Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery by Anthony Berkeley Page B

Very awkward indeed.”
    “But you don’t think – you don’t think there can be anything in – well, what the inspector seems to be thinking do you?”
    “You mean, that she pushed her cousin over the cliff?” amplified Roger, who was not a person to mince matters. “No, I don’t think I do. I liked her, I must say – though that isn’t anything to go by, is it?”
    “It’s a devil of a lot. And you really will do all you can to help clear her, Roger?”
    “Of course I will. Haven’t I told her so half a dozen times over?”
    “Thanks, old man,” said Anthony simply.
    It was a slightly awkward moment. To tide it over Roger embarked upon a voluble account of his conversation with Inspector Moresby, what he had discovered and what he had not, which took them right up to the door of their inn.
    “And that’s the first thing we’ve got to discover, fair coz,” he was saying vehemently as they crossed the threshold. “What old Moresby’s got up his sleeve. And that’s what I’m jolly well going to get out of him somehow, by hook, or even, if it comes to the point, by crook. And what’s more, I think I see a way of going about it. So now for our four bedrooms and a little cold water. By Jove, Anthony, it’s hot, isn’t it? What about a tankard apiece before we go upstairs?”
    “How you do think of things!” was Anthony’s strongly approving comment.
    They adjourned briskly into the cool little bar.
    “Mr Moresby back yet, do you know?” Roger asked the landlord in a casual voice as he set the mighty tankard down on the counter after an initial gulp at its contents.
    “No, sir,” replied that mountainous man. “He said he’d be back for ‘is supper round about eight o’clock.”
    “Well, we shall be ready for ours about that time too. You might as well serve all three in our sitting-room. And send me up a bottle of gin, half a dozen bottles of ginger beer, a bottle of whisky, a couple of syphons of soda and a corkscrew. Can you manage that?”
    “Yes, sir,” said the landlord benevolently. “That I can.”
    “Excellent! I suppose it would be too much to ask if you’ve got any ice as well?”
    “I have an’ all, sir,” replied the landlord with conscious pride. “I gets it three times a week from Sandsea in this ‘ot weather. There’s some come in this morning you can have, and welcome.”
    “But this is sheer Epicureanism!” Roger cried.
    “Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “There’s been two gents in this evening asking for rooms. London gents, by the look of ‘em. I told ‘em I ‘adn’t got any.”
    “That’s right, landlord,” Roger said with approval. “Speak the truth and shame the devil, you know.”
    “Yes, sir,” said the landlord, and turned away to serve another customer.
    “I say,” Anthony asked hopefully as they climbed the stairs a few minutes later, “I say, are we going to make old Moresby tight?”
    “Certainly not,” said Roger with dignity. “I’m surprised at you, Anthony. Do I look the sort of person to interfere with the sobriety of the police in the execution of their duty?”
    “Well, what’s all that gin and stuff for, then?”
    “To pour libations to the great and puissante Goddess of Bluff! Now then, Anthony, how many bedrooms would you like to sleep in tonight? One, two or three?”

chapter six
An Unwelcome Clue
    Inspector Moresby, it has been said, was a genial man. He had no hesitation in falling in with Roger’s suggestion that the three of them should sup together. Even a Scotland Yard detective is human, and Inspector Moresby very much preferred to spend his moments of leisure in the congenial company of his fellows than alone.
    In the same way he had no hesitation in accepting a little gin before a meal. In yet once more the same way he had not the slightest hesitation in drinking some gin and ginger beer with his supper because, as anyone knows, gin and ginger beer with a lump of ice clinking invitingly against the