I’m not sure, looking back on it, how we got through the rest of that night without at least five additional unpremeditated homicides—or at least homicide committed wilfully and without premeditation on one man by at least five others. It was extraordinary how Mr. Purcell managed to antagonize practically everybody at Romney to a point of frenzy. It amounted almost to a genius, some way, or so I thought until I realized—and I don’t think there’s any doubt of it now, though none of us so much as thought of it at the moment—that what he said and did, and his whole manner and conduct, was simply because he was more genuinely upset by Irene’s death than anyone else on the place, not even excepting Major Tillyard. It wasn’t only because Irene—as several people suggested—had loaned him considera
