“They do say, sir, that it’s her spine,” the grocer confided. “Anyway, she’s mostly lying down. Some time ago they took her to one of them French places, but it don’t seem to have done her much good.”
“Aix-les-Bains, it was,” the butler put in. “I’ve been there with my gentlemen before now. In fact, it was through us, I think, that she went there.”
“Did it do her no good at all?”
“Some say it made a difference and some say it didn’t,” was the doubtful reply. “Anyway, there’s a physician comes to see her now once a month, and she has massage regularly from Norwich. It looks as though there were still some hope.”
“Is she—er—inclined to be sociable?” her new neighbour enquired.
The grocer shook his head.
“I’m afraid she isn’t disposed that way, sir,” he declared. “She and the Squire have been great friends all their lives, and he visits her regular, but she don’t see none of the other folk round if she can help it.”
“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” Mr. Johnson commented. “Does she live quite alone?”
“She has a companion,” the innkeeper answered—“a Miss Besant. A nice proper-spoken young woman, but keeps herself to herself. There was a niece too—lived at the Great House, she did—but she went away about a year agone and she hasn’t been in these parts since.”
“As a neighbour,” Mr. Johnson confessed, with a little sigh, “Madame appears to be a wash-out. Let’s hear about the rest of the folk.”