But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn’t be eighteen till the week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite a tidy little bit of money.
“What are you smiling at?” said his wife sharply.
And he shook himself. “I—smiling? At nothing that I knows of.” Then he waited a moment. “Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is gone on her, ain’t he?”
“Gone?” And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly laugh. “Gone, Bunting?” she repeated. “Why, he’s out o’ sight—right, out of sight!”
Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on, twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:—“I suppose he’ll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or—or d’you think he’ll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?”
“Inquest? What inquest?” He looked at her puzzled.
“Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King’s Cross.”
“Oh, no; he’d have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o’ that, I know he’s going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night—just when you went up to the lodger.”
“That’s just as well.” Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable satisfaction. “Otherwise I suppose you’d ha’ had to go. I wouldn’t like the house left—not with us out of it. Mr. Sleuth would be upset if there came a ring at the door.”
“Oh, I won’t leave the house, don’t you be afraid, Ellen—not while you’re out.”
“Not even if I’m out a good while, Bunting.”
“No fear. Of course, you’ll be a long time if it’s your idea to see that doctor at Ealing?”
He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow nodding didn’t seem as bad as speaking a lie.
XVIII
Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage, when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is entirely novel.
Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause for bitter jealousy. The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles to the strange lady’s maid rather than to her own fellow-servants, and it was during the conversation the two women had had together that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor, unfortunate creature had been held.
The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl’s fate had aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with chairs, but with cake and wine.
She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place, rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the sad business.
But it had not been so very dreadful after all. The coroner had been a kindly-spoken gentleman; in fact he had complimented her on the clear, sensible way she had given her evidence concerning the exact words the unhappy girl had used.
One thing Ellen Green had said, in answer to a question put by an inquisitive juryman, had raised a laugh in the crowded, low-ceilinged room. “Ought not Miss Ellen Green,” so the man had asked, “to have told someone of the girl’s threat? If she had done so, might not the girl have been prevented from throwing herself into the lake?” And she, the witness, had answered, with some asperity—for by that time the coroner’s kind manner had put her at her ease—that she had not attached any importance to what the girl had threatened to do, never believing that any young woman could be so silly as to drown herself for love!
Vaguely Mrs. Bunting supposed that the inquest at which she was going to be present this afternoon would be like that country inquest of long ago.
It had been no mere perfunctory inquiry; she remembered very well how little by little that pleasant-spoken gentleman, the coroner, had got the whole truth out—the story, that is, of how that horrid footman, whom she, Ellen Green, had
