Aunt Lally would agree to that.'
'You're not going to winkle out her three pennies, are you?' I asked, torn between excitement and terror. 'Wouldn't it be stealing?' (Stealing, to our minds, was a much greater sin than murder. The truth is, I suppose, that stealing came within our comprehension; murder, although we had had evidence of it, still did not.)
'Well, David took the shewbread when there wasn't anything else for his men to eat.'
'He didn't steal it, though. The priest gave it to him.'
'Well, Aunt Lally gave the pennies to us. She didn't say anything about missionaries when she put the money into the tin. We'll have to make it up later on, of course. If it wasn't in a really good cause I wouldn't do it. Let's get back to Aunt Kirstie's and get hold of a hatpin.'
All our fiddling and fidgeting, however, failed to produce a single coin. I was immensely relieved and I believe Kenneth was, too.
'Oh, well,' he said at last, when we returned the hatpin surreptitiously to the crown of Aunt Kirstie's best hat, 'I suppose it's really God's money and He's holding on to it. We'd better have one more go at people and it's no use funking it. We've got to try the Widow Winter.'
Greatly to our surprise we found the Widow Winter on the defensive when she answered our knock on her front door.
'Ef your grandad sent you,' she said, 'you tell hem et ent no good. Oi ent got et and that's a fact. Oi do know as how Oi'm a lettle bet be'oind-'and, but he'll get et when Oi gets moi next Lord George.'
We had no idea what she was talking about, but Kenneth dropped the collecting-box behind a bush in her tiny front garden and I said,
'Grandfather didn't send us. Could we just speak to you for a minute about the murders?'
'About the murders? Not about the rent?'
Light dawned on me. She was behind with her rent. I knew how people dreaded that. Eviction for non- payment of rent was all too common in those days, I suppose. We knew that the first thing our own mother did when father brought home his wages at the end of the week was to count out the rent-money and put it in the tea-caddy ready for the rent-man when he came on Monday morning. We realised, therefore, with the precocious intelligence of the children of the poor, that if the Widow Winter owed our grandfather even two weeks' rent we had the whip-hand of her, especially as being behind with her rent was the last thing she would want her neighbours to know about.
'Not about the rent. I expect grandfather will wait a bit longer,' I said. 'But we want to talk to you, please, Mrs Winter. We won't keep you long, but it's very, very important.'
'And about the murders?' Her long thin nose appeared to quiver with eagerness. 'Well, you better come enside, then.'
So, for the first and last time in our lives we penetrated into the forest of pot-plants from behind which she kept watch over the comings and goings of the village. The room was airless, stuffy and heavy with a smell of wet and decaying foliage. She asked us to sit down, but she herself remained standing at the window behind her barrage of plants, barely turning her head when she spoke to us. It seemed as though she could not bear to take her eyes off the village street, and the houses opposite her own, even for a moment.
'It's about Mr Ward,' I said. 'Aunt Kirstie's lodger, you know.'
'I ded hear as they dug hem up en the old cottage down the road. Murdered for hes money, Oi reckon.'
'For his money?' This, to us, was entirely a novel idea. 'But he didn't have any money.'
'Oh, dedn't he, though!' She sniffed importantly. 'Only went to the public every day of hes loife and took hes denner there as well as hes beer. Every four weeks he was en Old Mother Honour's lettle post-office a-changen of hes bets of paper Messus Kempson sent hem.'
'How do you know?' asked Kenneth.
'Talked to Messus Honour when Oi got moi Lord George dedn't Oi? Ferret and foind out, that be moi motto. Ef ee don't arsk ee don't learn, do ee? Don't you arsk questions when you be at school?-whech Oi do notece as you beant there thes mornen. Whoi not, then?'
This question ought to have non-plussed us, but we had agreed upon our answer to it if it was put to us, as we thought it might well be.
'Because the police and Mrs Kempson and an important lady called Mrs Bradley have asked us to help them and, in any case, our school is in London, not here,' I said glibly, for we had memorised and rehearsed this wording. The Widow Winter withdrew her gaze from the window long enough to give us a hard look, but all she said was,
'Oh, Oi see. Oi follered hem ento the shop one day to boi moiself a stamp and Oi seen hem get twenty pound acrorst the counter-just loike that! The post-offece in the town ded used to send Old Mother Honour the money special every month, Oi reckon, so as her could pay et out to hem. Her wouldn't never have all that money en the tell, and her'd have to gev et to hem when he handed over hes money-orders-four on 'em!'
This was a revelation to us. Twenty pounds! The largest amount we had ever seen at one and the same time was the five pounds our father received every Quarter Day for travelling expenses. As he always used his bicycle for getting about, the five pounds came in very handy indeed and we always felt immensely proud of him when he put them out on the kitchen table in front of mother and they laughed together with pleasure over them.
'Oi'll tell ee sommat else,' said Mrs Winter. Like so many lonely people (and, ostracised as she was in the village because of all the spying she did, I imagine that she was very lonely indeed) she talked to us as though we were her own age. 'You knows about the noight the young lady was kelled? Well, Oi 'adn't got off to sleep-Oi sleeps en the front room, see?-when Oi hears one o' them moty-cars go boy.
''Oi knows the sound of that there,' Oi says to moiself. 'That be Doctor Matters' car,' Oi says. 'But 'twouldn't be hem, not at past ten o'clock,' Oi says. 'That'll be Doctor Tassall-ah, and what do he get up to weth old Mother Grant? Loike foine to know that, Oi'ud.''
