“Pray forgive me for disturbing you, Mrs. Bisset, but I heard from Mrs. Abbott that Miss Bell was likely to be alone this afternoon, and I wondered if she would care for a visitor. I have some magazines for her from Miss Georgina Grey.”

There was something so warm and friendly in the way this was said that Mrs. Bisset relaxed. Stepping back a yard, she raised a rather strident voice and called up the stairway,

“Lady to see you, Maggie! Are you awake?”

It appeared that she was, and Miss Silver being encouraged to go right up, Mrs. Bisset returned to her comfortable easy chair and to the rhythmic snores of Mr. Bisset.

Maggie Bell was on her sofa by the window. Sunday afternoon was a dreadfully dull time. Mum went over to see Aunt Ag at Lenton, and the telephone might just as well have been dead for all anyone used it. There was the wireless she could turn on, but she wasn’t all that fond of music, or of talks either for the matter of that. It was people she liked- people she knew and who knew her-what they said to each other when they didn’t think anyone was listening-the appointments they made, and the things they ordered from the shops. You found out quite a lot about people when you listened to what they said on the telephone, but Sunday afternoon was a wash-out. She had a magazine, which she called a book, lying open in her lap, but she had lost interest in it. There was a girl in the serial that she didn’t have the patience to read about. There was ever such a good-looking young man after her, with money and a nice place and all, and all she did was to bite his nose off every time he spoke to her. Just plain silly was what Maggie called it. If it hadn’t been in a story, he’d have gone off and never given her another thought, same as Annie White’s young man did when she cheeked him once too often.

Miss Silver’s knock was a most welcome sound. She brought two magazines and three picture papers from Georgina and a book from Mrs. Abbott, who had had it given to her for Christmas and thought Maggie might like to look at it. It was called Dress Through The Ages and there were a great many pictures, so Maggie thought she would. Meanwhile she set herself to make the most of her visitor. Miss Silver had been at the funeral, she had lunched at the Abbotts’, and she was actually staying at Field End, all of which combined to make her a most desirable source of information.

Miss Silver was so amiable in her response that they were soon launched upon one of those long, comfortable conversations which cover a great deal of ground and are trammeled by no special rules. At first the questions were mostly Maggie’s, and the replies, nicely calculated to maintain the interest of the proceedings whilst adding very little to what had already appeared in the Press, were Miss Silver’s. It thrilled Maggie Bell to be told what Miss Georgina and Miss Mirrie had worn at the funeral-everything new, the both of them.

“And time some of the ladies did the same, if you ask me. There’s Mrs. Fabian-you wouldn’t credit it, but that black costume of hers, well, it’s one she had when Mr. Fabian died twenty years ago! That’s what Mum says, and she ought to know, seeing she’s had it in I don’t know how often, letting it out when Mrs. Fabian puts on and taking it in when she goes down again, to say nothing of lifting the hem when skirts go up and dropping it again when they come down. And last time she had it in, she took and told her straight, Mum did. ‘Mrs. Fabian,’ she said, ‘it isn’t worth what I’ll have to charge you for the alterations, and that’s the fact,’ she said.”

When the murder had been discussed and the enthralling subject of clothes exhausted the conversation, guided by Miss Silver, began to concern itself with the disadvantages of a party line.

“I am sure, with so much going on and so many police calls, you must find it very disturbing. There is that peculiar tinkle every time anyone is rung up, is there not? And of course there is always the possibility that the call is for oneself. It must be a great help to Mrs. Bell to have you here to attend to all that sort of thing.”

Falling comfortably into Miss Silver’s assumption that a tinkle could be readily confused with a ring, Maggie said in a longsuffering tone that it was ever such a nuisance, but of course she had to do what she could to help poor Mum, or she’d never be able to get on with her work.”

These preliminaries over, Miss Silver coughed and said,

“I suppose you would not happen to remember whether you were much disturbed on Tuesday evening? But no-it’s so many days ago now, and even at the time I do not suppose you would have noticed anything.”

Maggie bridled. She was the noticing sort and nobody was going to tell her she wasn’t. And as to not remembering, there wasn’t one single thing that happened in Deeping or round about that didn’t stay just as sharp and clear in her mind as when it happened. She said as much, and was rewarded by Miss Silver’s declaring that it was a gift.

“Do you really mean to say that you could remember whether anyone rang up Field End on the Tuesday evening?”

Maggie nodded, her sharp little face intent.

“Miss Cicely did for one.”

“Do you remember what time that was?”

“It was eight minutes to ten. Miss Cicely wanted some pattern or other, and Miss Georgina said to come over and get it any time in the morning-only come the morning I don’t suppose either of them thought about it because of Mr. Field being murdered on the Tuesday night.”

“And was that the only call for Field End on Tuesday evening?”

“Ten o’clock Mum started getting me to bed. The bell went twice, but we didn’t take any notice. My back was bad and Mum was having a job to get me moved. She brings the phone over nights once I’m in bed. Sometimes it rings and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does as likely as not it’s someone ill and ringing up the doctor from the call-box at the corner, and if it’s one of my bad nights I don’t always bother.”

Miss Silver looked at her compassionately.

“Was Tuesday one of your bad nights?”

Maggie screwed up her face.

“Well, it was. Mum sleeps in the next room. I don’t call her unless I’ve got to-you can’t work all day and not get your rest at night. The phone’s kind of company.”

“Did anyone ring up Field End after you were in bed?”

“Well, they did.”

“Do you know who it was?”

Maggie shook her head.

“Not but what I’d heard him before.”

“You mean you knew the voice?”

“I’d heard it before-not to know who it was though.”

Miss Silver sat there pleasant and composed. No one would have known that Maggie’s answers were of any special interest or importance. To Maggie herself they were just a part of the nice interesting conversation she was having with Mrs. Abbott’s little visiting lady. It was always nice to have someone fresh to talk to, and it wasn’t everyone who listened to what you had to say as if they appreciated it. Miss Silver listened, and Miss Silver said,

“It was a man’s voice? Do you know to whom he was speaking?”

“Oh, it was to Mr. Field.”

“I suppose you do not remember what they were talking about?”

“Of course I remember-as far as it went.”

“How do you mean, Miss Bell?”

It enchanted Maggie to be called Miss Bell. When you never go out and you live in a village where everyone has known you since you were a baby, it isn’t a thing that very often happens to you. She became as anxious to speak as Miss Silver was to hear. Someone who really listened, someone who called her Miss Bell. A flow of words set in.

“Well, you see, it was like this. There I was in my bed, and not so bad as long as I didn’t try and move, and there was the phone and I couldn’t reach it without I did move. So first I thought I wouldn’t, and then I thought I would, and by the time I got hold of the receiver there was Mr. Field saying, ‘Rather a late hour to suggest a meeting, isn’t it?’ ”