"Well, Ma'am?"
"Mr. Meager has not been here since?"
"No, Ma'am. Mr. Meager, Ma'am, isn't what he ought to be. I never do own it up, only when I'm driven. He hasn't been home."
"I suppose he still has the coat."
"Well, Ma'am, no. We sent a young man after him, as you said, and the young man found him at the Newmarket Spring."
"Some water cure?" asked Madame Goesler.
"No, Ma'am. It ain't a water cure, but the races. He hadn't got the coat. He does always manage a tidy great coat when November is coming on, because it covers everything, and is respectable, but he mostly parts with it in April. He gets short, and then he—just pawns it."
"But he had it the night of the murder?"
"Yes, Ma'am, he had. Amelia and I remembered it especial. When we went to bed, which we did soon after ten, it was left in this room, lying there on the sofa." They were now sitting in the little back parlour, in which Mrs. and Miss Meager were accustomed to live.
"And it was there in the morning?"