Lamb brought down his fist on the table.

‘Someone gave him brandy, and someone knocked him out and put him in the water to drown.’

Bush stared.

‘You don’t say!’

‘Yes, I do.’

Bush went on staring. ‘Whatever for?’

Lamb gave him back look for look.

‘To stop him opening his mouth about who killed Mr Harsch.’

Bush dropped his cap on the floor. It seemed as if it just slipped from his hand and fell. He stooped to pick it up.

‘Whoever ’ud do a thing like that?‘ he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THEY WOULD NEVER forgive me if I did not take a visitor to call,’ said Miss Sophy. ‘I have known them all my life, and Mary Anne is such a sad invalid.’

Miss Silver smiled, and spoke the simple truth.

‘I shall be delighted to call on the Miss Doncasters.’

‘Then I will just finish the letter I was writing to my cousin Sophy Ferrars. It will not take me long, and it will give them time to finish their tea.’

The afternoon was mild and fair. Miss Silver put on her hat, her gloves, and a light summer coat, and strolled in the garden, where the trees made a shady pattern across Miss Sophy’s lawn. It was very agreeable – very agreeable indeed. If her mind had been at rest, she would have been enjoying her visit very much. But her mind was very far from being at rest – oh, very far indeed. She walked up and down upon the grass and considered the unsatisfactory details of the Harsch case.

From nowhere on her left a voice of peculiar shrillness spoke her name. No one who had heard that voice could possibly mistake it. She had made it her business to encounter Cyril Bond that morning. She turned now to see him astride the wall between the Rectory and Meadowcroft, one hand holding an overhanging branch, the other flourishing a stick in a manner which suggested that he regarded it as a spear.

‘What is it, Cyril?’

‘D’you reckon you know what “Spricken see Dutch?” means?’

Miss Silver smiled benignly.

‘You are not pronouncimg it correctly. It should be, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” It means, “Do you speak German?” ’

Cyril flourished his spear.

‘I arst Mr Everton, and he said he didn’t know any German. There’s a boy at our school, his father’s a refugee. He’s a Jew. He knows a lot of German – he can talk it ever so fast.’

Miss Silver smiled.

‘You are a great climber, are you not? I hope you are quite safe upon that wall. Which was the window you climbed out of?’

Cyril drooped.

‘I won’t ’arf get in a row if Mr Everton knows.’

Miss Silver continued to smile.

‘I shall not tell him. Which window was it?’

Cyril reduced his piercing tones to a hissing whisper.

‘That one there’ – he pointed with the spear – ‘over the libery. That’s how I got down.’

‘Were you not afraid that Mr Everton would hear you?’

Cyril cast her a look of scorn.

‘Naow,’ he said, making two Cockney syllables out of the word and lingering on them. ‘I don’t do it except when he’s out.’

‘And he was out on Tuesday night?’

‘Acourse he was! Up at Mrs Mottram’s fixing something for her. She can’t do nothing by herself.’

‘How do you know he was there?’

‘Cos I heard him say so. Called right out in the hall he did. “I’m just going up to Mrs Mottram’s,” he says, “to fix her wireless set.” Cook and the other lady didn’t ’arf laugh when he’d gone.’

‘When did he come back?’

‘I dunno – I went to sleep. Oh, boy! When I think I might have heard the shot!’

‘How do you know Mr Everton was not in when you got back?’

Cyril dropped his voice.

‘The black-out isn’t all that good in the study. I don’t say it’s bad, but there’s always places you can see if there’s a light on.’

‘Perhaps he’d gone up to his room.’

His tone was scornful again.

‘Naow! He sits up ever so late, Mr Everton does.’ He looked sideways out of the corners of his eyes.

‘You couldn’t be sure,’ said Miss Silver mildly but firmly.

‘Well then, I could!’ He made a sudden cast with his spear into the garden of Meadowcroft and slid down after it.

As she walked with Miss Fell past the intervening two houses to Pennycott Miss Silver had not a great deal to say. Miss Sophy found her a delightful listener. Scarcely drawing breath, she managed to impart a good deal of information about the Miss Doncasters in the short time at her disposal. It went back to their schooldays, and contained some particulars which interested Miss Silver very much.

‘But of course it all rather faded during the war – the last war – and for some years afterwards. And we all hoped there wouldn’t be any more of it.’

‘And was there?’ said Miss Silver in a most attentive voice.

Miss Sophy stood quite still opposite the Lilacs and said,

‘Oh, yes.’ She leaned towards Miss Silver and fooffled. ‘And when it came to such an inordinate enthusiasm for a housepainter…’

It was some minutes before they resumed their interrupted progress towards Pennycott.

They were admitted by an elderly maid and taken upstairs into what had been the best bedroom, now converted into the drawing-room for the convenience of Miss Mary Anne, who slept in the room behind and could be easily wheeled to and fro. She was there when they came in, propped up by cushions in an invalid chair with rubber tyres.

Miss Sophy made the introductions.

‘My friend Miss Silver. Miss Doncaster – Miss Mary Anne.’

Miss Silver took a seat beside the wheeled chair and remarked that Bourne was a very picturesque village, and that the weather was delightful. As she did so she was observing the two sisters and their surroundings – the overcrowded room, its walls covered with dark oil paintings in the heavy gilt frames of a bygone day, the floor space contracted by a quantity of ugly, useless furniture which must have cost a great deal some hundred years ago. Curtains of maroon velvet obscured the light. An ancient drab carpet could be seen here and there between the chairs, the cabinets, and the tables which were crowded with gimcracks – a family of wooden bears from Berne; frames carved with edelweiss; a miniature Swiss chalet engrained with dust; other frames of tarnished silver holding faded photographs; little boxes in Tunbridge ware; in filigree, in china; a snowstorm in a glass paperweight; an Indian dagger in a tarnished sheath. Family history come down to trifles.

A hideous teaset with a great deal of gilding occupied the mantelpiece, and above it a monstrous overmantel inset with mirror-glass reared itself to the ceiling and reflected a score or so of distorted views of the room.

As a background to the Miss Doncasters nothing could have been more appropriate. She had not been five minutes in their company before she understood why kind Miss Sophy could find no warmer words for either than ‘Poor Lucy Ellen’, and ‘Poor Mary Anne’. There was a strong family resemblance between the sisters, but whereas Lucy Ellen was sharp and ferrety, Mary Anne was heavy and shapeless. Both had sparse grey-white hair and deep lines of discontent.

Without effort on her part Miss Silver found the conversation turning upon Mr Harsch. It was of course the most dramatic thing which had happened in Bourne since Jedediah Pincott ran away with his cousin Ezekiel’s bride twenty-four hours before the wedding and they were both killed in a railway accident, which Bourne considered to be a very proper judgement. It was Miss Mary Anne who introduced the subject of Mr Harsch, greatly to Miss Sophy’s relief as Lucy Ellen was being what she could only call persistent in cross-examining her about Miss Brown. She hastened to join in.

‘I am sure we must all hope that the matter will be cleared up.’

Miss Doncaster gave it as her opinion that it was suicide.