The tea-party broke up rather early. Rosamond was uneasy about Jenny, and Lucy Cunningham about Mrs. Parsons’s cat.
“I did ask Henry to keep an eye on the garden, but you know what men are, they become immersed. And cats are so determined. If it wants to sharpen its claws on that particular tree it will persevere.”
“Well, I don’t see how you are going to stop it, my dear.”
“A squirtful of water,” said Miss Cunningham firmly. “If I get back now there will be just enough light.”
When they had gone Mrs. Merridew allowed herself a little indignation.
“I can’t imagine why Lucy should expect the Parsons’s cat to be sitting there waiting for her to come home and fill a squirt. It seems ridiculous to me, and I very nearly told her so. Dear me-who on earth can this be!”
She had been looking in the direction of the window to watch Miss Lucy go. She now saw a tall, elegant young man come up the flagged path and disappear behind the jasmine on the porch. Miss Silver had a premonition. She was therefore not really surprised when Florrie looked round the edge of the door, a habit of which Mrs. Merridew had tried in vain to break her, and announced that Mr. Abbott had called to see Miss Silver- “and I put him in the dining-room.” Had Frank but known it, this was an almost unexampled tribute. If Florrie knew anyone she showed him in. If she didn’t she left him standing in the hall, or in an extreme case upon the doorstep. Mrs. Merridew had laboured in vain. In this, as in a good many other directions, Florrie took her own way.
Miss Silver picked up her knitting-bag and made haste to forestall the invitation which she saw rising to Mrs. Merridew’s lips.
“An old friend who, I believe, may have called on a matter of business. You will not mind if I see him in the dining-room, Marian?”
Mrs. Merridew was disappointed. She would have liked to meet her schoolfellow’s old friend. She said so as Miss Silver withdrew, but she was not at all sure that her remark had been heard. The door closed, and she was left to wonder what the old friend’s business could be.
In the dining-room Miss Silver took a chair. When Frank Abbott had also seated himself she said,
“I must not stay too long, or my kind hostess will feel hurt. If you can spare the time before you go, I should like to introduce you. I did not really like to neglect her offer to bring you into the drawing-room, but in the light of recent developments it occurred to me that you might wish to see me privately.”
He nodded.
“Yes, of course. I take it you are well up to date in the matter of this latest disappearance. Well, it is fairly fluttering the official dovecotes. You see, it may be important, or it may be nothing at all. They don’t like to neglect the first possibility, but they don’t want to make fools of themselves by treating it as a matter of urgency, and then find out that the lady has just gone off on a jaunt.”
“No one in Hazel Green believes in that as a possibility.”
He laughed.
“Of course they don’t! Trust a village to make up its mind to the worst! No one will actually say so, but there will be the deepest disappointment if it turns out that she has been week-ending with the odd friend or relation.”
Miss Silver looked grave.
“She has lived here for a good many years, and no one knows of any such relation or friend. But you were saying?”
“So I was. Delicate situation of the high-ups. And when the high-ups are in a delicate situation the low-downs don’t always know exactly where they are. And that goes for you and me. In the upshot, I continue my visit, and you continue yours. You, in fact, are just where you were, and you keep your eyes and your ears open and pass on anything that comes your way. I am rather more complicated than that. Scotland Yard has been asked to allow me to remain, but I’ve been given a strong hint to be as unobtrusive as I can. Just in case it all turns out to be nothing, when nobody will want to look as if they had picked up a sledgehammer to take a swipe at a midge.”
Miss Silver had opened her knitting-bag. She produced little Josephine’s cherry-coloured hood, now more than half completed. The bright wool made a pleasant contrast with the dark blue of her dress. She said,
“I understand perfectly. The whole affair calls for discretion.”
“You’ve said it! And that being that, what have you got to tell me?”
The grey needles clicked.
“Not very much, I am afraid, and probably nothing that you do not already know. I am, of course, fortunately placed here, as Mrs. Merridew knows everyone in the neighbourhood and her daily maid is a cousin of Maggie Bell who disappeared from Hazel Green a year ago. She is, in fact, the Florrie mentioned on the card received by Mr. and Mrs. Bell after Maggie’s disappearance and supposed to have been written by her.”
“Supposed?”
