acquaintances.
'I have often wished, myself, to go on a cruise,' said Emily Barton wistfully. 'One reads about them in the papers and they sound so attractive.'
'Why don't you go?' asked Joanna.
This turning of a dream into a reality seemed to alarm Miss Emily.
'Oh, no, no, that would be quite impossible.'
'But why? They're fairly cheap.'
'Oh, it's not only the expense. But I shouldn't like to go alone. Traveling alone would look very peculiar, don't you think?'
'No,' said Joanna.
Miss Emily looked at her doubtfully.
'And I don't know how I would manage about my luggage – and going ashore at foreign ports – and all the different currencies -'
Innumerable pitfalls seemed to rise up before the little lady's affrighted gaze, and Joanna hastened to calm her by a question about an approaching garden fete and sale of work. This led us quite naturally to Mrs. Dane Calthrop.
A faint spasm showed for a minute on Miss Barton's face.
'You know, dear,' she said, 'she is really a very odd woman. The things she says sometimes.'
I asked what things.
'Oh, I don't know. Such very unexpected things. And the way she looks at you, as though you weren't there but somebody else was – I'm expressing it badly but it is so hard to convey the impression I mean. And then she won't – well, interfere at all. There are so many cases where a vicar's wife could advise – perhaps admonish. Pull people up, you know, and make them mend their ways. Because people would listen to her, I'm sure of that, they're all quite in awe of her. But she insists on being aloof and far away, and has such a curious habit of feeling sorry for the most unworthy people.'
'That's interesting,' I said, exchanging a quick glance with Joanna.
'Still, she is a very well-bred woman. She was a Miss Farroway of Bellpath, very good family, but these old families sometimes are a little peculiar, I believe. But she is devoted to her husband who is a man of very fine intellect – wasted, I am sometimes afraid, in this country circle. A good man, and most sincere, but I always find his habit of quoting Latin a little confusing.'
'Hear, hear,' I said fervently.
'Jerry had an expensive public school education, so he doesn't recognize Latin when he hears it,' said Joanna.
This led Miss Barton to a new topic.
'The schoolmistress here is a most unpleasant young woman,' she said. 'Quite Red, I'm afraid.' She lowered her voice over the word 'Red.'
Later, as we walked home up the hill, Joanna said to me.' 'She's rather sweet.'
At dinner that night Joanna said to Partridge that she hoped her tea party had been a success.
Partridge got rather red in the face and held herself even more stiffly.
'Thank you, Miss, but Agnes never turned up after all.'
'Oh, I'm sorry.'
'It didn't matter to me,' said Partridge.
She was so swelling with grievance that she condescended to pour it out to us:
'It wasn't me who thought of asking her! She rang up herself, said she'd something on her mind and could she come here, it being her day off. And I said, yes, subject to your permission which I obtained. And after that, not a sound or sign of her! And no word of apology either, though I should hope I'll get a postcard tomorrow morning. These girls nowadays – don't know their place – no idea of how to behave.'
Joanna attempted to soothe Partridge's wounded feelings:
'She mightn't have felt well. You didn't ring up to find out?'
Partridge drew herself up again.
'No, I did not, Miss! No, indeed. If Agnes likes to behave rudely that's her lookout, but I shall give her a piece of my mind when we meet.'
Partridge went out of the room still stiff with indignation, and Joanna and I laughed.
'Probably a case of 'Advice from Aunt Nancy's Column,'' I said. ''My boy is very cold in his manner to me, what shall I do about it?' Failing Aunt Nancy, Partridge was to be applied to for advice, but instead there has been a reconciliation and I expect at this minute that Agnes and her boy are one of those speechless couples locked in each other's arms that you come upon suddenly standing by a dark hedge. They embarrass you horribly, but you don't embarrass them.'
Joanna laughed and said she expected that was it.
We began talking of the anonymous letters and wondered how Nash and the melancholy Graves were getting on.
'It's a week today exactly,' said Joanna, 'since Mrs. Symmington's suicide. I should think they must have got on to something by now. Fingerprints, or handwriting, or something.'
I answered her absently. Somewhere behind my conscious mind, a queer uneasiness was growing. It was connected in some way with the phrase that Joanna had used, 'a week exactly.'
I ought, I dare say, to have put two and two together earlier. Perhaps, unconsciously, my mind was already suspicious. Anyway the leaven was working now. The uneasiness was growing – coming to a head.
Joanna noticed suddenly that I wasn't listening to her spirited account of a village encounter.
'What's the matter, Jerry?'
I did not answer because my mind was busy piecing things together.
Mrs. Symmington's suicide… She was alone in the house that afternoon Alone in the house because the maids were having their day out. A week ago exactly…
'Jerry, what -'
I interrupted:
'Joanna, maids have days out once a week, don't they?'
'And alternate Sundays,' said Joanna. 'What on -'
'Never mind Sundays. They go out the same day every week?'
'Yes. That's the usual thing.'
Joanna was staring at me curiously. Her mind had not taken the track mine had.
I crossed the room and rang the bell.
Partridge came.
'Tell me,' I said, 'this Agnes Woddell. She's in service?'
'Yes, sir. At Mrs. Symmington's. At Mr. Symmington's I should say now.'
I drew a deep breath. I glanced at the clock. It was half past ten.
'Would she be back now, do you think?'
Partridge was looking disapproving. 'Yes, sir. The maids have to be in by ten there. They're old- fashioned.'
I said, 'I'm going to ring up.'
I went out to the hall. Joanna and Partridge followed me. Partridge was clearly furious. Joanna was puzzled. She said as I was trying to get the number, 'What are you going to do, Jerry?'
'I'd like to be sure that the girl has come in all right.'
Partridge sniffed. Just sniffed, nothing more. But I did not care twopence about Partridge's sniffs.
Elsie Holland answered the telephone from the other end.
'Sorry to ring you up,' I said. 'This is Jerry Burton speaking. Is – has – your maid Agnes come in?'
It was not until after I had said it that I suddenly felt a bit of a fool. For if the girl had come in and it was all right, how on earth was I going to explain my ringing up and asking. I would have been better if I had let Joanna ask the question, though even that would need a bit of explaining. I foresaw a new trail of gossip started in Lymstock, with myself and the unknown Agnes Woddell as its center.
Elsie Holland sounded, not unnaturally, very much surprised:
