“You saw her?”
“Yes, I saw her. I oughtn’t to have come. She thought I wanted money for the letters, and she talked about the police. She didn’t love Arthur. She only thought about getting her letters back, and the photographs.
“There were photographs?”
Minnie closed her eyes as if it would help her to shut out what she had seen. She said, “Yes,” in a whispering voice. And then, “They were in a separate envelope-stuck down. Arthur had written ‘Private’ on it, and ‘Keep Safely’. I wasn’t going to look at anything, but I thought I ought to open the envelope-I wish I hadn’t. One of the photographs fell out on to the floor between us-we couldn’t help seeing it. All I wanted to do after that was to get away. She was wicked, and she had made Arthur wicked too.”
Miss Silver sat there. She would have to return to the house, but it did not seem possible to take this poor thing back there. It was after six o’clock. She would have to get Annabel Scott to help her. If Minnie Jones was well enough to travel, Annabel could drive her to Ledlington and see her on to a train, but she could not believe that it would be right for her to travel alone. She said, “Are you far from your home?” and was relieved to learn that Miss Jones resided in one of the nearer London suburbs. She said tentatively,
“You spoke of a friend-”
Minnie was sitting up now. She responded with more strength in her voice.
“Oh, yes-Mrs. Williams-she lives with me. And she will be ever so worried if I miss my train. Oh dear, I shall never catch it! It was the six-twenty.”
Miss Silver looked at her watch.
“I am afraid it has gone, but there will be another in a little under an hour. That will give you time to have some refreshment, and if there is any way of letting your friend know, perhaps she could meet you at the other end.”
A little colour came back into Minnie’s face.
“Oh, that would be nice!”
“Are you on the telephone?”
Minnie shook her head.
“Oh, no. But Mr. Pegler would take a message. He’s Florrie’s brother-in-law and ever so kind.”
Miss Silver never forgot a name. This was an uncommon one, and she had heard it before. She repeated it with a question in her voice.
“Mr. Pegler?”
Minnie nodded.
“He lives just round the corner. The people in the house are relations. It’s a grocery business, so they have the telephone, and if they’re out he answers it. And Saturday evenings they go to the pictures, and Mr. Pegler comes round to Florrie and me, only tonight he said he thought he’d stay at home because of me coming back tired and wanting to rest. He’s ever so considerate.”
A grocery business-the Masters gallery-there might be a link between them, or there might not. Pegler was certainly an uncommon name. Miss Silver remarked upon this fact.
“That is a name one does not often hear. I believe I have only once come across it before. A friend mentioned it to me then in connection with a picture gallery.”
Minnie brightened.
“The Masters gallery. That would be our Mr. Pegler-he’s worked for them for years.”
Miss Silver proceeded with caution.
“My friend was a deaf lady-a Miss Paine. She had learned to do lip-reading, and she told me Mr. Pegler was very much interested, as he had a little grand-daughter who was deaf.”
Minnie had begun to look a great deal more like herself. She said in quite an animated voice,
“Oh, yes-little Doris. She’s a sweet little thing. Miss Paine told him all about how to get her taught, and he was ever so grateful. You know, she was run over the other day, poor thing. Mr. Pegler was quite upset about it, and about having the police in at the gallery asking him about the lip-reading. Seems a funny sort of thing for them to want to know about, and of course he couldn’t tell them anything. He couldn’t make it out at all, he said. Miss Paine came in to see the pictures on account of her portrait being there, and when she’d gone away there was a gentleman came from the other end of the gallery, and he got asking Mr. Pegler all sorts of questions about Miss Paine and her portrait. And when Mr. Pegler told him about how deaf she was but that no one would know it on account of her doing this lip-reading, well, he said you would hardly credit how interested the gentleman was. And what was so funny was that the police were just as interested as the gentleman. It was after poor Miss Paine had had the accident, and they wanted to know about the lip-reading, and about the gentleman that was interested in it. But of course Mr. Pegler couldn’t tell them anything more about that-” She paused, and added, “Not then.”
All the time that she had been speaking the scene in the morning-room at Merefields had been getting fainter in her mind, the way a dream gets fainter when you wake up and get out of bed and wash, and dress, and do your hair. Miss Silver, observing this, was beginning to feel a good deal happier about her travelling alone. She felt able to give more of her attention to the fact that Mr. Pegler’s name had cropped up in rather a surprising manner, and less to the question of whether Miss Jones was likely to be overtaken by a second attack of faintness. She was still a little divided in her mind when Minnie concluded with the words “Not then.” If they meant anything at all, they meant that although Mr. Pegler had found himself unable to give the police any information about the gentleman in the gallery, he had subsequently become possessed of some such information. It seemed imperative to discover what this might be. Whatever thoughts she may have had about Miss Jones’s train and the advisability of allowing her to continue to sit upon the ground, which at this time of year could hardly fail to be damp, were dismissed. She repeated Minnie’s last words with a strong note of enquiry.
“Not then, Miss Jones? Do you mean-”
Minnie Jones nodded.
“I don’t suppose I should have known anything about it, only I was with him. I had been round to the shop for some potatoes- we had run right out-and Mr. Pegler walked back with me. He’s always so kind like that. Well, just as we came to the corner on the High Street, there was a man standing-right under the street-lamp. Two men there were really, waiting to go across the road and talking to each other. We didn’t have to cross, and after we’d gone by Mr. Pegler said, ‘See that gentleman, Min? That’s the one I told you about that was looking at that Miss Paine’s portrait and was so interested when I told him about her lip-reading. The police wanted to know about him, though I’m sure I don’t know why-you remember?’ So I said I did, and he said, ‘Funny seeing him again.’ And it was, wasn’t it?”
“Miss Jones, what did he look like?” Minnie stopped to think. Then she said in a hesitating voice,
“Well, I don’t know. He was pretty much like anyone else, if you know what I mean. He’d a drab coat on and one of those soft hats, and-well, he was pretty much like anyone else.”
“But Mr. Pegler recognized him?”
“Oh, yes he did. He’s got a wonderful eye for a face-never forgets one, he says. Now, if it had been the other gentleman, I don’t say I wouldn’t have remembered him myself, but Mr. Pegler’s one-” she shook her head-“I don’t suppose I’d know him if I saw him again this minute.”
Miss Silver was not interested in the other gentleman. She said,
“Was Mr. Pegler going to tell the police that he had seen this gentleman again?”