“Florrie says that Maggie always wrote both their names with a Y, whereas on the card the spelling is IE.”
“I thought there were no specimens of Maggie’s handwriting-”
“Maggie and Florrie were at school together. She is quite positive that Maggie did not write that card.”
“Then why didn’t she say so? She didn’t-did she?”
“Oh, no. She is the type who would never tell anything to the police. And she said the card was being a comfort to Maggie’s parents and she couldn’t take it from them. They are dead now, but she only burst out about it in the shock of Miss Holiday’s disappearance.”
“It was a shock to her?”
“A very considerable one.”
“Well, that’s that. What else?”
She was knitting rapidly, her expression serious and intent. It was a moment before she said,
“There are two households here intimately connected with one another and with the two women who have disappeared. The Cunninghams live in the Dower House, just out of the village, and next door to them in Crewe House there is Miss Lydia Crewe. Both these ladies are old friends of Mrs. Merridew’s, and I have met them here at tea. Maggie Bell worked for the Cunninghams. The household consists of Miss Lucy, who is in her middle fifties, a brother Henry, and her nephew Nicholas, employed as a draughtsman at the Dalling Grange experimental station. Miss Crewe is, or was, Miss Holiday’s employer. She is on terms of old and intimate friendship with Miss Cunningham, whom she is said to dominate. More than twenty years ago there was an engagement between her and Miss Cunningham’s brother Henry. Following on the unsubstantiated suspicion that he had been concerned in the disappearance of a valuable diamond ring, Henry Cunningham left the country. I have not been able to discover what foundation there was for this rumour. The lady who owned the ring has long since left the neighbourhood. She was a Mrs. Maberly, the wife of a rich self-made man, and notoriously careless about her belongings, but Henry Cunningham seems to have taken the gossip very much to heart. In fact, my dear Frank, he ran away from it, and from his engagement to Lydia Crewe. He returned about three years ago, and lives in a very retired manner, occupying himself with bird-watching and nature study. Most of this you will know already, but you may not be aware of the persistent and painful breach between him and Miss Crewe. Only yesterday they met just outside this house as she arrived to have tea with Mrs. Merridew, and according to what I am told is her invariable practice she cut him dead. In spite of which her intimate friendship with his sister continues. Nicholas Cunningham is also a constant visitor at Crewe House, and she is said to be devoted to him. Her household consists of herself, her nieces Rosamond and Jenny Maxwell, the latter a child of twelve and recovering from a serious motor accident sustained a couple of years ago, and the cook, Mrs. Bolder, an old trusted servant with a rather celebrated temper. Miss Holiday and a girl called Ivy Blane are daily helps, but Ivy does not go there on Sundays.”
“Do you mean that Miss Holiday does?”
“Yes. As I told you, she has neither friends nor relations, and I gather that the midday meal is an attraction. She has just the one room at Mrs. Maple’s, and she is no cook.”
Frank laughed.
“I’ve been hearing about Mrs. Maple. I gather she routed Denning horse and foot. I want you to come round there with me if you will by and by. At present all we know is that the cook at Crewe House says Miss Holiday left at about half past five, and we don’t know whether she ever got home or not, because Mrs. Maple can’t be induced to tell us. Which leaves Mrs. Bolder the last person to see her. In other words, we don’t know for certain that she ever left Crewe House.”
Miss Silver stopped him.
“Oh, yes,” she said-“Miss Cunningham met her.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because she mentioned it when she was here at tea this afternoon. Mrs. Merridew was wondering whether there had been any quarrel between Miss Holiday and the cook, and Miss Cunningham said, ‘Oh, she looked all right when I met her’. She was apparently on her way up to Crewe House, when she encountered Miss Holiday coming away. They met at the foot of the drive. I asked Miss Cunningham whether she had spoken to her, and she spilt her tea. I do not wish to stress this incident, because I believe it may have been quite accidental. Miss Cunningham is a large, untidy person. Her movements are very often jerky. She appears to be very good-natured.”
“But she spilt her tea.”
“Yes, she spilt her tea. And when I recurred to the subject of Miss Holiday and again asked whether she had spoken to her, she looked vague and said in an absent-minded sort of way, ‘Oh, just a few words’.”