“And what makes you think I’d be working on a Sunday afternoon?”
“Now, Uncle, I never said a word about working, and you know it! I suppose you could be taking a turn in the garden after the rain had stopped, and I suppose you could see Miss Margot Trent-or anyone else-if they happened to be there.”
Old Humpy produced a ferocious grin.
“Arh! So I could, Johnny Grayson! Or I could be a-setting comferable by the fire with my pipe, or I could be a-walking round my own little patch a-looking at the bulbs a-coming up. Wonderful forward they are this year too.”
“And which of those things were you doing?” said Grayson good-humouredly.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” grinned old Humpy.
“Yes, I would. Come along, Uncle, don’t you hinder me, and I’ll quit hindering you.”
The little pots were being quickly and accurately filled. Old Mr. Humphreys bent down and came up again with more compost.
“I don’t let no one hinder me,” he said, and went on filling pots.
Grayson watched him in silence. What the old boy liked was the spur of contention. Well, he just wouldn’t get any more of it, and that was that. He liked the sound of his own voice, and he liked an audience for it, the old devil. He leaned against the doorpost with his hands in his pockets and waited.
Presently the pots began to be set down rather hard. The silence was broken by a loud “Arh!”
“Pity I didn’t go into the police instead of letting myself in for a job as meant hard work! Fine upstanding feller like you, and nothing to do but hang around my potting-shed of a Monday morning! Wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself! Idle bones make empty stomachs-that’s what old dad ’ud ha’ said! Gardener here fifty years man and boy, and head gardener near on forty of ’em! But I aim to beat him!”
Grayson gazed abstractedly through the open door of the potting-shed. He made one of those indeterminate sounds which are of all things the most enraging to anyone who has just delivered himself of a speech designed to impress. The small bright eyes which were watching from behind a bush of eyebrow took on a malicious sparkle.
“Sunday afternoon I has my pipe, and my glass by the fire, and my old woman she plays a ’ymn on the ’armonium. Arh!”
“Then you didn’t see Miss Margot Trent at all.”
The stare became positively malignant.
“Don’t you go a-putting words into my mouth, Johnny Grayson-nor into no one else’s! This isn’t foreign parts where the police can carry on just how they likes! Nor do we want any such scandalous doings here! So don’t you go a-trying of it on! I might be saying things you wouldn’t like if you did! I might be saying I felt sorry for your wife! Pretty little bit of a thing she used to be afore she married you!”
The Inspector’s chief aid in keeping his temper was the knowledge that nothing would delight old Humpy more than to see him lose it. He smiled and said easily,
“That’s very kind of you, Uncle-I’ll tell her. And now, since I’m not to put words in your mouth, perhaps you’ll put them there yourself. Did you see that girl Margot Trent on Sunday afternoon, or did you not?”
Old Humpy considered. All except the last few pots were filled. He was beginning to be bored with having Johnny Grayson there. He said in a meditative voice,
“Sunday afternoon I have my pipe and my glass by the kitchen fire, and your Aunt Mary she plays a ’ymn on the ’armonium in the setting-room with the door open if so be that I’ve a mind to have it open-and shut if I’ve a mind to have it shut. Come a quarter to three the rain give over. I goes out to take a breath of the air-always takes a turn, I do, when the rain gives over. I comes along this way, and I sees that mischeevious girl-”
“What time would that be, Uncle?”
“Trouble with you, Johnny Grayson, is you don’t listen to what you’re told! Didn’t I say as it had just gone the quarter? Now I don’t want no interruptions if you please! I see that mischeevious girl coming out of my potting-shed and a-laughing to herself. Now I keeps the key in a flower-pot with a chip on it. Half full of old labels it is, and lying in the grass along of a lot more. ‘How d’you come by my key?’ I says, and she laughs fit to bust herself and throws it at me. Spanking, that’s what she did ought to have had and never got! And see what come of it! Arh!”
“Nobody corrected her?”
“Spared the rod and spoiled the child-that’s what they done!”
“Uncle, was she carrying anything?”
“She’d got something humped up under her raincoat. ‘Something there you don’t want me to see, you darned brat!’ I says, and I picks up the key from where she throwed it, but it stands to reason she hadn’t troubled to lock the shed. Well, I goes in, and there’s nothing touched-only an old pile of ropes in the corner. She’d pulled ’em out and messed ’em about, and likely enough she’d gone off with one of ’em. Seems she must ha’ done. So I coils up the ropes and puts ’em away, and I goes on with my turn.”
“You didn’t go as far as the quarry?”
Old Humpy shook his head.
“That’s where that mischeevious girl was heading for. I didn’t want to run across her.”
“Then you didn’t see her again?”
“Nor I didn’t want to!”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“I heerd the governess a-calling.”
“What time would that be?”
“Church clock had just struck three.”
“You didn’t see her?”
“No.”
“Nor Mr. Trent?”
“No.”
“Nor anyone else?”
Old Humpy blazed.
“I didn’t see no one at all-only that mischeevious girl going off with the rope from my potting-shed! And if it ’ud been a good one I’d ha’ gone after her, but since it wasn’t nothing but a lot of old rubbish I let her go, and a good thing I did! A peck of trouble was what that girl was going to be wherever she was! And since it was one of her own mischeevious tricks that finished her off, I don’t see no call for the police to go shoving of themselves in, nor I don’t see no call for the family to take on about it! A good riddance, Johnny Grayson-that’s what she was, and you won’t get me from it!”
CHAPTER 17
Inspector Grayson made his report to his Superintendent.
“Everything quite straightforward as far as I can see. The girl was abnormal and must have been a great trial, yet they really seem to have been fond of her, and to be genuinely distressed about her death. The married couple, cook and butler, and Florrie Bowyer, daily housemaid, all say she never had a scolding or a rough word from anyone-and she must have tried them high. There’s nothing in it, except that Mr. Trent comes in for the property. He says there was a considerable fortune, but it isn’t what it was.”
“There’s precious few things that are,” said the Superintendent.
Whilst this conversation was going on-that is to say, at the agreeable hour when the curtains have been drawn and a pleasantly shaded light diffuses itself upon flowered china and the silver teapot-two ladies were approaching the same topic in Miss Falconer’s cottage sitting-room. Two rooms had been thrown into one so as to have a window at either end, with a couple of black oak pillars to support the heavy beams which carried the upper storey. There was some beautiful furniture, not perhaps quite suited to a cottage, and a good deal of valuable china, but the carpet was threadbare and the curtains faded relics of former grandeur.
Miss Falconer herself was a tall angular woman with the amiable face of a horse which has been turned out to grass after years of faithful service. There was the mild, rather protuberant eye, the long front teeth, the general fading of skin and hair. In her youth, as she was presently to confide to Miss Silver, she had been known in the family as “Ginger.” There was still no grey in the ample but rather untidy coils which slipped continually from the restraining hairpin, but the ginger had become very mild indeed. She was pressing Miss Silver to have another cup of tea-“after your long cold journey.”