“Oh, I don’t mean I’m refusing to answer, only that I’ve nought to tell,” she replied, “but come in, and I’ll do my best.”
She was a stout, middle-aged, kindly-looking woman, the type of countrywoman Macdonald liked at sight, and she led him into a tidy parlour, one of those little-used rooms which country housewives are proud of. Macdonald started on an interrogation which he knew he would have to repeat again and again.
“Did you know Miss Torrington personally, Mrs. Venner?”
“Why, yes, of course. We all knew her. Sister, she came and nursed me when I had the pneumonia. During the war, ’twas. A wonderful nurse was Sister.”
“You mean she was very good to you and you were grateful to her. You felt you could trust her.” Macdonald was very much aware of the glance Mrs. Venner shot at him, but she replied:
“Her was a wonderful nurse, was Sister. Never tired of helping others.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“Well, I couldn’t rightly say.”
“Was it shortly before she died—a day or so? Or more like weeks?”
“Well, a few weeks maybe. ’Tis a steep hill up to village and Sister wasn’t so young as she was. No more am I. I don’t go up top more’n I need.”
“It is a steep hill—I’ve seen that for myself,” said Macdonald, “and it must be just as steep going up by the park.”
“’Iss. ’Tis—and rougher going.”
“But Miss Torrington used to come down that hill at night sometimes, didn’t she?”
“So they say.”
“Did you never see her by the mill stream or in the park at night?”
“Well, yes. I did see her the once. And surprised I was to see her.”
“When was it that you saw her?”
“Quite a while back that was. I can’t rightly say when.”
“Well, let’s try to get the time fixed. You’re a country woman, Mrs. Venner. The seasons mean much more to countryfolk than to townsfolk. Are you going to tell me that you can’t remember if it was spring, summer, autumn or winter when you saw Miss Torrington in the park at night?”
Mrs. Venner flushed uncomfortably, paused for a long time, and then said: “’Twas springtime.”
“Not this year, because you said ‘quite a while back’,” persisted Macdonald.
“Well, then, ’twas last year,” she said. “I went out late, after twelve ’twas, because my young dog had gone straying, and I was worried. The farmers don’t like dogs straying.”
“Especially when there are lambs in the fields,” said Macdonald. “You lamb early in Devon, so it would have been early in the spring.”
“Yes. ’Twas—and what difference do that make?”
“The difference it makes is that Nancy Bilton was drowned in the mill-race a year ago this April, Mrs. Venner. You had seen Miss Torrington wandering in the park at night early in the spring—before April, that is—but no mention was made of that fact at the inquest on Nancy Bilton.”
“No one asked me, and ’twasn’t my business. Sister Monica was asked questions, same as all of us. It was for her to tell on what she did herself.”
“It’s the business of every honest man and woman to tell everything they know in a police enquiry. Did Miss Torrington know you saw her?”
“I don’t know. I never spoke to her about it. And we always called her Sister Monica. I get moithered with your Miss Torrington. I can’t think of her that way.”
“I think it’d be much better if you did,” said Macdonald crisply. “Then you might think straight about her. This ‘Sister Monica’ you talk about is a being who is all wrapped up in make-believe. You say she was ‘wonderful,’ and you’ve gone on saying it until you’ve forgotten that she was a real person. You’re trying to make out to yourself and me that she was a cross between a plaster figure and Florence Nightingale.”
“Well, I never did…” expostulated the stout dame. “That’s no way to speak of the dead.”
“I’m not talking about the dead. I’m trying to get an idea of what Miss Torrington was like when she was alive, and you’ve already told me quite a bit about her, Mrs. Venner.”
“I told you her was a wonderful nurse.”
“Yes. She nursed you when you were ill. We get used to summing people up in my job, Mrs. Venner. It’s my belief that you are a kindly person, as well as a truthful one, and I don’t think you’d be ungrateful. Yet when I ask you what was the last time you spoke to Miss Torrington you can’t remember. It must have been quite a long time ago. When you saw her out in the park after midnight, you didn’t speak to her. That seems very odd to me. You’d reason to be grateful to her: you must have thought it strange to see her out like that. In the ordinary way, wouldn’t you speak to a neighbour if you saw her out after midnight, and ask if anything was amiss?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“I think you do. I’m trying to find out what made you change in your attitude to Miss Torrington. You say she was ‘wonderful,’ but you seem to have avoided her for some time past. Why did you avoid her?”
Mrs. Venner sat very still, her rubicund face troubled. At last she said: “I’m not saying I avoided her. It just happened like that. And what ’tis to do with police I just can’t see.”
“Why do you think I have been sent here from London, Mrs. Venner?” asked Macdonald. “We have plenty of police work there, you know.”
“I can’t see for why,” she said obstinately. “Sister, her came over dizzy and her fell in the mill-race. ’Twas plain accident.”
“The only thing that’s plain is that two
