'Well, that wasn't much good,' said Kenneth, as we walked on down the village street. 'Not that I expected much from her.'
'I think we ought to make a note about the letters,' I said. 'Letters are always important. Look at the letter Laurie wrote to Meg, pretending it came from his tutor. There was an awful row about that. And look at the letter that man in the pub wrote to Jellicoe that could have got Mike Jackson expelled when he biked over at night to pay the five pounds.'
'Tell Mrs Bradley about the letters, do you mean?' Kenneth was obviously impressed by my arguments, for, although he had not read Little Women, he, like me, had wallowed in the Captain magazine which was in bound volumes in our local public library at home, and especially did we love the school stories by P. G. Wodehouse.
'Well, I bet it's something nobody but Mrs Grant knows about,' I said. 'What only one person knows must be a secret of some sort and secrets, like letters, are always important.'
We walked on and then stopped outside the Widow Winter's house. She was on our list, but neither of us wanted to knock on her door.
'We could leave her till last,' said Kenneth, 'and then perhaps we shan't need her at all.' We went on to Mother Honour's, but all she said when she saw our box was,
'I'm here to take money, not give it. Out you get!'
So out we went. We stood outside the little post-office and looked at the tumble-down cottage across the road.
'She must know something,' said Kenneth. 'After all, her shop door is bang opposite. If only I hadn't put my ha'penny in this silly tin I could have bought some sweets and then perhaps she'd talk to us.'
'Not for only a halfpenny; I said. 'We'd better try Miss Summers next, I suppose. She lives nearly opposite Mrs Grant, so we might hear something more about the letters.'
'They can't be all that important.'
'They must be, or else they wouldn't need to be kept so secret.'
'They wouldn't be about the murders, anyway. They might be love-letters. Something silly, anyway, I'll bet. I thought Amabel was an awfully silly girl, didn't you? Besides, you and I used to have a secret post, don't you remember?'
'Yes, but it was only a shoe-box with a slit in the lid. Well, do we try Miss Summers or don't we?'
So we tried Miss Summers, but it was not any good. As soon as she spotted the collecting-box she said,
'You're the third lot that's come bothering me. Don't you know it's against the law to beg?'
'It isn't for ourselves,' said Kenneth.
'Don't you tell me that! You children are all the same. You know what to do with a hatpin, I'll be bound!'
'Well,' said Kenneth, when we got outside, 'if we didn't then, we do now, and it is in a good cause. Even 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
