[Mrs Bradley 50] - Late, Late in the Evening

long fringe with bobbles on it. It formed an excellent hiding-place, and we heard the whole interview. Aunt Kirstie guessed we were there, I think, but perhaps she was glad of our company and moral support.

It was after the police had gone, and Aunt Kirstie had returned to the kitchen, and we had crawled out and sneaked down the back staircase into the scullery and the garden, that Kenneth said we must track down the murderer.

We had to wait until afternoon school came out before we could contact Our Sarah and her gang. By that time rumours of Poachy's horrid discovery were all over the village. The police had been seen going into Aunt Kirstie's house and it was known that two of them had dragged poor Poachy out of the hermit's cottage. Then his mother, who, alone of mankind, seemed able to interpret his gibberings, had gone into Miss Summers' shop to purchase a loaf of bread and spread the news. It was not known at that time who the dead man was, except to us and our family and Mrs Bradley. Even the police could not be dogmatic until the body had been formally identified, although their questioning of ourselves and Aunt Kirstie indicated their opinion clearly enough.

We did not intend to wait at the school gate for Our Sarah because we did not want to be spotted and identified by the governess as not having been at school, so we loitered outside the drill hall, knowing that Sarah and Ern would have to pass it on their way home.

We seemed to wait for a very long time, and Kenneth suggested that they must be playing on The Marsh. They hove in sight eventually and we went to meet them.

'Can't stop now,' said Our Sarah, before we could speak. 'Oi warnts moi tea.'

'After tea, then,' said Kenneth. 'It's fearfully important.'

Even Our Sarah, who had lofty ideas as to what was important and what was not, was compelled to allow our claim when we mentioned the cottage, later, after tea.

'Though Oi knows all about et,' she said, when we met at half-past five on The Marsh. 'Oi 'eard et en Mess Summers. That old nosey parker the Weddow Wenter was en there and her and Mess Summers was so busy yappen their selly 'eads orf as 'em never 'eard me come en. Tale dedn't lose nothen en the tellen, Oi'll be bound. Any road, take somethen special to breng the Weddow Wenter out from be'oind they aspedestriers of hern.'

'It was because of us that the body was discovered,' said Kenneth, repeating a phrase which the police inspector had used in our hearing when he was questioning Aunt Kirstie.

'Oi don't berlieve et.'

'It's true. We knew something was buried in that cottage, so we got Peachy to dig it up for us.'

'Then you be a body-snatcher, you young Oi say.'

'What's a body-snatcher?'

'Oi don't roightly know, but moi dad talk about 'em. Be 'anged for body-snatchen, ee can. They won't arf streng ee up 'oigh because you be only a lettle un and got no weight to ee, so they'll gev ee a long drop.'

'We didn't "snatch" anything. We simply found Mr Ward,' said Kenneth quickly.

'How do ee know as et was hem?'

'We saw a bit of that suit he always wore, and Margaret found one of his boots in the bushes. Look, Our Sarah, we want to find the murderer, because Mr Ward must have been murdered to have been buried like that. What we want to know is whether you and the gang will come in with us.'

'To look for a murderer? That's a p'lice job, that es.'

'Oh, please come in with us.'

'For whoi?'

'Well, to catch the murderer, like I said.'

'More loike the murderer 'ud ketch us, Oi reckon. Oi don't want no part of et.'

Kenneth gave up.

'It's no use arguing with her,' he said, as we made for the plank bridge and grandfather's iron gate. 'She won't budge. It's up to us, I reckon.'

Aunt Kirstie heard us come into the scullery. She told us not to make a noise because the police were interviewing Uncle Arthur upstairs in the parlour.

'And look you here,' she went on, 'I don't want you roaming about no more. You ain't to go on The Marsh or anywhere near that old cottage.'

'Police orders?' asked Kenneth.

'And mine and your grandfather's and your Uncle Arthur's. 'Tain't safe. I wishes as I could pack you both off home, but I can't do that till your father sends.'

We talked it over in the bedroom.

'What on earth shall we find to do?' I asked dolefully. 'Without the cottage-not that I really want to go there any more-and without The Marsh and the sheepwash, I don't see it's worth while being here any longer.'

'Of course it is,' said Kenneth. 'We're not forbidden the village streets and that's where we shall score. We've got to get at people and question them. Somebody must know something or have seen something. All we've got to do is find out what it is.'

'We can't just go knocking on doors.'

'I suppose not. Well, you think of something.'

As it happened, it was the Sunday school superintendent, and not myself, who thought of something, although he had no idea that he had solved the first part of our problem for us. More or less incarcerated as we felt ourselves to be, even Sunday school seemed tolerable now that we had been deprived of our meetings on The Marsh with Our Sarah and her gang, so that when, on Sunday morning, Aunt Lally suggested it before she sent us over to get our breakfast from Aunt Kirstie, she found us in an unusually compliant mood.

We allowed ourselves without protest to be arrayed like the lilies of the field and set off in good