On this particular night our guests were Miss Ganett, and Colonel Carter, who lives near the church. A good deal of gossip is handed round at these evenings, sometimes seriously interfering with the game in progress. We used to play bridge—chatty bridge of the worst description. We find Mah Jong much more peaceful. The irritated demand as to why on earth your partner did not lead a certain card is entirely done away with, and though we still express criticisms frankly, there is not the same acrimonious spirit.
“Very cold evening, eh, Sheppard?” said Colonel Carter, standing with his back to the fire. Caroline had taken Miss Ganett to her own room, and was there assisting her to disentangle herself from her many wraps. “Reminds me of the Afghan passes.”
“Indeed?” I said politely.
“Very mysterious business this about poor Ackroyd,” continued the colonel, accepting a cup of coffee. “A deuce of a lot behind it—that’s what I say. Between you and me, Sheppard, I’ve heard the word blackmail mentioned!”
The colonel gave me the look which might be tabulated “one man of the world to another.”
“A woman in it, no doubt,” he said. “Depend upon it, a woman in it.”
Caroline and Miss Ganett joined us at this minute. Miss Ganett drank coffee whilst Caroline got out the Mah Jong box and poured out the tiles upon the table.
“Washing the tiles,” said the colonel facetiously. “That’s right—washing the tiles, as we used to say in the Shanghai Club.”
It is the private opinion of both Caroline and myself that Colonel Carter has never been in the Shanghai Club in his life. More, that he has never been farther east than India, where he juggled with tins of bully beef and plum and apple jam during the Great War. But the colonel is determinedly military, and in King’s Abbot we permit people to indulge their little idiosyncrasies freely.
“Shall we begin?” said Caroline.