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Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the man who has reason to fly that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket would share it.
Altogether, Stoner had gained a vague feeling, a curious intuition, that there was something queer, not unconnected with the visit of Cotherstone's new tenant, and when he heard, next morning, of what had befallen Kitely, all his suspicions were renewed. So much for the difficult reasons which had made him appropriate the half-sheet of foolscap. But there was a reason which was not difficult.
"Well?" demanded Mallalieu, nerving himself for what he felt to be coming. "What about it?" "He's met with a bad accident," replied the superintendent. "In fact, sir, he's dead! A couple of men found his body an hour or so ago in Hobwick Quarry, up on the moor, and it's been brought down to the mortuary. You'd better come round, Mr. Mayor Mr. Cotherstone's there, now."
"But I know who I think killed him!" "Who, then?" demanded Tallington. "The man who killed Bert Stoner," said Cotherstone firmly. "And for the same reason." "And this man is " Tallington left the question unfinished. For Cotherstone's alert face took a new and determined expression, and he raised himself a little in his chair and brought his lifted hand down heavily on the desk at his side.
But there was no quiet drinking of a glass of wine in the parlour to which Cotherstone and his cronies retired. Whenever its door opened Cotherstone's excited tones were heard in the big room, and the more sober-minded of the men who listened began to shake their heads. "What's the matter with him?" asked one. "Nobody ever knew him like this before! What's he carrying on in that fashion for?"
Now here came in what Brereton felt to be the all-important, the critical point of this, his first attempt to think things out. He was not at all sure that Cotherstone's astonishment on hearing Garthwaite's announcement was not feigned, was not a piece of pure acting. Why? He smiled cynically as he answered his own question.
Then there was the fact of Cotherstone's curious abstraction when he, Stoner, entered and found his employer sitting in the darkness, long after Kitely had gone Cotherstone had said he was asleep, but Stoner knew that to be a fib.
Mallalieu was Cotherstone's partner. Mallalieu went to Northrop's house to play cards at ten o'clock. It might be well to find out, quietly, what Mallalieu was doing with himself up to ten o'clock. But the main thing was what was Cotherstone doing during that hour of absence? And had Cotherstone any reason of his own, or shared with his partner for wishing to get rid of Kitely?
He turned and glanced at Stoner, who had come to the bar for his customary half-pint of ale. "Your folks aught to do with this?" he asked. "Kitely was Mr. Cotherstone's tenant, of course." Stoner laughed scornfully as he picked up his tankard. "Yes, I don't think!" he sneered. "Catch either of my governors wasting five hundred pence, or five pence, in that way! Not likely!"
The whole population will be turned into amateur detectives. Now let's draft the exact wording, and then we'll see the printer." Next day the bill-poster placarded Highmarket with the reward bills, and distributed them broadcast in shops and offices, and one of the first persons to lay hands on one was Mallalieu & Cotherstone's clerk, Herbert Stoner.
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