'We don't think Mr Ward was murdered for his money,' said Kenneth, 'but perhaps be found the treasure in the hermit's cottage and was murdered for that.'
'Treasure? What treasure?' Her long nose quivered again.
'Well, something must have been buried there, or why did Mr Ward dig up the floor?'
'Hem? Proper dotty-loike, weren't he? Touched en the head, Oi reckon.' She had scarcely at all ceased to keep vigil at the window and now she exclaimed: 'There's somebody new awalken down the road! Now who would that be, Oi wonder? Look loike her as Oi seen en the Kempson's car a-comen back from the town station weth luggage an' all.'
'Do you mean Mrs Bradley?' asked Kenneth, jumping up from his chair.
'You keep out o' soight! You keep out o' soight!' cried Mrs Winter in agony. 'Nobody don't never see nobody watchen out moi front winder!'
'She's got a hope!' said Kenneth, when we were outside the front door and he had scooped up the money-box. 'Oh, well, if she owes her rent, it wouldn't be any good asking her for money.' We shot out of Mrs Winter's front gate and joined Mrs Bradley in the road. I thought she seemed pleased to see us.
'Well, well, well! The Baker Street Irregulars!' she said. At that time we had not read the Sherlock Holmes stories and so this quip was lost on us. Later I wondered how she knew or guessed that we had been doing-or trying to do-some detective work.
'How have you got on?' was her next question. 'And to what extent, if any, has a good cause benefited from your questionable endeavours?'
We knew she was pulling our legs, but Kenneth answered truthfully.
'We've only got threepence ha'penny, and the ha'penny is mine. At least, it was mine before I put it in the box, and Mrs Honour won't answer any questions because we haven't any money to spend.'
'That is a deficiency which can be dealt with.'
'Oh, no!' I said, as she took a fat purse out of her skirt pocket. 'We're not allowed to take money.'
'This is not money; merely working expenses,' she said. I thought of father and his quarterly five pounds, and this did seem to put a different complexion on the matter. 'In a business concern,' she went on, 'it is quite usual for the partners to put up the capital and for others to take a salary and work for the firm until such time as they, too, are in a position to invest in it.'
We told her what had happened so far.
'Valuable information from Mrs Grant,' she commented, 'and a useful pointer from Mrs Winter. It was one which had already occurred to me, so I am glad to have an opinion which coincides with mine, especially as it comes from such a source. I imagine, from what I have heard about her from various persons, that what Mrs Winter does not know about what goes on in the village is, as the saying goes, not worth knowing. You have done well. As you probably thought, Miss Summers may have picked up gossip from the baker with whom, I am told, she has a platonic understanding. As for Mrs Honour, as you think and say, living, as she does, almost opposite the cottage in which Mr Ward was found, she must have something to report. Let me accompany you into these Hansel and Gretel dwellings and we will put the owners to the question.'
'That's what they used to call it when the Spanish Inquisition was working,' I said. 'We won't really torture Miss Summers, will we?'
'Nor Mrs Honour, I trust. Did you know that our English version of Hansel and Gretel is completely bowdlerised? In the original version collected by the brothers Grimm, no witch appears except the wicked step-mother, who is referred to not as a witch but as a fairy, albeit, we must suppose, a wicked one, and there is no house made of confectionery in the story. Hansel, in fact, is turned into a fawn after drinking from the third of the forbidden brooks and is cherished by his sister Gretel until the king who marries her catches the wicked fairy and makes her change Hansel back again. Well, never mind Miss Summers. Let us concentrate upon Mrs Honour.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MRS LESTRANGE BRADLEY AGAIN
It was clear that Margaret and Kenneth knew Mrs Honour's shop-window display off by heart and I feel sure that they could have played Kim's Game with the items with great success. This being so, we went inside the shop, as there was a further display within, so that comparisons could be made and merits weighed up and discussed.
While they were choosing what I was to buy for them, I entered into conversation with the shopkeeper and postmistress concerning the stamps I should require to send a letter to America. Having settled this matter, I then purchased envelopes and notepaper and asked whether she did not think that the American police were more efficient than our own.
As I had hoped and anticipated, this proved to be an effective ploy, for she replied that, if they were not, she hardly supposed they would catch any criminals at all. I agreed with her and suggested that it was disgraceful that a woman like herself, living alone-that was a shot in the dark, but it found its mark-should be without police protection. She agreed and immediately confessed that she now felt extremely nervous at nights, since she knew that there was a fiend in human shape roaming about the village. She added that no one was safe.
'Must be a madman,' she said. 'Who with any sense in their head would kill first an innocent young lady who was not even known in the place, and then a nice, quiet gentleman like Mr Ward?'
'Oh, was he nice and quiet?' I asked. She assured me that he was and that he called regularly at her shop to buy snuff, for she had a licence to sell tobacco. He also used the post-office counter, she added, but only once a month.
'I suppose you cannot see from behind your counter which children or other people might ever have gone into the cottage where Mr Ward's body was found,' I remarked. She said that the police had asked her that, but she could tell them nothing except that some rude children occasionally came and shouted in at her doorway so that she was obliged to chase them away.
'The last lot ran into the cottage to get away from me, but that was weeks ago,' she said. 'I've seen nothing since.'
So the young Cliftons made their modest purchases, thanked me quite unnecessarily and we made our way up the slope to the house where they were staying. Having franked myself, so to speak, by purchasing their confectionery for them, I said that I should be interested to meet their aunt.
She proved to be a buxom, kindly woman, very different from the elderly and (I suspect) shrewish Mrs Honour, and when the children introduced me as a friend of Mrs Kempson-they had insisted upon taking me up the steps to the front door, although I am sure their usual entrance was by the sideway and the kitchen-Mrs Landgrave took me into the parlour and insisted upon giving me refreshment. We then got rid of the children and settled down to conversation about Mr Ward.
Yes, she said, he had been quiet enough and gave no trouble. She knew he spent time at the village public house, but declared that she had never seen him what she called 'the worse'. On the other hand, during the week or two before his death she had become increasingly worried about his idiosyncrasies. He had dug up their garden and her father's chicken-run and one day she had seen him come into the kitchen just as she had put the children's mid-day dinner on the table and had noticed that he was soaking wet up to his waistcoat and had great splashes of mud on his face.
Subsequently, although they had tried to hide the fact, she found that Kenneth's shorts and Margaret's cotton frock were also wet and muddy. When she discovered this and challenged them about it, they reported that they had seen Mr Ward standing in the sheepwash wielding a pickaxe. They had been alarmed and had hidden partly in the brook when he abandoned his strange occupation and appeared to be coming their way.