Twenty-five AT DELLER’S CAF?

Emily Trefusis and Charles Enderby were seated at a small table in Del-ler’s Café in Exeter. It was half past three, and at that hour there was com-parative peace and quiet. A few people were having a quiet cup of tea, butthe restaurant on the whole was deserted¹.
“Well,” said Charles, “what do you think of him?”
Emily frowned.
“It’s difficult,” she said.
After his interview with the police, Brian Pearson had lunched withthem. He had been extremely polite to Emily, rather too polite in her opin-ion.
To that astute² girl it seemed a shade unnatural³. Here was a young manconducting a clandestine⁴ love affair and an officious stranger butts⁵ in.
Brian Pearson had taken it like a lamb; had fallen in with Charles’s sugges-tion of having a car and driving over to see the police. Why this attitude ofmeek acquiescence⁶? It seemed to Emily entirely⁷ untypical of the naturalBrian Pearson as she read his character.
“I’ll see you in hell first!” would, she felt sure, have been far more his at-titude.
This lamb-like demeanour was suspicious. She tried to convey some-thing of her feelings to Enderby.
“I get you,” said Enderby. “Our Brian has got something to conceal,therefore he can’t be his natural high-handed self.”
“That’s it exactly.”
“Do you think he might possibly have killed old Trevelyan?”
“Brian,” said Emily thoughtfully, “is — well, a person to be reckonedwith. He is rather unscrupulous, I should think, and if he wanted any-thing, I don’t think he would let ordinary conventional standards stand inhis way. He’s not plain tame English.”
“Putting all personal considerations on one side, he’s a more likelystarter than Jim?” said Enderby.
Emily nodded.

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