“I think so, Mrs. Yeo. It was empty when it was found, but there’s a very strong old-fashioned safety catch on it, and I don’t think it would have come undone by itself.”
2
“Why didn’t you report that this bag of Miss Torrington’s was missing, Hannah?”
Macdonald was sitting in the Warden’s office at Gramarye. The bag lay on the desk in front of him, and it was the first thing Hannah Barrow set eyes on when she came into the room. She was as neat and clean as ever, if less severely starched, but her wrinkled pippin of a face seemed to have shrunk and puckered, and her eyes were frightened and sunken. She stared at the bag as though she couldn’t take her eyes from it, and her fingers knotted themselves into contortions, with her knuckles showing white and shiny.
“Missing? That there? ’Tis an old thing. Sister was a-going to give that away. Her had a new one. Sergeant took it, with Sister’s purse and notebook and all. I showed it to he—a good new bag ’twas.”
“Yes. I know that Sergeant Peel has the new bag,” said Macdonald, “but Miss Torrington only used that one on Sundays. She always took this one with her whenever she went out, as you know quite well. But when the sergeant asked about her handbag, you told him about the new bag, but you didn’t say anything about this one.” He spoke slowly and evenly, without any suggestion of sharpness in his voice, as patiently as a schoolmaster might talk to a dull pupil, and with the same expectant note of one who hopes for the right answer. Hannah’s mental age, he had concluded, was about twelve, but on the whole a very unintelligent twelve.
“Him didn’t ask me,” she said, pulling at her fingers till the joints cracked.
“He asked you if anything was missing,” persisted Macdonald. “You knew this bag was missing, but you didn’t say so.”
There was a long pause, then she answered as a dull child might answer: “If so be I had, Sergeant’d have said I stole mun. I know he. Terr’ble sharp him be.” She broke off and then added: “Us all knew Sister kept that bag by her. I said to Cook, ‘Sister’s old bag’s not nowhere,’ and Cook said, ‘That be’n’t our business. Us hasn’t got t’ old bag. Likely it fell in millrace or maybe they’ve got it. But it be’n’t our business.’ And I said, ‘That’s right, that be. If I say Sister’s old bag be’n’t here, Sergeant will say, “ ’Tis that old fool Hannah stole he.”’ Him went all around, opening everything with Sister’s keys, counting this, counting that, spying and staring and jumping out on we with questions till us was fair dazed like.”
Some part of Macdonald’s mind was almost fascinated by the singsong drone of Hannah’s voice: there was a peculiar primitive rhythm to her sentences, and this, together with the liquid Devonshire vowels, gave the effect of some ancient ballad, akin to song rather than speech.
“What did she keep in this bag, Hannah?” asked Macdonald, sensing that he was more likely to get an answer by the method of assuming that Hannah knew all that there was to be known.
“Us never knew for sure, sir. If Sister sent for we, ’twasn’t like you saying, ‘Come right up to table,’ or ‘Sit down, Hannah.’ Us stood by the door and took our orders without drawing near. And if so be ’twas something to be fetched and paid for, Sister would put the money down on that table there, always just right, and make me count it out, but fares or stamps or register letter, and she’d say, ‘Put that in your pocket, Hannah, to keep it safe.’ But she’d never open her bag and take out her purse. ‘Never put temptation in no one’s way,’ Sister would say, meaning them young girls we had who knew no better,” ended Hannah sanctimoniously.
“Did Sister carry the bag about with her when she was in the house?” asked Macdonald.
“No, sir. Only when her went out. Her locked it away in the house. I can’t say for where. I never did see where she kept mun, and none other did, neither.”
“But she kept her keys in the bag, Hannah,” said Macdonald mildly, careful not to let his voice give away that he was getting more and more interested. She came right up to him, a withered elderly little body who put out a knobbly hand and touched Macdonald’s arm with the confiding gesture of a child.
“Her had two lots of keys, her must have,” said Hannah. “Her never did say so, and I never saw them together, but her must have had two lots.”
“How do you know?” asked Macdonald, and she replied simply:
“Them had different key rings. One was brass, one was steel.”
The. phrase “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” flashed through Macdonald’s mind: he had had previous experience of the fact that illiterates, and even partially defective persons, could be very observant of small details which pass unnoticed by the intelligent.
“I’m glad you told me about the key rings, Hannah,” he said. “That may be very helpful. Now there’s another thing you could do for me. I want to see the medicine cupboard again.”
“You can and welcome, but I never touched he since you saw it afore.”
“I don’t expect you have, but I know now what a good memory you’ve got. You’ll be able to tell me just what you did when the children had their medicine. I expect you know all the bottles and all the doses, too.”
“Them has been the same so long I couldn’t
