Late, Late in the Evening

When he and the sergeant had gone, Kenneth said,

'We ought to have asked them if they'd like to give us something for our missionary box.'

They'd have thought it cheek,' I said, 'and it doesn't do to cheek the police. You get sent to Borstal.'

After dinner we decided that Sunday afternoon was a bad time to go round the village asking for charity, because money given away on Sunday was for church collection, and anyway, all the grown-ups would be taking their Sunday afternoon siesta and would not be pleased at having to get up and answer the door, so, to repay Aunt Lally for her kind contribution to our missionary box, we went to her while she was doing the washing-up and asked for something Sundayish to read. That sent her happily up to her afternoon rest. We read for a bit, then we sneaked out into the garden to plan the morrow's campaign and draw up a list of people we wanted to question, but by the time Aunt Lally came downstairs again to wake grandfather and give him his tea we were back indoors with our Sunday pamphlets. She was very pleased with us.

When Monday morning came I think that, but for Kenneth, I would have abandoned our project. What had seemed such an amazingly good idea in Sunday school looked far less attractive at breakfast time on the following day. I said to my brother,

'Do you really think we'll do any good?'

'Of course we shall. Think, if we can beat the police at their own game!'

'But even if we do find out something important we shall have to tell it to them.'

'Not to them; not directly, anyway.'

'What shall we do with it, then? It won't be any good just keeping it to ourselves.'

'Of course not. We tell Mrs Bradley up at the manor. She'll know whether it's important enough to pass on. In fact, I vote we tell her everything we find out, whether it's important or not. I'll tell you something else, too. We might get hold of something to do with that other murder. You know, the girl who was at Lionel's sister's party.'

'Do you really think so?' I asked doubtfully.

'Well, we've put Mrs Grant on our list and we know Doctor Tassall visits her-she's his patient because of her ague she's always complaining about-and Doctor Tassall writes letters-I expect they're love-letters or some rot like that, you know...'

'Yes, to Amabel Kempson-Conyers. Do you wish we had a double-barrelled name?'

'Anybody can have one if they are stuck-up enough, I believe. We could call ourselves Innes-Clifton if we liked.'

I tried it over a time or two and then rejected it.

'I'd feel silly,' I said. 'But about Mrs Grant? She can't know anything worth much about Mrs Kempson and those people up at the big house.'

'We shan't know that unless we ask her. Then there's Old Mother Honour. Her shop is almost opposite the hermit's cottage. She must know something about who goes into it.'

'Well, so do we. Our Sarah and her lot, then us, then Mr Ward and now Poachy.'

'And the man who put Mr Ward in that hole and buried him. Suppose she knows who that was, eh? And suppose she told us, and we told Mrs Bradley, and she told the police! We might even get our names in the papers!'

'I wouldn't want that, unless they'd caught the murderer first and locked him up.'

'Well, they'd have done that, of course, on our information.'

So I committed myself to the enterprise and we began with Mrs Grant. We found her sitting on her doorstep as usual rocking herself to and fro and moaning about her ague.

'I hab de ague bery bad, bery bad,' she told us.

'I'm sorry to hear it,' said Kenneth in a grown-up way, keeping the collecting-box behind his back, for we did not want to frighten her off before we had got any information out of her which she might possess. Besides, it was rumoured in the village that she was a Catholic, although, so far as was known, she never went to church. Anyway, I doubted whether she would give anything towards the Sunday school's Foreign Missions because, after all, she herself was a foreigner and might think it a cheek of the English to send out missionaries. She might even have feasted off a missionary in her earlier life, I thought. 'Still,' my brother went on, 'I suppose even the ague is better than being murdered.'

'Murdered? Mudder ob God, who is murdered?'

'Surely you know,' I said, taken aback, all the same, by what I believed to be a blasphemous exclamation. 'You heard about the girl at the sheepwash, and now Mr Ward.'

'Nobody don' tell me notting. No friends I got in dis place.'

'No, they're not a very friendly lot,' said Kenneth. 'We can tell you about the murders if you like.'

'You come in. I gib you glass ob good wine.'

'No, thank you all the same. We're Band of Hope,' I said, afraid that Kenneth was going to accept the invitation. 'Have you seen the doctor lately?'

'Doctor no damn good. I tell him not to come no more. I got no more letters to gib him.'

'Letters?' We pricked up our ears.

'Long time young lady send embelopes to me. Inside is letter in smaller embelope address to Doctor Tassall. It is an arrangement. He treat me free for my ague, I gib him his letters. Dey come first from France, den London, but no more. Young lady she don' write no more letters and I don' have money to pay doctor, so I tell him not to come no more, and he don' do notting for de ague, anyway. Now I go indoors, sit by fire. Goodbye.'

'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,