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The crime was discovered by Police Constable Dover at 1 am on the morning of the 22nd.
You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened.
“Mais qu’est ce que vous faites là?” “I was packing for you. I thought it would save time.” “Vous éprouvez trop d’émotion, Hastings.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
“Et alors, je vais à la pêche.” As I looked rather bewildered,
“Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.”
Mais je crois que la blonde l’emporte sur la brunette!”
“C’est ingénieux. Tout de même c’est bien imaginé, ça.”
Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man’s to prevent him from thinking.
But what is often called an intuition is really an impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely—his experience obviates that—the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience.
