‘Miss Fell.’

Lamb stared angrily.

‘Well, of all the-! Look here, Frank, what does it mean? Miss Fell – she’s a nice old lady – what’s it got to do with her, unless she’s doing it on account of this Miss Brown? Did you see her?’

‘Oh, yes, I saw her. And I might just as well have stayed at home. She had nothing to add to her statement, she had no comment to make on what Mr Madoc might have said, and that was that. All very petrified, very haughty – the Great Ice Age – and what is a policeman that I should tell him anything? In fact, as our Maudie would say, “Icily regular, splendidly null”. Quotation from the late Lord Tennyson.’

Lamb growled, ‘Quit fooling!’ and rapped the table with his knuckles.

‘What did she say to you – Miss Silver, not Miss Brown. What has she got in her head?’

‘I don’t know – she didn’t let on. It’s clear she is being retained by Madoc’s friends. I won’t say in Madoc’s interest, because, as she’s always so careful to point out, she’s out for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But she wants to see Madoc.’

‘Oh, she does, does she?’

‘Alone,’ said Abbott with some emphasis.

‘Now look here, Frank-’

Abbott’s mouth twisted.

‘I said I would lay the matter before you, sir.’

Lamb gazed at him with suspicion.

‘Very correct – aren’t you? When you start saying sir every time you open your mouth, I begin to look out for what you’ve been up to. And you needn’t go out of your way to tell me I’m ungrateful like you did just now, because I’m not saying, and never will, that Miss Silver didn’t do us a good turn over the Vandeleur House murders. I don’t mind admitting that we were on the wrong line and she put us on the right one, and that we both got some good marks out of it. And I’ll admit she’s not one to make a fuss of herself, or to get into the papers.’

Frank Abbott had his faint sardonic smile.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ he said in an easy conversational voice. ‘She’s known to the police, but not to the Press, and whenever she comes into a case, we come out of it in a blaze of glory. And she just fades away quoting Tennyson and saying “Bless you my children”. What about her seeing Madoc, sir?’

Lamb relaxed.

‘Oh, she can see him if she’s got a mind to. But I’d like to know what she’s got up her sleeve.’

Frank Abbott came and sat on the corner of the writing-table.

‘Well, here’s something she gave me. That man Bush, the sexton – it never came out at the inquest that he makes a round of the church and the churchyard every night at ten o’clock because the Rector goes on leaving windows open and he doesn’t hold with it.’

Lamb stared.

‘There wasn’t anything about that. If it’s true, why wasn’t it brought out? The local constable would know – everyone in the village would know.’

Abbott laughed.

‘Village people don’t exactly rush to the police with information. Mrs Bush was a Pincott, and as far as I can make out every other soul in Bourne is either a Pincott or has married one. Very prolific family. The constable is a nephew – Jim Pincott. I suppose he would have said if he’d been asked – I suppose any of them would. But nobody asked them whether Bush went round the church at night, so they held their tongues in the fine old English way. Maudie suggests that we have Bush on the mat and ask him what about it.’

Lamb’s face grew slowly purple. His eyes, always rather reminiscent of the old-fashioned peppermint bullseye, showed a tendency to bulge. He smacked the table with his open hand.

‘Look here, what are you giving me? She hasn’t been there five minutes – how did she get all this? When did she come?’

Frank looked demure.

‘By the six-fifty-eight at Perry’s Halt last night, with Albany and Janice Meade. I gather that she engaged Mrs Bush in gossip over the local picture postcards this morning. She has a flair for that sort of thing.’

Lamb said heartily.

‘Good thing for her she wasn’t born a couple of hundred years ago, or she’d have been ducked for a witch, if it didn’t get farther than that.’

Frank laughed.

‘Makes you feel that way – doesn’t she? Well, here’s something else. There’s a disreputable old chap called Ezra Pincott – leading light in poaching circles, strong persevering upholder of the local bar – Maudie says he’s been shooting off his face to all and sundry in the Bull about knowing something that would put money in his pocket if somebody knew what was what. She takes this to mean he’s got a low-down on the Harsch business, and she feels we ought to keep an eye on Ezra in case somebody thinks it would be simpler to do him in than to start paying blackmail.’

Lamb grunted.

‘That all? Nothing else she’d like? She’s about to say of course. All right, all right – you can see about it tomorrow.’

MISS SILVER HAD a busy afternoon. Lunch was not a comfortable meal. Florence had taken a great deal of trouble and everything was very nice, with good country vegetables, a plum tart, and the best she could do with the meat ration, but however well balanced you are, it is difficult to enjoy a meal with someone sitting opposite who looks as if she had just received a death sentence and has braced herself to endure its instant execution.

Miss Brown was more like Medusa than ever. Her eyes remained fixed upon her plate, but she did not eat. She merely pushed the food about in a jerky, mechanical manner. When it was apparent that the plum tart with its really very nice custard made from egg substitute was to share the same fate as the curried mince, the baked tomatoes, the beans and potatoes of the first course, Miss Sophy could bear it no longer. She said, ‘Medora-’ in a pleading voice.

Miss Brown’s face remained blank – eyes cast down, heavy black hair shading the marmorial brow, heavy black lashes shading the marmorial cheek. It certainly was exasperating to the last degree. Quite suddenly Miss Sophy lost her temper. Her voice, incapable of being loud, shook with vexation.

‘Medora, you’ll be ill, and nothing puts Florence out like leaving what she has cooked – and I’m sure I don’t wonder when you think about the Navy having to bring everything hundreds of thousands of miles, except the plums and the vegetables which are out of the garden, but it would be all the same if they weren’t! And what good you think you do, making yourself ill like this, I don’t know, but you are making me very unhappy – very unhappy indeed!’ She screwed up her eyes, and two bright little tears popped out.

Miss Brown’s black lashes lifted, disclosing sombre eyes. She said in a deep whisper, ‘I am sorry – I had better go,’ and with that pushed back her chair and went out of the room in an unhurried, sleepwalking sort of way.

Miss Sophy burst into tears.

When she had been consoled, and lunch concluded, Miss Silver betook herself upstairs. Her tap upon Miss Brown’s door was so briskly followed up that she was well into the room before her entry was perceived. It occasioned so much surprise as to shake that cold control.

Miss Silver coughed in a deprecating manner.

‘I have come to have a little talk with you. Shall we sit down?’

Miss Brown shook her head.

‘You are a detective. I have nothing to say.’

Miss Silver surveyed her compassionately.

‘You are very unhappy, are you not?’

Miss Brown turned abruptly and walked over to the window. She stood there looking out, but she saw nothing. A sudden rush of tears blinded her. She neither moved nor did anything to wipe them away. They remained a distorting crystal through which the outside world had no form nor meaning.

Miss Silver stood where she was and waited. After a moment she said, ‘It will be more comfortable if you will sit down. It does not matter if you are crying, but I think we must talk.’