Idiots are stubborn and always take the longest time to spill the beans. They imagine that if they don’t answer, or they come out with any old nonsense, even if it means contradicting themselves every five minutes, they will somehow get away with it. Thinking they are smarter than anybody else, they invariably start by showing off.
‘Don’t think you’re going to get me!’
–From Georges Simenon’s Maigret and the Dead Girl (1954)
Plus ça change, plus la même chose.