'I should advise you to get straight back to your flat and go to bed,' said Colonel Julyan shortly, 'and drive slowly, or you will find yourself in jail for manslaughter.
I may as well warn you now, as I shall not be seeing you again, that as a magistrate I have certain powers that will prove effective if you ever turn up in Kerrith or the district.
Blackmail is not much of a profession, Mr Favell.
And we know how to deal with it in our part of the world, strange though it may seem to you.'
Favell was watching Maxim.
He had lost the grey colour now, and the old unpleasant smile was forming on his lips.
'Yes, it's been a stroke of luck for you, Max, hasn't it?' he said slowly; 'you think you've won, don't you?
The law can get you yet, and so can I, in a different way Maxim switched on the engine.
'Have you anything else you want to say?' he said; 'because if you have you had better say it now.'
'No,' said Favell.
'No, I won't keep you.
You can go.'
He stepped back on to the pavement, the smile still on his lips.
The car slid forward.
As we turned the corner I looked back and saw him standing there, watching us, and he waved his hand and he was laughing.
We drove on for a while in silence.
Then Colonel Julyan spoke.
'He can't do anything,' he said.
'That smile and that wave were part of his bluff.
They're all alike, those fellows.
He hasn't a thread of a case to bring now.
Baker's evidence would squash it.'
Maxim did not answer.
I glanced sideways at his face but it told me nothing.
'I always felt the solution would lie in Baker,' said Colonel Julyan; 'the furtive business of that appointment, and the way she never even told Mrs Danvers.
She had her suspicions, you see.
She knew something was wrong.
A dreadful thing, of course. Very dreadful.
Enough to send a young and lovely woman right off her head.'
We drove on along the straight main road.
Telegraph poles, motor coaches, open sports cars, little semi-detached villas with new gardens, they flashed past making patterns in my mind I should always remember.
'I suppose you never had any idea of this, de Winter?' said Colonel Julyan.
'No,' said Maxim. 'No.'
'Of course some people have a morbid dread of it,' said Colonel Julyan.
'Women especially.
That must have been the case with your wife.
She had courage for every other thing but that.
She could not face pain.
Well, she was spared that at any rate.'
'Yes,' said Maxim.
'I don't think it would do any harm if I quietly let it be known down in Kerrith and in the county that a London doctor has supplied us with a motive,' said Colonel Julyan.
'Just in case there should be any gossip.
You never can tell, you know.
People are odd, sometimes.
If they knew about Mrs de Winter it might make it a lot easier for you.'
'Yes,' said Maxim, 'yes, I understand.'
'It's curious and very irritating,' said Colonel Julyan slowly, 'how long stories spread in country districts.
I never know why they should, but unfortunately they do.
Not that I anticipate any trouble over this, but it's as well to be prepared.
People are inclined to say the wildest things if they are given half a chance.'