“I understand that he has a very good friend in you, my dear.”

“No-no-it’s not that way. I forgot you don’t know me. I’ll try and tell you, or you won’t understand. I am Kathy Lingbourne. My father is a solicitor at Collingdon. My mother died when I was seventeen. That’s five years ago, and I have run the house ever since. There are four of us. Len is older than I am, and the other two are younger. Len is in Mr. Mottingley’s firm, and that is how Jimmy started coming to the house. Len got to know Jimmy and they got to be friends, and that is how it was. I know Jimmy very well indeed. He couldn’t have killed that girl. He couldn’t kill anything. The other boys teased him about it-you know how boys are. He tried very hard, but he simply couldn’t do it. That is why I know that he didn’t kill this girl. She was a horrid girl, but he didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have done it-not if he’d tried ever so! And look here, Miss Silver, they say that she was knocked down first and then -strangled. Was it like that?”

“Yes, my dear, it was.”

“Then Jimmy couldn’t have done it-he simply couldn’t. I know him so well. Even supposing he hit her-and he wouldn’t have, he wouldn’t -the minute she fell down he’d have been on his knees beside her asking her if she was hurt and doing his best to reassure her. I tell you I know Jimmy.”

Miss Silver was touched. And she found herself in agreement. She said,

“My dear, I must go in. But I shall not be long. Will you wait for me, and then I can give you an account of my visit. There’s a nice shop across the road. They make most excellent tea there. I had some when I came down before. You can say that you are waiting for someone and they will not trouble you. The woman is a nice placid creature. And now I must go.”

Chapter XXX

Kathy sat down to wait. The minute she saw the woman in the shop she knew that waiting would be restful. She seemed to have been keyed up for a very long time, and now quite suddenly it was all over. Meeting Miss Silver had begun it, and when she had seen her go through the gates into the prison, and had turned her back and gone over the road to the tea-shop, the process had gone on. The shop was called Mrs. Brown’s Teahouse, and when she lifted the latch and walked inside there was a large rolling Mrs. Brown all smiles and affability.

“Well, me dear, come along in with you! And shut the door, for it’s a nasty day outside.”

Kathy gave her a blank piteous look and said, “Is it?” And with that Mrs. Brown came bustling out from behind her counter and had Kathy by the arm.

“Now just come along with me. You’ll sit down here in the back shop by the fire. And you’ll take your gloves off and get your hands warm, for it’s an aching cold today, and if gloves keep the cold out, so they can keep it in too, that’s what I always say.” She said a good deal more, but most of it went past Kathy.

When she opened her eyes and became aware of things again, the large woman was saying, “And you’ll be as right as rain-you see if you’re not.”

It felt like a promise. Things were going to be all right. She must just wait. She opened those deeply fringed eyes of hers and fixed them on Mrs. Brown with a trusting look which went to the lady’s kind heart, and said,

“You are very good. Are you Mrs. Brown?”

The woman laughed cheerfully.

“That’s me, though to tell you the truth there’s never been a Mr. Brown. But when you come to the fifties, well, I say it sounds better to be Mrs. Brown. But Brown I was born, and Brown I’ll die when me time comes. And now, me dear, I’ll go and make you some tea, and that’ll put fresh heart into you.”

Kathy was on a little settee in the room behind the shop. There was a sort of gauze curtain between the two rooms. The settee on which she was sitting was lumpy, and yet it was comfortable. Her troubles seemed all to have dropped from her. She said in a dazed, exhausted voice,

“You are so very good. I think I had better wait a little. The lady whom I am with has gone to see someone”-she paused and caught her breath -“someone in the prison. She said they wouldn’t let me see him, so I came in here to wait for her. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course it is, my dear. It’s not likely I’ll have anyone else in. Not a great day for visitors, Monday isn’t, and not at this time o’ day either. But are you all right to wait-that’s what I want to know. What did you have for lunch?”

“Lunch?” said Kathy as if she had never heard the word before and didn’t know what it meant.

“That’s what I said, l-u-n-c-h-lunch. And you needn’t tell me, because I know by the look of you that you never give it a thought. Gels-” said Mrs. Brown with strong reprobation, “I know ’em! I never had none of me own, but believe you me, there’s nothing about gels I don’t know. Seventeen nieces I’ve got, the darters of my five brothers, and what you can’t learn from a niece you’ll never learn from a darter-that’s what I say. Now what could you fancy? I don’t run to lunches as a rule, but a negg to your tea?”

“It’s not time for tea, is it?”

“Well, not formal like it’s not. But you can have tea any time, that’s what I always say. And I’ve got some lovely eggs. My brother Steve he brought them in yesterday afternoon-come over with his youngest, Doris. She’s got a look of you, me dear, if you don’t mind my saying so, and a real nice gel she is. Well then, I’ll do you a negg, and I’ll do it right away, because your friend she won’t be wanting more than a cuppa, I should say. I’ve seen her before. Last week it was-Thursday or Friday -and she come in for a cuppa. So you have your egg, me dear, and she’ll be only too pleased.”

Kathy sat still. She didn’t know afterwards whether she had dropped asleep or not. She might have, but if she did, it was only for a minute or two. She had the curious feeling that time had stopped.

Miss Silver went into the prison. She was taken to the room that she had been in before, and presently Jimmy was brought there. He looked a little brighter than he had that first time, and he was certainly glad to see her. She transacted her business with him-a matter of the time he had left his mother and her friend, and the time it had taken him to drive to his meeting-place with Miriam. He gave clear answers, and Miss Silver would have been a good deal more comfortable about his movements if it had not been for a most trying discrepancy between the evidence of the two ladies concerned-Mrs. Marsden stating that she looked at her watch just after Jimmy had left and had found the time to be ten minutes past six, whereas Mrs. Mottingley had said that Jimmy left the house at six-thirty. Both ladies had been obstinate in sticking to the fidelity of their timepieces. Jimmy said frankly that he didn’t remember, but he added that the drawing-room clock was always going wrong. He did not seem to take in the importance of the twenty minutes’ difference, and the mere fact that he did not do so tended to make his evidence the more credible to Miss Silver, though she doubted if it would have that effect upon a jury. However, there was no more to be done with it, and after all both times were open to argument. So much depended upon the speed at which Jimmy had driven.

Miss Silver turned to the subject of Kathy.

“You had another visitor this afternoon, Mr. Mottingley.”

“Another visitor?”

“Miss Kathy Lingbourne. She did not know that she would have to get special permission to see you, but I met her at the gates and told her that I would give you a message and take back one from you. You have a very firm friend there, Mr. Mottingley.”

She saw his hands catch one another close. He said in a shaking voice,

“I didn’t expect her to come. I-I haven’t treated her right.”

“She is not thinking of that, I can assure you.”