Mrs. Alexander frowned.
“She hadn’t got any call to be frightened of Mr. Edward.”
Mrs. Stone gave her a sideways look.
“Well then, it seems she thought different, because that’s what I heard with my own ears. ‘You frighten me when you’re like that!’ she says, and he tells her to leave him alone. Well, maybe if he’d ha’ left her alone, it’d ha’ been better for her, pore thing. Frightened was what she was, and there’s no smoke without any fire.”
“Mr. Edward wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Mrs. Alexander.
Mrs. Stone was large and shapeless. Winter and summer she wore a raincoat and a man’s cloth cap. She leaned on the counter and said,
“Maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn’t. And I wasn’t talking about flies neither. That girl was frightened, and if a man had spoke to me the way Mr. Edward spoke to her-well, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been frightened too. And ‘darling!’ was what she said, and begging of him not to be so angry, and you won’t get me from it.”
She went back to Betsey-a slow progress, because she met three or four more people on the way, and every time she told her tale Clarice became in retrospect more frightened and Edward Random harsher. The currents of village thought and feeling began to change. Girls have drowned themselves before now when a man has treated them badly. Clarice Dean might have drowned herself if Edward Random had treated her badly. But the word “frightened” began to crop up whenever two people stopped to talk to one another about Clarice Dean.
She was frightened.
Mrs. Stone said she was frightened.
Miss Sims said she was frightened.
They had both heard her talking to Edward Random, and she was frightened.
She was frightened of Edward Random.
And she had been drowned in the splash.
They began to say to one another that she wasn’t the sort to be frightened for nothing. And if she was frightened, what was she frightened about? And, at the tail end of it, “There are other ways of getting drowned than by drowning yourself.”
The police, in the person of Inspector Bury, came out from Embank to interview the Miss Blakes-Miss Ora in her best shawl, eyes bright with interest and quite becomingly flushed; Miss Mildred at her grimmest and most detached. They united in assuring him that Clarice Dean had seemed rather-“well, excited, Inspector, if you know what I mean.” This was Miss Ora, the more forthcoming of the two.
The Inspector turned a shrewd grey eye upon her.
“And when did you first notice this excitement?”
“Oh, it was after lunch-wasn’t it Mildred? Yes, definitely after lunch. I know it was then, because I had just seen Mr. Edward Random go by, and I was rather wondering about that, because as a rule he goes by in the morning and doesn’t come back until late. Not as late as he was last night of course. I hear it was he who found the poor girl’s body, but that would be something quite unusual-I mean, his being so late. He is taking over from Lord Burlingham’s agent, you know, and it must be very trying for Mrs. Random never knowing when he is going to be in for a meal. And not as if she was his own mother after all-”
“Now just a moment, Miss Blake. You say this excitement of Miss Dean’s became noticeable soon after lunch?”
Miss Ora nodded.
“That was when I noticed it. She was helping my sister to carry some of the things downstairs-not very convenient being obliged to use an upstair room for meals, but I am a sad invalid and cannot attempt the stairs. And when she came back she was all flushed and smiling, as if something pleasant had happened.”
“Did she say what it was?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t ask her of course. It doesn’t do to encourage too much in the way of confidences, does it?”
The Inspector turned to Miss Mildred, sitting there in her shabby old clothes darning a stocking which had left its better days a long way behind. The darn she was imposing upon it was of a rigid nature. He reflected that it would be most uncomfortable to wear. He said,
“You went downstairs with Miss Dean-”
“She went downstairs with me.”
He accepted the correction.
“Whilst you were downstairs together did anything happen which would account for the excitement mentioned by your sister?”
Miss Mildred sniffed.
“Am I expected to account for every passing mood of a flighty girl?”
“You considered Miss Dean flighty?”
“Most young women are flighty. Their moods change from one moment to the next. One cannot be expected to account for them.”
“Then whilst you were downstairs nothing happened which would account for a change in. Miss Dean’s mood?”
She sniffed again.
“I do not feel called upon to account for Miss Dean. As to anything happening, she went to the front door, and I thought she took something out of the letter-box.”
“Took something out of the letter-box, did she? You only have the one post here, early in the morning, so if there was a letter for her after lunch, it could hardly have come by the post. Do. you think she really did get a letter, Miss Blake? You can see that it might be important.”
“I am quite unable to say. She went to the front door, and I thought she took something out of the letter-box, but I did not see her do so. I was on my way to the kitchen with a tray, and I was not sufficiently interested in Miss Dean’s affairs to take any further notice.”
He turned back to Miss Ora.
“Well, madam, I wonder if you can help me at all. With regard to this letter, whatever it was, that Miss Dean took out of the letter-box. You have your sofa close up to the window. Would you be able to see whether anyone came up and dropped a note into the letter-box?”
She shook her head regretfully.
“Well, no-I’m afraid not. You see, this bay is really built out over the footpath. The pillars which support it are right upon the edge of the street. It is considered very quaint and attractive. Strangers who are passing through always remark on it, and one of them told me that there is a house near Guildford which has the same peculiarity. He said the famous beauty Miss Linley climbed down one of the pillars when she eloped with Sheridan. Now if you will come over here, you will see for yourself that the curve of the bay just screens our own front door.”
He came to stand by the sofa, and when he bent his head to the level of hers he could see that what she said was true enough. The front door was out of sight. Anyone walking between those supporting pillars and the side of the house would be able to slip a note into the letter-box and Miss Ora be none the wiser.
As he went back to his seat, she said in a consolatory tone,
“I have a splendid view right up and down the street, you know. I really see everyone who comes and goes. It is only at just the one point that the view is interrupted.”
He sat down, and engaged her in a long desultory review of all that she had seen and noticed during the course of the previous morning.
“You see, Miss Blake, we should very much like to know a little more about that note. The person who left it here must have walked along the street and passed this house. You may have noticed him-or her, even if you did not witness the actual delivery of the letter.”
Miss Ora beamed, informed him that she always noticed everything, and embarked upon a detailed description of all the comings and goings of the day before.
Mrs. Random-Mrs. Jonathan Random, that was-Edward Random’s stepmother, had come down with a basket and gone into Mrs. Alexander’s shop, where she had remained for twenty minutes. “She can always spare time for a talk there, but too busy to come in and see me of course. And it wasn’t for what she bought either, for her bag was still quite flat when she came out.”
Mrs. Stone had come up the street. “Likes a gossip too, and I’m sure I don’t blame her, living with that dreadful invalid daughter. At least they all call her an invalid, and I daresay her mother has made her one, waiting on her hand and foot as she does, but if you ask me, I don’t believe there’s very much wrong with her, and I daresay she could get up and do an honest day’s work if she wanted.”