so utterly amazed to find out that our visitor was a full-fledged Scotland Yard detective, having until then cherished a wholly fanciful and imaginary idea of the personalities of these sleuth-hounds, that for a moment I stood staring at him, in blank silence. But Keziah called from the parlour, to know who was there, and I hurried back and thrust the card before her. She uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and stalked out into the hall.
“Now, I told Veller” she began. But at sight of the caller she checked herself. Keziah had certain weaknesses, and one of them, with which I was well enough acquainted, was for well-dressed and good-looking people. I saw her face change. “You don’t mean to say that you’re a policeman?” she exclaimed, incredulously. “A smart young gentleman like you!”
“I hope I’m not the less fitted for my job because of that, ma’am,” replied our visitor, with a laugh of enjoyment at Keziah’s bluntness. “I believe I’ve the pleasure of seeing Miss Heckitt—Miss Keziah Heckitt?”
“You can come in,” said Keziah, motioning him to enter. “Perhaps you’ll take a cup of tea?—it’s all ready. Of course, I saw you at the inquest, but I never dreamed that you’d anything to do with the police. And as I was just going to say, I told Veller yesterday morning all I know, and all that Ben there knows, and I said that I wouldn’t be bothered any more, nor with the newspaper men neither—especially them, a parcel of busy-bodies! But well I knew the police would come! However, sit you down—do you take milk and sugar?”
“Both, if you please, Miss Heckitt, and you’re very kind,” answered our visitor, taking the chair which I offered him. “But don’t think that I’m going to bother you! As a matter of fact, I’m here to save you a lot of bother. You see, the local police—Veller, of course—told me what you’d already said, and I suggested to them that instead of putting you in the witness-box this afternoon, it would be far better if I just called and had a bit of quiet talk with you. Ladies, I know, don’t care about going into witness-boxes.”
“Well, I don’t know that they’d have got anything much out of me if I had gone into the box,” remarked Keziah. “As to finding that poor fellow, Captain Marigold and Veller saw as much as Ben and me did, and as to anything else—try a bit of that hot tea-cake, now!”
“It’s the anything else, Miss Heckitt, that I called about,” said the detective, helping himself. “And the anything else is—your uncle, Mr. Joseph Krevin. As I understand matters, Mr. Krevin came down here, where he hadn’t been seen for a great many years, and said that he’d a little private business with somebody hereabouts. Since yesterday morning the local police have been making inquiries all round the immediate district, and they can’t find that Mr. Krevin called on anybody, saw anybody, did anything. Yet I believe he was twice away from your house during the day he spent here?”
“Out in the afternoon, and out again in the evening,” asserted Keziah. “But we don’t know where he went!”
“The notion is—or may be—that he came here to meet the dead man,” said Cherry. “I gather that you don’t know much about Mr. Krevin?—of late years.”
“I know nothing!” declared Keziah. “Never set eyes on him—never heard tell of him for nineteen years till the other day. I don’t know why he came here, mister, and I don’t know what he did here, and I don’t know where he went!”
“That’s a queer thing, too,” observed Cherry. “The local police spent a lot of time yesterday trying to find out where Mr. Krevin went when he left your house. They haven’t heard a word of him! From the time he walked out of your garden—five o’clock in the morning, I understand”
“I never said it was five o’clock,” interrupted Keziah. “What I said was that he’d gone by five o’clock, at which hour, following my usual custom, I was up. He might ha’ gone at three o’clock, or at two, or at one, for all I know. What I do know is, he’d gone! And good riddance!”
“You don’t feel friendly to your relative, Miss Heckitt?” suggested Cherry, smiling. “Just so! I understand. Well, he went during the night. But—before that, you’d told him of what had happened?—of what you and your brother had seen?”
“We had, and a nice turn it gave him!” replied Keziah. She proceeded to tell of Uncle Joseph’s seizure and of his denial of acquaintance with the murdered man. “But he may ha’ known him, for all that!” she concluded. “First and last, flesh and blood of ours though he is, Joe Krevin’s a bad ’un, mister! And I’ll warrant me he was down in these parts for no good purpose.”