“You were telling the inspector about your call upon Mrs. Lestrange,” I prompted.
“Exactly – and by the way, he didn’t thank me. Said he’d ask for information when he wanted it – not those words exactly, but that was the spirit. There’s a different class of men in the police force nowadays.”
“Very probably,” I said. “But you were going on to say something?”
“I decided that this time I wouldn’t go near any wretched inspector. After all, a clergyman is a gentleman – at least some are,” she added.
I gathered that the qualification was intended to include me.
“If I can help you in any way,” I began.
“It’s a matter of duty,” said Miss Hartnell, and closed her mouth with a snap. “I don’t want to have to say these things. No one likes it less. But duty is duty.”
I waited.
“I’ve been given to understand,” went on Miss Hartnell, turning rather red, “that Mrs. Lestrange gives out that she was at home all the time – that she didn’t answer the door because – well, because she didn’t choose. Such airs and graces. I only called as a matter of duty, and to be treated like that!”
“She has been ill,” I said mildly.
“Ill? Fiddlesticks. You’re too unworldly, Mr. Clement. There’s nothing the matter with that woman. Too ill to attend the inquest indeed! Medical certificate from Dr. Haydock! She can wind him round her little finger, every one knows that. Well, where was I?”
I didn’t quite know. It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins.
“Oh! about calling on her that afternoon. Well, it’s fiddlesticks to say she was in the house. She wasn’t. I know.”
“How can you possibly know?”
Miss Hartnell’s face turned a little redder. In some one less truculent, her demeanour might have been called embarrassed.
“I’d knocked and rung,” she explained. “Twice. If not three times. And it occurred to me suddenly that the bell might be out of order.”
She was, I was glad to note, unable to look me in the face when saying this. The same builder builds all our houses and the bells he installs are always clearly audible when standing on the mat outside the front door. Both Miss Hartnell and I knew this perfectly well, but I suppose decencies have to be preserved.
“Yes?” I murmured.
“I didn’t want to push my card through the letter box. That would seem so rude, and whatever I am, I am never rude.”
She made this amazing statement without a tremor.
“So I thought I would just go round the house and – and tap on the window pane,” she continued unblushingly. “I went all round the house and looked in at all the windows, but there was no one in the house at all.”
I understood her perfectly. Taking advantage of the fact that the house was empty, Miss Hartnell had given unbridled rein to her curiosity and had gone round the house, examining the garden and peering in at all the windows to see as much as she could of the interior. She had chosen to tell her story to me, believing that I should be a more sympathetic and lenient audience than the police. The clergy are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to their parishioners.
I made no comment on the situation. I merely asked a question.
“What time was this, Miss Hartnell?”
“As far as I can remember,” said Miss Hartnell, “it must have been close on six o’clock. I went straight home afterwards, and I got in about ten past six, and Mrs. Protheroe came in somewhere round about the half-hour, leaving Dr. Stone and Mr. Redding outside, and we talked about bulbs. And all the time the poor colonel lying murdered. It’s a sad world.”
“It is sometimes a rather unpleasant one,” I said.
I rose.
“And that is all you have to tell me?”
“I just thought it might be important.”
“It might,” I agreed.
And refusing to be drawn further, much to Miss Hartnell’s disappointment, I took my leave.
Miss Wetherby, whom I visited next, received me in a kind of flutter.