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“I came to see Arthur’s girl. I’m his aunt-Mi
“You saw her?”
“Yes, I saw her. I oughtn’t to have come. She thought I wanted money for the letters, and she talked about the police. She didn’t love Arthur. She only thought about getting her letters back, and the photographs.
“There were photographs?”
Mi
Miss Silver sat there. She would have to return to the house, but it did not seem possible to take this poor thing back there. It was after six o’clock. She would have to get A
“You spoke of a friend-”
Mi
“Oh, yes-Mrs. Williams-she lives with me. And she will be ever so worried if I miss my train. Oh dear, I shall never catch it! It was the six-twenty.”
Miss Silver looked at her watch.
“I am afraid it has gone, but there will be another in a little under an hour. That will give you time to have some refreshment, and if there is any way of letting your friend know, perhaps she could meet you at the other end.”
A little colour came back into Mi
“Oh, that would be nice!”
“Are you on the telephone?”
Mi
“Oh, no. But Mr. Pegler would take a message. He’s Florrie’s brother-in-law and ever so kind.”
Miss Silver never forgot a name. This was an uncommon one, and she had heard it before. She repeated it with a question in her voice.
“Mr. Pegler?”
Mi
“He lives just round the corner. The people in the house are relations. It’s a grocery business, so they have the telephone, and if they’re out he answers it. And Saturday evenings they go to the pictures, and Mr. Pegler comes round to Florrie and me, only tonight he said he thought he’d stay at home because of me coming back tired and wanting to rest. He’s ever so considerate.”
A grocery business-the Masters gallery-there might be a link between them, or there might not. Pegler was certainly an uncommon name. Miss Silver remarked upon this fact.
“That is a name one does not often hear. I believe I have only once come across it before. A friend mentioned it to me then in co
Mi
“The Masters gallery. That would be our Mr. Pegler-he’s worked for them for years.”
Miss Silver proceeded with caution.
“My friend was a deaf lady-a Miss Paine. She had learned to do lip-reading, and she told me Mr. Pegler was very much interested, as he had a little grand-daughter who was deaf.”
Mi
“Oh, yes-little Doris. She’s a sweet little thing. Miss Paine told him all about how to get her taught, and he was ever so grateful. You know, she was run over the other day, poor thing. Mr. Pegler was quite upset about it, and about having the police in at the gallery asking him about the lip-reading. Seems a fu
All the time that she had been speaking the scene in the morning-room at Merefields had been getting fainter in her mind, the way a dream gets fainter when you wake up and get out of bed and wash, and dress, and do your hair. Miss Silver, observing this, was begi
“Not then, Miss Jones? Do you mean-”
Mi
“I don’t suppose I should have known anything about it, only I was with him. I had been round to the shop for some potatoes- we had run right out-and Mr. Pegler walked back with me. He’s always so kind like that. Well, just as we came to the corner on the High Street, there was a man standing-right under the street-lamp. Two men there were really, waiting to go across the road and talking to each other. We didn’t have to cross, and after we’d gone by Mr. Pegler said, ‘See that gentleman, Min? That’s the one I told you about that was looking at that Miss Paine’s portrait and was so interested when I told him about her lip-reading. The police wanted to know about him, though I’m sure I don’t know why-you remember?’ So I said I did, and he said, ‘Fu