“Your friend’s going to be left behind,” said Mrs. Cropper as the train moved out.
“That would be very unlike him,” replied Mr. Murbles, calmly unfolding a couple of rugs and exchanging his old-fashioned top-hat for a curious kind of travelling cap with flaps to it. Mrs. Cropper, in the midst of her anxiety, could not help wondering where in the world he had contrived to purchase this Victorian relic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Murble’s caps were specially made to his own design by an exceedingly expensive West End hatter, who held Mr. Murbles in deep respect as a real gentleman of the old school.
Nothing, however, was seen of Lord Peter for something like a quarter of an hour, when he suddenly put his head in with an amiable smile and said:
“One red-haired woman in a crimson hat; three dark women in black hats; several nondescript women in those pull-on sort of dust-coloured hats; old women with grey hair, various; sixteen flappers without hats- hats on rack, I mean, but none of ’em crimson; two obvious brides in blue hats; innumerable fair women in hats of all colours; one ash-blonde dressed as a nurse, none of ’em our friend as far as I know. Thought I’d best just toddle along the train to make sure. There’s just one dark sort of female whose hat I can’t see because it’s tucked down beside her. Wonder if Mrs. Cropper would mind doin’ a little stagger down the corridor to take a squint at her.”
Mrs. Cropper, with some surprise, consented to do so.
“Right you are. ’Splain later. About four carriages along. Now, look here, Mrs. Cropper, if it should be anybody you know, I’d rather on the whole she didn’t spot you watching her. I want you to walk along behind me, just glancin’ into the compartments but keepin’ your collar turned up. When we come to the party I have in mind, I’ll make a screen for you, what?”
These manoeuvres were successfully accomplished, Lord Peter lighting a cigarette opposite the suspected compartment, while Mrs. Cropper viewed the hatless lady under cover of his raised elbows. But the result was disappointing. Mrs. Cropper had never seen the lady before, and a further promenade from end to end of the train produced no better results.
“We must leave it to Bunter, then,” said his lordship, cheerfully, as they returned to their seats. “I put him on the trail as soon as you gave me the word. Now, Mrs. Cropper, we really get down to business. First of all, we should be glad of any suggestions you may have to make about your sister’s death. We don’t want to distress you, but we have got an idea that there might, just possibly, be something behind it.”
“There’s just one thing, sir -your lordship, I suppose I should say. Bertha was a real good girl- I can answer for that absolutely. There wouldn’t have been any carryings-on with her young man- nothing of that. I know people have been saying all sorts of things, and perhaps, with lots of girls as they are, it isn’t to be wondered at. But, believe me, Bertha wouldn’t go for to do anything that wasn’t right. Perhaps you’d like to see this last letter she wrote me. I’m sure nothing could be nicer and properer from a girl just looking forward to a happy marriage. Now, a girl as wrote like that wouldn’t be going larking about, sir, would she? I couldn’t rest, thinking they was saying that about her.”
Lord Peter took the letter, glanced thorugh it, and handed it reverently to Mr. Murbles.
“We’re not thinking that at all, Mrs. Cropper, though of course we’re very glad to have your point of view, don’t you see. Now, do you think it possible your sister might have been- what shall I say?- got hold of by some woman with a story and all that, and- well – pushed into some position which shocked her very much? Was she cautious and up to the tricks of London people and that?”
And he outlined Parker’s theory of the engaging Mrs. Forrest and the supposed dinner in the flat.
“Well, my lord, I wouldn’t say Bertha was a very quick girl- not as quick as me, you know. She’d always be ready to believe what she was told and give people credit for the best. Took more after her father, like. I’m Mother’s girl, they always said, and I don’t trust anybody further than I can see them. But I’d warned her very careful against taking up with women as talks to a girl in the street, and she did ought to have been on her guard.”
“Of course,” said Peter, “it may been somebody she’d got to know quite well- say, at the restaurant, and she thought she was a nice lady and there’d be no harm in going to see her. Or the lady might have suggested taking her into good service. One never knows.”
“I think she’d have mentioned it in her letters if she’d talked to the lady much, my lord. It’s wonderful what a lot of things she’d find to tell me about the customers. And I don’t think she’d be for going into service again. We got real fed up with service, down in Leahampton.”
“Ah, yes. Now that brings us to quite a different point- the thing we wanted to ask you or your sister about before this sad accident took place. You were in service with this Miss Whittaker whom you mentioned just now. I wonder if you’d mind telling us just exactly why you left. It was a good place, I suppose?”
“Yes, my lord, quite a good place as places go, though of course a girl doesn’t get her freedom the way she does in a restaurant. And naturally there was a good deal of waiting on the old lady. Not as we minded that, for she was a very kind, good lady, and generous too.”
“But when she became so ill, I suppose Miss Whittaker managed everything, what?”
“Yes, my lord; but it wasn’t a hard place- lots of the girls envied us. Only Miss Whittaker was very particular.”
“Especially about the china, what?”
“Ah, they told you about that, then?”
“I told ’em, dearie,” put in Mrs. Gulliver, “I told ’em all about how you come to leave your place and go to London.”
“And it struck us,” put in Mr. Murbles, “that it was, shall we say, somewhat rash of Miss Whittaker to dismiss so competent and, if I may put it so, so well-spoken and personable a pair of maids on so trivial a pretext.”
“You’re right there, sir. Bertha- I told you she was the trusting one- she was quite ready to believe as she done wrong and thought how good it was of Miss Whittaker to forgive her breaking the china, and take so much interest in sending us to London, but I always thought there was something more than met the eye. Didn’t I, Mrs. Gulliver?”
“That you did, dear; something more than meets the eye, that’s what you says to me, and what I agrees with.”
“And did you, in your own mind,” pursued Mr. Murbles, “connect this sudden dismissal with anything which had taken place?”
“Well, I did then,” replied Mrs. Cropper with some spirit. “I said to Bertha- but she would hear nothing of it, taking after her father as I tell you- I said, ‘Mark my words,’ I said, ‘Miss Whittaker don’t care to have us in the house after the row she had with the old lady.’”
“And what row was that?” inquired Mr. Murbles.
“Well, I don’t know as I ought rightly to tell you about it, seeing it’s all over now and we promised to say nothing about it.”
“That, of course,” said Mr. Murbles, checking Lord Peter, who was about to burst in impetuously, “depends upon your own conscience. But, if it will be of any help to you in making up your mind, I may say, in the strictest confidence, that this information may be of the utmost importance to us- in a roundabout way which I won’t trouble you with- in investigating a very singular set of circumstances which have been brought to our notice. And it is just barely possible- again in a very roundabout way- that it may assist us in throwing light on the melancholy tragedy of your sister’s decease. Further than that cannot go at the moment.”