. Stone, in an effort to escape from this playful badinage. Young women like Miss Cram always make me feel awkward.
“No, I’m afraid I feel very little interest in such things. I am a man very wrapped up in his own hobby.”
“It must be a very interesting hobby,” I said.