As far as Tuppence was concerned nothing could have turned out better. It could have been distinguished by a slogan-'You want information, we have it'. Mrs. Copleigh was as good as a wireless set or a television. You had only to turn the button and words poured out accompanied by gestures and lots of facial expression. Not only was her figure like a child's rubber ball, her face might also have been made of India rubber.

The various people she was talking about almost came alive in caricature before Tuppence's eyes.

Tuppence ate bacon and eggs and had slices of thick bread and butter and praised the blackberry jelly, homemade, her favourite kind, she truthfully announced, and did her best to absorb the flood of information so that she could write notes down in her notebook later. A whole panorama of the past in this country district seemed to be spread out before her.

There was no chronological sequence which occasionally made things difficult. Mrs. Copleigh jumped from fifteen years ago to two years ago to last month, and then back to somewhere in the twenties. All this would want a lot of sorting out. And Tuppence wondered whether in the end she would get anything.

The first button she had pressed had not given her any result. That was a mention of Mrs. Lancaster.

'I think she came from hereabouts,' said Tuppence, allowing a good deal of vagueness to appear in her voice. 'She had a picture-a very nice picture done by an artist who I believe was known down here.'

'Who did you say now?'

'A Mrs. Lancaster.'

'No, I don't remember any Lancasters in these parts. Lancaster. Lancaster. A gentleman had a car accident, I remember. No, it's the car I'm thinking of. A Lancaster that was. No Mrs. Lancaster. It wouldn't be Miss Bolton, would it? She'd be about seventy now I think. She might have married a Mr. Lancaster. She went away and travelled abroad and I do hear she married someone.'

'The picture she gave my aunt was by a Mr. Boscobel-I think the name was,' said Tuppence. 'What a lovely jelly.'

'I don't put no apple in it either, like most people do. Makes it jell better, they say, but it takes all the flavour out.'

'Yes,' said Tuppence. 'I quite agree with you. It does.'

'Who did you say now? It began with a B but I didn't quite catch it.'

'Boscobel, I think.'

'Oh, I remember Mr. Boscowan well. Let's see now. That must have been-fifteen years ago it was at least that he came down here. He came several years running, he did. He liked the place. Actually rented a cottage. One of Farmer Hart's cottages it was, that he kept for his labourer. But they built a new one, they did, the Council. Four new cottages specially for labourers.'

'Regular artist, Mr. B was,' said Mrs. Copleigh. 'Funny kind of coat he used to wear. Sort of velvet or corduroy. It used to have holes in the elbows and he wore green and yellow shirts, he did. Oh, very colourful, he was. I liked his pictures, I did. He had a showing of them one year. Round about Christmas time it was, I think. No, of course not, it must have been in the summer. He wasn't here in the winter. Yes, very nice. Nothing exciting, if you know what I mean. Just a house with a couple of trees or two cows looking over a fence. But all nice and quiet and pretty colours. Not like some of these young chaps nowadays.'

'Do you have a lot of artists down here?'

'Not really. Oh no, not to speak of. One or two ladies comes down in the summer and does sketching sometimes, but I don't think much of them. We had a young fellow a year ago, called himself an artist. Didn't shave properly. I can't say I liked any of his pictures much. Funny colours all swirled round anyhow. Nothing you could recognize a bit. Sold a lot of his pictures, he did at that. And they weren't cheap, mind you.'

'Ought to have been five pounds,' said Mr. Copleigh entering the conversation for the first time so suddenly that Tuppence jumped.

'What my husband thinks is,' said Mrs. Copleigh, resuming her place as interpreter to him. 'He thinks no picture ought to cost more than five pounds. Paints wouldn't cost as much as that. That's what he says, don't you, George?'

'Ah,' said George.

'Mr. Boscowan painted a picture of that house by the bridge and the canal-Waterside or Watermead, isn't it called? I came that way today.'

'Oh, you came along that road, did you? It's not much of a road, is it? Very narrow. Lonely that house is, I always think. I wouldn't like to live in that house. Too lonely. Don't you agree, George?'

George made the noise that expressed faint disagreement and possibly contempt at the cowardice of women.

'That's where Alice Perry lives, that is,' said Mrs. Copleigh.

Tuppence abandoned her researches on Mr. Boscowan to go along with an opinion on the Perrys. It was, she perceived, always better to go along with Mrs. Copleigh who was a jumper from subject to subject.

'Queer couple they are,' said Mrs. Copleigh.

George made his agreeing sound.

'Keep themselves to themselves, they do. Don't mingle much, as you'd say. And she goes about looking like nothing on earth, Alice Perry does.'

'Mad,' said Mr. Copleigh.

