“I really can't go into that, Mr. Fleetwood. I came to ask a few questions, not to answer any. It's to your interest to answer frankly.” He turned to Cressida. “You were on the beach last night about eleven o'clock?” Stanley Fleetwood broke in again before Cressida could make a reply. “Wait a moment, inspector. Are you proposing to bring a charge against me?” Armadale hesitated for a moment, as if undecided as to his next move. He seemed to see something further behind the question. “There's no charge against anyone—yet,” he said, with a certain dwelling on the last word; but as he spoke his eyes swung round to Cressida's drawn features with a certain menace. “Don't say anything, Cressida,” her husband warned her. He turned back to the inspector. “You've no power to extract evidence if we don't choose to give it?” he asked. “No,” the inspector admitted cautiously, “but sometimes it's dangerous to suppress evidence, I warn you.” “I'm not very amenable to threats, inspector,” Stanley Fleetwood answered drily. “I gather this must be something serious, or you wouldn't be making such a fuss?” In his reply, Armadale reinforced his caution with irony. “It's common talk in the hotel that there's been a murder on the beach. Perhaps the rumour's reached you already?” “It has,” Stanley Fleetwood admitted. “That's why I'm cautious, inspector. Murder's a ticklish business, so I don't propose to give any evidence whatever until I've had legal advice. Nor will my wife give any evidence either until we've consulted our lawyer.” Armadale had never seen a move of this sort, and his discomfiture was obvious. The grand scene of inquisition would never be staged now; and his hope of wringing damning admissions from unprepared criminals was gone. If these two had a lawyer at their elbow when he questioned them, he wouldn't stand much chance of trapping them into unwary statements. Wendover was delighted by the alteration in the inspector's tone when he spoke again. “That doesn't look very well, Mr. Fleetwood.” “Neither does your intrusion into a sick-room, inspector.” Sir Clinton evidently feared that things might go too far. He hastened to intervene, and when he spoke his manner was in strong contrast to the inspector's hectoring. “I'm afraid you hardly see the inspector's point of view, Mr. Fleetwood. If we had the evidence which you and you wife could evidently give us, then quite possibly we might get on the track of the murderer. But if you refuse that evidence just now, we shall be delayed in our work, and I can't guarantee that you won't come under suspicion. There will certainly be a lot of needless gossip in the hotel here, which I'd much rather avoid if I could. The last thing we want to do is to make innocent people uncomfortable.” Stanley Fleetwood's manners gave way under the combined action of his physical pain and his mental distress.