'Well, I don't know as I'd say that. She looks mad all right. All that scatty hair flying about. And she wears men's coats and great rubber boots most of the time. And she says odd things and doesn't sometimes answer you right when you ask her a question. But I wouldn't say she was mad. Peculiar, that's all.'

'Do people like her?'

'Nobody knows her hardly, although they've been there several years. There's all sorts of tales about her but then, there's always tales.'

'What sort of tales?'

Direct questions were never resented by Mrs. Copleigh, who welcomed them as one who was only too eager to answer.

'Calls up spirits, they say, at night. Sitting round a table. And there's stories of lights moving about the house at night. And she reads a lot of clever books, they say. With things drawn in them-circles and stars. If you ask me, it's Amos Perry as is the one that's not quite all right.'

'He's just simple,' said Mr. Copleigh indulgently.

'Well, you may be right about that. But there were tales said of him once. Fond of his garden, but doesn't know much.'

'It's only half a house though, isn't it?' said Tuppence. 'Mrs. Perry asked me in very kindly.'

'Did she now? Did she really? I don't know as I'd have liked to go into that house,' said Mrs. Copleigh.

'Their part of it's all right,' said Mr. Copleigh.

'Isn't the other part all right?' said Tuppence. 'The front part that gives on the canal.'

'Well, there used to be a lot of stories about it. Of course, nobody's lived in it for years. They say there's something queer about it. Lot of stories told. But when you come down to it, it's not stories in anybody's memory here. It's all long ago. It was built over a hundred years ago, you know. They say as there was a pretty lady kept there first, built for her, it was, by one of the gentlemen at Court.'

'Queen Victoria's Court?' asked Tuppence with interest.

'I don't think it would be her. She was particular, the old Queen was. No, I'd say it was before that. Time of one of them Georges. This gentlemen, he used to come down and see her and the story goes that they had a quarrel and he cut her throat one night.'

'How terrible!' said Tuppence. 'Did they hang him for it?'

'No. Oh no, there was nothing of that sort. The story is, you see, that he had to get rid of the body and he walled her up in the fireplace.'

'Walled her up in the fireplace!'

'Some ways they tell it, they say she was a nun, and she had run away from a convent and that's why she had to be walled up. That's what they do at convents.'

'But it wasn't nuns who walled her up.'

'No, no. He did it. Her lover, what had done her in. And he bricked up all the fireplace, they say, and nailed a big sheet of iron over it. Anyway, she was never seen again, poor soul, walking about in her nice dresses. Some said, of course, she'd gone away with him. Gone away to live in town or back to some other place. People used to hear noises and see lights in the house, and a lot of people don't go near it after dark.'

'But what happened later?' said Tuppence, feeling that to go back beyond the reign of Queen Victoria seemed a little too far into the past for what she was looking for.

'Well, I don't rightly know as there was very much. A farmer called Blodgick took it over when it came up for sale, I believe. He weren't there long either. What they called a gentleman farmer. That's why he liked the house, I suppose, but the farming land wasn't much use to him, and he didn't know how to deal with it. So he sold it again. Changed hands ever so many times it has. Always builders coming along and making alterations-new bathrooms-that sort of thing. A couple had it who were doing chicken farming. I believe, at one time. But it got a name, you know, for being unlucky. But all that's a bit before my time. I believe Mr. Boscowan himself thought of buying it at one time. That was when he painted the picture of it.'

'What sort of age was Mr. Boscowan when he was down here?'

'Forty, I would say, or maybe a bit more than that. He was a good-looking man in his way. Run into fat a bit, though. Great one for the girls, he was.'

'Ah,' said Mr. Copleigh. It was a warning grunt this time.

'Ah well, we all know what artists are like,' said Mrs. Copleigh, including Tuppence in this knowledge. 'Go over to France a lot, you know, and get French ways, they do.'

'He wasn't married?'

'Not then he wasn't. Not when he was first down here. Bit keen he was on Mrs. Charrington's daughter, but nothing came of it. She was a lovely girl, though, but too young for him. She wasn't more than twenty-five.'

'Who was Mrs. Charrington?' Tuppence felt bewildered at this introduction of new characters.

'What the hell am I doing here, anyway?' she thought suddenly as waves of fatigue swept over her-'I'm just listening to a lot of gossip about people, and imagining things like murder which aren't true at all. I can see now: It started when a nice but addle-headed old pussy got a bit mixed up in her head and began reminiscing about stories this Mr. Boscowan, or someone like him who may have given the picture to her, told about the house and the legends about it, of someone being walled up alive in a fireplace and she thought it was a child for some reason. And here I am going round investigating mares' nests. Tommy told me I was a fool, and he was quite right-I am a fool.'

She waited for a break to occur in Mrs. Copleigh's even flow of conversation, so that she could rise, say good night politely and go upstairs to bed.

Mrs. Copleigh was still in full and happy spate.